Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
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Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#2I think the problem is that you need to find a very good counter-argument to the rationalization of "If I don't invent it, someone else will"
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#3I think of the film The Bridge on the River Kwai as being a great cautionary tale for engineers, the myopic pursuit and pride in solving engineering problems at the expense of one's larger mission.
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#4I think the problem is that you need to find a very good counter-argument to the rationalization of "If I don't invent it, someone else will"
Yeah, this argument is interesting. There are good moral rebuttals. Someone on HN said recently, “your actions remain immoral even if others are ready to be just as immoral as you are.” I haven’t heard a good practical rebuttal though :/
W.r.t. nukes, for example, there is a good chance that mutually assured destruction prevented war despite how terrifying the policy is.
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#5Much like Black Mirror and 1984, media like this will not be a deterrent but rather a guide on how to execute the future.
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#6Much like Black Mirror and 1984, media like this will not be a deterrent but rather a guide on how to execute the future.
"Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The
Torment Nexus"
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#7I think the problem is that you need to find a very good counter-argument to the rationalization of "If I don't invent it, someone else will"
Especially when that "someone" is literally the Nazis.
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#8I think the problem is that you need to find a very good counter-argument to the rationalization of "If I don't invent it, someone else will"
Yeah, this argument is interesting. There are good moral rebuttals. Someone on HN said recently, “your actions remain immoral even if others are ready to be just as immoral as you are.” I haven’t heard a good practical rebuttal though :/ W.r.t. nukes, for example, there is a good chance that mutually assured destruction prevented war despite how terrifying the policy is.
It's also worth considering if the act of inventing something horrifying is actually immoral, or if using it for immoral purposes is.
For instance, dynamite. We would not have the society we do now without dynamite. The fact that it can also be used to destroy property and kill people makes it a deadly invention, but was it immoral to invent?
Of course dynamite is nothing compared to the Atomic Bomb.
Or maybe inventing it for the purposes of killing people makes it immoral regardless of other possible applications.
How much does intent matter, versus outcome?
And then, does it absolve the inventor if they had pure intentions but others used their inventions to do harm?
Is it all moot because trying to live a moral life when others are willing to be immoral will basically never work out in your favor?
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#9Ah yes, what a better world we would be living in if the Nazis had created the bomb first.
Re: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this argument is interesting. There are good moral rebuttals. Someone on HN said recently, “your actions remain immoral even if others are ready to be just as immoral as you are.” I haven’t heard a good practical rebuttal though :/ W.r.t. nukes, for example, there is a good chance that mutually assured destruction prevented war despite how terrifying the policy is.
It's also worth considering if the act of inventing something horrifying is actually immoral, or if using it for immoral purposes is. For instance, dynamite. We would not have the society we do now without dynamite. The fact that it can also be used to destroy property and kill people makes it a deadly invention, but was it immoral to invent? Of course dynamite is nothing compared to the Atomic Bomb. Or maybe inventi…
We could also consider failure to prevent bad actors from doing immoral things as immoral itself. The problem with this line of thinking is there is no tight definition of immorality.