this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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Well, philosophical and epistemological suicide for now, but snowball it for a couple of decades and we may just reach the practical side, too...
Edit: or, hell, maybe not even decades given the increase in energy consumption with every iteration...
When technology allows us to do something that we could not before - like cross an ocean or fly through the sky a distance that would previously have taken years and many people dying during the journey, or save lives - then it unquestionably offers a benefit.
But when it simply eases some task, like using a car rather than horse to travel, and requires discipline to integrate into our lives in a balanced manner, then it becomes a source of potential danger that we would allow ourselves to misuse it.
Even agriculture, which allows those to eat who put forth no effort into making the food grow, or even in preparing it for consumption.
This is what CEOs are pushing on us, because for one number must go up, but also genuinely many believe they want what it has to offer, not quite having thought through what it would mean if they got it (or more to the point others did, empathy not being their strongest attribute).
Technology that allows us to do something we could not do before - such as create nuclear explosions, or propel metal slugs at extreme velocities, or design new viruses - unquestionably offer a benefit and don't require discipline to integrate into our lives in a balanced manner?
We could bomb / kill people before. We could propel arrows / spears / sling rocks at people before. All of which is an extension of walking over and punching someone.
Though sending a nuke from orbit on the other side of the planet by pressing a couple buttons does seem like the extension is so vast that it may qualify as "new".
I suppose any technology that can be used can be misused.