In The News

[maledoro]

The technology is nice I agree but the bigger question is ultimately, will it be used for good or evil? I think history has taught us that new technology inevitably always finds its biggest home in military applications.

Which begs the question: is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's an awesome thing.  Technology is not always used for bad. Just imagine all the customized parts the general public can make for cars and bikes!  Example, when I get my hands on a 3D printer I'm going to totally redesign the front end of my GSXR, print it, and just pop it on.  Maybe the back end too.  Then just change it all later.  It will be endless creative joy.  I'm excited about the 3D printing technology.

Alice, I love technology and am first in line to defend the need for a space program, but I was asking Doom if it was a bad thing if technology is in military applications, thus leading us into a deeper level of conversation. My question to him was purely rhetorical.

[KirklandSignature]

The technology is nice I agree but the bigger question is ultimately, will it be used for good or evil? I think history has taught us that new technology inevitably always finds its biggest home in military applications.

Which begs the question: is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's an awesome thing.  Technology is not always used for bad. Just imagine all the customized parts the general public can make for cars and bikes!  Example, when I get my hands on a 3D printer I'm going to totally redesign the front end of my GSXR, print it, and just pop it on.  Maybe the back end too.  Then just change it all later.  It will be endless creative joy.  I'm excited about the 3D printing technology.

Alice, I love technology and am first in line to defend the need for a space program, but I was asking Doom if it was a bad thing if technology is in military applications, thus leading us into a deeper level of conversation. My question to him was purely rhetorical.

Well Global Positioning Systems and the Internet were first created for military purposes. Both can be used benevolently and malevolently. Get on the governments bad side and they can track you anywhere and if you make an idiot out of yourself at some point, people can look you up on the Internet.

[SpreadEagleBeagle]

Technology is great and is helping us enormously. My biggest gripe with all these new innovations has to do with distribution and how it is making humans more and more obsolete as a workforce and how it is nullifying education as the big savior for people forced to pick a new trade since automation rendered their skills and experience as useless. It doesn't have to do as much about the technology itself rather than the way our so called "free market" globalized world works.

We complain about the effects of our jobs being outsourced overseas to countries such as India, China etc. since the labor there is so cheap. In the future not only those jobs will become completely automated, white collar jobs and emergency services will be as well. In other words in a few decades the 1% of the world can just forget about the rest of us completely since machines and such will be advanced and versatile enough to do the work of the 99% - there won't be a need for the rest of us, and with the trend of extremely low to no minimum wage and social security, less regulations, extreme decline of unions, combined with the cost of living getting higher and higher, things look quite bleak to say the least... Global mass-unemployment without any safety nets and no turning back.


Paul Krugman wrote an excellent op-ed in NY Times about the topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?_r=0


What are you guy's thoughts on this (i.e. Krugman's piece)?

[AliceApocalypse]

The technology is nice I agree but the bigger question is ultimately, will it be used for good or evil? I think history has taught us that new technology inevitably always finds its biggest home in military applications.

Which begs the question: is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's an awesome thing.  Technology is not always used for bad. Just imagine all the customized parts the general public can make for cars and bikes!  Example, when I get my hands on a 3D printer I'm going to totally redesign the front end of my GSXR, print it, and just pop it on.  Maybe the back end too.  Then just change it all later.  It will be endless creative joy.  I'm excited about the 3D printing technology.

Alice, I love technology and am first in line to defend the need for a space program, but I was asking Doom if it was a bad thing if technology is in military applications, thus leading us into a deeper level of conversation. My question to him was purely rhetorical.

Oops, my bad. 

Had your question been aimed toward the general members for discussion, 3D printing technology for military applications is a necessary evil in order for any country to stay ahead.  But don't me 

[Xenomorphine]

Who says military applications = evil? Even if it ends up in something capable of killing, that still doesn't make it evil. Only if using such a power is done for evil purposes. Killing, by itself, is not necessarily an evil thing.

[Gate]

This would technically put weapon manufacturing in the hands of those who don't need it.

[maledoro]

Who says military applications = evil? Even if it ends up in something capable of killing, that still doesn't make it evil. Only if using such a power is done for evil purposes. Killing, by itself, is not necessarily an evil thing.

I've been making this argument to an anti-science idiot on another forum. She refused to believe that everything that is actually known is due to science. Another person was quick to tell her to get off the Internet because it involves...science.

[Valaquen]

Killing, by itself, is not necessarily an evil thing.

Am I reading you correctly? Killing by itself (no rhyme or reason) is an evil thing. I hope you mean killing with no context on the nature of the killing isn't necessarily evil (as in, the jury is out for the time being).

[Xenomorphine]

I've been making this argument to an anti-science idiot on another forum. She refused to believe that everything that is actually known is due to science. Another person was quick to tell her to get off the Internet because it involves...science.

Am I reading you correctly? Killing by itself (no rhyme or reason) is an evil thing. I hope you mean killing with no context on the nature of the killing isn't necessarily evil (as in, the jury is out for the time being).

I'm saying that there are times when it's required. In the natural world, certainly (the need for food). Also in self-defence. And I'm certainly not going to call standing up to Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan 'evil', even though it involved killing.

Even Ghandi conceded that things like peaceful non-co-operation wouldn't have worked in those instances, if memory serves correctly.

If you do it with malicious/sadistic intent, then yes, that could be said to be an evil act. If you do it in defence or to prevent the infliction of harm/continued misery and suffering, then it's not. Same reason I wouldn't term things like mercy-killing and assisted suicide (when it's something like an incurable, horrific medical condition) 'evil'. In fact, I'd even go so far as to term such actions as 'good'.

[maledoro]

But Valaquen said killing with out rhyme or reason. You gave us both in all your examples. He (now, we) was (are) talking about killing just for the helluvit.

However, I'll say that not all killing for the sake of killing is necessarily evil.

[Xenomorphine]

If that's what was meant, then that would qualify under malicious/sadistic intent.

[SpreadEagleBeagle]

Killing is killing. Whether it's 'good' or 'evil' is in the eye of the beholder and the ones writing the history books. Personally I find it rather absurd to differentiate between killing and killing. You're still taking lives. The ends justify the means is a really dangerous mentality.

[Xenomorphine]

Killing is killing. Whether it's 'good' or 'evil' is in the eye of the beholder and the ones writing the history books. Personally I find it rather absurd to differentiate between killing and killing. You're still taking lives. The ends justify the means is a really dangerous mentality.

In that case, as I wrote above, you're saying that standing up to the Nazis was in some way bad. Or that, say, a woman who shoots someone to prevent herself being raped, should have let it happen. Or that mercy-killing shouldn't be allowed.

Lots of exceptions any kind of killing = bad rule.

[maledoro]

If that's what was meant, then that would qualify under malicious/sadistic intent.

Not if the killer doesn't know right from wrong.

[SpreadEagleBeagle]

In that case, as I wrote above, you're saying that standing up to the Nazis was in some way bad. Or that, say, a woman who shoots someone to prevent herself being raped, should have let it happen. Or that mercy-killing shouldn't be allowed.

Lots of exceptions any kind of killing = bad rule.

I'm not talking about "good" or "bad/evil" at all, because I think that is completely irrelevant when you talk about killing people. I'm just saying that killing is killing and that trying to justify certain killings really opens up a bunch of cans of worms.