In a rare conversation last night with an unusually-minded friend over dinner, we explored two topics: duplication and technology. I argued that it’s unethical to deliver the findings of science to modern societies because they will weaponize nearly everything… and build anything they can imagine, without any meaningful regard to the damage that results. In fact, ‘advanced’ technologies… which affect »time and the environment… are impossible for us to know the repercussions of because we have no idea how delicate the »context is. So anything that affects contexts is built and enacted with effectively no foresight whatsoever. Especially anything that might damage »time, which is a concept we do not even have language for… at all.

My friend argued that it was ‘natural’ for humans to do this, and there’s no way to know that it isn’t ‘what’s supposed to happen’. Effectively, his position—one I have heard before—is the opposite argument. Perhaps it is precisely what is required to ‘achieve the next level/situation’.

I posed an analogy where an actually intelligent civilization held competitions to discover advanced technologies… precisely in order to »not enact them. To understand what our species fails to: »what must never be built.

He responded that they would not progress. I responded that this is what actual progress looks like. I posed a situation where very few technologies are built, but those that are, are actually relatively safe, effective… and quickly and constantly re-engineered to improve them.