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Comment by dumbfoundded | Hacker News Reader

Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is not the problem.

People act like somehow the technology has a mind and it wants us to be free or some bs. Silicon Valley isn't special. It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires. Technology would absolutely solve humanity's problems. That is if we put our money where our mouth's are.

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You're certainly correct that the major problem is social, economic, and structural, but I do think there are some technologies that are inherently tricky to justify regardless of the economic structures they arise in.

The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself.

You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.

I think it's also a problem that we seem to treat technological progress as a glorified end for humanity—we find it very difficult, for whatever reason (perhaps economic as you point out) to have the courage to admit when something shouldn't be invented, even if it presumably can be. I think part of this stems from the co-opting of science by technology, and science's silly claim to be "value-free" and neutral—which has had some disastrous consequences. If I'm engaged in a value-free enterprise, I have no reason to stop and wonder what devastation or havoc my creation might one day wreak, I'm doing it, after all, in the name of science, or progress, of unreflective pursuit of an end I can't forsee.

"it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint."

Large, efficient explosives in space is an obvious one. We will need to crack open asteroids to mine them or blow one up so it doesn't collide with something eventually. I hope.

> blow one up so it doesn't collide with something eventually.

The one thing worse than a large asteroid heading for you is dozens of medium-sized ones and thousands of small ones all heading for you.

This is often repeated but I doubt if this is true. There will be more surface area exposed to the atmosphere for one. Notice that this falls apart if you end up dividing it in millions of smaller pieces

It would probably be better to use the explosion to nudge its trajectory instead.

That's simply not true.

[citation needed]

> The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself.

Is it really inherently bad if it's just generating a lot of energy? Couldn't that technology be used to generate electricity?

It could, but the primary reason it was developed was to generate a lot of energy to kill as many people as possible.

Then be very careful to not extend the negativity over the entire field of nuclear physics. Atomic bomb is a very specific weapons technology. Mastery of fission and physics at atomic scale does great good already - from energy to medicine - and holds potential for even more.

> Then be very careful to not extend the negativity over the entire field of nuclear physics

I never did, perhaps you are replying to the wrong person? I was just pointing out that creating the atomic bomb was a very negative thing. Even though other many other fields in nuclear physics came about because of the bomb's development, there's nothing that says they couldn't have come about without developing an atomic bomb in the first place.

Arguably, the dropping of the atomic bombs saved more lives in the long run by forcing the Japanese to surrender and end the war, full-stop.

And arguably, nuclear weapons are keeping the world at peace. Sure, everyone has them pointed at each other, but it’s that threat that keeps us honest and peaceful. Just like how drivers in Chicago are courteous and never honk their horn - you’ll get shot if you drive like a dick.

> Arguably, the dropping of the atomic bombs saved more lives in the long run by forcing the Japanese to surrender and end the war, full-stop.

This was a popular myth that Truman started. In fact, if we’d told the Japanese we would let them keep their emperor, they almost certainly would have surrendered. The Soviets had just entered the war in the Pacific and we wanted to end it before they captured much territory. Ironic since the Japanese had no intention to risk a Soviet occupation either.

This, in turn, is a popular myth often promulgated by apologists of the Empire of Japan (but also reiterated by others, I'm not saying you're among the former). The terms proposed by Japan during the latter period of the war included not only keeping the emperor, but also the existing government, immunity from war crimes trials, and keeping much of their colonial territory (namely, Korea).

The Empire also planned to resist a speculated US and Soviet invasion as leverage to negotiate better peace terms. The expected Japanese casualties (that is, the Japanese military's own estimates) of this planned defense numbered in the tens of millions. The Japanese high command deemed this an acceptable number of casualties and went forward with the planned defense.

> In fact, if we’d told the Japanese we would let them keep their emperor, they almost certainly would have surrendered. The Soviets had just entered the war in the Pacific

Er, no.

The nuclear bombs were dropped on August 6 and August 9. The USSR announced it's declaration of war at 11pm Trans-Baikal time August 8, and began invasion at 12:01am August 9. So, at the commencement of the atomic bombing, the Soviets had not just entered the war.

> and we wanted to end it before they captured much territory.

So, what you are saying is that he Soviet entry into the war, absent the nuclear bombings, would put pressure on the US to grant Japan more lenient peace terms. Maybe that's true, but I'm not sure how that's an argument against the bombings.

What I'm saying is the Soviet entry into the war by itself was enough to push Japan into an (almost) unconditional surrender to the US, so the bombings were unnecessary. The timing was not coincidental, they had agreed on a Soviet entry within three months of V-day in Europe at Yalta. While Stalin probably didn't know about the bombing, Truman almost certainly knew the specific date of the invasion of Manchuria in advance and it likely established the timetable.

Dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population is an act of madness, doing it twice is is beyond ethical discourse.

We are just 70 years out but these crimes against humanity will haunt for generations to come.

Conventional bombing killed far more on the Japanese mainland than both atomic bombs combined did.

You do not see the difference between conventional warfare between armies and dropping untested new weapons on mass destruction on civilian populations?

This is a deliberate calculated war crime. Hundreds of thousands of people were burned, suffocated and boiled to death in seconds let alone the radiation for no good reason. No educated person is unaware of the horror of launching a nuclear bomb on a civilian population. This is an act of evil.

How many countries have used nuclear weapons? Why do you think nuclear weapons are controlled and treated as a separate class of weapons under strict control?

   between armies

Conventional bombing was not limited to "armies" in WW2 at all, least of all by the Japanese.

Again, there were more Japanese civilian deaths by conventional bombing than by both atomic bombs combined.

Strange example. Chicago is famous for its rude drivers and honking. http://chicagoist.com/2009/11/27/ask_chicagoist_whats_up_wit...

> You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.

Well, we know why it was invented in the first place, so it's justification is based on what you think of the II World War, and United States' involvement in it.

As for direct beneficial applications, those are after-the-fact, but two comes to mind:

1) Nuclear propulsion as currently the only feasible way we know of to move large masses through interplanetary space in reasonable timeframes.

2) Russians did some experiments with large-scale landscaping using nuclear bombs. Not sure what's the opinion of specialists in earth sciences, but it looks like a pretty useful tool to have.

1.) As for the first point, propulsion is not the same as a bomb. Yes the mechanics are the same, but what this example points out to me is that the context and concept behind an invention is an important component of the invention itself. Most people would consider nuclear propulsion and a nuclear bomb to be entirely distinct inventions, even if the mechanics are the same. And indeed there are some mechanical/physical considerations that make the inventions distinct. Blast radius considerations, for instance, are entirely different if one is constructing a bomb (in which case they might be maximized instead of minimized, etc.) as are the considerations that go into constructing the container that will house the explosion/reaction.

2.) As for point 2, Look into the nuclear fallout in Kazakstan (for which the soviet tests are responsible). Unless there have been significant developments in controlling the effects of nuclear bombing technology and more recent tests (which there may have been, idk) I would hardly think anyone familiar with the environmental side effects from those experiments would recommend it as a good landscaping tool.

One could make a similar rebuttal as the above to space applications based on the environmental impacts nuclear bombs have on earth. We don't know much (afaik) about the negative side effects using nuclear bombs in space could have, even if they're useful asteroid detonators. Radiation takes quite a long time to dissipate. This would be one reason for dissuading its use in terraforming activity, at least without extensive consideration and analysis.

The atomic bomb is a bad example- the reason we haven’t had ww3 is due to nuclear weapons. MAD basically means that no rational actor will fire a nuke at someone else who also has one, so we’re all paralysed and need to fight wars in other ways (the Cold War, proxy wars eg Syria, trade wars, cyber warfare, propaganda etc), all of which are less impactful than the world wars we would have without MAD

But this is a counter factual argument and unsound. You don’t know we would have necessarily had more wars/ other world wars without deterrence theory kicking into effect. You’re also not accounting for the arguably inhumane weapons technologies that have been developed because of the deterrence situation, or that the bomb hasn’t prevented us from developing (eg, drones, and in some nations biological weapons). Furthermore, you’re really cheapening the lives of all of those who were victims to the bombs in Japan, and also diminishing the horrible humanitarian crises that have arisen out of the very proxy wars you’ve cited.

Just because it has “prevented ww3” is not a very adequate or admirable reason to ignore the other negative effects that you yourself admit have been caused by the bomb. This is the fundamental weakness of utilitarianism, which turns human life into a commodity and effectively nothing more than a calculable value which is not a very dignified image of mankind.

I’m open to arguments about the positive effects of the bomb, but not counter factual as that ignore the very real conditions of pain, war, and violence that are still occurring. The bomb’s effect as a deterrent being a positive thing is not very convincing—really the only thing it protects us from is the bomb itself, which wouldn’t be a problem had the bomb not been invented. Sure major economic powers are less gung-ho to engage in war directly but I’d argue the proxy wars they engage in now are more morally questionable then direct action against each other as they now use lesser developed countries as pawns of sorts, and the civilians and economies of those nations suffer while the big boys get to play an even “safer” (for them) little war game.

>Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production.

>It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires.

Maybe we should organise our production, decision-making, control and incentives structures differently then, rather than sticking to an old, disastrously inefficient, enormously wasteful and unfair model. Maybe some democratic, social system, if I do make myself clear...

Theoretically yes, but I think it's difficult to achieve in practice. We probably don't need massive systemic changes. These are the changes I think would massively improve the US:

1. Campaign finance reform. Money != free speech. Citizens United is a disaster.

2. Ranked voting in federal elections. A two-party system isn't that great.

3. Get rid of the Electoral college & make Gerrymandering illegal.

4. Shut the revolving door. I'm not sure about the best way to solve it so this is one proposal. Make appointed government officials sign a non-compete for the industry they work in. You shouldn't be able to go from Verizon Exec to FCC Chairman to Verizon Exec.

5. Increase regulation for large companies. Reduce it for small companies. Facebook/Google should have similar regulatory standards compared traditional media companies.

> Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology.

In other words:

Technology would solve humanity's problems, except it doesn't, because humanity is bad at choosing the right technologies.

Or, more succinctly:

TECHNOLOGY does not solve humanity's problems.

You've entirely missed the point of the quote, and in fact, you're agreeing with him.

> Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is not the problem.

The problem is that in order to invest in "clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production" you need a huge amount of capital. A good way to build capital is to invest into technologies that bring a lot of profit such as advertising, you can then use this capital to invest in more noble, less profitable technologies (in the short term at least) such as new medicines, better transportation etc which is what Google is doing to be fair.

That's not true at all. Your thinking is dangerously wrong.

If you feel that these companies like Google are in it to make humanity better, you really need a better understanding of people. Google, Exon Mobile, Phillip Morris, and every other public company work in virtually the same way. They maximize profit. If you work at one of these companies and you don't help the company make more money, see how long you keep your job. Google is just in a different market. You may respond with why does Google invest in self-driving cars or 4g weather balloons? Very simply, to make more money. I'm not saying you can't make money from doing things to help humanity or that you shouldn't but let's be very clear, Google is not a person with a conscious. It's a system set up to make money and it will disappear as soon as it stops.

From a planning perspective, hoping large systematic changes will be brought corporations completely ignores history. The military has been behind virtually every significant technology at least in the United States. Even technologies created by corporations almost always have some sort of public assistance.

Our problem now is that corporations are seeping deeper into the centralized decision-making network we call the government. The whole point of government is to have a centralized power that can avoid the local maximums of profit motive. Corporations, in their bid to continue their existence, erode our public institutions. If we really wanted to, we could have the government mobilize trillions of dollars to solve any problem we wished. Capital may be the problem for figuring out fusion but it's certainly not the problem for clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production.

An extremely lucid and concise comment. You are spot on, especially when it comes to how corporations have pushed to erode and corrupt the allegedly "democratic" government institutions.

One reason of many as to why we need campaign finance reform.

> The military has been behind virtually every significant technology at least in the United States.

Not jet engines, rocket engines, transistors, ethernet, search, cloud computing, encryption, agricultural revolution, airplanes, steelmaking, telephones, electric power grids, movies, electric light, LEDs, microprocessors, Linux, vaccines, railroads, automobiles, television, radio, food preservation, tractors, printing, vacuum tubes, microcomputers, on and on.

> There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved.

Technology has failed over and over to provide an accountable, verifiable, and secure election process.

The technology for elections is there. It's people who have failed to get it in use.

> The technology for elections is there

But not technology that guarantees what I mentioned previously.

> It's people who have failed to get it in use.

Some have, but some have resisted, for good reason too, because it fails to guarantee the things I mentioned previously.

No it hasn't. Paper works great. So great in fact, many security experts recommend returning to a paper backup system (1). The reason we don't have a secure election process is because no one with the power to do anything has any incentive to fix it (a bit of an over-generalization).

(1) https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/opinions/to-keep-our-votes-sa...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408717

Washington state has an excellent system where all ballots are on paper and are mailed in. It's not perfect, there was a gubernatorial election where they kept "recounting" and "finding" more ballots until the correct person won, but it's a lot harder to corrupt than those hackable electronic machines.

That's the point. How does technology solve that incentive problem?

Technology != Computers

Mass producable pens and paper, decent locks, and nationwide logistic networks have made elections accountable, verifiable, and secure decades ago.

> Technology != Computers

In this context (an article written by Google's CEO, about technology on computers), it arguably does.

By being pedantic, you might as well extend technology to everything up to, and including creating fire and making very basic hand tools. The article clearly isn't about that.

You should google technology then. It obviously includes every tool and yes, even fire. Do you think rocket ships are technology?

If you're saying computer technology has failed to solve election validity, that's a fair observation. It probably could if it was done correctly but the government has their best CS people working on spying on us while our elections are outsourced to idiots.

What about evil?

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