Explanation: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin with the thinking that it would further help to end American slavery, which was on its way out anyway. After all, reducing the need for labor reduces the need for keeping labor in bondage, right?
… unfortunately, what the cotton gin did was revitalize slavery and give it greater power in the American South (and the Federal government) than it ever had previously. The cotton gin reduces the amount of labor needed for processing cotton… which increases the demand for and profitability of unprocessed cotton… which is gathered pretty exclusively by hard, tedious labor.
Great engineer, poor economist.
To be honest with you, I feel like every scientist and engineer should take a hard look at their work and remember that a Nazi can use it as easily as anyone else.
With that school of thought, at some point you just have to entirely stop inventing things. That the cotton gin would increase slavery really wasn’t that obvious IMO, in contrast to e.g. weapons or surveillance tech. And we’re talking about a time where famines were still a thing even in rich, developed coutries that weren’t at war, they kinda needed every agricultural advancement they could get.
This is supposed to be why they make you take one semester worth of ethics and learn about Therac 25 and that hotel with the incorrect bolted connection on its catwalk and whatnot, but it’s a fucking joke that misses the point. Even in concept, it is wholly inadequate to stopping engineers from working for evil, especially if it isn’t poorly-designed.
Because it is never designed to stop them from that. Even if you make them take double their science classes in ethics. You would need to explain to them why some company like lockheed martin can pay them magnitudes more, with a more stable job, and why they shouldn’t take the job.
The ethics classes are designed to explain that the engineer is responsible for that his invention and/or design doesn’t kill/damage what it wasn’t supposed to. A bad staircase which breaks beneath people would be unethical for example, however that cluster bomb which can erase a small village is very ethical, it kills and destroys only the target, even if this bomb is used by say terrorists who blow some hospital, the engineer is still ethical because it blew the target.
That is all to say that the ethics class is doing jackshit but also was never going to do it in the first Place, and also the root of the problem is not inadequate ethics classes, but huge inequalities.
Jevons paradox. Increased efficiency results in higher consumption.
