If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Interpretation
Knowledge can lead to challenges, and ignoring them won't offer resolutions.
Isaac Asimov's quote suggests that while knowledge can often present us with problems, simply remaining ignorant is not a solution. To address the complexities that knowledge brings, one must actively engage with and confront those issues rather than avoiding them. It emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and understanding in the face of challenges.
In practice
During a public seminar on decision-making, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of confronting challenges head-on.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.
Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.
I write to save someone's life, probably my own
The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. The grass is greenest where it is watered.
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