As necessary as what you suggest may be, it won’t come without costs. It’s likely to slow technological progress down to a crawl as every step is painstakingly debated as well as render innovation more vulnerable to political and economic interests — anybody who decides they have an axe to grind about any particular technology or surrounding field can just construct a wall of false ethical questions to debate and keep it perpetually bogged down.

I’m not arguing against having more thought put into what we do, but taking it too far could easily put us into a collective rut that is nearly impossible to get out of.