Am I or Are We All Dangerous to the Public?

"Should I reassure myself by simply saying that bad guys can use any weapon at hand, naturalized facts when it suits them and social construction when it suits them? Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: what were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts? Nothing guarantees, after all, that we should be right all the time. There is no sure ground even for criticism." (227) 

When I first saw the first question above about bad guys holding weapons, I immediately thought of Robin mentioning in class once about when different guys hold a gun, the gun becomes a different gun. I would suggest that when different guys learn new things, information that being absorbed and expressed opinion can vary by that person's personalities, culture and a lot of different things. Bruno Latour talks about how criticism is no longer progressive in this essay and that the action of critique is getting us nowhere. In order for myself to write this blogpost, I looked up criticism on Dictionary.com and here is what I found: 

Criticism: a critical comment; any of various methods of studying texts or documents for the purpose of dating or reconstructing them, evaluating their authenticity, analyzing their content or style, etc. 

Throughout this course of CSCL 3331, Science and Nature, I am not sure if what we have been doing is for the purpose of dating or reconstructing or evaluating, I feel like we are more likely commenting on different issues throughout the course. And please correct me if I am wrong, the time that I feel like we are actually critiquing something is when, after the debate of if Michael Crichton and State of Fear are dangerous to the public, we had a discussion whether or not State of Fear is fiction, and whether or not it's us reader responsibilities to look up every single footnote Michael Crichton provided. Furthermore, I couldn't agree with Latour more on his idea of criticism nowadays are getting us nowhere. It is not just that are we only critiquing with one-side information and are we arguing on the same topic over and over again, e.g. climate change/global warming, people don't take action due to several reasons, as I have briefly talked about in my last blogpost. I feel like people these days, especially normal, ordinary, smart-but-not-science-studies-oriented person like Robin mentioned, are only looking at a issue with only one side of information is provided, and then they think they know the truth and the big picture. If they think what they are doing is right, there won't be anymore debate on climate change/climate change denial. 

From what I have read in other people's blogposts that they talk about how they were raised to think critically and to question, I am unlike the majority, I was raised not to think critically but to take/absorb as much knowledge/information as I can as a student. From my perspectives and my experience studying in Hong Kong, China, the idea of critiquing is not as important as "remembering" a lot of stuffs, and it was awful hard and sad that we had to memorize a lot of stuffs, to the point like we were being stuffed. And this explains why I like to just sit and listen to you all discussing on interesting topics. 

I can answer Latour's questions: should we apologize for having been wrong all along? I myself don't think that we should apologize for having been wrong all along because genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration, but we should probably apologize for the time we have taken so far, which is long. Should we bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself? Yes, I think we should critique how we critique before we critique again, otherwise it will still lead us to nowhere and etc. And this has a lot to do with the issue of global warming/climate change that we have been working on. In my opinion, in order to figure out whether or not if global warming does exist, one that with high credibility should really dig deep into this issue, although you may argue someone has already done that. But if that's the case, why is there still debate going on? Or are we after something else? 

Last but not least, I just feel like we as student do have responsibilities to know both side when we are to discuss a particular issue. If what we have in our hands are only one-sided information and we are to express our opinions, I would propose that we are dangerous to the public as well. And before we say it's listeners's responsibilities to look up what we expressed, it's also our responsibilities to know both side of information before we express. 

I am sorry if what I have been discussing in this blogpost is confusing people, it makes more sense in my head.