The Yuck Factor
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, reports from Davos on the yuck factor:
When it comes to thinking about how to regulate the science, the best test may be the "yuck factor." This is, as you might imagine, a pretty squishy concept, something along the lines of using gut reaction as a proxy for a long and unproductive philosophical debate. Perhaps if people are grossed out by, say, vat-grown artificial organs, they may not be ready to use them wisely. Indeed, their gag reflex may be telling us something about the essence of human nature and what might threaten it.
I would say the opposite can hold as well--if people find something too mundane, we're not always going to think through all the consequences of its use. 'Oh, there won't ever be a problem with that' can be famous last words.
Another problem says Nobel Laureate David Baltimore is that 'Yuck is culturally determined.'
Dr. Baltimore bravely soldiered on, noting that yuck changes with age and generations; teenagers aren't freaked out by the things their parents are. Indeed, yuck is as much learned as innate: An audience member cheerily volunteered that a 1-year-old will drink apple juice—"which is urine-colored"—out of a bedpan without complaint. Good point: Perhaps this is not the stuff laws should be made of.
All that money and all those brains--it's good to know they're concentrating on the estoteric and the strange....
via BoingBoing