I am getting pretty tired of folks abandoning logic. They listen to “facts” that are clearly malarkey – but because they desperately want to live in a make-believe world, they aver them to be true.
I have written about some of this insanity recently. Politicians letting folks avoid vaccinating their kids as a matter of choice. So that the rest of the American population can be left at risk.
The driving force behind the “logic” of these adults? Corporations lie to them, so they can’t believe in the technology or science. REALLY? Maybe these same folks should be railing at the politicians taking bribes (you can call them political donations if it makes you feel better) to promote crony capitalism.
Letting corporations go scott-free for our major disaster (The Great Recession). Letting those same companies DEDUCT fines and penalties- a practice the IRS code clearly denies to the rest of us- so that government can ‘show’ us they are expediently handling the criminals.
The problem is that science and technology are both amoral; they do not exist in a moral framework. It is the function of us humans to discern the moral choices from the facts, machines, devices, and theorems developed.
The development of atomic theory is and was amoral. It’s first use to terminate the lives of those in Hiroshima could be considered a moral act; to demonstrate to the Japanese that resistance would result in the deaths of their millions, not just ours. The second bomb sent so rapidly thereafter…a much harder definition of morality.
The ability to effect genetic changes, stem cells, and DNA changes to cells all amoral. Changing the DNA of a fetus in the womb…or of an ovum…that requires moral interpretation. Don’t get me started on this British concept to allow three parties to jointly donate germ cell information to create one new human.
I have been a life-long technologist, one with a strong moral code. Yet, I know that it is the job of society to determine the use of various technologies. Whether or not I agree with the concept of driver-less cars (technologically feasible), society must decide if making truck driver’s jobs and taxi-driver’s jobs obsolete is acceptable.
That does not mean the technology is bad or good. It means how we use it is the critical consideration.
Tomorrow, I will discuss why this problem is getting to be more vicious and deadly.
