More religion, where even if you cannot see it or touch it, if you have faith, then it is real.Â
Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone.
It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize.
We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real.
Jonathan Shell, author of Our Fragile Earth (1989)
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Bunch more of that “non-think” that the leftists are constantly blathering about.
Reminds me of Gore.
In all honesty, this one doesn’t sound as crazy as the others… I disagree with him, but say Chamberlain had stood up to Germany, we might never know that he did the right thing. Or, if Patton had his way, and in 1945 we joined up with the fragments of the Wehrmacht and kept going east to Moscow, we’d never have known how horrible Communism was. (Though we’d learn Stalin was a monster)
So, I have to put this quotation in a different category from the others.
I can’t agree with you Aught. The preservation of ignorance goes against all human nature. It should also never be compared with fanciful hypothetical thinking.