Extrapolating Einstein

 In 1915 Albert Einstein published the General Theory of relativity - an update to the limited theory, published ten years earlier.

That little episode was only the then most recent example of a human phenomenon.

As a race and as a species we come up with great ideas, that, at inception, are missioned for some advantageous contribution to our race.

The lever could move weights of a magnitude that no human or group of humans could move.

Big things resulted: the pyramids - perhaps - for example.

But it was not long before a thing called a catapult was hurling flaming tar over city walls into unprotected and unexpecting populations.

Flint was used for scrapers, bird points, and heavy-duty game killers: food became more plentiful.

But the game points were a good way to kill fellow humans; and kill they did, en masse.

Bronze was a mix of copper and tin.

When it was discovered, manufacturing tools (the "manu" being accurately tied to its base-word meaning - hand) exploded, as did human prosperity and its associated fecundity, associated with making a lot of stuff cheaply.

But mass production - relatively speaking - of warfare points became possible; empires, and their associated human populations began to be toted up and written down as gone in a massive war game count of death and destruction.

Gun powder was invented for fireworks.

But it was not long before someone figured out that if you put a projectile in a tube and loaded a charge of gun powder behind it you had a weapon substantially more lethal than either a flint or a bronze point designed for human destruction.

Which brings me back to Einstein.

His General Theory has been summed up: E = MC squared.

Buried in that equation, but obvious to anyone worth his or her salt in those days was the fact that, if you could disassemble an atom - of something to be determined - you could create a big burst of energy.

That could have generated a rush to create some sort of perpetual motion machine - something to run the turbines of our electric grid for example.

But it produced a bomb that killed a lot of Japanese and maimed myriad others.

Today I heard an NPR show about human embryos in a test tube.

Not a new thing.

But, when added to the preceding thoughts, a disquieting thing.

Being able to do that makes parenthood for many, many people, who, for various reasons could not be possible; that is a good thing.

But how long will it be - applying the "buts" outlined above - before test tube babies will begin to resemble Hitler's super race?

Just askin'.

Then there's CRSPIR.

That's a cut and paste gene technology that allows humans now and humans future to be re-engineered.

It has had a lot of success in improving the human condition.

It has ridden certain people of sickle cell anemia, for example.

But, again applying the rule of precedents, how long will it be before we all are blonde, six feet or more in height and are singing Deutschland uber Alles?

Just askin'.

Or, related to CRSPIR, what earthly reason do we have to believe that cloning humans has not already occurred, let alone believing that such a thing will never happen?

Just askin'.

I'm not comfortable with the answers I get to that, or any of my other questions.

Our track record history to date seems to me to be grim.