[bawolff]

Academics seem to like saying that considering any tool or technology to be value neutral, is naive.

And sure, technology choices have plenty of second order effects. Stopping any analysis at just how you are directly using the tool is probably insufficient.

At the same time, i still think that is part of how we use a tool. Society's choices about a tool (or even the choice to ban a tool) is still a part of how we use the tool and not instrinsic to the tool. I feel it all comes back to how we decide to use it. We can use nuclear technologies to treat diseases, power our cities, or we can use it to bomb places. We can chose to regulate the waste appropriately or not. Etc.

When i say things like its just a tool and it matters how you use it, i am claiming it is not inherently good or evil. It can have good or evil (or both) effects depending on how individuals use it and how society regulates it.

I have yet to hear a compelling counter example.

[jraph]

> i am claiming it is not inherently good or evil

This is what is being refuted. The argument is that there is, in fact, inherent badness in the tool, which doesn't quite depend on how the tool is used (or at least non neutral implications that don't depend on usage).

[bawolff]

I understand that that is what the author is trying to refute, i just find it extremely uncompelling.

[andsoitis]

> We can use nuclear technologies to treat diseases, power our cities, or we can use it to bomb places

That’s picking at a particular level in the hierarchy of application that amounts to sleight of hand, even if unintentional.

If you said “a nuclear bomb”, the more specific instantiation focuses the purpose and likely impact in the world to a narrower, more purposeful goal.

Simply: nuclear technology might be used to treat diseases, but I am pretty certain nuclear bombs are not.

[bawolff]

I guess it depends on how you define tool. Like as far as i know, traditionally Molybdenum-99 (an important isotope in medicine) is made by fision of highly entiched uranium. The same thing a nuclear bomb does, just a little more controlled so there is no big boom.

Is that a different tool or the same tool put to a different use? I would lean to calling that the same tool, since its the same process. I think at some point if we divide tools too finely we just end up encoding the use of the tool in the tool definition and the whole thing becomes moot. Like is a gun used for hunting a different tool then a gun used for murdering? Maybe you could say a machine gun is different, but what if its the same model of gun?

[As an aside, there are very real arguments over if nuclear bombs are a net negative for humanity. For all the downsides, mutually assured destruction significantly suppressed major wars]

[crote]

And then there's Project Plowshare, where we are so obsessed with justifying nuclear bombs that bombing yourself starts to sound like a sensible idea...