Technology is bad

[Mímir]

3D printing weapons. It had to happen one day.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012...of-gun-control/

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[Huhuh]

Go back to living in a cave then.

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[Mímir]

Tsk, youth these days. You don't see the scope of where we are going?

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[Huhuh]

Tsk, youth these days. You don't see the scope of where we are going?

Technology is not to blame. People are.

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[Mímir]

Yes, it can be erroneously reduced to that. "Guns don't kill, people do", yet there are more murders pr. capita in the US than in gun-restricted Scandinavia. Most of which are carried out with firearms. Go figure.

Technology enables people to do catastrophic things on a scale never seen before. Technology has made total devastation of the planet in a matter of hours possible, and introduced a lot of other risks to the society and the environment.

So it's good to be cautious and not just take a back-seat approach, no?

EDIT: Especially when people can print out working models of weapons, totally undermining years and years of legislation in the developed world.

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[Huhuh]

Yes, it can be erroneously reduced to that. "Guns don't kill, people do", yet there are more murders pr. capita in the US than in gun-restricted Scandinavia. Most of which are carried out with firearms. Go figure.

Technology enables people to do catastrophic things on a scale never seen before. Technology has made total devastation of the planet in a matter of hours possible, and introduced a lot of other risks to the society and the environment.

So it's good to be cautious and not just take a back-seat approach, no?

Technology also enables people to do good. Without enhancements in farming and medicine, the extra 5 billion people we put on the planet in the last 200 years wouldn't be here.

It's not like there was no crime before the industrial revolution.

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[Mímir]

No what worries me is the scale. People have always been able to kill people, modern technology just made it a lot faster, easier and more efficient.

Also in regards to putting an extra 5 billion people on the planet, that is in itself a catastrophy. The 21st century is going to be signified by mass-migration, and historically mass-migration has always lead to conflict and wars (Ghengis Khan anyone?).

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[Huhuh]

No what worries me is the scale. People have always been able to kill people, modern technology just made it a lot faster, easier and more efficient.

Any process that aids in the construction/assembly of goods/materials makes it easier to produce weapons. You can't just stop research into improving technological processes.

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[Mímir]

But if we haphazardly reduce everything it that manner, we relieve ourselves of any and all responsibility. It's a cop-out, isn't it?

Also this specific case is not just about making weapon production easier, it's about making it possible. There's a radical difference right there, wouldn't you say?

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[Huhuh]

But if we haphazardly reduce everything it that manner, we relieve ourselves of any and all responsibility. It's a cop-out, isn't it?

Also this specific case is not just about making weapon production easier, it's about making it possible. There's a radical difference right there, wouldn't you say?

So if anything is possible, we should police and regulate ourselves.
Surely if anything is possible then we can find a way to do that.

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