Comment by pogorniy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pogorniy | Hacker News Reader

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> I think we're not understanding each other here. Let me rephrase this.

That's much better. Because to understand what you meant by example one needed to know reasoning behind the example.

> Science and technology shouldn't have a political valence

It should not. I agree.

Do you agree that atomic bomb is political? At which sate atomic bomb development stops being science and starts being political? At theory level? Experiments? First device? First use of device?

At some stage we start observing that cryptocurrencies impact start having great consequences regardless of the science behind them. Great volume of electricity, centralization of power at hands of middlemen, promises of great future where benefits are reaped by early adopters already today.

Some people feel like looking at cryptocurrencies and blockchain purely from technology perspective, advocating for them, brings more harm than good. And I can understand this position of the author well.

> Some people feel like looking at cryptocurrencies and blockchain purely from technology perspective, advocating for them, brings more harm than good. And I can understand this position of the author well.

This is assigning a valence, that's what I mean. We can well debate and choose to ban the mining of PoW energy-heavy cryptocurrencies, but to tar the entire field as harmful is assigning a valence.

> Do you agree that atomic bomb is political? At which sate atomic bomb development stops being science and starts being political? At theory level? Experiments? First device? First use of device?

Fission can be both beneficial (fusion power reactors) or it can be a weapon (nuclear weapons). Should we ban the research of nuclear altogether because of its potential to be used for a weapon? Then comes the question of where to draw the line. Should fission research be banned but fusion research be allowed to continue? Should we stop researching atoms altogether? What if banning research into fission stops us from understanding a key way to generate cleaner energy and overcome climate change and non-renewable energy usage?

This is exactly what happened with the Soviet Union and genetics. Remember that at the time the Soviet Union placed a ban on genetics research, genetics in the West was heavily associated with eugenics. By banning genetic research altogether, the Soviet Union missed out on the chance to derive many drugs beneficial to human health, though their heart came from the right place (banning the idea of eugenics and social darwinism altogether).

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