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> But innovation isn't good per se. Innovation isn't anything in moral terms. All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology of

> But innovation isn't good per se. Innovation isn't anything in moral terms. All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.
- blueflow 6y ago
  Use of antibiotics bred resistant strains, which are becoming a increasing danger for hospital inpatients.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    Yes, infections are a danger for patients....................
- arethuza 6y ago
  You could perhaps argue that antibiotics have allowed farming practises that might not be otherwise be economical that produce more suffering for the animals. NB I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seems possible.
- roenxi 6y ago
  There is an argument that the black plague was one of the driving forced behind the rise of British democracy causing a labour shortage that added fuel to the rise of the middle class. Now I've got no idea if that is a convincing argument, but it is plausible enough to say that a counterfactual world without antibiotics might have turned out better.
  - hkt 6y ago
    Not quite. It was during feudalism, and what it established was the power of the guilds and a large rise in wages. To use the Marxist term, there was no "reserve army of the unemployed" so workers found it much easier to negotiate wages. British democracy generally came much later, as a divide and rule proposition. The divide was between the feudalism descended aristocrats on one hand, and the merchant capitalists on the other. The franchise was extended to property owners, then poorer property owners, then all men and property owning women, then all women, then they removed multiple votes in the 60s and limited the number of hereditary peers in the 90s. The start of the process was the 19th century, whereas the plague was the 14th and then 15th.
rjknight 6y ago
We can distinguish between pure and applied innovation, though. Coming up with a new algorithm which can be applied to facial recognition is a pure innovation, deploying that algorithm to monitor political dissidents is applied innovation. I would not agree that the latter example "isn't anything in moral terms", even though the former is.
- oldsklgdfth 6y ago
  I would argue that you cannot parse out the "good" technology from the "bad" technology as that would require full knowledge of downstream consequences. Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. As soon as we build tiny cameras and software that could interpret pixel values and classify it, there was going to be facial recognition used against people. P.S. I don't think it should, but I don't see how you can stop that. My personal feeling is that access to knowledge and technology is what prevents power imbalance.
  - rjknight 6y ago
    This feels like having it both ways. "Innovation is morally neutral" and "harmful uses are the inevitable consequences of innovation" can't both be true. I would prefer to say that the act of creating a possibility is different from the act of exercising that possibility in a particular way. But you seem to be saying that merely creating the possibility makes the use inevitable, and so the person who invents the tiny cameras or the image-recognition software is inescapably responsible for the use of that technology to target political dissidents. I agree that once the invention has been made, it becomes harder to stop someone from using the invention in bad ways. But the moral responsibility is clearly with the person who makes bad use of technology, not with the person who invented it (assuming that the technology was not invented specifically for that purpose).
    - 6y ago
Misdicorl 6y ago
This is silly. The world isn't balanced like that. Many improvements have no disadvantage. More efficient photovoltaic cells, not needing hfcfs in pressurized spray cans, discovering that you can add a bit of carbon to iron, ...
- oldsklgdfth 6y ago
  If that is your position I would refer you to the myth of thamus[0] and the writings of Neil Postman. [0]https://bearskindigital.com/2015/01/20/the-myth-of-thamus-and-theuth/ https://bearskindigital.com/2015/01/20/the-myth-of-thamus-an...
  - theelous3 6y ago
    That was pretty unconvincing. Some people think writing makes your memory lazy? Well even more think it can serve as a tool in learning and as a tool for memorisation. Now what?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Many improvements have no disadvantage Every improvement has, at the very least, its Luddite cost. It forces some people to change, and some of those people won’t like that.
  - dantheman 6y ago
    What was the disadvantage introduced by having doctors wash their hands or the invention of antibiotics?
    - oldsklgdfth 6y ago
      I can only speculate. I would say an overall weakened immune system. Is your point that there are technologies with only benefits?
    - Ygg2 6y ago
      Washing hands for doctors? Probably not much. Invention of antibiotics, its use and abuse increased bacterial resistance to them.
seneca 6y ago
> All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. This, to me, reads as one of those statements that sounds wise and correct but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Going from digging with your hands to using a shovel doesn't have a negative trade off. Going from carrying things on your back to using a wheeled cart doesn't have a corresponding disadvantage. You can find very myopic cases where they're not improvements (e.g. digging for fragile objects is better done with hands), but that doesn't disprove the general improvement, and it is far from a corresponding disadvantage equal to the new advantage.
- tome 6y ago
  > Going from carrying things on your back to using a wheeled cart doesn't have a corresponding disadvantage. Doesn't it? What if those "things" are weapons that you are carrying to battle?
  - seneca 6y ago
    > Doesn't it? What if those "things" are weapons that you are carrying to battle? I'm not sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that some things are better kept close at hand and not on a cart? The invention of the cart does not remove the ability to carry things. Do you mean to make an appeal to the evils of war? If so, the morality of a use case doesn't have much to do with the efficacy of a technology, though I think you have a point of discussion there. War is hardly always evil, but maybe you could argue that adding efficiency to the ability to wage unjust war is a disadvantage. But, again, you have to get very abstract to make that argument.
    - tome 6y ago
      > I'm not sure what your point is. You denied a claim that "every new technology benefits some and harms others" by doubting that invention of a cart could cause harm. I'm suggesting a way that it could. > the morality of a use case doesn't have much to do with the efficacy of a technology I agree, but I believe it was morality that was under discussion, not efficacy.
BurningFrog 6y ago
> For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. If that was true, society as a whole would never improve. But in reality, the last 300 years have seen an unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  You can push that all the way back to the Middle Ages. Serfdom was quite an improvement over Roman-era slavery, being tied to the land was far more stable and secure than being tied directly to a master. It wasn't quite a middle class, but better nonetheless. Transportation and naval technology steadily improved, and more and more goods and services became broadly available during this time period. The downside is that war got really bad from 1800-1950.
- oldsklgdfth 6y ago
  > If that was true, society as a whole would never improve. Not sure that's the conclusion to draw. The car made traveling large distances possible. Now things are built on car scale distances, making walking difficult and requiring a car. > unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension I would argue mainly materialistically. And yet we have to spend most of our lives working to pay for these comforts.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.

blueflow 6y ago
Use of antibiotics bred resistant strains, which are becoming a increasing danger for hospital inpatients.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Yes, infections are a danger for patients....................
arethuza 6y ago
You could perhaps argue that antibiotics have allowed farming practises that might not be otherwise be economical that produce more suffering for the animals. NB I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seems possible.
roenxi 6y ago
There is an argument that the black plague was one of the driving forced behind the rise of British democracy causing a labour shortage that added fuel to the rise of the middle class. Now I've got no idea if that is a convincing argument, but it is plausible enough to say that a counterfactual world without antibiotics might have turned out better.
- hkt 6y ago
  Not quite. It was during feudalism, and what it established was the power of the guilds and a large rise in wages. To use the Marxist term, there was no "reserve army of the unemployed" so workers found it much easier to negotiate wages. British democracy generally came much later, as a divide and rule proposition. The divide was between the feudalism descended aristocrats on one hand, and the merchant capitalists on the other. The franchise was extended to property owners, then poorer property owners, then all men and property owning women, then all women, then they removed multiple votes in the 60s and limited the number of hereditary peers in the 90s. The start of the process was the 19th century, whereas the plague was the 14th and then 15th.

rjknight 6y ago

We can distinguish between pure and applied innovation, though. Coming up with a new algorithm which can be applied to facial recognition is a pure innovation, deploying that algorithm to monitor political dissidents is applied innovation. I would not agree that the latter example "isn't anything in moral terms", even though the former is.

oldsklgdfth 6y ago
I would argue that you cannot parse out the "good" technology from the "bad" technology as that would require full knowledge of downstream consequences. Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. As soon as we build tiny cameras and software that could interpret pixel values and classify it, there was going to be facial recognition used against people. P.S. I don't think it should, but I don't see how you can stop that. My personal feeling is that access to knowledge and technology is what prevents power imbalance.
- rjknight 6y ago
  This feels like having it both ways. "Innovation is morally neutral" and "harmful uses are the inevitable consequences of innovation" can't both be true. I would prefer to say that the act of creating a possibility is different from the act of exercising that possibility in a particular way. But you seem to be saying that merely creating the possibility makes the use inevitable, and so the person who invents the tiny cameras or the image-recognition software is inescapably responsible for the use of that technology to target political dissidents. I agree that once the invention has been made, it becomes harder to stop someone from using the invention in bad ways. But the moral responsibility is clearly with the person who makes bad use of technology, not with the person who invented it (assuming that the technology was not invented specifically for that purpose).
  - 6y ago

Misdicorl 6y ago

This is silly. The world isn't balanced like that. Many improvements have no disadvantage. More efficient photovoltaic cells, not needing hfcfs in pressurized spray cans, discovering that you can add a bit of carbon to iron, ...

oldsklgdfth 6y ago
If that is your position I would refer you to the myth of thamus[0] and the writings of Neil Postman. [0]https://bearskindigital.com/2015/01/20/the-myth-of-thamus-and-theuth/ https://bearskindigital.com/2015/01/20/the-myth-of-thamus-an...
- theelous3 6y ago
  That was pretty unconvincing. Some people think writing makes your memory lazy? Well even more think it can serve as a tool in learning and as a tool for memorisation. Now what?
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Many improvements have no disadvantage Every improvement has, at the very least, its Luddite cost. It forces some people to change, and some of those people won’t like that.
- dantheman 6y ago
  What was the disadvantage introduced by having doctors wash their hands or the invention of antibiotics?
  - oldsklgdfth 6y ago
    I can only speculate. I would say an overall weakened immune system. Is your point that there are technologies with only benefits?
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    Washing hands for doctors? Probably not much. Invention of antibiotics, its use and abuse increased bacterial resistance to them.

seneca 6y ago

> All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. This, to me, reads as one of those statements that sounds wise and correct but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Going from digging with your hands to using a shovel doesn't have a negative trade off. Going from carrying things on your back to using a wheeled cart doesn't have a corresponding disadvantage. You can find very myopic cases where they're not improvements (e.g. digging for fragile objects is better done with hands), but that doesn't disprove the general improvement, and it is far from a corresponding disadvantage equal to the new advantage.

tome 6y ago
> Going from carrying things on your back to using a wheeled cart doesn't have a corresponding disadvantage. Doesn't it? What if those "things" are weapons that you are carrying to battle?
- seneca 6y ago
  > Doesn't it? What if those "things" are weapons that you are carrying to battle? I'm not sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that some things are better kept close at hand and not on a cart? The invention of the cart does not remove the ability to carry things. Do you mean to make an appeal to the evils of war? If so, the morality of a use case doesn't have much to do with the efficacy of a technology, though I think you have a point of discussion there. War is hardly always evil, but maybe you could argue that adding efficiency to the ability to wage unjust war is a disadvantage. But, again, you have to get very abstract to make that argument.
  - tome 6y ago
    > I'm not sure what your point is. You denied a claim that "every new technology benefits some and harms others" by doubting that invention of a cart could cause harm. I'm suggesting a way that it could. > the morality of a use case doesn't have much to do with the efficacy of a technology I agree, but I believe it was morality that was under discussion, not efficacy.

BurningFrog 6y ago

> For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. If that was true, society as a whole would never improve. But in reality, the last 300 years have seen an unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension.

vinceguidry 6y ago
You can push that all the way back to the Middle Ages. Serfdom was quite an improvement over Roman-era slavery, being tied to the land was far more stable and secure than being tied directly to a master. It wasn't quite a middle class, but better nonetheless. Transportation and naval technology steadily improved, and more and more goods and services became broadly available during this time period. The downside is that war got really bad from 1800-1950.
oldsklgdfth 6y ago
> If that was true, society as a whole would never improve. Not sure that's the conclusion to draw. The car made traveling large distances possible. Now things are built on car scale distances, making walking difficult and requiring a car. > unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension I would argue mainly materialistically. And yet we have to spend most of our lives working to pay for these comforts.