IMHO the real question is why would we do this? Just because we can? Is there a hidden bio arms race we can’t stay away from?
This is all perhaps well and good if you're fighting for funds for studying, say, childhood leukemia, but in this case it's been a major disaster and has almost certainly played a central role in this recent global pandemic. Oops.
The revolution in technology has shifted the global array of national security threat models away from just the nation-state. The low barrier to entry to tech like the latest in bio or cyber research means now a single actor with no grouo or state affiliations is now capable of producing some destructive event on a national or even global scale.
On the backend, this is one of the quiet whispers in the halls of power in DC as a justification for the surveillance systems being enabled. You ask if there is an arms race. No, there are many arms races going on right now.
Just like nuclear, if its possible they will consider building it, potential side effects be damned, as long as we have some force multiplier the "enemy" doesn't.
On the one side of it: humanity, and our ability to explore, comprehend, and modify the reality around us.
On the other side of it: naturally-evolved viruses. They have a couple billion years' practice overriding biological countermeasures and massive territory advantage. If we do nothing, odds are they will eventually mutate into something that drops us dead in our tracks or wrecks us slowly, as they have before (smallpox, 1918 flu, HIV). And in our modern, deeply-interconnected world, geographic defenses and population isolation no longer protect us as they did our ancestors.
The main tools we have to avoid this are our ability to explore, comprehend, and modify. The capacity to change something and observe how the change affects it is something the viruses cannot do, and arguably our best chance of "outsmarting" them so that when they naturally mutate into a dangerous form, we already have the tools in place to mitigate or disassemble the danger.
88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human racesmost of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr. Teller get emotional about other "humanitarian" causes? If he was such a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to "benefit humanity" but from a personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.
89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself.
90. Of course, it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is in large part a surrogate activity.
91. Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).
92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.
Even now, in the era of federal grants provinding the meat & potatoes, a lot of scientists have multiple motivations, as in 'this line of research really is quite useful to industrial progress/understanding nature/fighting disease/etc and thus human civilization' as well as 'hey, I can make a decent living and get a fair amount of social prestige by doing this'.
The internal bureaucratic politics of the modern science world are pretty nasty though, it's like bad office politics on steroids. Possibly the most extreme example of how it call all go wrong is seen in the legacy of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union. Comparing Anthony Fauci to Lysenko might seem a bit extreme but recent events show how these types can utilize their power to protect their position, even if the kind of 'science' they're promoting is either reckless and dishonest or just manufactured ideological nonsense.
38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn't need the meat; other aristocracies have competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.
39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the "fulfillment" that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito's studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)
It seems like a logical quandry. If the only measure of non-surrogate activity is something like 'does this activity contribute to the survival of the individual, the family, the society, the species', and if science is a surrogate activity, then why isn't learning how to control fire also an unnecessary and frivolous activity?
Pretty much yeah. I don't think he's implying it as much as saying that outright. He doesn't condemn all surrogate activities equally though. He has ire specifically for those surrogate activities he believes inevitably restrict the freedom of individuals to go through their own power process, specifically science and industrialization. I'll not dump more large quotations in this thread, but read the section "Restriction of Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society" if you want to hear his reasoning for this.
I am not an anarcho-primitivist so the above is not the point I am trying to make. I provided the quotations in my previous comments to answer the question "why would we do this? Just because we can?" I believe the answer is this: "scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself."
What rubbish. One need only look at Euclid's Elements to see that a small portion of humanity has always been interested in completely irrelevant but highly specialized formal knowledge manipulation. That a single book about math has survived for longer than the Bible and been translated to a few dozen languages, across a dozen civilizations tells you all you need to know about the universality of curiosity.
Yes, if you're starving you won't be spending your time on curiosity, but you also won't be doing much of anything but looking for food. You might as well say that sex is a surrogate activity that we'd give up if we found something better to do.