

The dangers of a high-information diet - muon
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527431.600-the-dangers-of-a-highinformation-diet.html?full=true&print=true

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z8000
FUD. People can always do something bad. Hiding information from them so they
cannot do something bad such as recreating influenza from 1918 is a horrible
idea in my opinion, and intuitively seems like an impossible task anyway.

"The invention of spiked clubs, triremes, longbows, gunpowder and all the
other military technologies can be traced to the discovery of new
information."

Well, I am splitting hairs here but it isn't really a "discovery" when you
wake up one morning with a monolith in your front yard, a monolith that
somehow helped you kick your neighbor's butt.

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Padraig
Summary: Too much information is bad for you because someone might use it to
do something bad.

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Asmodeus
Both the article and summary sound like, "too much information is bad for _me_
because someone _else_ might use it to do something bad."

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ax0n
When reading about scientific history, I noticed that many times, it was noted
that several scientists stumbled across the same fact independent of one
another. Several inventors independently conjured up similar solutions to a
given problem years apart. These days, startup founders find that someone else
may have had the same idea not long before (or not long after) they did.

I have a feeling that many of us are somewhat in the "information wants to be
free" camp (some to a higher degree of fanaticism than others). I fail to see
how keeping information secret will keep other people from independently
reproducing, reverse-engineering, discovering or inventing the same.

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etherael
I think this is the only thing I can be fanatical on, I am hard pressed to
devise a theoretical piece of information I would not wish to be exposed to,
no matter it's nature. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, and
information can't kill you.

Well, directly, anyway. :)

