Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

Re:Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000) by jonahx on Friday September 01, 2017 @01:52AM (#15146435)

I probably shouldn't have mentioned responsibility -- it wasn't the main point I was trying to make. My point is something like "people living in a world with X" are different from "people living in a world without X" in profound ways, and it's not under anyone's control.

I'm not really interested in how we distribute blame -- only in pointing out that you can't release new technology, shrug your shoulders, and say, "Well, if it's misused, not on us." A far more accurate metaphor would be to consider us like animals in captivity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000) by pizza on Friday September 01, 2017 @02:07AM (#15146498)

OK. I admit that the preexisting presence of an object influences the decision to use it or not far more than most would probably care to admit. But I think one of the problems is when people start to sum history to explain something new's causality. It's like saying you should trust a prior probability to predict an event's occurrence more than the posterior probability after it happens - a new piece of evidence is categorically different than a historical tendency.. if that makes sense?

[ Parent | on HN ]