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[–] 1 point 10 hours ago (6 children)

Hostile architecture is a great example! It's used to make those spiky panels to discourage people from trespassing on railways. Their introduction led to a vast reduction in deaths of people getting hit by trains (even though it's still possible to traverse them)

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago (5 children)

    I'm not saying there aren't uses for it but it's basically a "I don't want to see poor people around" technology made manifest. Also, aren't there better versions? I remember that metros can have doorways that impede going onto the tracks without the need of spikes.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

    How is it "basically" that if there are prominent examples of other uses? Another use is to prevent public urination. (And no, just providing toilets does not prevent it...)

    I don't know what you're imagining, but I'm not taking about metros, rather regular trains. But regardless, if you think about it, the existence of alternatives doesn't make a difference to what I'm saying.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

    And the existence of alternative uses doesn't take away the pain of someone who needs to sit on a bench and can't. The ringing noise that only teenagers hear on public parks because the council doesn't want them there. Alternative uses of a bad technology do not redeem a technology.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (2 children)

    The statement you objected to is:

    No technology is evil. They way it is used definitely can be.

    If hostile architecture is evil, then hostile architecture used to reduce suicides is evil.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 hours ago* (1 child)

    It is fair to judge a technology by the totality of outcomes it produces. You might find a subset of the technology that may be positive but you can't use a part of it to justify the whole.

    It really reminded me of this image.

    A partial perception of a technology might blind us to the overall net benefit.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 hours ago

    Sure, judge the totality of outcomes. Just don't conflate that with the technology itself, whose outcomes change over time as new uses are found and old ones become obsolete.

    This is important because people who judge something evil generally want to get rid of that thing, and reasonably so. But if it's not the thing you're judging, but the outcomes, then it's not reasonable to get rid of the thing just because some of its outcomes are bad.

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