Ethical OS and Silicon Valley’s Guilty Conscience
This is an excellent time to ask for a counterargument to CGP Grey&#x27;s stance that immortality should be invented: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY</a><p>Suppose there were a technology X which was going to be invented eventually. Suppose also that it&#x27;s a highly unethical technology, for some definition of unethical.<p>Is it therefore unethical to create X?<p>Note: The constraint is that X <i>is inevitable</i>. The only question is who creates it first. And in that context, isn&#x27;t it at least possible to argue from multiple axes that you should help to create it? The limit case of this argument would be &quot;It&#x27;s your duty to the society you live in to ensure it has the competitive advantage, not some other society.&quot;<p>A less-hostile way to phrase that would be &quot;The first company to invent a technology can then try to <i>enforce ethics</i> onto that technology.&quot;<p>That is, if you invent something, it&#x27;s easier to dictate how it&#x27;s used than if you didn&#x27;t.<p>Hence, paradoxically as it may seem, the logical conclusion would <i>seem</i> to be that you should work as hard as you can to invent whatever unethical technology you&#x27;re worried about -- in the hopes that you can minimize the damage later.<p>If it seems like a technology can&#x27;t really be controlled (e.g. nuclear weapons), I counter with this: Bitcoin was the implementation of a set of ideas. The exact implementation could have been very different. It could have been inflationary rather than deflationary, for example. The precise choices were very important, because Bitcoin has huge first-mover advantages. And that is often true of the first X to be invented.<p>So, what&#x27;s the answer? Do we work as hard as we can to invent unethical technologies in order to mitigate their effects, or do we try to suppress or discourage the invention of new technology knowing that some less-&quot;ethical&quot; society will get there first?<p>Or is that a false dichotomy? I&#x27;m fascinated by the possible answers.