| THE CRIME OF REASON And the Closing of the Scientific Mind Robert B. Laughlin New York: Basic Books, September 2008 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-465-00507-9 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-465-00507-1 | 186pp. | HC | $25.95 | |
| Page 16: | "You can't make tiny nuclear weapons for the same reason you can't make tiny nuclear power plants." |
| Not only is this untrue in itself, but it contradicts the statement on the preceding page that nuclear weapons can be small enough to fit in a backpack. Of course, there are differing conceptions of "tiny." But to me a backpack nuke fits the definition well enough. |
| Page 22: | "Immediately after the World Trade Center attacks, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to news organizations and to the U.S. Congress, killing five people and injuring another seventeen. The perpetrators were never identified." |
| This was true in September 2008, but only just. The probable sole perpetrator, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, committed suicide on 28 July of that year. The subsequent review concluded in February 2010 that Dr. Ivins was responsible.1 |
| Page 30: | "...that high voltage in power lines causes cancer, for example, cannot possibly be true because even higher voltages are everywhere in your home." |
| This is a fatuous claim for a physicist to make, because the power lines carry AC which radiates electromagnetic fields, while the high voltages the author mentions are DC. |
| Page 49: | "Labeling the creation of secrets as good because it protects inventors' rights is just ridiculous—like saying that card playing is moral because people have a natural right to lie." |
| Both statements go too far in dogmatic denigration. That patents can be abused or secrecy overdone does not negate the value to society of allowing inventors time to exploit their ideas for personal gain. Similarly, playing cards is not inherently immoral, and while lying may be so, no one sensible condemns it absolutely because the so-called "white lie" often proves essential to close relationships.2 |
| Page 81: | "The Lee incident thus revealed a profound conflict between national security needs and civilized rules of criminal evidence, specifically, treating the accused as innocent until proven guilty. You can't have both." |
| Yes you can. That the government went overboard in its statements about Wen Ho Lee does not preclude confining him without rendering a prejudicial statement. To be fair, Laughlin modifies his view on page 82: "Instead, each [principle] has a domain of validity in which the other makes no sense." |
| Page 86: | "A person thoroughly educated in gene manipulation might create dangerous forms of life, such as giant hermaphroditic lizards, virulent new diseases, or people specially designed to be slaves or soldiers." |
| Works of fiction such as Jurassic Park notwithstanding, the knowledge to create slave people or giant lizards does not yet exist, and won't for some time. Even with diseases, it would take a team of researchers and years of work to succeed in creating a new disease. Even modifying an existing disease, such as weaponizing the anthrax bacillus, is probably too difficult for one person. |
| Page 94: | "...developments that, unlike the sequencing of microbe genomes, are extremely important scientifically." |
| It's also important to sequence the genomes of microbes, for this contributes to the development of antimicrobial drugs and vaccines. |
| Page 95: | "It is very likely that we also got Hal (or Heather) the human, since cloning people isn't conceptually more difficult than cloning animals." |
| True, but the difficulty that would tend to prevent it is anticipation of the outrage that would follow such an occurrence. Laughlin acknowledges that such outrage has prevented public announcement of success. What he fails to acknowledge is that outrage would likely prevent such a project from completing, or even from being started.3 |
| Page 106: | "Rumor has it, for example, that when a new version of Windows is written, Microsoft programmers start from the beginning and rebuild the entire system from scratch. It costs too much to figure out how to use the old code." |
| I can easily believe this, but I'd still like to see a citation for it. |
| Page 107: | "The computer industry that we have today is centrally planned." |
| Nay, sir. Not so. Negatory, good buddy. Wrong-o! Or "That has been found not to be the case." |
| Page 110: | "These decisions are based partly on genetic birthright but also on the circumstances in which the cells find themselves—including their relationships at a given moment with their peers. Such decisions then become internalized as special individual characteristics of the cell, which it then passes on to its progeny." |
| This does not fit with what I understand of genetics. It sounds like the inheritance of acquired characteristics. If true, I'd have to begin referring to the author as Robert "Lysenko" Laughlin. |
| Pages 113-14: | "Most of us have seen horrific science fiction movies such as The Matrix, in which computers get out of control and enslave us." |
| Dr. Laughlin has his movies mixed up. It's aliens who do the enslaving in The Matrix. He should have cited The Terminator and its sequels. |
| Page 116: | "Genetic information is simply a string of ones and zeroes—as all of us are when we begin our embryonic journeys." |
| Is this a nod to Jefferson Airplane? |
| Page 119: | "Before epic poetry there were earnest all-night parties with alcoholic beverages." |
| That's a long way back, Doctor — before Homer's Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Are you sure they post-dated strong drink? |
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