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| What do you think about mixed use weapon tech? |
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| Infraviolet:
Not sure how your LRAD example is "mixed use" (the wod was always "dual use" I thought), it is still a weapon in both circumstances. Whether it used by soliders against soldiers, by civilian sailors against pirates, or by law enforcement (often in a mroe oppressive fashion than when used by actual soldiers against soldiers), it is still a weapon, still infact the very same weapon. My general consideration would be things with true dual use, that is to say an application that is not a weapon or other form of military/paramilitary equipment is all morally ok, because it has a civilian non-combative use which is of value to society and the economy. Anything which is a weapon solely for battlefield use by armed combatants against one-another is morally fairly ok. The same for law enforcement weapons which would only be of practical use against violent adversaries. War is ugly, but when both sides are there for a fight then so be it and they may as well have an arms race for the best kit. Anything which is primarily for use by governments/corporations against civilians (mass surveillance tech, facial recognition, censorship tech, creepy financial control schemes...) is morally unacceptable, and doesn't tend to have dual uses because it is usually specific enough in its details it can only ever serve to surveil/censor/maniuplate/oppress whether the operator is a government or a private entity. |
| cool_man:
I think that mixed use weapon tech is a great idea. |
| SiliconWizard:
As this is an EE forum rather than a philosophy forum, might as well consider the question under the angle of engineering as a profession, rather than engineering (or even more vague, "technology") in general. Even if there's still some philosophy under that angle. But this is ethics, and talking about ethics in relation to engineering sounds relevant to me. To me, the question is, what do you, as an engineer, accept to work on? Is there anything you personally would refuse to work on if you knew it was going to be used to kill people? Where would you draw the line? If there was a question of benefit/risk ratio, would you feel able to determine this ratio - or judge the relevance thereof if it was given to you as a premise - and act accordingly? If you got orders from some authority (your boss, or some higher authority), would you consider that it exempted you from being personally responsible? Those are pretty personal questions in the end, and the answers probably can't be generalized, except maybe at the surface. OTOH, those are questions that almost any engineer will face at some point. Ethics is a bitch. Just my 2 cents though. |
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