Withholding Technology from the World - A Question of Ethics

[Level_One]

Imagine the following:

You are an engineer. Today, you have achieved the invention of a source of unlimited free energy. Naturally, you are eager to share your invention with the world and bring humanity into a new age, but you give pause - should you?

The dissemination of your technology would cure starvation and dehydration forever in less than a decade. Industry and progress would be catalyzed to unimaginable levels. The greatest technological barrier to human achievement will be overcome once and for all. 

However, does humanity in its current state of conscience run too great a risk of abusing the most powerful technology it has ever possessed? Instead of a tool of liberation, will your energy be a tool of enslavement? Instead of fueling industry without limits, will it fuel war without end? In a matter of a few generations, will it deliver the human race to its golden age, or its ultimate demise?

Innocent millions will continue to suffer and die of all of the afflictions that your energy can relieve, so long as you withhold it. However, is it even less ethical to give this technology to a race that isn't prepared for it? As its inventor, you have a choice to make. 
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An interesting dilemma I've been pondering lately. What to do with great technology that could harm humanity if misused? Hide it away? Reserve it for a select responsible few? Release it in the hopes that its benefits will so greatly outweigh the risks that it will aid humanity faster than it can harm it (such as the internet so far). 

This is a fascinating topic to me, an ultimate challenge of responsibility, and I am very curious about the FDR community's perspective on it.

Discuss!

 

[MMX2010]

This is a fascinating topic to me, an ultimate challenge of responsibility, and I am very curious about the FDR community's perspective on it.

 

Discuss!

 

 

 

The community probably won't share my opinion, but I don't trust people who ask hypothetical questions that'll never happen which also attempt to justify or explain the questioner's lack-of-action.  Not only that, but you can never decide, on behalf of 7.5 billion people whether they're "conscious enough".  They'll decide that on your own, with or without your help, and with or without your feelings of guilt/responsibility. 

 

If you want to be responsible, build up your body until it's excellent, repair a house until it's in stellar condition, or any other form of self-improvement.  Don't waste your time and energy pondering things that will never happen.  

 

 

[Level_One]

The community probably won't share my opinion, but I don't trust people who ask hypothetical questions that'll never happen which also attempt to justify or explain the questioner's lack-of-action.  Not only that, but you can never decide, on behalf of 7.5 billion people whether they're "conscious enough".  They'll decide that on your own, with or without your help, and with or without your feelings of guilt/responsibility. 

 

If you want to be responsible, build up your body until it's excellent, repair a house until it's in stellar condition, or any other form of self-improvement.  Don't waste your time and energy pondering things that will never happen.  

 

 

The energy source was just an idealized representation of any piece of revolutionary technology. As for humanity deciding itself whether or not it's responsible enough to handle such technology, that is precisely the dilemma: what if it's not?  

 

I'm not sure what self-improvement has to do with a question about how to handle something that could affect all of humanity. 

[shirgall]

You are an engineer. Today, you have achieved the invention of a source of unlimited free energy. Naturally, you are eager to share your invention with the world and bring humanity into a new age, but you give pause - should you?

 

Let's say I invent a new type of steel with amazing advanced in properties. Let's call it "Reardon Metal". Nothing stops me from making it and sharing it with the world if they want to buy it. Nothing should compel me to give it away, or give away it secrets. And there's nothing wrong with me holding my trade secret to my chest.

 

Almost every entrepreneur goes through a version of this. Some choose to patent things. Some place their advances in the public domain. There's nothing really terribly wrong with either course of action. The entire world has benefited from the process. But, the reality of the situation is that they have to nurture and develop something new and garner enough capital to make it happen, or it never gets anywhere. The real shame is great ideas that fail, but the real benefit is that good ideas challenged by the marketplace have that chance to be great.

[dayna j.]

If I invented it, I would release it.  It's not my responsibility to babysit the world.

[Agalloch]

1. Unlimited free energy is impossible. That's important because there's probably not an reasonable example for your question... Nuclear technology is exclusively Statist, the free market doesn't create products that destroy itself.

 

2. Humanity doesn't abuse technology, the State does.

 

3. The free market is much more adaptive than the State, it will use technology to free itself from it, see the Internet, Public Key Encryption, Bitcoin, Tor (original a State project I know) etc.

 

What great technology have you invented Level_One, that you need to ponder this about? If people will pay you for it, sell it, an Engineer isn't special, he doesn't have less chance of abusing a technology, so the fact he ponders these things - despite his hubris - implies that the vast majority of people will also not abuse the technology.

[AncapFTW]

1. Unlimited free energy is impossible. That's important because there's probably not an reasonable example for your question... Nuclear technology is exclusively Statist, the free market doesn't create products that destroy itself.

 

2. Humanity doesn't abuse technology, the State does.

 

3. The free market is much more adaptive than the State, it will use technology to free itself from it, see the Internet, Public Key Encryption, Bitcoin, Tor (original a State project I know) etc.

 

What great technology have you invented Level_One, that you need to ponder this about? If people will pay you for it, sell it, an Engineer isn't special, he doesn't have less chance of abusing a technology, so the fact he ponders these things - despite his hubris - implies that the vast majority of people will also not abuse the technology.

1) How is nuclear power a product that destroys the free market?

2) People abuse technology, as that's what the State is, just a collection of people with special privileges.  People could abuse the technology outside of the State, though much of the incentive wouldn't be there.

3) Even if the Free Market is more adaptive than the State, there isn't really a free market for the product, just various shades of State-run markets.

 

As for the original question, much war is caused by scarcity of resources, like energy.  If the technology were available, it would cause less war, at least in the short term, until the market adjusts to need new resources it can't help with.

[MrCapitalism]

Neither option violates the NAP... so fundamentally I don't see the problem as an issue of ethics. Do whatever you want.

 

Besides, if you don't release it, how do you know that somebody else isn't working on the same thing and will discover the same technique next week?

[autowagon]

All technology is art.  Culture will always try to hold back humanity that is why art is always done to escape that which puts limits on us, in protest, as a deviation from a control or norm.  To hold back technology as a means towards advancing humanity is the same notion as the culture now pushes.  That humanity must be bound by the limitations of some other 'leader'.  We must have a master, a totalitarian God.  Ever searching for a new world order (to exploit) instead of a chaotic constant re-arrangement between individual's with changing demands.  (Instead of a leader taking posession of all your goods and redistributing them as they see fit.)

Art is not exploitation.  Art is the ingenuity of man.  It is simply a means to express value sets and influence mankind to push out of its shell.  Sure it is used and manipulated to exploit, but that would not be an example of creation (thus not art) just exploitation.  Art has to be created.  Someone's actions utilizing art or technology is their own responsibility.  An artist doesn't simply invent something and then throw it away because the world wasn't ready for it.  That's not how it works.  You can't limit the creation of art.  You just can't.

Art does not limit mankind, mankind is limited therefore creates art.

[Agalloch]

1) How is nuclear power a product that destroys the free market?

2) People abuse technology, as that's what the State is, just a collection of people with special privileges.  People could abuse the technology outside of the State, though much of the incentive wouldn't be there.

3) Even if the Free Market is more adaptive than the State, there isn't really a free market for the product, just various shades of State-run markets.

 

As for the original question, much war is caused by scarcity of resources, like energy.  If the technology were available, it would cause less war, at least in the short term, until the market adjusts to need new resources it can't help with.

1. The free market is human beings. Nuclear technology was created to create nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs exist to exterminate lots of human beings. Human beings are the free market...

 

2. "The incentive wouldn't be there" pretty much answers your own criticism. I didn't say "couldn't", I said "doesn't". Also, as well as incentives, people outside the State lack the psychopathy, hubris and most importantly - and probably even a "couldn't" - they lack funding because noone would pay for that.

 

3. What product? Also, I meant to say just "market", not free market, my bad.

 

By the way, war isn't caused by scarce resources, that's an excuse. War is a typically Statist phenomena that uses false external pretenses like energy to steal tonnes more from the local population. I don't know where people get this idea that war has anything todo with scarce resources at the same time they peacefully purchase so many scarce resources every single day...

[ribuck]

All knowledge becomes public eventually, either by leaking or by being independently discovered. If you hold back an invention, the bad guys will likely find a way to get hold of it before the good guys do.

[FriendlyHacker]

In AI the decision has to be made beforehand, once AI reaches a certain level you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

 

The reason I work on it is because this technology is innevitable, and it's either going to come from pacifists such as myself, or the military, and I see serious moral implications on an AI that comes from the military.

[AncapFTW]

1. The free market is human beings. Nuclear technology was created to create nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs exist to exterminate lots of human beings. Human beings are the free market...

 

2. "The incentive wouldn't be there" pretty much answers your own criticism. I didn't say "couldn't", I said "doesn't". Also, as well as incentives, people outside the State lack the psychopathy, hubris and most importantly - and probably even a "couldn't" - they lack funding because noone would pay for that.

 

3. What product? Also, I meant to say just "market", not free market, my bad.

 

By the way, war isn't caused by scarce resources, that's an excuse. War is a typically Statist phenomena that uses false external pretenses like energy to steal tonnes more from the local population. I don't know where people get this idea that war has anything todo with scarce resources at the same time they peacefully purchase so many scarce resources every single day...

1) Nuclear power technology is derived from nuclear bomb tech.  Comparing nuclear bombs to nuclear reactors is like comparing fireworks to guns. (although fireworks came first)  The tech that isn't a threat to people and doesn't kill people isn't bad just because it's related to a tech used to do that.  Also, nuclear power could have been developed without developing nuclear bombs, but it wasn't because all of the government funding went into bombs.

 

2) That depends on what you consider "abusing technology" to be.

 

3) The hypothetical Perpetual Energy device from the OP, though it could apply to any product.

 

And I guess it would be more accurate to say war is caused by scarcity of resources coupled with state power, as without state power it isn't generally a viable option.  Even without the state, though, it's possible some people would try it, but in this example, where there still is a State, the "scarce resources" excuse would merely be put on hold by the technology.

[Malej_Pstros]

Nothing stops me from making it and sharing it with the world if they want to buy it. Nothing should compel me to give it away, or give away it secrets. And there's nothing wrong with me holding my trade secret to my chest.

 

Exactly. What would even be the single advantage of opensourcing your inventrion rather than supplying the whole world with your sweet private energy? I am not sure how much money would we need to buy all the politicans in the world, but I am god damn certain that the world needs a heckloads of energy.