tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post3059297007018736283..comments2023-08-20T06:07:00.883-07:00Comments on Lysine Rich: Oryx and CrakeElizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03838351800414878044noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post-68130007674463450702010-06-23T14:40:28.853-07:002010-06-23T14:40:28.853-07:00Ryo: You have a very good point, and I certainly a...Ryo: You have a very good point, and I certainly agree with most of it. Mine was a rather inchoate argument, in any case. First of all, the shovel metaphor was meant to highlight exactly that all tools are good and bad, and that you can't say "such and such a tool is bad" or "such and such a tool is good". All you can say in any case is "such and such a use is bad" or "such and such a use is good".<br /><br />And at that point it stops being about a tool and starts being about a use. So, up until that point I totally agree with you. I guess from there it becomes a practical problem. You say the task is to "do our best to eliminate the evil without also sacrificing the good", and I agree with you, but I don't know how to do that <i>without</i> issuing some sort of value judgment on a tool. <br /><br />As an example, postulate that bad uses come about from bad users. Killer viruses will be created by crazy people (this does not seem to be that unreasonable a hypothesis to me). So, to prevent killer viruses, all we need to do is to prevent crazy people from getting their hands on the tools of genetic engineering; sane people are totally A-ok. <br /><br />But we simply can't regulate that. Apart from the obvious reasons why controlling 'crazy' people based on predictions of what they will do rather than realities of what they have done is possibly more dangerous than letting said 'crazy' people run amok, there's no (or next to no) reliable way to tell who will snap and when they will snap. And what's your definition of crazy? It varies from person to person, time to time, place to place. <br /><br />Since we can't, and don't want to, regulate people, since we can't 100% weed out the abusers, at a certain level we require regulation at the level of tools; there have to be some things that no one has access to, or that no one has access to without a really good reason (although what those reasons would be and who adjudicates them is up in the air). <br /><br />But regulating tools is a touchy subject. You can't regulate all tools equally (I see that as being either totalitarianism or anarchy) and you have to draw the line somewhere -- different tools have different hoops you need to jump through to get them. Which requires asking the question of "Someone who wants to use this; are they more likely to want to use it appropriately or inappropriately? What are the risks of the inappropriate use as compared to the benefits of the appropriate use?" Which does becomes a value judgment on the tool, no matter how you phrase it. And that becomes an individual judgment that varies from person to person and situation to situation -- there's no good moral calculus for it, either. (There's just no good moral calculus.)<br /><br />But I still think it's better to talk about it than not, I guess?Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03838351800414878044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post-71226934508818912812010-06-22T17:27:13.850-07:002010-06-22T17:27:13.850-07:00(Sorry, wanted to make clarifying changes to one s...(Sorry, wanted to make clarifying changes to one sentence after posting, but there was no "edit" so deleted and reposting.)<br /><br />In trying to argue that shovels are more neutral than guns by attempting to weigh "legitimate" vs "illegitimate" uses, I think you're falling into the same trap as your detractors.<br /><br />Trying to put any given piece of technology on a good-evil scale is almost always a futil exercise, because it simply can not be done objectively. The benefits of gun ownership can't be quantified (even though the "cost" can be more easily). Similarly, the "cost" of bioengineering can't be quantified, because nobody knows what adverse consequences may lay ahead, and it's impossible to quantitatively (or even qualitatively) compare them to the potential benefits, which are also unknown. At the end, all such arguments devolve into questions of aesthetics, subjective taste, faith, and personal risk tolerance levels, all of which are unresolvable (and therefore unproductive).<br /><br />Rather than trying to place technologies on a single-dimensional spectrum (shovels:neutral, guns:less-than-neutral), I think it is more productive to accept that all technologies are both good AND evil, simultaneously. The task isn't to argue whether something is inherently good or evil, but rather to be cognizant of the inherent multidimensionality of everything that exists, and to identify what <i>aspects</i> are good, and what <i>aspects</i> are evil, and do our best to eliminate the evil without also sacrificing the good. The good vs evil arguments polarize us and merely serve to distract us from the matters that are actually important, like preventing gun violence, shovel deaths, and mutant viruses that eat your brains for desert.Ryo Chijiiwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07711220914806338039noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post-6272305043174311572010-06-22T17:18:27.836-07:002010-06-22T17:18:27.836-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Ryo Chijiiwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07711220914806338039noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post-83261247783710779842010-06-15T20:22:26.744-07:002010-06-15T20:22:26.744-07:00I dunno. I loved the characterization in "The...I dunno. I loved the characterization in "The Blind Assassin" -- on one hand I can see why you say 'they always present the worst in people' because no one was kind or trustworthy. But it felt authentic, and the emotion felt so real. And I liked that part of Oryx and Crake as well. <br /><br />I guess part of my problem isn't just that individual people were tragically flawed (I think most people are tragically flawed), but that the society amplified rather than ameliorated those flaws, and the structures they were interacting with seemed evil and far-afield from our social structures. <br /><br />On the other hand, it's possible that I'm (1) a Pollyanna desperate to think that everything is always for the best, (2) in denial about our society, (3) biased towards a favorable view of science, (4) otherwise blind to the realism of Atwood's apocalypse, or (5) all of the above. So take it with a grain of salt I guess?Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03838351800414878044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29091041.post-49858360633316631682010-06-12T16:47:16.409-07:002010-06-12T16:47:16.409-07:00I read Oryx and Crake back when it first came out,...I read Oryx and Crake back when it first came out, in 2003, so it;s been awhile. I remember having qualms about it (though I don't specifically remember what bothered me).<br /><br />When I do remember from all of the Margaret Atwood books I've read is that they always preset the worst in people.Aynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03534968356995054787noreply@blogger.com