Picard wrote:No, it is not really stupid. Humans there never encountered Flood before, and spores, probably weakened by being in space for too long (bacteria and viruses can be weakened that way too - it is called vaccine.), seemed harmless. Except that Flood spores remained deadly, but it was not displayed immidiately. Mind you, they did test it - but initially, spores "proved" to be harmless.
But I do agree with other points - however, we saw several times crewmen doing stupidities they never would normally, so as to allow plot to keep going.
Not at the scale of a whole civilization, not that fast, not so recklessly. It's beyond mind boggling. Stuff arrives from outer galactic range, which by itself should be a big surprise and infinitely puzzling, then after a couple batteries of tests, they deem the stuff safe, despite the fact that it clearly alters creatures. Notwithstanding, they spread it like mad, and above all, they manage to miss the fact that the damn spores contained genetic material, which for all intents and purposes, being so complex as Flood, would be quite obvious.
It's not just that. Even taking the road that this genotype is coded differently than all life on Earth (why not?), either you recognize that it
is code, and therefore at this scale it can only be genetic or similar. Eventually, if you're advanced enough, you may even know what this code produces: either you manage to let it grow, or you literally simulate the organism by merely reading the code.
Otherwise, you don't recognize it, as in there are parts of the stuff you don't know what they're used to do.
In the less stupid scenario, they have read the genetic code, and deemed it safe, or harmless. The fact that they tested it on animals implies a level of tech that wouldn't even allow them to read the code so simply, and certainly not run a simulation off the bat.
Seems like the prehistoric humans of then were at a level of tech that may have been similar to Star Wars', where what is baffling is certainly the scale of the industry more than some bits of tech.
In all other cases, they fully know that there is this agent they can't read, can't know what it's supposed to do, but since it does nothing, they literally decide to spread it, despite that and its much mysterious origins.
Before anyone objects, the story with vaccines, regardless of your stance about them, is that when the virus is deemed neutered, it's actually fully understood by scientists. Not only that, but they do know that it's a virus, they can extract the genetic material, and they also know what it does when it's active.
In the human society described in the book, we're dealing with people who weren't wise enough to humbly take life for what it was, and decided that cats weren't cute enough. The kind stupid enough to actually get hacked by the bloody /b/ :D