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kantro[w83,jmc]		Ideas of Arthur Kantrowitz

Messenger lectures - "A technologist looks at anti-technology"

lecture 2 - p.1 "Thus, critics of the Vietnam War frequently criticized
high technology for its role in that catastrophe".

p.3 - I doubt that the advocates of irrationality will be appeased
by the fact that scientific creativity isn't itself a science.

If we take Dostoevsky literally in the passage quoted, he is describing
a phenomenon, not praising it.  I don't know to what extent Dostoevsky
subsequently advocates it.  In my opinion, the description is substantially
correct, provided we don't say how many people react this way to
progress what fraction of the time.

	Of course, some of it is mere contentiousness.  Iranian student
life today is dominated by Moslem fanatics.  At the beginning of the
century, the fanatical students in Moslem countries were fanatical
advocates of modernization.  Perhaps the two groups share something:
being against whatever establishment dominates, and a large component
of this is independent of the ideas involved.  However, fanaticism
dominates only a small fraction of youth at any given time, and it
takes power only under special conditions.

p.5 - Social control of technology has been mainly harmful.

I should read Malthus to determine whether he would have been against
use of technology to control population.  Was he advocating one policy
rather than another or simply arguing that God meant mankind to suffer.

p.9 - "The progress establishment exhibited its inability to take
outside criticism seriously by hiring private detectives to
investigate his private life".
	1. It was GM, dominated by finance, not "the progress establishment".
	2. My own opinion, is that anyone should be allowed to hire
private detectives to investigate anyone or anything for any reason.
The limits come at the point of using the information.  It is clearly
wrong to use the information to spread false, though perhaps plausible,
rumors.  No-one has attempted to come up with a rule about what may
be investigated.  Many people who object to investigating Nader
would be pleased to have private detectives investigate Nixon.

It is important that only the most controversial and important issues
come before the formal procedures of a science court.  In most matters
an individual is the best judge of his own interests.  In the case
of almost all innovations, the market can be left to decide.  In the
case of most research grants, the harm of an award to an insufficiently
competent investigator is not very great.