X-Message-Number: 15432
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: worrying about science, and questioning medical procedures
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:35:02 -0000

From: "Jeff Grimes" <>

> The trouble is, the writer is seeing himself as totally separate from the
future.
> This is not the case. The future GROWS out of the PRESENT. If everyone
> basically said, "Why worry, future science will take care of everything,"
> future science would never happen. It's up to us to make it happen, if we
care.

The number of people who make the future happen are very small. The chances
of any one given individual influencing the future are extremely small.
Think of how many job descriptions produce the same result with regards to
the future as the giants of science. The great thing with science, which is
not present in any other field of human endeavour, is that participants can
build on what has gone before.  Nothing is rigid or sacrosanct as in other
areas. If you can demonstrate in science that a "law" can be broken, that
law ceases to exist. If some uneducated inventor did manage to make a
perpetual motion machine that could clearly be demonstrated to work, (and
repeated by independent researchers) then he wouldn't be bankrupted, fined
or imprisoned for breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Instead, all the
framework of thermodynamics which says that such a thing cannot be done
would be demolished.

Can politicians and lawyers really influence the future of science at all? I
would suggest not. For
example, the fear that some other country will do stem cell research using
embryos must have
influenced legislatures who made decisions not to ban it. Therefore this
very large sector of the
economy are all really "drones" in terms of the advancement of science. Many
other sectors, such as entertainment, sports and so on are also "drones" in
this context.

Of course science relies on an infrastructure, but people rely on work in
order to eat and enjoy themselves. But in the strict sense, very few people
actually are capable of doing the things that really will influence progress
towards goals such as the milestones of science and engineering.

I would also suspect that those who are in the forefront of science really
can't help themselves doing what they do. Although many would like to be
there, most that know enough to get within sniffing distance of the frontier
will realise that they are only capable of being also-rans, or "drones" in
this context.

The"you can't do that because what would happen if everyone did it" is
frequently used to divert an individual from doing something. Cryonics is a
very good example. I would suspect those politicians and lawyers who have
legislated against cryonics in a few peculiar countries have used this
argument. "Where would be we be if everyone chose to be frozen" they may
have debated.

Having hope for the future of science is all that most people can hope to
do!


> But it seems to me, if I was going in for a medical procedure,
> these are the kinds of questions any patient wants to know.
> Who will operate on me? Can he do it locally? What techniques
> does he use? How does this differ from other surgeons?

A sound set of questions, but I would also add
"If I don't have this procedure, what will happen?"
"Is there any other course of action I could take to prevent this presumably
undesirable prognosis ?"

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz
my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, music, Inventors'
report, an autobio and various other projects:
http://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt
http://www.autopsychoice.com - should you be able to chose autopsy?

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