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db48xyesterday at 8:45 PM3 repliesview on HN

Tools are always neutral. The hammer doesn't become evil merely because you used it to bash someone's brains in. Tools do not make choices; humans do.


Replies

datsci_est_2015yesterday at 8:50 PM

This is reductionist. Surely you’ve heard of the Torment Nexus?

This is along the lines of “If I don’t do it, someone else will get paid to, so it might as well be me that gets paid to do it” which I personally find morally abhorrent.

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yndoendotoday at 2:01 AM

Let say someone creates a tool, an android which is designed to kill everyone that believes in a religion the creator does not like. Is that tool neutral?

Only way to repurpose that tool is to destroy part if the tool and replace parts. It is now a different tool.

I say intention of the tool design dictates if the tool is "neutral". That hammer analogy is tool simplistic to the tools we can now create and are attempting to create.

J_McQuadeyesterday at 8:59 PM

This is an incredibly silly thing to say. If someone makes a knife that is terrible at carving wood or cutting food but is the perfect shape for, say, clitorectomies... then maybe that tool is bad and we should probably stop making it.

Yes, people choose to make it and people choose to use it. But, like... stop those people, right?

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