unintended consequences

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Now who would want to breed cobras?

I haven’t been able to determine whether this is true or not; but the story goes that in the 19th century, when the British ruled India, the colonial government wanted to put a stop to people being killed by cobras. And so, to eliminate the cobras, the government put a bounty on them.

The people soon realized that, as badly as they needed the bounty money, sooner or later all the cobras would be gone. So… they bred them. Set up home cobra hatcheries: that way there’s always a dead cobra to bring in for a bounty.

When the government found out that people were breeding cobras for fun and profit, they canceled the bounty. With no more money to be made from cobras, the people who had boxes of cobras at home released them into the wild. Presto! They had a much worse cobra problem than they had before.

This is the origin of the expression, “cobra effect,” describing how efforts to solve a problem sometimes make the problem worse.

Especially when the government gets involved.

Image result for mozart Drat! No more Mozarts

A scientist warns that current efforts to “edit genes” and remove genes for inherited diseases and disabilities could… well, it could ensure that no more geniuses would ever be born ( http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/747382/SCIENCE-WARNING-Messing-genes-WIPE-OUT-geniuses-earth ).

Naturally, we hate inherited diseases and would like to see them abolished. But another thing that we’ve inherited–culturally, not biologically–is this weird ideology that says that the creations of our own hands, Science and the State, will do all those things that God can’t do because He doesn’t exist. The history of the 20th century largely consists of the miseries imposed upon the human race by that ideology.

And so, armed with good intentions and the audacity of ignorance, we go trampling into uncharted territory where the slightest misstep might prove fatal–well, to somebody, at least. High overhead we carry the inspiring banner of Uniformity–physical, cultural, intellectual, political–this glorious flat same-ness that real smart people like to call Diversity.

Dirty little secret: even our geniuses aren’t all that smart. If they were, do you think we’d be in the mess we’re in today?

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. –I Corinthians 1:19