Wild futuristic transhumanist ideology is on parade in this Metro interview (the free paper read by Londoners on the subways) with Michio Kako, a string theory proponent. Kako demonstrates a near-religious devotion to technology and clearly supports the “anything goes” mentality that impedes society erecting any reasonable ethical parameters around the immense power of biotechnology and other areas of scientific innovation. This does not bode well for the future. Human hubris can bring disaster. Just ask the passengers on the “unsinkable” ship, Titanic.
In this interview, he has some interesting things to say, including analogizing cloning to a heroin addiction for the rich—which, of course, we can’t stop so we might as well get used to it!
do we have time to consider the ethical impacts of technology?By the way, the man is a physicist. so I see no reason his ethical prescriptions should have any greater heft than mine or yours. Moreover, his area of expertise, string theory, is wholly speculative, founded on some amazing leaps of logic that cannot be tested—raising the question of whether it is belief or science.
There are some things we just have to accept. Cloning, for example. One day, rich people will start cloning themselves. How can you stop them? You can legislate against it but look at the drug trade today—people have got used to a certain fraction of society being heroin addicts. It’s the same with cloning.
And there is the implication in the interview that we dummies among the general public need to accede to “the scientists,” and give them a blank check—both financial and ethical:
are people becoming more interested in science or less?I am sure the BBC program will be suitably skeptical to such claims and avoid all propaganda—not!
Society is becoming more technological but our level of technological understanding hasn’t increased. The public will be asked to make huge decisions in the coming elections about allocation of resources, so we have a mismatch. Knowledge is doubling every few decades, so hopefully programmes like this will help people understand [Me: and open their pocket books].
