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0 pointsBurningFrog4y ago0 comments

If new technology X saves 100 lives for each person it kills, it will be banned.

Because the dead person has a name, a tragic story, and grieving relatives, which will make the news.

The 100 saved people are anonymous, don't know they were saved by X, and this will be unreported outside of obscure research journals.

0 comments

ClumsyPilot4y ago

If you save a child from drowning you don't get a 'a kill coupon' you can retrieve next time you are accused of murder.

Sodman4y ago

Certainly not, but if we invent a life-saving medicine that 1 in 1 million people have a fatal reaction to, we'll still consider it enough of an overall positive for humanity to celebrate it as a technological win for society.

The ratio isn't 1:1 or even 1:10, but there is a line somewhere where X deaths <caused by new tech> is acceptable because of the X^Y lives saved <by new tech>.

See also: Most modes of transport, most medicines and surgical procedures.

BurningFrogOP4y ago

Deliberate murders of individuals are morally very different from tiny risks of deaths in a large population.

Nothing good comes from trying to treat them as the same.

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