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> Robotics, like genetic engineering, nano-technology, and data mining can do good things and bad things. How's that going with arguably the most advanced and
by ethbro 12y ago
> Robotics, like genetic engineering, nano-technology, and data mining can do good things and bad things.
How's that going with arguably the most advanced and widely available of those (data mining)?
To expand: I'd offer that capital tends towards amorality. Why? Because amorality is more profitable.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI don't buy that argument. Criminal capital (if such a term exists, which would be defined as capital that is amoral in origin) tends toward profit over morality. To the extent that technology is exploitable with a small amount of capital[1] the likelyhood of it being so exploited increases. We've seen drug lords building submarines to transport drugs up the coast, but the economic cost of really effective submarines is still too high relative to the profit such devices provide. And perhaps more importantly the economic risk of 'losing' a submarine such that its life time value exceeds its cost to build and deploy. Things like DNA printers worry me for example much more than robot dogs. [1] The same cost reductions that make fielding a web server $5/month enable large scale data mining for very little investment in cash.
- samatman 12y agoBoth parent comment and Chuck's reply appear to contain an important semantic error, using amoral to mean immoral. Corporations tend towards amorality, which is a superset of both morality and immorality, because this is more profitable. I believe Chuck is hoping we can keep morality more profitable, on the whole, than immorality. I am less sanguine.
- ethbro 12y agoFwiw, I specifically used amoral. I don't consider most things capital does to be immoral. In an optimally run profit-generating business, the course that produces the most profit will be pursued. That's basically a tautology, and cares nothing about morality at all!