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0 pointsktta9y ago0 comments

> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral.

Well, that's a very evasive argument in my opinion. It's absolutely true that objects are neutral, but you can't make a blanket argument with topics like these. That argument has been made lots of times by many (including me).

But it eventually breaks down. You can't give a child a gun and when the kid shoots someone say it was the kid's fault. Whose fault is it? I'm guessing you're going to say the adult responsible for putting the gun within the reach of a child. You're still taking away an object from the kid. In this case it was a kid who didn't know better.

Now this isn't a narrow argument. This becomes interesting when you get to powerful things, like say nuclear weapons. They aren't inherently evil too. But if you look around, UN is trying to ban them[1]. Shouldn't UN ban them?

What I'm trying to get at is that you can't always but the blame on people. Just like you can't blame a child for not knowing better, you can't blame a person for knowing better (although people do). Sometimes you just have to take the gun (or nuclear weapons or encryption) away.

[1]: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/

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fwn9y ago

I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive.

You rightly said that I will answer that it was the adults fault. The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child, not the childs shooting someone. It gets clearer if the adult hands the weapon to a monkey or a randomized shooting machine. All three scenarios change nothing in regard to the moral responsibility of the adult.

I do not know whether the UN should ban nuclear weapons, but if someone uses a nuclear weapon and we would check out who might be morally responsible for the attack, I'd point at the attacker.

kttaOP9y ago

> I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive.

Well I meant evasive argument as in statements which directly avoid the question. Because the thing is, we don't live in a perfect world. So putting the blame on agents doesn't solve the problem. That's why I brought up that sometimes things have to be taken away from people. The question is when and how.

> The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child

I didn't say the adult gave the weapon. I just said the adult left it within the reach of the child. One is direct, the other is indirect. I wouldn't even say indirect, but lets go with it.

> I'd point at the attacker

It gets blurry deciding who the attacker is, depending on whose side you are on. Things aren't always so clear.

fwn9y ago

In a perfect world, government would be good, capable not oppressive and there would be zero reason for anyone not to trust them with private data - but government would not want it, since they would not be immoderate and power hungry but perfect.

But we both believe that the world is not perfect. This is why we need to talk about moral responsibility in the first place. Blurry definitions might only make us even more humble while proposing new, disruptive power centralizations like an encryption ban.

natch9y ago

Let's turn the analogy around to the other side.

With their utterly poor understanding of encryption and the harms of compromising it, people in governments who want to do so might as well be monkeys.

By providing backdoored encryption products, we would as you put it be handing out randomized shooting machines to monkeys.

LoSboccacc9y ago

on the other hand a huge nuclear arsenal maintained a long period of peace during a troubled time, so there's that

kttaOP9y ago

> long period of peace

What if the huge nuclear arsenal was in the wrong hands? That begs the question, what is 'wrong'?

Your definition of peace was probably characterized as oppression/dominance by the people who did want to revolt. You don't account for the extremely subjective nature of things, especially when it comes to nationalistic actions of people.

natch9y ago

It arguably has so far, but let's not get too smug about it. The end of that story has not yet been written.

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0 pointsktta9y ago0 comments

> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral.

[1]: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/

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fwn9y ago

I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive.

I do not know whether the UN should ban nuclear weapons, but if someone uses a nuclear weapon and we would check out who might be morally responsible for the attack, I'd point at the attacker.

kttaOP9y ago

> I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive.

> The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child

I didn't say the adult gave the weapon. I just said the adult left it within the reach of the child. One is direct, the other is indirect. I wouldn't even say indirect, but lets go with it.

> I'd point at the attacker

It gets blurry deciding who the attacker is, depending on whose side you are on. Things aren't always so clear.

fwn9y ago

natch9y ago

Let's turn the analogy around to the other side.

With their utterly poor understanding of encryption and the harms of compromising it, people in governments who want to do so might as well be monkeys.

By providing backdoored encryption products, we would as you put it be handing out randomized shooting machines to monkeys.

LoSboccacc9y ago

on the other hand a huge nuclear arsenal maintained a long period of peace during a troubled time, so there's that

kttaOP9y ago

> long period of peace

What if the huge nuclear arsenal was in the wrong hands? That begs the question, what is 'wrong'?

natch9y ago

It arguably has so far, but let's not get too smug about it. The end of that story has not yet been written.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse