I think that one general attitude toward solving our problems is to
keep in mind that not all problems have to have a moralistic
solution. That often things that improve the
value of life and that in that sense are highly moral outcomes may
not have come about through moral saber rattling,
posturing, persuasion and thought to be concrete. Let's say you've got a problem that
needs to be solved. A doctor makes an error, sends the wrong drug into a patient
and the patient dies. There are two ways of solving that problem. One is you could punish
the doctor and have a policy that any doctor that is careless in the future
will face severe penalties. That would be a kind of moralistic solution or you could
design the I.V. valves so that you can't snap together the wrong drug
with the wrong patient. That no matter how careless you are, you just can't have that bad outcome.
Probably the second one is what will save more lives than the first. It won't give
us that that bitter sweet glow of having punished the careless. On the other hand,
more people might be alive. I think probably a lot of improvement in the human
condition, more than we acknowledge has come about through non-moralistic
improvements than we commonly acknowledge.
If you ask who saved the most lives in the past generation?
One answer might be Norman Borlaug, winner of 1970, Nobel
Peace Prize, someone that no one has heard of. He's the father of the Green Revolution.
He devised strains of crops and methods of agriculture
that are more disease resistant, more energy efficient.
He's probably deserves credit for saving tens, maybe hundreds of millions of lives. No one's
heard of him. Why? Because he wasn't a moral crusader. He was a
technologist. But he accomplished wonderful things. Many
of the problems that we face might be solved. I wouldn't say all of them. There is a
there is a role for a Martin Luther King or an abolitionist to slavery.
And so on. But there is also a role, I think, for the engineer, for the scientist,
for the planner, for the policymaker, who figures out how people can get more of
what they want. Given the resources that they have.
