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Is There Such Thing as Dangerous Knowledge?

Prospero

Thinker
Prospero
Joined
Sep 24, 2003
Messages
176
I've heard it on more than one occasion that there are just certain technologies that should not be discovered, the most obvious example being nuclear bombs, of course.

I'm not so sure I think it's possible to predict a techonology that shouldn't be discovered, much less proove that there is any technology whose consequences would outweight its benefits.

I bring this up in light of discovering this article which basically talks about reinstating review boards on discoveries in biotech. It mentions specifically a paper that tells how a virus was engineered with a human gene to make it more effective, and mentioned the possibility of terrorists getting it and employing the same technology against us.

My personal view is that the terrorism card is overplayed. I don't really see terrorists sitting down to establish a biosafety lab in which to grow the necessary bacteria and sample the human genes and create some doomsday virus. I'm not saying they're not capable of doing so should they put their mind to it, but explosives tend to be their modus operendi and they're not likely to deviate.

I'm not a big fan of the oversight panel, personally. I don't like the idea of having a line of research shot down because of its potential consequences versus its potential benefit. Mankind is too myopic to be able to judge any technology's consequences or benefits in my opinion. What is everyone else's thoughts on the matter? Is there such thing as dangerous knowledge that should never be learned?
 
[Pointing out the obvious]Its not the knowledge itself that is dangerous, its the idiots who get ahold of it who make it dangerous.[/Pointing out the obvious]
 
Well, there is knowledge and there is danger. Amongst those who do crisis intervention work , it is pretty well known which OTC meds are the most dangerous. But they don't tell it to suicidal people.

SUICIDAL PEOPLE PLEASE STOP READING:
Tylenol has the highest lethality and the lowest lethal dose of the OTC, take a certain amount and you fry your liver. Which is a very bad deal, you don't die right away, you wake and are glad to be alive and then you suffer a very painful death three days later as you go into liver failure. They should not sell those thousand tab bottles of tylenol!
Alcohol is very toxic, if you are not an alcoholic and you drink a fifth of hard liquor, you will die.

If you soak a single, regular tobbaco cigarette in a glass of water for eight hours, it will kill you if you drink it. (This is probably how H. Goerring killed himself aawaiting trial at Neuremberg.)

Freezing to death is supposed to be very pleasant once the hypothermia sets in, people can kill themselves without great discomfort by just going out and sleeping outdoors without a coat in very cold weather.

These are common toxics available to all people,
it is the Intent and the Action that make them dangerous.
 
Tylenol, is that Paracetamol? ah, google tells me it is (acetaminophen). We have pack size limits in the UK for that. Though nothing will stop you going out and buying lots of packs if you want to.

I would query the alcoholic thing though. A fifth is 750ml, which is 30 shots, which is about 15 pints of lager. I guess it would depend how fast you drank it.
 
The traditional liquor bottle in the US is a fifth of a gallon, which is 757 ml. Most fifths sold nowadays are 750 though.
 
CurtC said:
The traditional liquor bottle in the US is a fifth of a gallon, which is 757 ml. Most fifths sold nowadays are 750 though.
Click to expand...

Ha, the metric system is silently sneaking in. We'll get you in the end :D

Zee
 
Yahweh said:
[Pointing out the obvious]Its not the knowledge itself that is dangerous, its the idiots who get ahold of it who make it dangerous.[/Pointing out the obvious]
Click to expand...

I agree. The danger is in the (mis)application.

-TT
 
fsol said:
I would query the alcoholic thing though. A fifth is 750ml, which is 30 shots, which is about 15 pints of lager. I guess it would depend how fast you drank it.
Click to expand...

The difference here lies in the concentration of alcohol. Distilling does a wonderful job of concentrating the toxin. So that distilled alcoholic beverages will have a much higher concentration per ounce than brewed or fermented ones. Thus making it easier to get a fatal dose from a 5th of whiskey than from 15 pints of lager.
 
Dancing David said:
If you soak a single, regular tobbaco cigarette in a glass of water for eight hours, it will kill you if you drink it.
Click to expand...
that's it, I'm quitting either cigarettes (I've been threatening to for the last few years) or water (now that's not too smart, it's cigarettes that will have to go...)
 
Well, considering that nicotine is not only the most physically addictive substance in nature, but also one of the most effective poisons known, I think it makes sense to quit. I mean, do you really want a substance that can kill with a concentration of 1mL nicotine per 10 L of water. Oh, and then there's the fact that it is rapidly absorbed through the skin. Oh, but it's an alkaloid, so death will be really trippy. Yah, maybe that's not something to be sucking into your lungs...
 
extra sensory potato said:

that's it, I'm quitting either cigarettes (I've been threatening to for the last few years) or water (now that's not too smart, it's cigarettes that will have to go...)
Click to expand...

Smoking allows you to only get ten percent of the nicotine, so it is a slower poison, I think it effects the same receptors as the fly agaric mushroom.
 
If it turns out it -is- possible to cause a quantum vacuum collapse, which would pretty much wipe out the universe as we know it, the physicist who figures out how to do it should probably keep his/her mouth shut. They might want to warn other particle physicists who are currently doing experiments with particle accelerators, so they don't cause one by accident, though. Admittedly, a big IF...
 
Probably the most dangerous knowledge in the universe is...
No. If I tell you, I have to kill you.

Maybe Time Travel?
I'm convinced the reason we have no time machines is that as soon as one is devised, it causes such chaos that a team of highly trained time police from the far future is sent back to shoot the grandfather of the guy who would have designed it.

The only puzzle is where the time police get their machines from.

I could be wrong, but I'm not going to risk it.
 
That's an easy one: the time police would get the one from the future that caused so much havoc and go back and whack the old man. If you're concerned about a time paradox, there wouldn't be one. If the laws of physics allow for backwards time travel (really, really, really, huge IF...) then they would also allow for the events which in our minds would lead to a time paradox. If backwards time travel could exist, more than likely it would also be proof of multiple time line where killing the person in the past and returning to the future would result in them returning to that timeline's future, not their own. Wired had an article on this last year that was really nifty. Sorry I don't have time to link.
 
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