I was discussing the topic of technological innovation with noonereally (regarding my previous post), and had a rather disturbing flash of insight.
My viewpoint with respect to technological innovation, cryptography, hacking, and other discovery of potentially dangerous or disruptive knowledge is that ultimately, the discovery of such knowledge will strengthen us. That is, uncovering an exploit in a firewall, for example, will cause that exploit to be fixed, resulting in better protection for all henceforth. If you are malicious, you’ll punish the exploit because you’re malicious. If you’re benevolent, you’ll inform someone responsible for security about it so that it can be fixed. Either way, it gets fixed. In addition, if you’re benevolent, you’ll bring the knowledge to light to avoid potential future malicious exploitation. This theory is a spinoff of the theory of evolution, and is also closely tied to the “play to win” philosophy of games – it’s all intertwined.
But I’ve also been thinking a bit about preemptive warfare lately. My refutation of it has been that conflict only escalates as far as either party allows. That is, if neither side is willing to escalate conflict, there will be no conflict. This theory is closely tied to my views on hypocrisy and the equality tenet I briefly rambled about nearly a year ago. Essentially, you can feel justified in mistreating people as much as they have mistreated you, but no further (and it’s sometimes mutually beneficial to treat them better than they treated you, to repair the relations to a superior level for all involved parties).
My insight was that these two mentalities are somewhat contradictory. If there is a machine sitting on a network somewhere, and you could hack into it and discover exploits, or you could leave it alone… and then there’s an evil dictatorship sitting there, and you could attack it and rescue its people, or you could leave it alone… both of them are potential disasters waiting to happen. I suppose they are disasters for different reasons, though – the machine is a disaster because a malicious hacker could attack and compromise it, whereas the dictatorship is a disaster because they could be holding WMDs and be run by someone totally crazy.
Maybe the analogy here is too weak, but I appear to have concluded that it’s okay to make preemptive war or to mistreat people if it ultimately results in a better or more stable situation or relationship. Maybe all of this blather just boils down to “the ends justify the means.” At heart, I believe they do.
Thoughts?
“Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
—Matthew 26:51-52
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head.”
—Romans 12:19-20