51–60 of 145 posts
I don't agree with this mentality. If you are helping a dictator or authoritarian regime, sure. I think it is in the wrong side of the story. But helping out the US in developing high-precission weapons does the opposite. 1. It might save lifes, as the alternative is dumb carpet bombing. As we know during WW2, carpet bombing killed mostly civilians and destroyed cities. 2. Most weapons that the US has, are there for…
As a former writer of telemarketing software it's nice to have missile guidance software developers that I can feel somewhat morally superior to. But in their defense at least missiles can be used in a non-evil way, but I'm not so sure about telemarketing software.
I am curious as to how missiles (or any weapon for that matter) could be used in "non-evil" way
Simply as an observation, it’s interesting that serving in the military is usually treated as honorable, but working at a defense contractor is viewed as unethical. I wonder why that is?
Presumably because soldiers are at putting themselves at risk while defense contractors are generally not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ethical to do unethical things because other "worse" people do unethical things?
No, it is ethical to have weapons because it's a bulwark and disincentive against countries with even more tyrannical objectives. This is not to defend the extent to which weapons systems are being invested in. But they need to be invested in. The race is not optional.
The result has been 3 decades of near continuous warfare in countries of little strategic threat to US interests. As a peer competitor to the US, do you fear a smarter drone or an ICBM?
>i don't remember what it was exactly that he said after that but he explained to us the value of considering the ethics of the software you're writing prior to writing it, and it was one of the most impactful things i ever learned in school, period How is the US having accurate weapons unethical? These hypocrites never seem all that concerned about the war-making capacity of China, Russia, Iran, or other rogue state…
It is unethical because the US is the only country to have used the atomic bomb and by far the largest missile threat all over the planet today. In contrast, Iran, China and Russia do not on a daily basis assassinate civilians with missiles.
Those countries do, however, do a whole bunch of other pretty bad things.
And I definitely do not want them having more power an influence to enact their agenda on other parts of the world.
>i don't remember what it was exactly that he said after that but he explained to us the value of considering the ethics of the software you're writing prior to writing it, and it was one of the most impactful things i ever learned in school, period How is the US having accurate weapons unethical? These hypocrites never seem all that concerned about the war-making capacity of China, Russia, Iran, or other rogue state…
And then we could argue the whole premise of "we have to do it because the others are doing it" which can be used to justify everything.
I don't agree with this mentality. If you are helping a dictator or authoritarian regime, sure. I think it is in the wrong side of the story. But helping out the US in developing high-precission weapons does the opposite. 1. It might save lifes, as the alternative is dumb carpet bombing. As we know during WW2, carpet bombing killed mostly civilians and destroyed cities. 2. Most weapons that the US has, are there for…
In my opinion your defense of US is completely unacceptable and wrong but i don't want to start a discussion about that: i want you to consider that in general, it's better to spend energy, focus, money and any other constructive effort in creating something that helps people instead of something that kills people, even if you consider those people bad ones. It's better to spend efforts in education and culture inste…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am curious as to how missiles (or any weapon for that matter) could be used in "non-evil" way
Anti-ballistic missiles seem fairly non-evil.
That's the reason for the ABM limitation treaties
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treat...