On Feb 21, 2009, at 3:38 PM, Arno Hautala wrote: > On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 14:59, Jeffrey Hergan <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> If I used it to find a cure for cancer, well, good. But what do the >> cancer survivors do with their lengthened stay on earth? >> If the cured people use all of their newly won time to burn ants with >> a magnifying glass and sunlight, then the cure for cancer perhaps, >> although in itself a good thing, has not perhaps had a positive >> change on history. >> >> Living longer, or having free time are desirable things, but maybe >> only insofar as they afford the opportunity to do _better_ >> things. No? >> >> Of course, you can see the giant can of worms I've opened here, >> right? > > Well, I can almost see. But given your example of someone "wasting" > their extra time doesn't really reflect on the person who enabled them > to make use of that time. It's only a reflection on that person. > Someone can still have a negative impact on history, but I think > you're stretching to place any of that influence on someone or > something that enabled their actions as a side effect. Unless, and > I'm not even completely sure of this, the _only_ use of the creation > is negative. >
Yes, I agree that _how_ a person uses their free time does not say anything about the _invention_ that _gave_ them free time to use. But my question, which I guess I'm not asking very clearly, is: Why does it matter? Granted, the invention of the wheel has changed history. Clearly this is true. My question is: so what? Some invention or act can either: 1. have an influence on history or 2. not have an influence. We want to deal with (for this project) some person or act that has changed history. What the contest (the history day project contest) asks the student to do is: Explain how an act or event changed history. But when I try to get past the simple observation that an act or event _did_ change history, the question seems to be :"Was it a good thing?" A wheel isn't good or bad. It's a wheel. It saves us time by doing work (or eliminating work/effort that we would otherwise have to expend). We can argue forever whether the wheel was used for good or bad purposes. But as soon as we go down _that_ road, we're not talking about the wheel anymore. We're talking about _value_ or worth or virtue or some such thing. And so, if all inventions are reducible to "things that save us time/ effort/work" then the most important thing is simply the thing that saves the greatest _quantity_ of time. But if the question is "What was the best thing to happen in the 20th century?" then we don't get concerned at all with "what saved the most time" but rather with "what made the greatest improvement" or "brought about the greatest good". Then we're talking about values. And we learn about values _not_ by sitting under a light bulb, but by _reading_ something important, or discussing something relevant, in the light. So it's the ideas in the book that make the printing press valuable, or the conversations held in the light that make bulb valuable. So Stephen King is more important than the wheel, right? Or, to put it differently, the US Constitution is a better achievement than the paper it was written on. Right? I think I need more coffee... Thanks, Arno, Jeff _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
