I’ve come to believe that detecting something is more helpful for honoring or preserving it than it is helpful for targeting or destroying it.
To see why, consider people. Our fundamental ability to detect each other enables us to kill each other in a targeted way. But if humans couldn’t detect each other any more, the loss of love would likely be greater than the loss of killing. Killing would be less but possible; empathy would be reduced to nothing. Taken together, I wouldn’t wish for this.
Or, imagine flowers distributed in a field. Consider also a robot aiming to destroy flowers. Even if the destroyer cannot detect flowers, it can still destroy everything, including flowers. But consider a robot aiming to preserve/honor flowers without the ability to detect them. You can’t really protect something without being able to know where it is. Ergo, to honor a thing, it is necessary to detect it. Destruction though can be coarser. To destroy a thing, detection is not necessary
Desires to destroy one thing are often accompanied by desires to protect and elevate another thing; and so a lot of “detection” serves the goal of discrimination: not just detecting the presence of X, but discerning X from some specific Y: food from poison, friend from foe, etc.
A gardener (or gardening robot) removes unwanted plants in order to protect and elevate wanted plants. It doesn’t only have the goal of “destroy the weeds” but also “preserve the crops”.
Agreed that detection is often used for discrimination, I appreciate the added nuance.
Though I would guess that we spend more effort to detect in detail the few things we care about more than the many things we don’t. I think this is because they’re not one to one. We care for our bodies; we dislike all of the germs/diseases that could infect them. We care for our particular, not all those we don’t have. Care is local, and detective infrastructure expensive.
If true, building detection infrastructure for X is a good way to help X get cared for.
I’ve come to believe that detecting something is more helpful for honoring or preserving it than it is helpful for targeting or destroying it.
To see why, consider people. Our fundamental ability to detect each other enables us to kill each other in a targeted way. But if humans couldn’t detect each other any more, the loss of love would likely be greater than the loss of killing. Killing would be less but possible; empathy would be reduced to nothing. Taken together, I wouldn’t wish for this.
Or, imagine flowers distributed in a field. Consider also a robot aiming to destroy flowers. Even if the destroyer cannot detect flowers, it can still destroy everything, including flowers. But consider a robot aiming to preserve/honor flowers without the ability to detect them. You can’t really protect something without being able to know where it is. Ergo, to honor a thing, it is necessary to detect it. Destruction though can be coarser. To destroy a thing, detection is not necessary
Desires to destroy one thing are often accompanied by desires to protect and elevate another thing; and so a lot of “detection” serves the goal of discrimination: not just detecting the presence of X, but discerning X from some specific Y: food from poison, friend from foe, etc.
A gardener (or gardening robot) removes unwanted plants in order to protect and elevate wanted plants. It doesn’t only have the goal of “destroy the weeds” but also “preserve the crops”.
Agreed that detection is often used for discrimination, I appreciate the added nuance.
Though I would guess that we spend more effort to detect in detail the few things we care about more than the many things we don’t. I think this is because they’re not one to one. We care for our bodies; we dislike all of the germs/diseases that could infect them. We care for our particular, not all those we don’t have. Care is local, and detective infrastructure expensive.
If true, building detection infrastructure for X is a good way to help X get cared for.