this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Of course there's such a thing as too quickly. Plenty of railroad workers died because people didn't realize that there's a huge difference between falling off a horse running ten miles an hour and a train going thirty. How many people got sick because someone thought putting lead in gas was a swell idea? What about Thalidomide? Heck, people thought heroin would cure opium addiction.
Just because people are reckless doesn't mean that it's a good thing.
I'm sure we'll keep racing ahead, but don't confuse activity with progress.
Falling from a horse at 10mph is dangers, falling from any height is dangerous.
We knew lead was poisonous before it was put into petrol, it was chosen because GM could patent it whereas they couldn’t the already known superior additive, ethanol.
We knew about man made climate change over a hundred years ago, it was buried and suppressed for profit.
Thalidomide wasn't tested and sold freely.
Heroine was a good drug for many uses, lack of regulation and care about addiction was the problem. Even today many medications can have adverse effects or cause addiction if not properly used.
These things have nothing to do with the speed of advancement and all to do with deliberate failures. You can advance rapidly and still test and regulate, but obviously thats less likely in a capitalist system that values money over everything.
Sounds to me like we basically agree on the main point and are arguing terms.
People are going to discover/invent new tech; that's a given. The question is how fast it gets out of the lab and into people's hands.
The question is: why don't our governments regulate effectively?
The answer is: money.
The question is why do we let it get out when we know its harmful or that we haven’t even looked into it despite being fully capable of.
Those weren't about speed of technology, it was capitalism being capitalism without being held back by regulation or worker protection.
How many people died designing the Internet? How many died to figure out how to land a rocket booster on a barge? How many people died figuring out mRNA vaccines?
A lot of people died designing the internet, because the original digital computers were created as a result of code breaking in WW2 and work done by the defense industry to make better missiles.
Same with space flight. You couldn't have landed that rocket without the V1 and V2 rockets the Nazis dropped on London.
You seem to have some idea that scientific progress can occur in an ivory tower, untouched by base ideas like money or war.
Like it or not, technology grows out of the larger society. If there's capitalism, capitalism will guide what gets built. Anything else is putting the cart before the horse.
Might want to catch a few episodes of this series that deals with the history of technology and how ideas become actual inventions.
https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/XetplHcM7aQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
See how I picked specific, more recent examples? Ones where OSHA existed?
That's the difference. You can't just damn the whole tech tree because the primitive precursor came about during WW2.
The turing architecture, which laid the groundwork for everything, wasn't even about war - it came from a man who was aiming far over the horizon, and used code breaking to fund his dream. His dream was a true AI.
Same with the rocket - it wasn't created to kill, it became a tool of death first because that's how it was funded.
We can do technology safely. Capitalism and war are both just incentives to do it recklessly. They also shape the form it takes, usually not for the better
I don't know why you're saying technology is responsible for war deaths either... The war drives the technology, not the other way around. Technology changes society and changes war, but you can have both with stagnant technology. At worst, technology magnifies the scale we act on, but it's not the source.
Technology comes from people who like to push limits. If you give the right type of people the resources they need, they'll create it.
I've watched plenty of YouTube videos about the development of tech. It's interesting, but I prefer the YouTubers who push the limits in their garage... Especially the things that exist but aren't economically viable, like paint that passively cools or diy algae bioreactors
Where did I damn all tech?
I just pointed out that tech doesn't exist in a vacuum.
It doesn't matter how noble the first rocketeers were, their toys ended up as weapons.
The existence of OSHA proves my point; we only got OSHA because things were so bad that workers started forming Unions, and the Unions had the power to force the government to start protecting the workers.
If you actually watched the video you'd see what I am saying.