assuming all the technology is sorted, the car can drive, the car can deal with pedestrians, bicycles, snow, flooding, the zombie apocalypse etc.

so.. i'm in my car which is driving down the road and "something happens" - a truck approaching on the other side has a blowout and swerves towards me.
the car knows that (say) it can steer either left or right and avoid the truck, that's not a problem.

however, if it steers right there is a high probability that I will survive but that by doing so I'll hit the minibus (full of school kids) that's in front and kill several.
however, if it steers left there is a high probability that I will be killed but that by doing so I won't hit the minibus (full of school kids) that's in front.

what decision will the car make?
will i be happy to allow it to make that decision?
- will i still be happy for it to make that decision if my 2 kids are in the backseat?

oops - replying to own post :-( Mr. Albert Einstein:"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. "

my understanding of faith is that "this is correct, we can't prove it is correct, you just have to believe it is"

my understanding of science (or more specifically scientific theory) is: "this is not necessarily correct but, given the limits of our understanding, this theory models behaviour in the physical universe within the following parameters..... ".

Scientific theory that claims to be correct, to always be correct and to never be anything other than correct is hokum and closer to religion than it is to proper science.

How many different theories as to the structure of the atom have there been?

Am not claiming to have thought about or researched the answer, but each has been the result of the testing of a hypothesis and has been demonstrated to be correct within the limits of knowledge currently available. Then, when more knowledge becomes available a new hypothesis is created, tested and if found to be true (within the parameters of the experiment) a new, more encompassing theory is defined.

there are enough theories out there that quantum mechanics debunks and proves that they do not actually describe how the universe works. However within defined parameters it is still possible to model super-quantum level behaviour using these theories

Whilst I completely agree with the above (and read engineering at university) I feel that the problem that people (myself included) have with experts these days is that they are frequently financially or politically motivated. In the UK under the last government we frequently got "policy based evidence" where lies, damned lies and statistics were used to justify conclusions after said conclusions had already been reached. meta-study says this, meta-study says that... are the studies used suitable? frequently not. we also seem to have ended up in a situation whereby unless you come to the correct "government approved conclusion" then you don't get any funding, therefore the first thing you do when starting your research you decide what results and conclusions you want to arrive at and then you make damn sure you arrive at them. Whether they are scientific and correct seems to be of secondary importance. so, whilst totally agreeing that there should be a lot more science in politics I would equally love to see a lot less politics in science.

thoroughly fed up with trying to register on wired to argue as the article seemed seriously wrong.
what i was intending to post there, but can't - finally somwhere to post it beyond the g/f's email!

Copied from http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm as I was looking for a reference to the information but think that this page sums it up at least as well as I could:

"The content of the human mind can be classified into five categories (Russell Ackoff):

Data: symbols

Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions

Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions

Understanding: appreciation of "why"

Wisdom: evaluated understanding."

The interpretation on the given url sees understanding as a process that represents the transition between each stage rather than as a stage in itself - information is the understanding of the relationships between data, knowledge is the understanding of patterns of information and wisdom is the understanding of the principles that underpin knowledge and hence make extrapolation to the future possible.

Whichever way it is looked at, the first categories relate to the past with wisdom (the ability to extrapolate) being the only one which relates to the future.

Applying to your example of J. Craig Venter, it can be seen (from my viewpoint) that his research has expanded the amount of data available to us and even possible the amount of information.
However it provides no answers, that I can see - from what is provided in your article - to the questions of "How?" or "Why?" and therefore provides no increase in knowledge, understanding or especially wisdom.

I would argue that it is the scientific method of hypothesize, model, test that provides the answers to the how and why questions and therefore increases Knowledge and Wisdom.

To me what you are arguing is not that the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete but rather that it provides a new basis for experimentation by the analysis of statistics - it provides a new medium for testing, but provides no ability to hypothesize or test and hence does not increase knowledge, understanding or wisdom.

As such it is a very beneficial development, but the results must be treated with the same caution, indeed more, as any experimental results gained by more traditional meas. To blindy accept the findings without factoring in all the paramaters and testing against a hypothesis (indeed, unless you hypothesize how do you determine what to vary and what to test?) seems to me to be very dangerous and indeed a step backwards in thinking.