221–230 of 1001 posts
As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about furthering the goals of any military. Contributing means being complicit. The fact that the military funds research doesn't change that.
I have refused to work for defense companies, I try to encourage my friends and sibling to avoid these companies. Boy they pay great though...
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Nobody cares how many dimes those drones cost. War isn’t fought using the cheapest means available, but the most effective. Have you seen the size of the U.S. military budget? This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish…
I feel like this would all be a little more interesting coming from a different username.
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To communicate that the people on the inside of Google who are making these protestations are grossly uninformed about the Google-Maven relationship. Choose to believe me or not. My background is all out there for people to see.
When it comes to life-or-death questions, we should make informed decisions. "Just trust me" fundamentally lacks any valuable information that furthers the discussion. In addition, "just trust me" also endangers less clear thinking people to sway based on emotion instead of well-founded cold hard facts.
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Maybe if they're more accurate the marginal cost of killing people in other parts of the world will go down even more so we'll be even less likely to reflect on whether the fact we can easily use robots to kill people on the other side of the world who have no way of responding symmetrically might come back to bite us in the ass?
Nobody cares how many dimes those drones cost. War isn’t fought using the cheapest means available, but the most effective. Have you seen the size of the U.S. military budget? This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish…
Do we really want to test a theory that we can have a repeat of the 1930s when the democracies fell far behind an autocratic regime in the arms race, and again the autocratic regimes will not win? Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. The military-industrial complex may have become far bigger and perhaps in some ways a burden, but the world is a dangerous place…
> Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. What are you advocating? Arming governments with autonomous killer drones in order to "protect democracy"? Because the world is a "dangerous place"? I don't even...
It's dangerous to imagine one is sitting on some moral high ground by refusing to work for the military. We all owe our freedom to previous generations of scientists and engineers who worked for the military, sometimes inspite of strong ethical concerns.
> Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project That moment when you realize your mega-corp employer's "culture" is merely just another tool to get your to do their bidding. How do the share holders feel? I'm sure they're betting that almost every employee will stay no matter how their technology is used.
To put a number on it: I am absolutely certain that Facebook would be willing right now to sacrifice 25% of their revenue for a bump in their reputation (among developers only) that puts them at Google's level.
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The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them: $700,000,000,000 Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union: "We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED." Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies. I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology
Wars between nuclear countries don't happen any more.
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The classification of cryptography as munitions was an interesting choice. The first amendment may protect domestic encryption capabilities as stated by the wikipedia article. From a legal standpoint, does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? As information becomes weaponized, it's an interesting thought. The first amendment is arguably more vulnerable these days, so I…
IANAL but I’m pretty sure the second amendment only applies to guns; you can’t walk around with an RPG on your shoulder.
I'd rather have a new amendment then have judges be able to decide what the definition of arms is. Slippery slope. They really could one day decide that 'arms' is only muskets, or even just knives.
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Citation needed
Sure, I'll bite. Just falsify it: the Pentagon's killing machines have never brought about world peace, and world peace has never occurred while the Pentagon received killing machines.