Because everyone in science and social change should think of the risks and the cost.
Though I believe suicide is okay and assisted suicide should be legal that doesn’t take away the loss and deaths caused. Though I strongly believe that disabled people will exist in utopia or heaven on Earth I fear protecting this future could have a terrible cost to disabled people now.
I think of Nobel and his invention of dynamite that he hoped would revolutionise mining and his guilt when it was used by the military to kill people more effectively.
I wonder if some of the people on the project to build the first atom bomb were conscientious objectors but were drafted irrespective of their moral objections.
Scientists prioritise discovery and truth seeking above consideration of their uses. They usually leave that to engineers. Neither profession has a moral code. It is left up to individuals and I’m afraid they fail to comprehend the consequences of their advances.
A theoretical physicist should consider that their work could contribute to a new generation of power generation but also that more advanced particle physics could also be turned into uncontrolled reactions which would dwarf current nuclear bomb technology.
As a social scientist, mental health rebel or whatever you, the reader, label me as I have to weigh my actions against the potential consequences. Too often I fail to do this enough.
For example, the other prongs of Angel of the Abyss could have negative impacts I’ve not yet explored. Equality First is riddled with problems and a lack of rigorous criticism.
But the genetics problem at the core of Don’t Exterminate Us is something I’m afraid of. I see big problems and evils whatever position I take. My intellect and experience have thus far failed to find a solution I’m comfortable either. Any decision I can make thus far makes me an evil man. My heart errs one way but protecting my soul make me err the opposite way.
Ugh.
We do big ideas 