Powerful Tech

[Suuper]

(Hypothetical situation.)
Someone just made a breakthrough technological discovery! This new technology can be used in a variety of areas, greatly improving several of them, including medicine. He starts putting together a paper to publish, and writes a quick list of what it could be used for. Then he stops. He realizes it will also vastly improve weapons technology, potentially even making a bomb that makes an H-bomb look weak by comparison.

What should he do? Should he release this technology?

[PrinceAceII]

Wow!

[GamerProist]

cool

[PinkyWoman]

Woaaahh...

We should test it out in Korea!!

[Darke~]

Hide information about weapons or combat improvement. We have enough violence in this world, why create more?

[GamerProist]

Hide information about weapons or combat improvement. We have enough violence in this world, why create more?

LOL, I just saw at yahoo that some cops were caught stealing lol

[Darke~]

LOL, I just saw at yahoo that some cops were caught stealing lol

You'll see something similar here on Brazil every 10 seconds.

[GamerProist]

You'll see something similar here on Brazil every 10 seconds.

lol ok

[Suuper]

Hide information about weapons or combat improvement. We have enough violence in this world, why create more?

He can't hide JUST the weapons part of it, other people will easily figure that out if he releases enough info for any new technology to be used.

[GamerProist]

guns shooting memes

[~▲†▲~]

Release it. The discovery itself is not inherently good or bad.

[J3NNiF3R]

There's no way to keep it a secret from other countries so you just might as well tell everyone (and if you did you would get the credit for it :L )

[Chai]

He should tweet it.

[Suuper]

Release it. The discovery itself is not inherently good or bad.

Yet there's no doubt it will be used for both killing and saving lives.

There's no way to keep it a secret from other countries so you just might as well tell everyone (and if you did you would get the credit for it :L )

If he didn't release it to anybody it would be secret until someone else could come up with it...an decided to publish it.

[!X!]

Sell it.
Or get a super powerful person he trusts to build these weapons and use them to take over the world.

[~▲†▲~]

Yet there's no doubt it will be used for both killing and saving lives.

Doesn't matter

[Rammjet]

'Every idea has been had before, the trick is remembering the good ones.'

The idea of relativity had been proposed several times and dismissed as a curiosity before einstein got to it, 'course einstein didn't realise his idea would in part lead to the construction of the most powerful bombs on the planet, but several physicists who had been kicked out of an increasingly intollerant Germany did, and they were the people who helped weaponise the idea.

Strangely this E=mc^2 business has eventually resulted in accelerators and colliders which produce research to cure cancers, such as those which may have been induced from fission bombs...it's odd how things sometimes come in circles.

I think there's a certain inevitability about the progress of technology, and that if you've come up with an idea and realised applications aside from weapons that that's a good starting point to go from, because it's a better starting point than what I see as the inevitability that somebody will have the same idea from a weaponised perspective somewhere down the line anyway.

[Suuper]

'Every idea has been had before, the trick is remembering the good ones.'

The idea of relativity had been proposed several times and dismissed as a curiosity before einstein got to it, 'course einstein didn't realise his idea would in part lead to the construction of the most powerful bombs on the planet, but several physicists who had been kicked out of an increasingly intollerant Germany did, and they were the people who helped weaponise the idea.

Strangely this E=mc^2 business has eventually resulted in accelerators and colliders which produce research to cure cancers, such as those which may have been induced from fission bombs...it's odd how things sometimes come in circles.

I think there's a certain inevitability about the progress of technology, and that if you've come up with an idea and realised applications aside from weapons that that's a good starting point to go from, because it's a better starting point than what I see as the inevitability that somebody will have the same idea from a weaponised perspective somewhere down the line anyway.

Most serious reply yet, by far.

That's a good point. I think you may have the answer there, can't think of any reason it wouldn't be the best thing to do.