The Voice of Time wrote:From the ever-inspiring Vsauce youtube channel. At 8:23 minutes he talks about nuclear bombs and their capacity in a way that is so much more learning and extra-detailed than what I've ever seen anywhere else.
Ah, then you will enjoy Countdown To Zero, an excellent documentary which covers the same topic in much more detail.
Here are links about the movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Zero
http://countdowntozerofilm.com/
Here is the full movie on YouTube (also available on Netflix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12Y7mo7fqM
He concludes with a philosophical twist that "science is keys", and keys is what science searches for, and the same key can open a door to heaven as well as a door in hell.
The challenge might be explained with an example.
Would we give a case of scotch, the keys to the car, and a loaded handgun to a ten year old? No, we wouldn't, because we recognize that ten years olds don't have sufficient judgment to use these tools safely and wisely. The tools aren't bad in themselves, but a mismatch between power and wisdom is.
The problem with science is that it is fueling an exponential rate of knowledge development, giving human beings ever more power at an ever faster rate, without first considering what level of power we are mature enough to handle.
Our culture has a very simplistic and primitive "more is better" relationship with knowledge, which would seem to be built upon an assumption that we can handle any amount of power, all evidence to the contrary.
Nuclear weapons serve the useful purpose of being an easy to understand example of the challenge presented by exploding knowledge development.
We are smart enough to make nuclear weapons, but not smart enough to unmake them. We don't even hardly talk about getting rid of them anymore.
What we do know for sure as a very well documented historical fact is that every so often human cultures go bat shit crazy and all hell breaks loose. It's happened over and over and over and over again for thousands of years.
Possessing nuclear weapons in significant numbers is like a game of Russian roulette. Sure, you can pull the trigger a number of times and get away with it, but sooner or later the loaded chamber comes up. Sooner or later the bat shit crazy time will come again, and the when that inevitable day finally arrives, human civilization will be knocked back 1,000 years or more.
Getting rid of nuclear weapons doesn't solve this problem, because nukes are just one of many incredible powers we are prying loose from Pandora's box.
I agree with the video you linked us to. Science opens the door to both heaven and hell. The problem is that as the tools become ever more powerful, we won't survive our encounters with hell, and thus won't get to enjoy the fruits of heaven.
Sadly, science has become the new religion, and any attempt to challenge the "more is better" relationship with knowledge dogma always quickly deteriorates in to a pointless conversation about Luddites etc.
