5 ms·
All social problems will be eventually solved through technology, not morality.
by pablovidal85 13y ago
All social problems will be eventually solved through technology, not morality.
- wsinks 13y agoMorality was one of the first technologies.
- thenerdfiles 13y agoIs this Nietzschean or something? What is it saying?
- ams6110 13y agoAt some point in our past we transitioned from being an amoral animal to a self-aware species with notions of morality. Certain things/behaviors are right and others are wrong. That clearly had a survival advantage.
- thenerdfiles 13y agoMoral facts are not self-evident. We became aware of disagreement, but about the games we use to describe right and wrong. It's what comes after the "because". Saying "X is wrong" and "Y knows X is wrong" mean two very different things depending on your analysis. "Notions of morality" is about the first statement and about the second. Does Y know X is wrong in virtue of the moral fact that X is wrong? If grass is green, there's something I'm learning when I read "Grass is green" — or is it upon seeing grass that I know grass is green? The point here is the features of facts: one does not see the wrongness of an act in the way that one sees grass is green, irrespective to the question of language. Now, of course, morality is primarily codified into symbols — do facts exist here, behind the veil of language? Perhaps. But the main question here is the structure of a fact: Is it a picture? If I know the constant of gravity, I know something about the shape of galaxies through relativity. I can see regularity across the heavens. I can test it and measure its components, but only in virtue of axiomitization, which is linguistic. Well, how does one test morality? Does one collect report on opinion, or does one look into the world to discover their structure? Certainly reports on moral opinion will be picture-like, but do they disclose the structure we would find if morality could be discovered in the world without reports on it? Is direct evidence possible without the existence of indirect evidence?
- pablovidal85 13y agoAre ants self-aware or moral? Let me be honest, I don't think there was a "transition"; as far as we lived in groups, we were always using social rules that work, instead of those that didn't.
- pablovidal85 13y agoWhile it can be certainly categorized as technology, I don't consider it so because it's based in purely subjective concepts like "good" and "bad" (right or wrong), instead of objective ones (working or not working). I agree that subjective concepts can control society, but so can art too (basically any idea has an impact on the human mind) and we do not normally classify art as technology. I understand that some rules in our moral code are indeed required for a working society, and because of those people see moral as indispensable, but still we can do much better without carrying the historical (and probably religious) payload.
- gress 13y agoAlternatively, technology may amplify social problems instead.
- pablovidal85 13y agoWhy instead? Actually it can be doing both at the same time. My point is that only technology that works inside the society will stay. Most likely the ones that create social problems will be replaced for those that don't.
- gress 13y agoWhy most likely? It's just as possible that the social problems will impede our ability to develop or introduce technology that makes society better.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoThat in itself would simply constitute yet another social problem, and solve nothing.
- dylandrop 13y agoInteresting that you chose to specify social problems. I would say that social problems are perhaps those which technology is particularly poor at addressing, even though it is very good at solving practical ones (how to get from point A to point B, how to live longer, how to better keep track of your information, etc.). As opposed to these practical problems, social problems seem to be the ones without any clear cut "correct" answer, and I couldn't really say that technology is a good tool for solving ambiguous problems. (By the way the "social" I'm referencing here are things like class conflict, racism, etc. - not "social" as in communication tools.)
- pablovidal85 13y agoWhat do you mean there is no clear, correct answer to social problems? I think there are many solutions, the impossibility to solve them has more to do with either upper social classes not wanting to lose power (nothing can be enforced to the enforcers) or precisely because is "morally" wrong to do what will surely work.
- dragonwriter 13y agoSocial problems aren't objective in the way that, say, math problems are. They are conflicts of the current state of objective reality with some set of subjective preferences. And the fact that a group of people shares preference to an extent that they can agree on the problem doesn't mean that they share preferences enough that the same solution would be optimum—or even better than the status quo—for all members of the group.
- pablovidal85 13y agoYou made a very interesting point here, I guess I will re-evaluate my opinion on this topic, thanks!
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoIf the prophets of technological revolution weren't such complete jerks when it came to social issues, I might actually still be naive enough to believe that.
- pablovidal85 13y agoI'm not sure if you're thinking into physical modern technology like electronics and stuff, but just in case, I meant technology more broadly (any human-made tool, machine, technique or system).