Sprecher
Beschreibung
Wisdom involves the seeking of an ethical, meaningful common good—a good for everyone—over the long- as well as the short-term. Whereas people of high IQ are a dime a dozen, comparatively speaking, wise people are hard to find. How many wise leaders can you identify? Regrettably, many of the intellectually gifted ones are simultaneously very unwise, downright foolish, or toxic.
Wisdom is particularly important in STEM disciplines because, while their innovations can create great good, they also can create great harm. Weapons of mass destruction, medications that turn out to have biological destructive long-term side effects, junk food advertised as nutritionally beneficial, and AI that spews out poisonous lies in support of extremist and destructive ideologies are only a few examples of how STEM can go wrong. Regrettably, many of the purveyors of bad-STEM innovations are gifted but choose to deploy their gifts to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
In this talk, I will discuss what STEM wisdom is, how STEM wisdom can be measured, and how STEM wisdom can be developed in young people. What teaching techniques ensure that young people learn now only about STEM, but about how wisely to deploy it? STEM wisdom may seem like a metaphorical “pie in the sky,” but when one thinks of how the microbes that will cause the next pandemic may be brewing in a scientist’s test-tube right now, one must realize that STEM wisdom is necessary, now.