25 thoughts on “Technology”

  1. I think the question was more than “ill-framed”.

    I think it was framed with malice aforethought.

    It is an open invitation to find “reasons” to make people fear a future in which others are free to invent new things, and then produce and sell them through markets, instead of being “under proper control”. I’ve noticed this attitude growing more open over the last 30 years, that humans are just not good enough to be given all these powerful creations, so those creations should not be made.

    It is basically anti-human, even beyond being anti-industrial.

    1. I agree, and sadly, for my alma mater, the Texas A&M professor fell for it, while the Clarkson assistant professor handled it much better.

      One could easily argue that the printing press, along with other advancements in communication media, has killed the most people by allowing a few individuals with dangerous ideas to reach greater audiences than they ought to have been able. People who hate Trump would agree and would note Hitler. People who hate the Fake Media would agree and would note Hitler and Goebbels. People who value free speech would recognize the agenda at play.

  2. Technology seems to have killed (-)7.5 billion people and counting. There is some concern about whether (-)death tolls of this magnitude can be maintained indefinitely, but searches are ever underway for new sources of energy with which to keep things afloat.

    (Memories of intro ODE class, with negative mice negatively eating grain.)

  3. By this logic women are the worst killers of all, because every murderer who ever lived was born of a woman.

    1. “By this logic women are the worst killers of all, because every murderer who ever lived was born of a woman.”

      When you said “woman”, “killers” and “born” in the same sentence I must confess the first word that came to mind was “abortion”. In addition to the words “mass” or “genocide” as well. I realize of course they have/had many male enablers in that regard.

  4. Plus the obligatory AGW warning so common with left wing “science and technology” magazines, which these days is virtually all of them. I’m old enough to remember when science and tech journalists weren’t pansy assed leftists.

    1. Nothing new. Even back in the 1970s, I remember, as a teenager, figuring out that the first article in every Scientific American always had some sort of bias in favor of what now is Progressivism. It’s the now pervasive invocation of “Climate Warming Global Change” and “Orange Man Bad” and, now, “Get Whitey!” that gets tiresome.

  5. Another good advertisement for universities to be shut down.
    The Arabs were in the slave trade long before Europeans and still are.
    I’ll also take specific issue with this: “The slave ship was also a factory of sorts, in the sense that was a mechanised system where merchant capitalists assembled large numbers of workers that transformed free men and women from the West Coast of Africa into a commodity, a “slave.””
    Oh, right, the inhabitants of the West Coast of Africa were “free men and women”. I doubt that their tribal chieftains even had the concept of “freedom” while organising surplus people being sold to those white guys with the boats.

  6. Reminds me, our current counting china flu deaths. it seems counting the common flu when no longer in the “Flu season”.
    Or we counting human deaths, once upon time we weren’t.
    And apparently Venezuela isn’t counting China flu death, nor is China counting China flu death.
    Brazil has counted: 43,389 deaths
    Venezuela: 24 deaths
    China: 4,634 deaths
    The continent of Africa: 6,490 deaths
    India: 9,520 deaths
    Mexico: 16,872 deaths
    South America, excluding Venezuela: 60,433 deaths

    1. Should have included per day and don’t per million per day so give
      total pop:
      USA {320 million} +331 per day {yesterday}
      Mexico [126 million} +424
      Europe {??- includes Russia}+289
      Brazil {209 million}: +598
      India {1.3 billion}: +321
      Canada [37 million} +39
      Total deaths per million to present, first place goes to New York state: 1,591 per million
      New Jersey: 1,439 per million
      My state California {more population than top leaders]: 129 per million
      And per day: +27 and they still can’t get of lockdown.
      Lockdown was to stop hospitals from being overrun, no country including Brazil is having this problem, they close about a week ago
      but going down {or flat] now and they entering their winter.

      It seems there talking about New York and area around it of high deaths, being different form of virus. I am going call it the Dem virus.

    1. To be honest, I thought the whole police department was an “anti crime unit”. This is just rearranging deck chairs. They’re going to be reassigned to detective division and other squads. It’s not like they’re going to put them back in uniform.

  8. Answer: Far less than the number of people these technologies have allowed to exist that we otherwise wouldn’t be graced with their presence.

  9. Rand, one of your Twitter followers wants to line you up against the wall and expose you to firearm technology.

    I want to first expose him to Igor Sikorsky’s technology in a most Pinochet way.

    We are leaving this planet. This is not a request. We can do it peaceably or we do it the hard way but the final outcome is not in doubt. Pro tip: People good at building space vehicles are generally good at building all kinds of things too.

    If the left wants to stay in the gutter, that’s their choice, just don’t try and determine that the rest of us are obligated to stay with you. We are not.

    1. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and learn to fly a helicopter.”

    2. Yep have to go along with this one as well. As an enabling technology only reading/writing comes as close and probably still a distant 2nd.

  12. Mar Hicks is short-sighted to think that the invention of the cotton gin entrenched slavery in the US. There is a Pollyanna assumption among many that abolishing slavery should have been a far simpler matter than it was. This mindset exists in part out of a failure to recognize slavery as not just an end in itself but also as a means to another end: control of the Federal government – ultimately, control of the Senate, which was threatened by every new state admission. The Southern planter class was accustomed to rule and would fight to defend themselves against being ruled by their less-aristocratic Northern power rivals.

    One lesson worth learning from history is how special interests can damage good causes. The pro-tariff forces were the classic example from the antebellum period. Were there any others?

  14. Would cheap medically safe abortions qualify as technology that ended up “accidently” killing large numbers of people? Wonder what would happen to our vaunted increased life expectancy averages globally if we started including said termination of lives in our calculations of such.

    1. It seems “peaceful protests” are AND have, killed a lot of people.

      Protests seems over rated.
      We had a lot them, what have the good results.
      It seems it has a narrow effect of hiring talking heads in the media- and of course currently giving news content which can be endlessly recycled.

      It seems for protest to work, politicans need to “listen” and pols rarely listen. Instead of politicans being listeners they tend abusive manipulators- and of course they have always been and will always be, sexual abusers.

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