> When in human history have we ever intentionally not furthered technological progress?
Oh, a number. Medicine is the biggest field - human trials have to follow ethics these days:
- the times of Mengele-style "experiments" on inmates or the infamous Tuskeegee syphilis study are long past
- we can clone sheep for like what, 2 decades now, but IIRC haven't even begun chimpanzees, much less humans
- same for gene editing (especially in germlines), which is barely beginning in human despite being common standard for lab rats and mice. Anything impacting the germ line... I'm not sure if this will become anywhere close to acceptable in my life time.
- pre-implantation genetic based discarding of embryos is still widely (and for good reason...) seen as unethical
Another big area is, ironically given that militaries usually want ever deadlier toys, the military:
- a lot of European armies and, from the Cold War era on mostly Russia and America, have developed a shit ton of biological and chemical weapons of war. Development on that has slowed to a crawl and so did usage, at least until Assad dropped that shit on his own population in Syria, and Russia occasionally likes to murder dissidents.
- nuclear weapons have been rarely tested for decades now, with the exception of North Korea, despite there being obvious potential for improvement or civilian use (e.g. in putting out oil well fires).
Humanity, at least sometimes, seems to be able to keep itself in check, but only if the potential of suffering is just too extreme.
Oh, a number. Medicine is the biggest field - human trials have to follow ethics these days:
- the times of Mengele-style "experiments" on inmates or the infamous Tuskeegee syphilis study are long past
- we can clone sheep for like what, 2 decades now, but IIRC haven't even begun chimpanzees, much less humans
- same for gene editing (especially in germlines), which is barely beginning in human despite being common standard for lab rats and mice. Anything impacting the germ line... I'm not sure if this will become anywhere close to acceptable in my life time.
- pre-implantation genetic based discarding of embryos is still widely (and for good reason...) seen as unethical
Another big area is, ironically given that militaries usually want ever deadlier toys, the military:
- a lot of European armies and, from the Cold War era on mostly Russia and America, have developed a shit ton of biological and chemical weapons of war. Development on that has slowed to a crawl and so did usage, at least until Assad dropped that shit on his own population in Syria, and Russia occasionally likes to murder dissidents.
- nuclear weapons have been rarely tested for decades now, with the exception of North Korea, despite there being obvious potential for improvement or civilian use (e.g. in putting out oil well fires).
Humanity, at least sometimes, seems to be able to keep itself in check, but only if the potential of suffering is just too extreme.