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If a smith makes a hammer for nails, makes the blueprint available for everyone and someone uses that hammer model to kill someone, is the smith evil? Should th

by zaarn 8y ago

If a smith makes a hammer for nails, makes the blueprint available for everyone and someone uses that hammer model to kill someone, is the smith evil? Should the smith no longer make the blueprint available because hammers can be used for evil? Has the smith made a political move by making the hammer available to everyone? Because all the smith wanted to do is share his knowledge to everyone, so everyone can smith their own hammers. Ultimately the smith is not morally responsible for what people do with the hammer IMO. The entire intent behind all actions of the smith was to do good, can we call him evil for that? Similarly I don't think simply building tools is a political or moral move. Rather, it's what you encourage people to do with it and what people do with it that is politically and moral. If I encourage my tool to be used for the better of society, am I evil is a small number of people abuse it? Don't get me wrong, I still think SV is a den of abuse, however that is because social networks like Twitter and Facebook aren't the hammer. They're not neutral tools. Both profit from moral abuse of the platform, it is enabled and encouraged to do so. Google as a search engine is making it's tool with the only intend to manipulate and abuse users for ads. There is definitely tools that exist in a moral vacuum (just think of a selfhosted radioshow software, it can host a show about pro-LGBT and one about 9/11 conspiracies, should the author be responsible for either?). But social networks and the tools you mention are largely not it. Those tools have been made with the purpose to do evil.

lvoudour 8y ago
Google and co aren't the smiths, they are the ones that hire them
- zaarn 8y ago
  In this example, they hire smiths to do evil and the smiths comply to make tools for evil. You can equate Google and Friends to the Smiths since the outcome is the same.
bumholio 8y ago
> Has the smith made a political move by making the hammer available to everyone? It depends. Is the "hammer" a set of instructions to build an airborne pathogen starting from the HIV genome? Technology is power and power is always political.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Even airborne pathogens could be used for good, the HIV-based one could be reengineered to transport a HIV cure while only showing mild symptoms of the common cold. Or cure cancer with it. Technology is not power. It enables power. If you engineer the technology to enable only a specific kind of power, then you the engineer and the technology you made can be called evil. Otherwise I would like you to point me to the particle of malice in the hammer and pathogen. The atom of injustice and evil that it's made of.
  - bumholio 8y ago
    > Technology is not power. It enables power. If you engineer the technology to enable only a specific kind of power, then you the engineer and the technology you made can be called evil. That's a clear contradiction. One one hand you acknowledge the choice of the technologist to be a power of evil, on the other you surmise that, as long as they are willfully ignorant to how the tech is used, they are merely a conduit of political power. It sounds like denial of an uncomfortable truth.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Not necessarily. I acknowledge that a technologist with the goal of doing evil can use technology to achieve that goal. But a technologist with the goal to do good or neutral will be able to use the same technology to achieve the goal. Technology itself is ignorant of how it is used, it's not a human. The tools, the technology, remains ignorant of how it's used even if it's for evil because ultimately it's the human wielding the tool that does evil. You may call technology only made for evil purposes evil if you want (I did say "can be called evil", not "must be called evil"). Or otherwise, did the technology choose to be evil? Was it asked and did it consent to be evil? Where is it's atom of injustice in the tool? Or for software, where is the bit that is evil? If I make a thousand hammers and use one to murder, are all hammers evil? I find it dangerous to use chains to bind evil, consider a doctor saving a life and then the patient murders someone. Is the doctor evil? Are the tools of the doctor evil? Should doctors consider if a patient might do evil? The same process should be applied to tools as well. If a tool is used to save a life and then a life is taken, is the tool evil? What if it doesn't save a life beforehand, is is now evil? How much live must it save before doing evil to be neutral? That is why I consider technology neutral (even if you may call it evil it remains neutral in nature, not in use), once you allow technology to become moral and political, you open the can of worms that is the consideration if evil is what enables evil in any possible form or shape.

by zaarn 8y ago

lvoudour 8y ago

Google and co aren't the smiths, they are the ones that hire them

zaarn 8y ago
In this example, they hire smiths to do evil and the smiths comply to make tools for evil. You can equate Google and Friends to the Smiths since the outcome is the same.

bumholio 8y ago

> Has the smith made a political move by making the hammer available to everyone? It depends. Is the "hammer" a set of instructions to build an airborne pathogen starting from the HIV genome? Technology is power and power is always political.

zaarn 8y ago
Even airborne pathogens could be used for good, the HIV-based one could be reengineered to transport a HIV cure while only showing mild symptoms of the common cold. Or cure cancer with it. Technology is not power. It enables power. If you engineer the technology to enable only a specific kind of power, then you the engineer and the technology you made can be called evil. Otherwise I would like you to point me to the particle of malice in the hammer and pathogen. The atom of injustice and evil that it's made of.
- bumholio 8y ago
  > Technology is not power. It enables power. If you engineer the technology to enable only a specific kind of power, then you the engineer and the technology you made can be called evil. That's a clear contradiction. One one hand you acknowledge the choice of the technologist to be a power of evil, on the other you surmise that, as long as they are willfully ignorant to how the tech is used, they are merely a conduit of political power. It sounds like denial of an uncomfortable truth.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Not necessarily. I acknowledge that a technologist with the goal of doing evil can use technology to achieve that goal. But a technologist with the goal to do good or neutral will be able to use the same technology to achieve the goal. Technology itself is ignorant of how it is used, it's not a human. The tools, the technology, remains ignorant of how it's used even if it's for evil because ultimately it's the human wielding the tool that does evil. You may call technology only made for evil purposes evil if you want (I did say "can be called evil", not "must be called evil"). Or otherwise, did the technology choose to be evil? Was it asked and did it consent to be evil? Where is it's atom of injustice in the tool? Or for software, where is the bit that is evil? If I make a thousand hammers and use one to murder, are all hammers evil? I find it dangerous to use chains to bind evil, consider a doctor saving a life and then the patient murders someone. Is the doctor evil? Are the tools of the doctor evil? Should doctors consider if a patient might do evil? The same process should be applied to tools as well. If a tool is used to save a life and then a life is taken, is the tool evil? What if it doesn't save a life beforehand, is is now evil? How much live must it save before doing evil to be neutral? That is why I consider technology neutral (even if you may call it evil it remains neutral in nature, not in use), once you allow technology to become moral and political, you open the can of worms that is the consideration if evil is what enables evil in any possible form or shape.