It’s pretty easy to argue with the claim that solving cancer or aging is good.
“Science advances one funeral at a time.” replace science with culture if you want.
I think the truth is the only way you can ensure technology is good is if you live in a non chaotic world, like a total dictatorship. We live in a chaotic world. Without a well defined, very high % enforceable social contract, you are simply guessing what might happen.
Broadly in agreement but I don’t think the examples are actually the pure version of what he is saying. It sounds like he is classifying goods based on the ratio of private benefit/social effect ish, so yes things with a very high private benefit and plausibly low externalities are definitely good but I feel less confident than him we could say that about refrigerators for instance.
It’s pretty easy to argue with the claim that solving cancer or aging is good.
“Science advances one funeral at a time.” replace science with culture if you want.
I think the truth is the only way you can ensure technology is good is if you live in a non chaotic world, like a total dictatorship. We live in a chaotic world. Without a well defined, very high % enforceable social contract, you are simply guessing what might happen.
What do you think of Manheim’s simple explanation for what makes good technologies good?
Broadly in agreement but I don’t think the examples are actually the pure version of what he is saying. It sounds like he is classifying goods based on the ratio of private benefit/social effect ish, so yes things with a very high private benefit and plausibly low externalities are definitely good but I feel less confident than him we could say that about refrigerators for instance.