Me: Cars
Guns and other weapons
Religion
Shareholders.
[Gestures broadly to Thomas Midgley Jr.] [Link]
It’s likely LLMs in their current corporate circular funding form and cryptocurrency.
Social media year over year shows it was a mistake.
Lead pipes.
Leaded gasoline has to be worse.
Lead pipes are fine. Step 1: Install. Step 2: ignore one generation of aggressive residents. Step 3: never touch the pipes again
Either leaded gasoline or pfas
Leaded gasoline is an Amazing answer. Fuck. Take my UpDoot.
Meta
I think it has to be something that poses an existential threat to human life on this planet, so cars (and other inventions dependent on fossil fuels) is a pretty good pick for the top of the list, IMO. I saw someone in the comments pick animal agriculture, and that, too, contributes to the existential threat of a warming planet; so that, too, feels like a good pick for the top of the list.
For me, though, nuclear weapons has to be the worst thing we’ve ever invented. No other invention is capable of ending human life on this planet so quickly and so thoroughly.
Theoretically, perhaps. Statistically, not even close. Mines have likely injured and killed more, both civilian and armed-forces.
Theoretically, we can argue that nuclear/atomic weapons have saved lives, due to conflicts that haven’t happenned.
industrialization.
it’s caused unfathomable damage to us, our planet, and the organisms we share our world with.
it’s also saved just as many as it’s harmed, but there is an upper limit when our planet dies and we all die with it.
Agriculture.
We could have stayed in a world where we lived in harmony with nature instead of trying to control it.
The corporation.
I know it this will seem trendy, or whatever, but AI and social media have been the worst inventions since religion.
Chemical weapons
