Why did you do this, man?

[youngborean]

Two current events that bug me:

1. The nuclear problem. Our progress has only been negatively affected by this scientific achievement. Now it is the greatest problem, that could never go away in our lifetime.

2. Sending a satellite to Saturn. 4 billion was spent on this project. Could the money not have gone to debt relief for the 3rd world?

So my questions for debate are:

Does man have his priorities in order?

Are these examples of scientific discovery in no way benefiting humanity?

[Nyril]

1. The nuclear problem. Our progress has only been negatively affected by this scientific achievement. Now it is the greatest problem, that could never go away in our lifetime.

Be more specific. I assume you're talking about nuclear weaponry, but I'm not going to go off about it if you are free to change it at this point.

2. Sending a satellite to Saturn. 4 billion was spent on this project. Could the money not have gone to debt relief for the 3rd world?

And Christopher Columbus shouldn't of left Spain until they'd fixed world hunger. We spend a lot of money on a lot of things nowadays, and there are still a lot of hungry people. I'll bet they've spent at least 100 billion on roads in the United States in a relatively small portion of it's history, while hungry people waited. I bet they put in sewer lines, water lines, and electricity to places on the government's dollar to give us luxuries while hungry people wasted away. We spend all this money on cars while people hunger. We spend all this money on clothes/shoes/jeweler, while people hunger. Look at cosmetic surgery, people just throw thousands of dollars away while people are hungry in far parts of the world.

Does man have his priorities in order?

I doubt anyone really does know what is best for themself, so no.

[Jose]

1. The nuclear problem. Our progress has only been negatively affected by this scientific achievement. Now it is the greatest problem, that could never go away in our lifetime.

Nuclear weapons? This is, indeed, a bit of a problem. Nuclear power? Not so clear. Nuclear family? This might be a problem too, in that extended families offer the kids more adults to emulate, and offer the elderly some hope of assistance. Nuclear medicine? Looks pretty good.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

2. Sending a satellite to Saturn. 4 billion was spent on this project. Could the money not have gone to debt relief for the 3rd world?

The money could have been spent elsewhere, all right. I doubt that it would have been spent in as useful an endeavor as you suggest though. I bet it would have been used for tax relief for the rich, or to build a new football stadium. The fate of the money is in the hands of politicians, after all.

Does man have his priorities in order?

Are these examples of scientific discovery in no way benefiting humanity?

I'll deal with the second issue first: these discoveries have benefited humanity tremendously, but not in ways that are easy to see on the surface. The space program and the weapons program have both led to technological innovations, like microwave ovens and calculators and light-weight composite materials. The weapons program always bothers me, since we're doing it to be better able to kill people who aren't like us. We aren't so good at using it just for defense. The space program, though, is inherently interesting.

Do we have our priorities in oder? No.

There have been several reviews of Jared Diamond's Collapse that suggest we should all read it to see just how far off our priorites are. We should be paying attention to the environment far more than we are. That is, environmental scientists are learning lots of things that are really important, but politicians are studiously ignoring them. I read recently that Texas is now expanding the anti-evolution "disclaimers" in textbooks (you know, evolution is "just a theory" and "alternate views are just as valid") to include environmental science. I presume this is to pretend that global warming doesn't exist, and enable us to continue our rapacious treatment of the earth (thereby enabling some of us to get richer), since paying attention would require changes that are "bad for the economy."

[youngborean]

Nuclear power? Not so clear.

The thing that bothers me is that our best solution to deal with spent fuel rods still seems to be to put them in containers that we hope don't leak. I think this is truly a problem that will never go away. Even if we disarmed every country. We would have a cleanup problem that would exist forever (relatively speaking).

And Christopher Columbus shouldn't of left Spain until they'd fixed world hunger.

Good point.

I think the advancements we often get from Science create as many problems as they help solve. I mean the space program also gave us better TV and cell phones on top of the inventions you mentioned Jose. But now I have to deal with people talking on the phone everywhere.

We aren't so good at using it just for defense.

This is what's so crazy. Initially the Bomb was created for defense, in that the plan was to test it in front of the Japanese. But men used it for offense. Now everyone wants one after seeing what a effective invention it was. And there is no way that a man will ever have the political capital to say "You can't have one" becasue there seems to be a movement towards moral relavatism that extends to other countries inspite of oft scary behavior from their leaders.

I posted this after seeing Henry Kissinger being interviewed the other night. He was talking about how it was easier in the 60s because only the Russians had one, so at least the balance of power was worrying about them. It kind of gave me a new perspective on High-level politicians in general. They must be really stressed if they spend all of their time worrying about all of the nuclear weapons in the world. It seems only logical that every country that has a nuke would have to have someone with their hand on the button just in case.


So a second question:

Is there any way to go back? Or are we just going to get worse?

[otseng]

And Christopher Columbus shouldn't of left Spain until they'd fixed world hunger.

As a note, Christopher Columbus did not sail off purely for research. His motive was driven by seeking an economic advantage of having another trade route to India. The cost/benefit ratio of having an alternate trade route made risking the voyage worth pursuing.

In the case of sending a satellite to Saturn, there is no commercial benefit to it. So, in my mind, the cost/benefit ratio would be hard to justify.

The fate of the money is in the hands of politicians, after all.

Too bad it's not totally in the fate of those who actually work for the money.

1. The nuclear problem. Our progress has only been negatively affected by this scientific achievement. Now it is the greatest problem, that could never go away in our lifetime.

During the beginning of the Manhattan project, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea for all those involved at the time. The Germans were trying to develop this technology, so it was in the best interest of the US to develop it first. I don't think the US had any other choice than to try to develop an atomic bomb first.

[Jose]

The thing that bothers me is that our best solution to deal with spent fuel rods still seems to be to put them in containers that we hope don't leak. I think this is truly a problem that will never go away. Even if we disarmed every country. We would have a cleanup problem that would exist forever (relatively speaking).

Yeah, and the weird thing is that we actually seem to think they won't leak. And Yucca Mountain! "Hey, guys--let's build a salt cellar on top of a fault. It hasn't slipped in my lifetime, so it must be safe." The SciFi answer is to use the space program to fix it: shoot the stuff into space.

But now I have to deal with people talking on the phone everywhere.

Shoot them into space, too. Well, maybe just the cell phones.

This is what's so crazy. Initially the Bomb was created for defense, in that the plan was to test it in front of the Japanese. But men used it for offense. Now everyone wants one after seeing what a effective invention it was. And there is no way that a man will ever have the political capital to say "You can't have one" because there seems to be a movement towards moral relavatism that extends to other countries inspite of oft scary behavior from their leaders.

There's politics for ya. There are our current friends and our traditional friends and convenient friends, and all kinds of covert programs to support or undermine regimes because of some perceived threat or benefit. It rarely seems to come with long-term thinking.

I think the problem is that we've changed the world enough that our inborn instincts are no longer appropriate. Our species "grew up" in a context of fighting other tribes, and probably other species, over scarce resources. We selected ourselves for group loyalty, and severe mistrust of "others." We selected ourselves to develop characteristics that would allow us to identify "our group," whether by face paint, tattoos, hairstyle, culture, or whatever. Now, when we're all jumbled up together on one small planet, when cooperation might actually work better, we still have these instincts even though they work against us.

It seems to be the case that everyone says "I know I'm right," without necessarily giving any thought to what the other guys think. We tried to have a discussion about this before invading Iraq, but those of us who tried were labeled "unpatriotic," and were at risk for being "detained" as "enemy non-combatants." Instead, we just followed our ancient instincts and went to war. We worry a lot about the Americans who have been killed, but no one ever mentions the Iraqis who were killed in the initial invasion, and little is said about those who are killed now. That's because "we're right" and they are "others." Presumably, that's why the local terrorists keep blowing us up--they know "they're right," and we are "the others."

Maybe some politicians worry about this, but I get the feeling that there are those who don't. God's on our side, so we're fine. We had absolute knowledge of the nuclear material in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but for the last four years (well, at least the beginning couple of those years), we ignored the fact that there were a lot of people who could get access to the stuff and squirrel it away somewhere. Where is it now? Why didn't we care when we had the opportunity to do something to protect ourselves and the rest of the world? (Of course, the rest of the world wouldn't have considered it "protection" if we had it...)

The cost/benefit ratio of having an alternate trade route made risking the voyage worth pursuing.

In the case of sending a satellite to Saturn, there is no commercial benefit to it. So, in my mind, the cost/benefit ratio would be hard to justify.

Commercial benefit isn't the only measure we should use. As someone who has been in "basic research" for decades, I'll argue strongly that a lot of commercial benefit has become apparent only after we've pursued interests simply because they are there. The commercial payoff is sometimes years down the road, and cannot be predicted. Conversely, restricting science to areas of known application unintentionally makes it much, much slower. Case in point: much of what we know now about cancer genes grew out of work with bakers' yeast. Lee Hartwell did a clever genetic study to figure out how the cell cycle works. What cues determine how and when yeast cells will divide? He figured it out.
When we developed effficient DNA sequencing years later, we found that many of those same genes, albeit the human versions of them, are the ones that are mutated in cancers. Would we have thought to study normal yeast in order to figure out cancer, because the critical genes would be evolutionarily conserved? I bet not.

Therefore, if a society wants to have scientific and technological advances, then part of the "investment" is in basic research, whether yeast genetics or space exploration. This is still a small sum compared to what we put into military research and development, and in my mind, is a very good investment.

Is there any way to go back? Or are we just going to get worse?

We can't go back very easily. My reasoning is above: our evolutionarily-selected instinct to hate others. As long as we fail to acknowledge this instinct, and as long as we pretend that we know better, we will have wars. if we have wars, someone will look for "advanced" weapons. Apparently, the Geneva Conventions are irrelevant, so there's not even any "Rule of Law" to govern what is allowed. All's fair in love and war, they say. We tried to identify some things that are not fair, and it worked for a while, but we've proven that even "the good guys" won't abide by the rules when they believe they are "right."

In a sense, it's not going "back" that needs to happen. It's going forward, to get beyond this knee-jerk acceptance of an instinct that threatens us. We need to move from hating the other guy just because he's different to being able to talk to the other guy and figure out what makes him tick. It is moral relativism? I don't think so. It's merely attempting to apply the morals we use in our own group to a larger, more inclusive group.

Until we can do that, it will get worse--if only because we have more knowledge, and can build nastier weapons. We need to become friends, and eliminate the need to use weapons. Unfortunately, we are not headed in that direction.

[Dilettante]

This is what's so crazy. Initially the Bomb was created for defense, in that the plan was to test it in front of the Japanese. But men used it for offense.

Perhaps the question should have been: Why did you do this, Truman?

Now seriously, it's hard for me to see the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as something other than acts of terrorism. Why were civilians targeted? Of course I'm happy the allies won the war, but it is not at all clear that the bomb killed less people than an invasion would have killed.

[seventil]

In the case of sending a satellite to Saturn, there is no commercial benefit to it. So, in my mind, the cost/benefit ratio would be hard to justify.

Scouting the escape route that we will use to escape the wrath of our future dolphin overlords is a commercial benefit, in my eyes.

I think the advancements we often get from Science create as many problems as they help solve. I mean the space program also gave us better TV and cell phones on top of the inventions you mentioned Jose. But now I have to deal with people talking on the phone everywhere.

On a serious note; perhaps we should be looking at another question: Have scientific advancements made our life better? Are we a happier people because of science? Or the contrary. Discuss.

Quote from Contact, Palmer Joss: Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the web... at the same time, we feel emptier, lonelier and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history.

[BeHereNow]

Have scientific advancements made our life better? Are we a happier people because of science? Or the contrary. Discuss.

Science has allowed more of us to be alive.
Live people are happier than dead people.
More of us are happier because of science.

Happiness is a state of being.
Happiness has nothing to do with the external world.
Science is an expression of the external world.
Science cannot contribute to our happiness.

[Wyvern]

Now seriously, it's hard for me to see the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as something other than acts of terrorism. Why were civilians targeted? Of course I'm happy the allies won the war, but it is not at all clear that the bomb killed less people than an invasion would have killed.[/quote]

The bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki were acts of war not terrorism, this was warfare before the advent of smart weaponry. At the time japan was preparing their citizenry for the final conflict, even school age children were being prepared to be kamikaze. in addition conservative estimates of allied casualties for a full invasion of japan were at over 3/4 of a million with guaranteed at least three times that number japanese deaths. In these terms dropping the bomb was a way to end the war relatively quickly and with significantly fewer deaths even taking into account all the cancer related deaths after the fact