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From: kurt@tc.fluke.com (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Impact of Inventions
Message-ID: <2135@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 19:10:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2135
Posted: Mon Jun 29 19:10:01 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 03:22:53 EDT
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Sender: taylor@hplabsc.HP.COM
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

Remember, just as, for every Einstein there are 1,000 ordinary engineers
and scientists, so, for every Shakespear, there are 1,000 copy-writers,
editors, ad-men, and corporate-relations specialists.  Many of these
people aspire to the heights of literature the same way scientists
dream of the Nobel Prize.  You can never escape the words of these
people, on your TV screen, on your newspaper, in the speaches and
posturings of your favorite politician.  Let no one who considers
themselves a philosopher or poet delude you into thinking that the
average literatary contributor is motivated in any way differently
from the average technocrat.

Why should people not be motivated by short-term profit?  Isn't that
what survival is about?  Live long enough to reproduce?  This is our
heritage as biological organisms.  Think of society as an organism.
Society evolves due to changes in the environment.  Trying to change
the organism without modifying the environment simply weakens it.

Trying to consciously control an organism leads to overcontrol of the
most obvious kind.  (Try typing a response to this note, but for each
letter, think consciously which finger is nearest to the key you want
to press).  The mistake philosophers and politicians make over and over
is to arrogantly believe that their consciousness is powerful enough to
firmly grasp and control all aspects of a society.  (Look at our
overcontrolled economy and the nasty cycles that result from economic
oversteering.  Look at the record of failure of communist central
planning.)

What is needed is a change in the environment that will cause society
to evolve naturally into a 'better' organism.  Instead of trying to
block certain lines of thought because their effects are considered
undesirable, why not simply demand that undesirable effects be taken
into short-sighted, profit-minded consideration by taxing them,
regulating them, or removing the limits on liability for them?  How
many companies would manufacture weapons of war if any victim the world
over could sue the manufacturer for injury sustained as a result of the
use of a weapon?  How many polluting industies would not re-think their
waste management procedures if they had to set aside each year a sum
sufficient to isolate their waste products from the environment for
their entire (multi-thousand year) life?  Do we have to prevent
thought?  No.  Do we miss out on a useful byproduct (fusion power) of
seemingly undesirable research (nuclear weapons)?  No, although
certainly fusion research would proceed more slowly without weapons
money.  Man became a 'success' by learning to manipulate his
environment, and I submit that we may not have exhausted all lthe
'good' from this evolutionary adaptation.