Are there inventions that do more harm than good to people?

Answer 1

There are a great many ambiguous cases; is the automobile a net benefit or harm? It's a wonderful means of transportation but also causes innumerable injuries and deaths. Many people would consider that nuclear weapons are more harmful than they are helpful, even though one could also argue that they were used to bring WW II to a more rapid conclusion (Ray Bradbury also stated that nuclear weapons are a good thing, because it was only the fear of nuclear war that prevented another world war from breaking out between the US and the USSR). The invention of chlorofluorocarbons has harmed the ozone layer, the invention of DDT has harmed the global population of birds (and while your question was about harm to people, not to birds, it is also true that the quality of human life is related to the overall ecology in which we live; birds eat insects, for example, and insects are often troublesome). Many people would argue that guns have done more harm than good (although if we did not have guns we would still have swords, and it is hard to say whether things would actually be better).