Brilliant minds have the potential for amazing discoveries. Like electricty or radioactive material, amazing discoveries have the potential to be gaming changing in both ideal and non ideal ways.
The mind sharp is not a given. Someone can work on something, mean it for good and it can be misused initially. Then later what was meant for good and initially misused can be later used for good. Scientist and Engineers that stop working because their products might be misused are making a choice, a choice that has the potential to limit their future throughput.
This line of thought has potential for known by those initially planning to misuse a discovery. What is proper use has potential for not judged appropriately, people are not ideal judgers, people do not consider all possible combinations and possibility by default when they deliver words or actions. Comprehension can be modify to suit future purposes.
An initial discovery might not always be accompanied by what is an appropriate and inappropriate use of a technology. A new super fuel could be helpful to deliver rockets to the moon cheap, a new super fuel could be helpful to deliver ICBMs to cities cheap. Discoveries matter, people that make discoveries do not always know their true value for good and bad. Max Profit systems have potential for finding and utilizing discoveries for the profit of few and at the detriment to many.
There is momentum and motivation to keep working on projects without knowing what will be their use. One can build a wall thinking that is helpful for protection, when actually it was a wall that would later be used to jail them and oppress them. People are not all backhanded poetic justice out. People might use peoples investments as a weapon against them in the future is likely not always fully pondered. Teach a business man how to profit then he tries to keep your company afloat? Maybe if it doesn’t compete with his.
There are brilliant minds that are humbled many times, humbled into thinking their discoveries are not on par with Einstein. A humbled mind can equal less hubris. A brilliant mind that knows they are a brilliant mind might understand possible implications of their discoveries and prevent a discovery but many times those minds have been humbled to block hubris in advance. There is the potential for hubris in humbling, hubris in thinking hubris can be ideally humbled, that humbled has no potential for problems of its own.
Someone that is brilliant that chooses to do nothing might save the World? True. It is profitable to let intelligence go to waste, to let hours, days, and months goto waste? Potentially. Brilliant minds are likely to just stop working? No, less profitable matters, and people don’t always make ideal decisions driven by what is profitable.
Doing nothing is easy? No. Instinct is to act, to plan, to react to changes in the World. Actions of one that responds will always be sufficient, always have ideal training, oversight, liability reduced? No. Action is what feels right many times, does not equal action is what is always right. Not Acting, Not reacting has potential for viewed as laziness, indecisiveness. Making decisions knowing they will hurt image, reduce profit is not easy, and is thus not always invested in.
Skills degrade when they are not used equals there is non ideal incentive to use skills. A surgeon that has skills loses those skills if they use them less. People might not like the idea that the surgeon keeping their skills sharp factors into decisions around who have surgeries and who does not. A surgery today factors into safety of those having surgery a week from now, a month from now, a year from now fully pondered? Practice is valuable, medical data is valuable, upsold to given and not truly appreciated on more than one occasion.
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