Culture Warriors On the Atomic Scale

Culture Warriors on the "NO!" side of Prop. 8 may take up their morally inflamed arms against nanotechnology, according to a new study.

The Cultural Cognition project at Yale Law School found that people who learn about a new technology often become deeply polarized along cultural lines. I know that this sort of behavior is as ingrained as breathing, but it's still disheartening.

Nanotech! The Devil's Science, or Johnny Jihadi's micro-terror pal?!

from Physorg:

The determining factor in how people responded was their cultural values, according to Dan Kahan, the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor at Yale Law School and lead author of the study. "People who had more individualistic, pro-commerce values, tended to infer that nanotechnology is safe," said Kahan, "while people who are more worried about economic inequality read the same information as implying that nanotechnology is likely to be dangerous."