alt Hacker NewsA lot of amazing technology has been invented just for the purpose of killing people. It's nothing new. Humans are monkeys that like to kill other monkeys and no amount of civilization will change that.
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This is where incentives strike us once again.
Unlike in any other pursuit, in war, governments have at least some incentive to be efficient, lest they be outcompeted by the other side.
In peacetime science, all they care about is crossing the is, dashing the ts, and making sure that no icky ethics violations are likely to cause a PR scandal and get somebody ousted from their post.
It certainly won't change with that kind of attitude. Don't you want to live a peaceful life and be free from your baser instincts? I believe most people do, and if they don't, the mission of those who have education and means should be to show the way in that direction, instead of shrugging off the worst things and excusing them on "monkeys", which IMO is insulting to monkeys.
I find it sad that while technological progress is seen almost as a given by virtually everyone, moral progress is often not even an aspiration