[bobcostas55]

>You are right on one part — culture acts as a filter upon collaboration. For some reason, you assume that the people who are harder to work with — those less capable of empathy or at least compassion — are the ones more likely to profitably explore the space of technological possibility. I’m not really sure how to address that.

Of course the people who are harder to work with are the ones on the bleeding edge! SSC had a great post on this[0]. What are the qualities that make a good scientist? Curiosity, open-mindedness, looking for errors in the dominant paradigm. Not coincidentally, these are also exactly the qualities that lead people to question the popular orthodoxies of the moment.

A good scientist would never be so absurdly naive to assume that society "drawing a line" necessarily "limits harm". Society is often wrong. Society has drawn many, many stupid lines in the past and there is no reason to believe that we have moved beyond that.

Also, someone should alert the author about the replication crisis. There are extremely good reasons not to trust sociologists.

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-a...