[Marsha] Take genetically-modified food, not enough time has passed to properly evaluate the effects on the food source or the generation humans ingesting the food. We, the citizens of the Earth, are the test, and the results are yet to be determined. Can you be sure there are no unintended consequences? And this is just one area. Science is so integrated into the marketplace that its discoveries are passed on to consumers at a breakneck speed and we, human beings, are now the lab rats.
[Krimel] Unintended consequences? Most consequences are unintended. The set of intended consequences is very small indeed. Genetically modified food just seems to me to have a very, very low risk factor. But look at the unintended consequences of say the green revolution. I would bet your holistic horse crap website takes a dim view of that as well. The unintended consequences of the wide spread use of fertilizers was a dramatic increase in world population as food supplies expanded. That sort of thing is about what I would expect from advances in genemods as well. But even so on a scale of risk I would put setting a generation of children in front of cathode ray tubes way ahead of that. Or how about convincing vast segments of the population to ride around in cars risking their lives and polluting the planet. Again the real bitch against science is its pure dynamic quality. If you have to point fingers I would say much of the blame for unintended consequences lies at the feet of philosophers, theologians and politicians who have been unable to understand or keep up with the changes. [Marsha] There are still conservative areas of science that insist that scientific knowledge be treated as if descriptive of an objective world "out there", and as if science were the primary source of knowledge, truth and rationality. [Krimel] There are people out there who still think the earth is flat. So what? [Marsha] Calling my statements "bitching" and "silly" doesn't address the issues I raise. Bacon is a man who stated that Nature needed to be tortured for her to give up her secrets. Come on... [Krimel] All I have said is that you are pointing fingers in the wrong direction. In the overall scheme of things science is injecting dynamic quality into society faster than economics, politics, philosophy and religion can static latch it. Whenever a system get too much positive feedback it spirals out of control; into what is called a positive feedback loop. [Marsha] As I said this is a post-Science Wars statement, until recently Science did claim Absolute Truth. Space and Time were once thought to be absolute, and now they are thought to be relative to a certain frame of reference. [Krimel] If you call recently, 100 years ago. The dream of determinism was inspired by Newton. With Einstein, quantum mechanics, chaos theory and information theory that dream died. [Marsha] I would say we are not necessarily better off than 30 years ago. Are all those bombs be accounted for? [Krimel] No but they aren't all poised to go off at once anymore. [Marsha] My repeated point has been that science has become totally integrated into the political and economic systems, my repeated point is that scientists have an obligation to educate and explain the products it introduces into the marketplace, pros and cons, and my repeated point is that without this knowledge the consumer has no intelligent way to make a proper evaluation. [Krimel] A great many scientists do indeed teach at colleges and universities. And scientists rarely introduce products into the marketplace. That is just not what they do. Their research might be applied by others into products but again the issue is political and economic not scientific. If consumers are ill prepared to make intelligent evaluations that would appear once again to be a political matter. You would expect a culture that relies so heavily on the fruits of research to invest more in education. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
