Carl Sagan’s Warning about Technocracy By Brian Simpson

Carl Sagan (1934-1996), American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor, before his death made a statement about the dangers of technocracy. One of the key issues is people not reading much science, and knowing little about science and technology. And yet, science and technology rule the society, maybe as much as finance, since technological innovation set the pace for the shape of things to come.  As he asks, if the people remain ignorant, who is controlling the whole show? Contrary to Hamlet, that is the question.  

https://armageddonprose.substack.com/p/carl-sagan-predicted-from-the-grave

“Consider Carl Sagan's warning here – resurfaced by Jimmy Dore -- taken from an interview with Charlie Rose, way before COVID-19 or any of the other permanent technocracy-mediated emergencies emerged.

"There’s two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about. That we’ve arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?

And the second reason that I’m worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along.

It’s a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise we don’t run the government—the government runs us."

The entire ethos of actual science in practice – to bastardize a phrase from Ronald Reagan, if you will permit – is "distrust and verify."

Scientists are humans. Humans are not gods. Ergo, scientists are not God, no matter how much Swamp creatures such as Anthony Fauci insist to the contrary.

For that matter, government bureaucrats are just humans – and, generally speaking, not particularly admirable or honorable ones.

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

-H. L. Mencken