Scientific Monastics?

[Template]

I think someone here wants an out.  Maybe me.  Here goes:
When I think healthy but expendable, I think military.  If we can get away with restructuring medical research, maybe we can work different facets of "risk your life for the greater good", ie soldiering.  maybe.

So, should a general model that monasticises all scientific research exist?

[LMNO]

For the same reason its ethically OK to give somebody who is sick a medication that has nasty side effects, but not somebody who is healthy.

Explain to me how that's ethically okay.

Well, let's say you were trying to find a cure for AIDS, post-infection.

There is an implication that someone in the monestary would have to infect themselves with HIV in order to see if it works or not.

Ethically, it seems better to find people who are already infected, rather than add to the sum total of HIV+ cases in the world.


The point being that in order to test if something will cure a disease, you need to have someone with that disease in the first place.  You can't test it on someone who's not sick.

[Cain]

Neal Stephenson's latest book Anathem goes into this idea veeery thoroughly. It also has the "was maths invented/discovered" thing, and parallel universes and ninjas and space aliens....

It's a long read but definitely worth checking out.

I still haven't read that.  I really should.

[LMNO]

Think TPB has it?

[Cain]

I don't think so, but I have it in html anyway.  I could probably convert it to pdf quite easily, though I know he sometimes likes to put graphics in his books and I don't know if they will copy over with everything else. 

Time to run some tests.

[LMNO]

Try Stanza, it's a good free conversion tool.

[Cain]

http://ifile.it/mdfal2s

[LMNO]

Well, I think I know what I'm reading next.

[Cramulus]

related to topic:

Cory Doctorow's story "The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away"
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/06/the-things-that-make.html

"about geek monasteries that house smart people who can't get along in the world and put them to work as coders. "





I found this story very enjoyable

[LMNO]

Neal Stephenson's latest book Anathem goes into this idea veeery thoroughly. It also has the "was maths invented/discovered" thing, and parallel universes and ninjas and space aliens....

It's a long read but definitely worth checking out.

I still haven't read that.  I really should.

So far, it's pretty good.  I thought the new language/terminologies would be annoying, but he actually put some thought into it.