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Should the people who discovered a way to start fires have come up with a way to prevent arson? Could they?
by tree_of_item 9y ago
Should the people who discovered a way to start fires have come up with a way to prevent arson? Could they?
- anigbrowl 9y agoThe negative externality of fire isn't arson, it's uncontrolled burning. Once you know water extinguishes fires, that's something to think about the next time you start one. The thing is, we know what externalities are and how they play out in regards to technology, even if we can't fully predict them. It's trivial to infer that this technology could be abused for deception, and that some sort of authentication technology might help to prevent that. So the responsible thing to do would be to provide both the editing and authentication technologies at the same time, even if neither is perfect.
- tree_of_item 9y agoI just don't understand how they can be expected to provide this, though. This "authentication technology" might not even exist, and in any case is very likely to be wildly different from the editing tech. The editing tech in the OP is also off-the-shelf components, i.e. nothing was invented, just assembled in to the correct form. What exactly are they supposed to have done, just not posted anything about it until they found a way to thwart the technique they just discovered? Most likely this bottoms out in an arms race, so they'd be waiting forever. Your request seems really absurd and I've never seen technological innovation work like this.
- dogecoinbase 9y agoIf structures had existed at the time, sure.
- tree_of_item 9y agoAnd how would they do this? Should they have tried to keep fire secret until this problem was solved?