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> Should we improve ourselves? I don't like dying of primitive diseases, and aging. > Is technology inherently good? It doesn't have to be inherently (intrin

> Should we improve ourselves? I don't like dying of primitive diseases, and aging. > Is technology inherently good? It doesn't have to be inherently (intrinsicly?) good. It has good ramifications, such as the literally billions of people that have had a chance to live and be brought out of poverty that wouldn't have even existed otherwise. Those aren't insightful questions. They only sound wise when you don't think critically about them.

The_rationalist 7y ago
And yet you are being downvoted for fighting common bullshit, what a world we live in!
eloff 7y ago
You have to look at the longer term with technology, so far it's been an overwhelmingly positive force for humanity. I personally think it's the greatest thing ever, but we may one day invent the thing that ends us. Maybe that's AI, maybe we unlock a power in the physical world that we can't be trusted with. For example if anyone could build antimatter bombs in the garage, terrorists or other discontents would have used it to end civilization. There's no law of nature that says great power must always be hard to come by, and I wonder if that's not the answer to the Fermi paradox. Civilization might be a short-term blip, an unstable state on cosmic timescales. H.G. Wells ends the Time Machine with: "for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."
globuous 7y ago
I definitely agree with you. But i cannot stop thinking about the dwarfs in the lord of the rings that went too far, dug too deep, potentially due to the rhetoric youre having. That was their doom. Its a book, just a book. But i keep on thinking about it because i find it might also apply to humans and technology.
reggieband 7y ago
I think it is fair to see both sides of technological advancement. For every positive use of technology there is often some negative use. I think of nuclear power vs. nuclear weapons. No one thinks we should stop investigating chemicals and diseases just because someone could use the information to create chemical weapons or biological weapons. However, we do have social and political tools to attempt to deal with these negatives, whether they be conventions or treaties. As a more recent data-point look at all of the hubbub caused by social networks and their use by opposing countries to destabilize political process. We are going to make real changes to technology to attempt to mitigate those issues. We need to think about the negative consequences of gene editing, robotics, super powerful AI, etc. not to overshadow the positive benefits but to help remind us to create the tools necessary to mitigate those negatives. If the only possible ramifications were good then we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. It reminds me of interviews with Steven Pinker and his opinion on potential negative outfall from AI research. He claims that engineers are generally good-willed and they try to do the best they can, e.g. they don't design bridges that will fall. Yet bridges fall down sometimes, occasionally quite soon after they are built. I'm glad there is some external oversight on issues that are potentially world-changing, just to have a sober second opinion.

The_rationalist 7y ago

And yet you are being downvoted for fighting common bullshit, what a world we live in!

eloff 7y ago

You have to look at the longer term with technology, so far it's been an overwhelmingly positive force for humanity. I personally think it's the greatest thing ever, but we may one day invent the thing that ends us. Maybe that's AI, maybe we unlock a power in the physical world that we can't be trusted with. For example if anyone could build antimatter bombs in the garage, terrorists or other discontents would have used it to end civilization. There's no law of nature that says great power must always be hard to come by, and I wonder if that's not the answer to the Fermi paradox. Civilization might be a short-term blip, an unstable state on cosmic timescales. H.G. Wells ends the Time Machine with: "for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."

globuous 7y ago

I definitely agree with you. But i cannot stop thinking about the dwarfs in the lord of the rings that went too far, dug too deep, potentially due to the rhetoric youre having. That was their doom. Its a book, just a book. But i keep on thinking about it because i find it might also apply to humans and technology.

reggieband 7y ago

I think it is fair to see both sides of technological advancement. For every positive use of technology there is often some negative use. I think of nuclear power vs. nuclear weapons. No one thinks we should stop investigating chemicals and diseases just because someone could use the information to create chemical weapons or biological weapons. However, we do have social and political tools to attempt to deal with these negatives, whether they be conventions or treaties. As a more recent data-point look at all of the hubbub caused by social networks and their use by opposing countries to destabilize political process. We are going to make real changes to technology to attempt to mitigate those issues. We need to think about the negative consequences of gene editing, robotics, super powerful AI, etc. not to overshadow the positive benefits but to help remind us to create the tools necessary to mitigate those negatives. If the only possible ramifications were good then we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. It reminds me of interviews with Steven Pinker and his opinion on potential negative outfall from AI research. He claims that engineers are generally good-willed and they try to do the best they can, e.g. they don't design bridges that will fall. Yet bridges fall down sometimes, occasionally quite soon after they are built. I'm glad there is some external oversight on issues that are potentially world-changing, just to have a sober second opinion.