The Power of Knowledge and the Dangers of Stupidity.
Tab,
Pipe bombs as you observe and from my own personal experience represent that aspect of human life we claim as knowledge. Gunpowder is very easy to make and so are a number of other higher power explosives. Nuclear bombs are also relatively easy to make if one can obtain the correct ingredients and a little technology. There are other types of knowledge in a similar category, for example, genetic engineering, cloning, and soon I think AI. Our problems are not that we have this knowledge but that many of us lack the intelligence of knowing when or how to use the knowledge. Almost any knowledge can be used for good or bad.
When my children were younger I remember explaining to them how a dangerous and volatile metal, sodium, when combined with a deadly poisonous gas, chlorine, can produce table salt. I suspect there are other aspects of the universe that may well have such counter-intuitive properties and which we will probably discover accidentally and for which we will express total astonishment.
The biggest problems we face are not from our scientific discoveries and factual knowledge but from our culture, our primeval instincts, and from socio-economic influences. If you give a child a loaded gun but don’t teach him its dangers then naturally you should expect a tragedy. We, as the human race are very much like that child, we are discovering these ‘loaded weapons’ through our instinctive curiosity, and we are demonstrating that immaturity that makes such knowledge so dangerous.
I don’t regret learning how to make explosives. It was a powerful learning experience, but what I don’t have is a desire to use that knowledge to cause harm to others, the idea is abhorrent. The solution to wars and terrorism is to understand the sociological immaturity of such groups and attack the issues from the direction of that understanding. Using more weapons to fight other weapons simply escalates the stupidity that so many people so very easily demonstrate.
Tab,
Pipe bombs as you observe and from my own personal experience represent that aspect of human life we claim as knowledge. Gunpowder is very easy to make and so are a number of other higher power explosives. Nuclear bombs are also relatively easy to make if one can obtain the correct ingredients and a little technology. There are other types of knowledge in a similar category, for example, genetic engineering, cloning, and soon I think AI. Our problems are not that we have this knowledge but that many of us lack the intelligence of knowing when or how to use the knowledge. Almost any knowledge can be used for good or bad.
When my children were younger I remember explaining to them how a dangerous and volatile metal, sodium, when combined with a deadly poisonous gas, chlorine, can produce table salt. I suspect there are other aspects of the universe that may well have such counter-intuitive properties and which we will probably discover accidentally and for which we will express total astonishment.
The biggest problems we face are not from our scientific discoveries and factual knowledge but from our culture, our primeval instincts, and from socio-economic influences. If you give a child a loaded gun but don’t teach him its dangers then naturally you should expect a tragedy. We, as the human race are very much like that child, we are discovering these ‘loaded weapons’ through our instinctive curiosity, and we are demonstrating that immaturity that makes such knowledge so dangerous.
I don’t regret learning how to make explosives. It was a powerful learning experience, but what I don’t have is a desire to use that knowledge to cause harm to others, the idea is abhorrent. The solution to wars and terrorism is to understand the sociological immaturity of such groups and attack the issues from the direction of that understanding. Using more weapons to fight other weapons simply escalates the stupidity that so many people so very easily demonstrate.
