Sure, but why would more knowledge lead to more danger, rather than less?

I come to think about the adage that scientific answers often bring with them more questions. Those ever expanding questions I sometimes imagine as an exponentially growing circumference of unknowns, surrounding a circle of what’s currently known.

Perhaps those unknowns could be thought of as corresponding to the gray and black balls, so that what’s dangerous is essentially that which we don’t fully understand and therefore cannot fully control.

Finally, I’m thinking that the area covered by all previously gathered knowledge (area because knowledge synergies with itself) will increasingly likely outweigh the danger that we uncover as the circumference of unknowns grows and dangers are discovered along the perimeter.

Why wouldn't it? Knowledge produces technology, technology magnifies capabilities, magnified capabilites create first- and second- order consequences that feed back on each other. Increased complexity demands increased energy to maintain, and increased catastrophe in the event of failure.

The natural world alone has disease, disaster, predators, and threats from space but would exist independent of knowledge. Technology allows us to mitigate those, and as a trade-off we get biological and chemical weapons, mass shootings, the Tsar Bomba, etc.