Will Science Destroy Us?

[dannieyankee]

Though it's true that people kill others and guns don't have a mind of their own, occasionally a gun will go off by accident.

Then again, that's probably a human's fault.

Either way, I don't think that all humans are always capable of every action they do; though this is unrelated, I must state that gun shops should have stricter control and a sort of Sane-ness test to weed out those capable of destruction of human life.

Science is destroying us, not because it is doing it itself, but because human nature, it seems, appears to be violent. We ourselves invented technology such as the a-bomb, nuclear/biological warfare, and firearms. Though it was not science itself that made these inventions, it will still be the direct cause of destruction.

And keep in mind how our artificial intelligence is keeping up.

[Boerseun]

Science has absolutely nothing to say about morality or ethics.

Also, Science is already perfectly capable of killing the entire Earth as it is - consider the lowly atomic bomb, for instance. The distance between blowing up Hiroshima and destroying the entire planet is merely a matter of scale and cost.

Also, scientists know that building and detonating a bomb to destroy the planet will most likely have a negative impact on the flow of grant money.

I can take a ploughshare and till a field to feed hundreds - or, alternatively, I can drive that very same ploughshare through your skull. The reason that you came to a particularly nasty and relatively sticky end is clearly not the ploughshare's fault.

Also, scientists have no opinion of their own - or are not supposed to have, as it were. They are supposed to be completely unbiased, impartial, uninvolved and objective. That's the idea, at least. If there is anybody or anything that will destroy the planet, it will most likely be the politicians. And they will destroy the planet regardless of the technological level attained at the time - whether it be by sticks and stones or space-based killer death rays.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

I can take a ploughshare and till a field to feed hundreds - or, alternatively, I can drive that very same ploughshare through your skull. The reason that you came to a particularly nasty and relatively sticky end is clearly not the ploughshare's fault.

I agree with the general consensus expressed in this thread – summed up pretty neatly, IMHO, in the Phantom cow of Justice’s parable - that science plays the role of a tool, and thus is neutral with regards to the question “will it destroy us?”

However, I think humans and general, and even many of us hypographers, have an overblown sense of our technological ability and will to destroy our own species, let alone Earth in its entirety.

Thus, I disagree with the assertion

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Also, Science is already perfectly capable of killing the entire Earth as it is - consider the lowly atomic bomb, for instance.

While the statement

Originally Posted by Boerseun

The distance between blowing up Hiroshima and destroying the entire planet is merely a matter of scale and cost.

is, in principle, true, we can just as truthfully state
the ability to break a stone with a hammer and shatter the earth into a gravitationally unbound swarm of fragments no larger than your fist is merely a matter of scale

As we discussed in the (highly recommended by me) thread “How to destroy the Earth”, if used 100% efficiently, all the nuclear weapons ever made have on the order of a 100-billionth () enough energy to destroy the Earth. Military experts on the subject generally conclude that an “successful” all-out nuclear holocaust would outright kill perhaps 33% of the humans on Earth, with perhaps an additional 75% of the survivors succumbing within a generation to various lethal collapse-of-civilization effects, for a total die-off of about 85%. In numbers of humans, this is equivalent to setting the word population back to about 1800 AD. In biological terms, it’s not a very significant die-off.

Likewise, biological weapon science in the past 30 years has had the humbling realization of the unlikelihood that even the most brilliantly engineered biological weapon is likely to be more lethal than those nature innocently throws our way from time to time. Macrofauna extinction on a practical human timeframe is a much more difficult evil feat than half a century of apocalyptic disaster fiction leads many to believe.

This is not to say that in the future, a human will not be capable of destroying the Earth, or at least all human life on it, but that present day capabilities are many orders of magnitude inadequate.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by CraigD

...we can just as truthfully state
the ability to break a stone with a hammer and shatter the earth into a gravitationally unbound swarm of fragments no larger than your fist is merely a matter of scale

Give me a hammer big enough, and the job is done. I fail to see any problem with that argument. Matter of fact, a big enough "space hammer" seems to have done the dinosaurs in. A big enough "space hammer" could have smashed a perfectly good fellow planet into the asteroid belt.

Originally Posted by CraigD

...but that present day capabilities are many orders of magnitude inadequate.

Whilst we might be succumbing to the ever-present temptation to digress this thread to death, I think that our "overblown belief in our own destructiveness" is not so overblown, at all.

A hammer is a perfectly good tool for smashing stuff to bits. And a big enough hammer to destroy the earth with a single swing is perfectly possible - and perfectly within our technological reach. It's merely a matter of scale and cost.

So, I agree with your sentiments that we aren't going to destroy the Earth anytime soon, but not because we can't , no - the spoilsports will once again be the accountants who simply won't let us build such awesome things like galactic hammers.

Bean counters - gotta hate 'em.

[lemit]

I started to read the responses, and then decided I wanted to address the question on my own.

I think the question has some merit. If the opposition to science is the proverbial villagers with pitchforks, I think I'd prefer to absorb whatever damage they can do as opposed to the archetype of the science that's being opposed, say, Dr. Strangelove.

I sometimes think ignorance has its uses, however Malthusian they might be. Then I start watching CSPAN and pretty soon realize I've recovered.

--lemit

[enorbet2]

This is probably going to sound off topic at the beginning but I just needed a starting point and this came to mind so I'm going with it. There is some method to the madness. IMHO one of the very few remaining big concepts in the watered-down Star Trek Voyager series took the form of the Physician AI in hologram form whom the crew needed desperately to evolve beyond his program. I don't recall his being specified as digital or not but he certainly was an analogue.

Stephan Hawking proposed (I know he wasn't the first and probably not the last but "Brief History" came to mind also) that prior to language the human species could only evolve at Biological rates, slowly, with very little change between one generation and the last. Hawking, and others, then go on to propose that language changed everything, first with oral history and even moreso with written history where each new generation, rather than starting like the last one at "zero", could start along a logarithmic progression. This is historically accurate in that apparently we spent around 1 million years (depending on where one assumes anything remotely resembling humans in our past began ... I mean we could go back to bacteria but that just makes the early period longer) with exceedingly little change. Hawking likens this situation, starting post language, as a tangential and sometimes competing sometimes complementing path of evolution, loosely based in mind and body. IIRC he ultimately formulates the issue that the characteristics that served us well as a species in the trees and on the plains for so long are now becoming so at odds that it is akin to the Sci Fi short story in which a loaded gun is left in a baby's crib as analogous to giving Man fission and fusion bombs, and either the "baby" must grow up, the "doctor" must exceed his program, or the technology must be abandoned. It may be worthy of note that a beakthrough of inestimable impact is underway EFDA - European Fusion Development Agreement and holds considerable promise

There is in all likelihood no way to turn back the hands of time and perhaps it's just as unlikely to just start over after some major apocalypse, Malthusian or otherwise. It's important to consider that any starting over is not equivalent to the past because although we have changed very little at the biological level and many would justifiably argue that we really haven't progressed all that far from coming down from the trees technologically since we still live in houses made of sticks and stones and depend on crops and the bounty or lack therof of drinking water and all of these things have changed rather drastically. When man was "on the rise" at first raw materials, even metals were essentially lying about in a form that a good fire could make useful and the biodiversity necessary for good odds at finding food was essentially everywhere since all life flourished in the temperate area from which it sprang. This can be expanded upon but after all this is but one post in a forum and I'm a ratchet jaw.

So while there may be scenarios in which we could "go back" I maintain that this is highly unlikely as an outright choice and much more likely to be stumbled into, probably as a result of our ancient programming to fight for territory and material gain, blindly follow leaders, distrust those who appear different, and solve conflicts with violence, often as first resort, etc etc. However we might get there the odds of either staying on a comfortable level or rising again don't appear as "betting with the house".

Often Creationists have said to me in hopes of proving the literal translation of the Bible, "Look around at all that is here for us" wheras I see that as a given since that is from what and whence we sprung. We fit because it came first. It is not a given that any survivors of an apocalypse will find it so accommodating.

So we, like the "doctor" or "the crew" if you wish, desperatly need to rise above our programming but wihout losing those characteristics that however ugly or politically incorrect are good survival instincts. Just knowing where that line is drawn is a major project not likely to be sussed out in just one generation. I submit that the best way to discover what is wheat and what is chaff as well as how to separate the two is again based in odds. We need to colonize other environments - perhaps undersea, perhaps Antarctica, but certainly on other worlds, moons and planets - spread the odds. One problem in our programming is that we tend to be ridiculously self-centered and self-congratulating - the whole "Center of the Universe, made in His image" thing. While the moon landing is quite possibly the highest achievement of Mankind on so many levels, including the cooperation required just to name one rarely mentioned (albeit still driven by deadly competition), it is a very small step compared to the vast ocean of Space and the difficulties that must be overcome. Yet even that happened over 40 years ago and has been relegated to near forgotten legend by many and ho-hum or wasteful by many others ignorant even of the spinoffs and Science itself, the single most useful and productive methodology ever invented is as suspect by many as politicians and lawyers and fit for only giving us Viagra, ShamWow, and the means to foment religious crusades. We have a very long way to go.

If this thread is about assessing the odds, my vote is that Science, the evolution of the mind, holds the answers, and obsession with vanities of the physical hold far more threat to our survival as a species. The Earth won't be in danger for 10 Billion years but we may face extinction in a few human lifetimes. and we have yet to raise the bar of survival past dinosaurs, cockroaches and horseshoe crabs, let alone bacteria, so what do we have that makes us different and possibly more succesful?. If we don't strive to make this new survival strategy, Intelligent Reason work for us, the truly meek, bacteria, may ironicaly actually inherit the Earth. Wouldn't that just be a Cosmic hoot?

[lemit]

Has anybody else here read William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" (in a graduate-level course on William Blake)?

Well, at least, has anybody else here read the book? It says a lot about the appeal of innocence, but eventially chooses experience. (I think, if I remember right, the course went into a little more detail.)

Since the question has both mystical and existential qualities, I think possibly a mystical response might help. I'll try for the existential later.

--lemit

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by enorbet2

the truly meek, bacteria, may ironicaly actually inherit the Earth. Wouldn't that just be a Cosmic hoot?

Hm...didn't bacteria rule the Earth for a few billion years already? After that things got out of hand pretty quickly.

[enorbet2]

Originally Posted by Tormod

Hm...didn't bacteria rule the Earth for a few billion years already? After that things got out of hand pretty quickly.

Well I did say "inherit" which implies the "last one standing" after all. But I suppose you know and sidestepped that for the great funny face!

[Moontanman]

Bacteria and other microbes already rule the earth, complex animals are just a after thought in numbers, biomass and influence.