"You're so busy asking whether or not you could you never stop to think whether or not you should" - Maybe Slightly Misquoted Jurassic Park. This goes with the AI ethics thread and my Evolution with technology thread. Do we as humans as stated above, just care so much about whether or not we can makes something possible that we never think about the moral implications before its too late? What drives this? Do we need to feel like we can conquerer nature, be superior?
Well I've been thinking lately that the sky is actually the limit when it comes to scientific advancement. When will the human race theorize and build everything there is, when will we figure things out? The trick is not to look out how evil our technology will be but how evil it can be. Computers can be used for evil but also for incredible good, they've helped advanced knowledge and science farther than any other machine or, well, thing to date. Things generally aren't created for evil, if you exclude biological weapons I guess, but just because they aren't created for evil doesn't mean that they cannot be evil.
Once again, objects are moral-neutral. A biological agent isn't evil. A killer-bee isn't evil. A gun isn't evil. Cocaine and heroin are not evil. Creating clones of dinosaurs isn't evil. Despite all they tried to say in Jurassic Park, the fact remained that the dinosaurs weren't the evil on the island. The evil was the greed of the engineer. Cloning dinosaurs isn't evil. Letting them loose on an unsuspecting population to kill and maim is. Every thing in creation has potential to be used for evil. Dogs can be turned into killers, nuklear power can be used to vaporize a city, guns can be turned on innocent citizenry, and AI can be created and turned into a slave race. It's all possible. Mankind is distinguished from the rest of nature because of our ability and desire to adapt our surroundings to ourselves. in that capacity, I don't think that really any purely academic pursuit is evil, misguided or even a slightly bad idea. And yes, yes, yes, we've all heard it before. Mankind is arrogant, mankind will find an evil use for anything, mankind this, mankind that. Why should we call something arrogance when we are simply fufilling our purpose on the planet? We are most human when we are using our rational minds to create new things. Should we stop wondering and exploring the universe because we are worried what might happen with the technology that is created? That's the sort of thinking that would have kept our ancestors barely more than apes, living in caves naked and capturing food with our bare hands. We've existed by creating more powerful, more useful, and faster things, from the rock to the club to the spear to the bow to the knife to the dagger to the sword to the pistol to the rifle, we increased our ability to hunt and kill game, feeding more people. From nomad farming to irrigation to crop rotation to metal plows to fertilizer to synthetic fertilizers to bug sprays and automatic harvesters we've been able to support MORE people per square acre of farmland than ever before. We are constantly growing and expanding and increasing our power over and against nature, and i'm not sure I see why that is so wrong.
Riomacleod ... "We are constantly growing and expanding and increasing our power over and against nature ... " I agree that obesity has become a problem, particularly in the US. What 'power' are you talking about? Far as I know, I have no more control over/against Nature than my great-great-grandfather had. Take care Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Certainly (collectively) we have some. We have been selectively breeding animals and crops, we now have genetic modification technologies which aloow us faster and greater control over such things. Refrigeration has given us the ability to store foods longer than nature would allow. We've sent things out of the atmosphere to the moon. We get pissed off when our flight (yes we can FLY) to Oakland is delayed an hour, even though it only takes 3 hours to fly across half the country! Maybe "power over and against nature" wasn't exactly the best word, but i think that i've given plenty of examples of how we have achieved better living through science.
Come on ... 1. Breeding: Both animals and crops, have been 'genetically' altered by cross-breeding etc. since god knows how far back; 2. Food preservation: Root cellars and 'ice boxes' have been around for a good while along with smoking and drying. Canning is the only relatively recent development in wide use; The rest is technology and in some cases quite 'nature' dependant. Why do you think flights, even shuttle flights, are delayed by nature in the form of weather. So, what word, or words, should you have used? Take care.
If the anti tecchies have their way, we'd all be growing crops for food and hunting the odd wild cow for dinner. Also dying of diseases, walking everywhere, not reading books, certainly not discussing anything on the internet, ad infinitum. They completely fail to see that technology and science have created far more good than bad, and live on fear of... something. Change maybe? In the case of science, it is certainly better to experiment with new things and guard as much as possible against disaster, than to not experiment at all, because something "might" go wrong. I better not go on any fishing trips to somewhere I havent been tomrrow... I "might" get eaten by a shark. I "might" get run over by a bus on my way to work tomorrow. I "might" die of food poisoning trying this new asian dish at a restaurant. sheesh.
I see what you're saying and I agree with you to a point but then some scientific advances are simply immoral and those ethical ramnifications were never thought out before hand. Sure being able to save someone from a terrible illnes is good, but a nuclear bomb isn't, etc. See its not the "might go wrong" concept, its the probability of seriously immoral and horrific uses. I still think science always asks could before should. We never really have ethics we just keep going on and on to see how much control we can have and what horrors we can create. Sure science has done a lot of good this I am not debating, I am not an anti-techy or whatever, but science many times opens the gate for evil not always an accident but many times on purpose or because the ethics were never thought out before hand.
"empowered ourselves" perhaps would be a better phrase, obviously we're still subject to the same basic physical rules as everything else. My point was that we're doing a better job of making lives less brutish and violent. Are you saying that there is a difference between science and technology? I didn't understand. the nuclear bomb was the first step to nuclear energy which is not the most pleasant of things but still it is a powerful resource which provides much more power than we've ever had available in a plant before. Cactus, I agree up to a point, but you have to understand that knowledge can never be evil, and simply because something might be misused by someone, that doesn't mean that millions and millions of people won't use them correctly.
Cactus, I agree up to a point, but you have to understand that knowledge can never be evil, and simply because something might be misused by someone, that doesn't mean that millions and millions of people won't use them correctly. Yeah, the point I'm trying to make is that science dashes head-first into everything never thinking about those times when its not a might, its an absolute certainty. Or those times when there is a likelyhood the bad will outway the good astronomically.
so what?! well certainly a nuclear bomb is immoral by some standards, but what about atomic power, is that immoral, or do we really even care? technology does not make life less brutish and violent, scientists say fuck utopia. those so impressionable by fact are those that care to much for morals.
Wow back then f*** up, chill out. I think you completely misunderstood and further more I am kinda taken aback by your tone. Listen what I am trying to get at the root at is why science does not consider morals, why do we feel we must keep asking could we? Why do we as human beings feel we need to be able to control the world around us as much as we can and go and see what we can accomplish, even when it can hurt the survival and comfort of our race. It may be a fairly simple question I am just interested in what people think. And Oedipus, FUCK OFF.
