Ignorance and Stupidity

This week, man launched a new mission to the moon. Many are excited about the possibilities of such an endeavor. 

I'm...concerned. 

I'm concerned because of the way that our attitude toward science has changed, even in my short lifetime. Because our confidence in some things has grown, but so has our arrogance. Because we are now certain in things we do not know. And I think that's dangerous. 

Sixty years ago when we were looking at the moon, we were ignorant. We didn't know much about the moon, if we knew anything at all. We didn't know what it was made of. We didn't know what kind of gravity it might have. We didn't know what kind of surface it might have. We didn't know what might happen if we were to approach it. 

But we knew that we didn't know. 

Our ignorance sparked our curiosity, and we approached the moon with more questions than plans. More exploration than intimidation. More wonder than domination. 

Today, we're in all of the other categories. We're back at the moon because of the plans we're trying to make, because of the ways we want to shape it to meet our own needs, because we're ready to dominate the moon and turn it into our launch pad for further space. 

We aren't ignorant any more, we tell ourselves. We know things about the moon. 

But do we know as much as we think we know? 

I don't think we do. And that changes our ignorance into stupidity. We are going to do some very stupid things in space because we're too arrogant about things we don't know. 

Science has a bad track record in this. Take, for example, the practice of carbon dating. Scientists studied for a very long time the way that carbon works across time, and they determined that by looking at the carbon in a thing, they could figure out how old it is. Which sounds really neat. Except that scientists also tell us that the world has changed dramatically in its history - in periods of great temperature fluctuation, in the movement of land masses and bodies of water, in the creation of mountains and valleys (so...changes in elevation), and all kinds of other things. And when they're looking at carbon for dating purposes, they do not account for how carbon must have acted under other circumstances. There are so many unknowns - when was this place hot? how hot? when was it cold? how cold? for how long? how much has its elevation changed over time? how much has it migrated closer or further from some other landmark, like the equator? 

We guess, but we do not know, and so we don't account for the things that even we say are true because we can't account for them because it's all theory and conjecture and guesstimations made off things observed in a relatively short period of time. Then, we say with "confidence" that a thing is such-and-such years old based on the carbon, but...what carbon? 

We're setting ourselves up the same way in space. One of the proposed uses I have heard for the moon is that it will become a waystation and a launch pad for further exploration to Mars. Which, if you're into that sot of thing, sounds really neat. But we do not know whether it's possible to launch something so powerfully off the moon. We don't know if the combustibles will work in the atmosphere of the moon. We don't know if the gravity that holds the moon in tandem with earth is strong enough to withstand such a launch. We could absolutely, worst case scenario, try to launch a rocket off the moon and change its trajectory by mere thousandths of a millimeter and end up throwing our entire planet into chaos. 

And all that science will tell you right now is "that's not going to happen." How do they know? They actually don't. They learned a few things about the moon a little more than 50 years ago and since then, they've been claiming they know more than they do. We have moved from ignorance, which inspired us to approach with questions, to stupidity, which inspires us to approach with arrogance. 

Even when we can't get space toilets right. 

I'm not saying that I'm hoping for a mission failure for Artemis II. Failure at these magnitudes is catastrophic. But I am hoping that we run up against something that reminds us how ignorant we are...and how stupid we're being. 

We all need the reminder sometimes. Myself included.