Niko, I'm running out of superlatives to describe your newsletter! It just keeps getting better and better...
When are you going to accept levels of subscription? I'm totally opposed to paywalls and monetization of the forum... however, some of us I'm sure would love to support this effort you are making... So long as you keep all the information open to all, don't restrict comment privileges and all the other ills that bedevil the substack environment.
Thanks, Michael. I appreciate your kind words. No plans to monetize yet. I do this purely because I enjoy it and want to learn. I do my best, make mistakes, and people correct me. There's a beauty to writing in public.
I feel good enough about my existing employment that I don't feel like I need additional money. I'm probably overcompensated as it is.
I'm curious as to your level of interest in the philosophy of progress. Or, to put it another way, the assumptions upon which a celebration of progress is built.
In your view, is more knowledge automatically a benefit? Do you see any limit to the amount of knowledge and power human beings can successfully manage?
I am generally interested in Progress Studies, e.g. what inventions and discoveries yield the greatest benefit for humankind, and trying to understand why. No, I don't think more knowledge is automatically a benefit, or an indication of progress. Lots of papers are technically "new" but are otherwise not useful or important. Another example: Easier access to long, synthesized DNA strands is not necessarily beneficial, especially if it's used to make bioweapons, which seems like a real possibility within the next 5 years.
Hi Niko, thanks much for your reply. Apologies for being off topic of this page, I wasn't quite sure where to put my question. I can't contribute much to a technical discussion of biology, but when you choose to write on these more philosophical questions I'd be eager to participate.
I'm interested in progress and benefit to humanity as well, which from my perspective may or may not include inventions and discoveries. I have significant concern that the pace of knowledge development is out running the pace of maturity development. Your example of bioweapons illustrates the concern well.
Those are EXCELLENT questions, Mr. Tanny. We should be asking them. So far as I know economic imperatives are driving the show rather than prudential considerations. The Fifth Industrial Revolution is arriving just as the Sixth Extinction is gaining momentum.. both linked to the explosive growth of human knowledge. We should step back and reflect on these topics. But we don't have a very good track record on restraint when it comes to exploiting new technologies.
Hi Michael, thanks for the encouragement. Yes, economic imperatives, geopolitical competitions, intellectual inertia, a general lack of interest in examining and challenging the status quo, etc.
Yes, the track record of restraint does seem poor indeed. As best I can tell, reason is insufficient for this challenge, and it's going to take real world events to modernize our relationship with knowledge.
Here's a kind of science fiction (?) biology question which you might use to further educate me. Imagine the plot of a movie...
Violent men drive some historic series of horrible events in the world. Say, nuclear weapons exchanges, or something of that scale.
These events cause some biologist to reflect that almost all the violence in the world at every level of society is committed by a small fraction of the human population, violent men. The biologist imagines a world with radically less violence, and thus, radically more money available for constructive purposes.
QUESTION: If this imaginary biologist decided to rid the world of violent men, or maybe men in general, how might they attempt to go about that?
So far I'm imagining something like they engineer a hyper transmissible virus which has no negative affect other than to prevent the infected from producing male offspring. I have no idea how realistic this is, or might become.
I'm in the middle of an article series about violent men and I'm attempting to obtain the most general understanding of where the field of biology is currently in relation to such questions, what possibilities the future might hold etc.
When readers ask me, "but how would we get rid of the men?" I'm interested in the degree to which current or future biology might provide one answer to that.
If such a question is at all realistic, either now or in coming years, this might illustrate the kind of radical social changes today's biology might lead to.
Honestly, I'm generally against revolutionary advances in the field of biology, because I don't have confidence that we can successfully manage the new powers which will emerge. The history of nuclear weapons is very instructive here. But...
Most of my concern revolves around what violent men might do with these new emerging biological powers. So if the field of biology could solve the violent men problem, that would go a long way towards undermining my objections.
If nobody can solve the violent men problem, then I predict that violent men will use the new biological tools in such a way as to turn the public decisively against the field of biology. If that's true, then it would seem to follow that addressing this threat should be a "do or die" high priority mission for the field of biology.
Niko, I'm running out of superlatives to describe your newsletter! It just keeps getting better and better...
When are you going to accept levels of subscription? I'm totally opposed to paywalls and monetization of the forum... however, some of us I'm sure would love to support this effort you are making... So long as you keep all the information open to all, don't restrict comment privileges and all the other ills that bedevil the substack environment.
Thanks, Michael. I appreciate your kind words. No plans to monetize yet. I do this purely because I enjoy it and want to learn. I do my best, make mistakes, and people correct me. There's a beauty to writing in public.
I feel good enough about my existing employment that I don't feel like I need additional money. I'm probably overcompensated as it is.
Understand completely. I'm in the same fortunate position, even retired.. 🙂
I'm curious as to your level of interest in the philosophy of progress. Or, to put it another way, the assumptions upon which a celebration of progress is built.
In your view, is more knowledge automatically a benefit? Do you see any limit to the amount of knowledge and power human beings can successfully manage?
Are questions like this of interest to you?
Hey Phil,
I am generally interested in Progress Studies, e.g. what inventions and discoveries yield the greatest benefit for humankind, and trying to understand why. No, I don't think more knowledge is automatically a benefit, or an indication of progress. Lots of papers are technically "new" but are otherwise not useful or important. Another example: Easier access to long, synthesized DNA strands is not necessarily beneficial, especially if it's used to make bioweapons, which seems like a real possibility within the next 5 years.
Hi Niko, thanks much for your reply. Apologies for being off topic of this page, I wasn't quite sure where to put my question. I can't contribute much to a technical discussion of biology, but when you choose to write on these more philosophical questions I'd be eager to participate.
I'm interested in progress and benefit to humanity as well, which from my perspective may or may not include inventions and discoveries. I have significant concern that the pace of knowledge development is out running the pace of maturity development. Your example of bioweapons illustrates the concern well.
Those are EXCELLENT questions, Mr. Tanny. We should be asking them. So far as I know economic imperatives are driving the show rather than prudential considerations. The Fifth Industrial Revolution is arriving just as the Sixth Extinction is gaining momentum.. both linked to the explosive growth of human knowledge. We should step back and reflect on these topics. But we don't have a very good track record on restraint when it comes to exploiting new technologies.
Hi Michael, thanks for the encouragement. Yes, economic imperatives, geopolitical competitions, intellectual inertia, a general lack of interest in examining and challenging the status quo, etc.
Yes, the track record of restraint does seem poor indeed. As best I can tell, reason is insufficient for this challenge, and it's going to take real world events to modernize our relationship with knowledge.
Here's a kind of science fiction (?) biology question which you might use to further educate me. Imagine the plot of a movie...
Violent men drive some historic series of horrible events in the world. Say, nuclear weapons exchanges, or something of that scale.
These events cause some biologist to reflect that almost all the violence in the world at every level of society is committed by a small fraction of the human population, violent men. The biologist imagines a world with radically less violence, and thus, radically more money available for constructive purposes.
QUESTION: If this imaginary biologist decided to rid the world of violent men, or maybe men in general, how might they attempt to go about that?
So far I'm imagining something like they engineer a hyper transmissible virus which has no negative affect other than to prevent the infected from producing male offspring. I have no idea how realistic this is, or might become.
I'm in the middle of an article series about violent men and I'm attempting to obtain the most general understanding of where the field of biology is currently in relation to such questions, what possibilities the future might hold etc.
When readers ask me, "but how would we get rid of the men?" I'm interested in the degree to which current or future biology might provide one answer to that.
If such a question is at all realistic, either now or in coming years, this might illustrate the kind of radical social changes today's biology might lead to.
Honestly, I'm generally against revolutionary advances in the field of biology, because I don't have confidence that we can successfully manage the new powers which will emerge. The history of nuclear weapons is very instructive here. But...
Most of my concern revolves around what violent men might do with these new emerging biological powers. So if the field of biology could solve the violent men problem, that would go a long way towards undermining my objections.
If nobody can solve the violent men problem, then I predict that violent men will use the new biological tools in such a way as to turn the public decisively against the field of biology. If that's true, then it would seem to follow that addressing this threat should be a "do or die" high priority mission for the field of biology.