141–150 of 154 posts
To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…
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Let us not blame the military. The military just works for the government. And the government works for we the people.
They are however killing people. Lets not skip over that part as nice and cuddly as "just doing their job" sounds. I highly doubt the dead would care that their murderers were paid to do it.
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I agree with you, but it's not so black and white. The atomic bomb is a notable example, and consider Eisenhower and many other military leaders said "there was no reason to use that awful thing." I realize my high school education, and most othet's, led me to believe this wasn't the case. I'm not trying to say it's wrong, but it deserves a lot of skepticism.
Reading a biography of Oppenheimer explores much of this. One thing is clear, the bomb was used on an essentially defeated enemy. From another angle though, it was necessary to push back Stalin and could be considered not as the last blow of WWII but the first blow in the cold war. It is difficult to question the possible outcomes if different choices were made but you can be sure that the last 80 years could have be…
The bomb were used on an enemy that was sooo defeated that there was a coup attempt by the military between the two bombs to prevent the emperor from capitulating.
To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…
For the record, given I'm at a university with 56% overhead, this is: - Often less than corporate research. I know because I've also worked with them. - Pays for things like startup packages for new faculty, administrative support, things shared by multiple groups, etc. (as well as, without a doubt, some waste, but I mean, private research companies have that too). - Is negotiated in advance with the government. - Is…
Theoretically that's pretty good. However if you look at a lot of the research projects you kind of scratch your head at the actual output (which imo is the real problem).
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For the record, given I'm at a university with 56% overhead, this is: - Often less than corporate research. I know because I've also worked with them. - Pays for things like startup packages for new faculty, administrative support, things shared by multiple groups, etc. (as well as, without a doubt, some waste, but I mean, private research companies have that too). - Is negotiated in advance with the government. - Is…
For comparison, German federal government research grants (from the BMBF) explicitly have a 20% markup that is reserved for non-research stuff. Typically this goes to the university to cover the offices of the employees who work on the project and into a fund for other stuff (grant application overhead etc). The rest is all used for salaries and project specific investments. Theoretically that's pretty good. However…
Can you elaborate? What do you mean?
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It’s basically a new foundation for math based on types rather than sets.
What is the basic difference between types and sets? From the software engineering point of view a type is something of which you can say whether something is a member of the type. And the same thing can be set about sets.
Even within "Set Theory" (as an umbrella term), there are several axiomatizations of sets that define in different ways what a set is, how sets come into existence, what it means for an element to belong to a set, and what are the allowed ways to conclude that it does or does not.
The link posted in a sibling comment by @empath75 goes into more detail.
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They are however killing people. Lets not skip over that part as nice and cuddly as "just doing their job" sounds. I highly doubt the dead would care that their murderers were paid to do it.
It's nice to displace the guilt for democratically electing a government that orders your military to kill people by blaming the military instead of yourself.
But why would you assume an either or to begin with? Soldiers are certainly responsible for their actions like anyone else, no matter their orders. Just as people giving the orders are responsible for whats done on their behalf. I also dont think it would be to controversial to also see responsibility of the people who voted them into office.
I would have hoped, that the excuse of just following orders had died with the end of WW2.
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Yeah, traditional sources suck, in America; universities should be way more tightly controlled, in a decent society taking 56% of grant money should put some people in jail. In the year 2019 working for the US military should feel embarrassing, after the Iraq fiasco, support to journalist-killer Saudi crown prince; support to genociders that use child soldiers such as Idriss Déby (Chad), plus many other mistakes make…
Let us not blame the military. The military just works for the government. And the government works for we the people.
The military is part of the government (executive branch).