Y'know Jurassic Park has that famous quote "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" but the text of Crichton's original novel is very specific that the research direction was not chosen by the scientists at all but rather dictated directly by John Hammond, the corporate investor https://mastodon.social/@lentinic@mastodon.gamedev.place/109961295590298984

Like who knows, maybe if the scientists had been actually given the choice to provide input the technology would have been used to reverse, I dunno, the 1976 extinction of the Jalpa false brook salamander and nobody would have died

@mcc Too bad that's such a classic quotable, nobody who hasn't read the book will ever know.

And now we find ourselves in whatever tf this past few years of history is, where mistrust of the gov't and giant pharma megacorps has morphed into mistrust of independently funded, impartial science.

I've kinda given up on even trying to explain anything to anybody at this point. Thankfully my SO and I both work from home, and it's too cold in Canada anyway, so we exist in our own little sanity bubble

@gordoooo_z If it helps, Crichton had deeply weird views on science that got worse over his life to the point where eventually in his final novel he took the name of a NYT reporter who had previously called him out for global warming denialism and wrote him into the book as a child molester

@mcc No fucking way 😳

Damn, and after my last months long ER marathon, I was thinking maybe I should consider reading one of his books.

I mean, I didn't, because I'm terrible about finishing books, so I'm choosing not to start any until I finish the ones I already have going, lol, but the thought occurred!

@gordoooo_z i thought the jurassic park novel was pretty good

@mcc Was he just a weirdo, or a hateful toxic weirdo?

I can handle weird, but again, maybe I don't need to add anything to my reading list.

@gordoooo_z I don't know, and as with many authors, the fucked up stuff seems to have come in at the end of his life. I think his science fiction is fundamentally anti-science, IE, the running theme seems to be a very cynical one that humanity cannot be trusted with knowledge or power (consider the ultimate moral of Sphere). But that is not so unusual for science fiction.