Re:Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel b...
by toyg on Friday January 29, 2021 @11:34AM
(#25959122)
Suppression, no; but choosing priorities carries an element of ethical responsibility. You can choose to dedicate your time towards improving chemical weapons or towards improving harvest yields. Better chemical weapons will likely come about anyway, but why hasten their arrival?
Re:Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel b...
by ballenf on Friday January 29, 2021 @03:01PM
(#25961651)
Isn't that a first order effect though?
A second order effect would be researching a life-saving drug for a lifestyle condition. You research means people have less incentive to live healthily and end up dying even sooner from some other diet-related disease. The disease you cured would have scared them "straight" diet-wise.
Here I'd argue that the effect may instead be that professionals are able to figure out what the amateurs are doing differently and incorporate it into their discipline.
If you hold up the research trying to figure out which second-order effect is more likely, you'll never get any research done on anything of substance. (You see, the second order effect of your suggestion is an overall suppression of research. Damn, arguing from second-order effects sure is tempting!)