[miloshadzic]

"Silicon Valley’s amorality problem arises from the blind faith many place in progress. The narrative of progress provides moral cover to the tech industry and lulls people into thinking they no longer need to exercise moral judgment."

Morality and the Idea of Progress in Silicon Valley http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/01/morality-and-the-idea-of-...

[nercht12]

Interesting article. Thanks for linking!

I think the statement could also be succinctly summarized from a simpleton's perspective as: "Have a problem? Science and tech will eventually find the answer." Science and tech keep answering questions, so it gives the false impression that every problem can be answered with science and tech, which in turn seems to justify - at least in part - every answer science and tech gives.

[wu-ikkyu]

>"Have a problem? Science and tech will eventually find the answer."

I used to believe this myself when I was first getting into tech in school and reading Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near.

Then I got into the real world and realized the hardest problems to solve are not technical problems, but people problems.

[jxramos]

Always a synchronicity of late. I've been thinking in the last few days about how often things that are "morally neutral" can often be confused as moral goods. Technological progress is a morally neutral thing, it must be evaluated whether the progress is a good one or not (e.g. chemical/biological weapons, etc). It hit me when someone wrote about diversity being a morally neutral thing. They gave a bizarre example of adding a deranged person or some other outlier to a crowd of folks an recognizing its more diverse, but certainly not for the better. Something to that effect.