“I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#91

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this extend to all countries that the US sells weapons to? Are you happy about the use of US weapons by Saudi Arabia against Yemen, for example?

You don't think that's balanced by the US selling weapons to several dozen of the freest nations on the planet, liberal democracies with the best human rights records? Do you know why the US is the world's biggest arms dealer? Mostly because all of those free, liberal democracies buy very expensive weapons from the US and have the most affluent economies (thus they can afford US aircraft that cost tens of millions of…

Actually no, that premise is completely wrong. Either you are a beacon of democracy and say you value human rights and that prevents you from supporting regimes like Saudi Arabia or you sell to whomever you like to because it's in your economic interest, but then don't pretend you're producing weapons for moral reasons.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#92

Post by krick » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #61

jamestimmins wrote: post #20

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?

That’s not exactly a US-centric viewpoint, but glorification of the military definitely isn’t as prevalent in the EU for example.

Yep. In fact, it feels to me as if you are softening things up quite a bit: sure, glorifying the military is something that every country (read as "government") tries to do, but I don't really know any modern example other than USA, where people actually buy this bullshit. Which is kinda surreal, because, let's be honest: there is absolutely nothing honourable about [strike]serving[/strike] working in the military. It's not even about being a murderer (which everyone working in the military definitely is), it's about signing up (explicitly giving the oath) to follow the orders of other murderers. So it's literally just selling any your moral principles for a quite handsome compensation (in the case of USA, anyway).

No, I'm not judging, maybe I would do it myself. I'm just refusing to pretend there's is anything honourable about that.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #83

ardit33 wrote: post #5

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…

It's worth pointing out that carpet bombing in WWII was not some accident of primitive technology and inability to perform precise targeting. It was deliberate strategy from the UK and the USA, with the goal to demoralize and punish German & Japanese civilians. Mass civilian death and the total destruction of whole cities was the result. Napalm, for example was specifically developed to create building fires that wou…

[deleted]

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#94

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

shajznnckfke wrote: post #23

Volundr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily disagree with your points, though I might debate most of them. #2 however strikes me as pretty darn optimistic. Recent history suggests that the US doesn't have much hesitation about using their weapons.

Very few of the US’s weapons have been used. They have the capacity to blow up the whole world many times over, and end up attacking a minuscule portion of the population.

Compared to all the other recent and present superpowers the US has actually used their weapons the most.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#95

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #38

mandelken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's referring to putting satellites into space for civilian use, but I could be mistaken.

These would not be qualified as missiles and have their own guidance systems. Having your rocket go and slam into a neighbouring country is not very conducive to putting satellites into space.

When talking ICBM level, the primary difference between a weapon and a peaceful satellite launcher is the little bit that sits on the tip of the rocket - the payload. Early satellites were literally launched on ICBMs, and if memory serves me right, US military still repurposes ICBMs for launching its satellites.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#96

Post by shajznnckfke » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #94

shajznnckfke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few of the US’s weapons have been used. They have the capacity to blow up the whole world many times over, and end up attacking a minuscule portion of the population.

Compared to all the other recent and present superpowers the US has actually used their weapons the most.

The US, USSR, China, Japan, and Germany are all the superpowers from the past century, and they all got in some wars with each other, sometimes via client states. In the recent decades after Germany and Japan exited the scene, the wars have been relatively small.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#97

Post by andretti1977 » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #34

andretti1977 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hitler started WW2 because he thought the other countries wouldn't fight or were incapable of fighting. His comment about invading the Soviet Union: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." The way to make peace is to make sure it is not worthwhile for someone else to attack you.

Hitler success among germans is due to the high burden WWI winners imposed on germany. Other countries may have relieved pressure on germany and maybe Hitler may have been stopped before he became something among germans.

Don't give people a reason to litigate and they won't fight.

Try to consider that countries where there is a common level of wealth and welfare, have lower rates of criminality (i.e. Norway).

Have you ever thought how much money has been spent in "defense" (ironically any country had and has a "defense" ministry, even those countries who attack) during human history? Can you imagine what could have been done if that money had gone into peace research?

I know that when a war has been started then you have to fight but you can try to prevent it. So instead of working on missiles control system it's better if you work on diplomacy and software that provides wealth and knowledge to the people.

Remember: this world could be heaven if we want it to be. Do what you want to do to make it heaven or hell.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#98

Post by meowface » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #74

cycomanic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the serving in the military seen as honourable is largely due to propaganda. There are different levels to it, but it is very obvious when coming from Europe to the US, where you see "support our troops" signs very regularly.

100% this. As a Canadian it's absolutely flabbergasting everytime I go there, the sheer level of martial obsession in the US. It bleeds over into Canada to some degree, but not dramatically. I suspect in part it comes from the country having its genesis in a war, its first president being a general, and its republic built around a president whose title is "commander in chief." That and its economic supremacy / domina…

Also possibly due to the fact that due to being so far away from the conflict and having a huge industrial economy with hundreds of millions of people, the US came out of WWII a lot stronger and more influential than they entered it. I think that was the moment the modern US was born.

The head of this new force and later the whole country, Eisenhower, even warned us that the military-industrial complex he leveraged was starting to become too powerful: https://youtu.be/uGd-rkPoGa4

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#99

Post by iaw » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #83

ardit33 wrote: post #5

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…

It's worth pointing out that carpet bombing in WWII was not some accident of primitive technology and inability to perform precise targeting. It was deliberate strategy from the UK and the USA, with the goal to demoralize and punish German & Japanese civilians. Mass civilian death and the total destruction of whole cities was the result. Napalm, for example was specifically developed to create building fires that wou…

Carpet bombing can be seen as a rational response to the V2 rocket which was indiscriminate of it's targeting of Londoners. War is often a case of responding in kind.

If the Germans had had the capability of bombing London they would have (but couldn't thanks to radar). This was not a small conflict but an existential fight for existence between two groups of countries.

I have a hard time judging the decision to carpet bomb during WWII harshly given the circumstances. Note that both sides had nerve agents that were not deployed because neither wanted that escalation.

There are definitely events, and even wars, where the US has committed atrocities but I don't think carpet bombing during WWII is a good example of it.

Re: “I just woke up one morning and it struck me that I was a murderer. so I quit.”

#100

Post by drdeca » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

kome wrote: post #79

martythemaniak wrote: post #73

He shouldn't be bringing politics to work. And we shouldn't be bringing politics to HN.

you can't avoid politics. you just can't. if you are avoiding politics, you are just blindly following some politics.

[Warning: the following comment of mine likely doesn't take the full context of the conversation into account, and much of what it says is likely not particularly applicable to the situation at hand.]

Maybe one can't completely avoid politics, but there are reasonable senses in which the word "politics" is used, such that, in those senses, one can avoid politics to some non-negligible degree.

If there is a discussion of one topic which people don't really tend to get upset about much, and then someone makes a big stretch to connect it to some other topic which has a lot of rather heated partisan controversy around it, the person who made the stretch to make the connection is doing the opposite of what might reasonably be called "avoiding politics". Not to say that anything like that happened in any of the relevant cases at hand, just to give an example that I think demonstrates why the concept of "avoiding politics in some sense to some degree" is a sensible concept.