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Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

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Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#151

Post by Latteland »

JohnFen wrote: post #59
mattnewton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes it feel like these changes happened because less people are enlisting or know people enlisting. I think that’s just another symptom of how some military programs lost a lot of legitimacy in the minds of some of my generation who were coming of age around the war on terror. It’s hard to feel like the good guys in a lot of these issues like drone warfare against non-combatants, and so the military was…

> I think that’s just another symptom of how some military programs lost a lot of legitimacy in the minds of some of my generation who were coming of age around the war on terror. It's not just your generation. I'm in my 50s and this opinion isn't rare in my age group either.

I'm in my 50s. All my friends have similar feelings to yours. We have endless wars, bombing, drone strikes with no goal other than vaguely stopping terrorism. We are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa now, Pakistan. We kill militants and/or terrorists that wish us harm, and we annually bomb a number weddings and kill a lot of innocents.

We don't have a strategy or goal or even clear enemy. We just do it because we are powerful. Of course there are people that want to kill us, blow up our airliners. But it's not clear we are doing anygood.

We have to set actual goals, not just being there and bombing targets of opportunity, saying sorry when it goes wrong. What's our goal? We don't have one.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#152

Post by Latteland »

rifung wrote: post #122
mrguyorama wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't consider national defense to be an immoral goal My personal opinion is that what the United States has been doing for over 20 years has not been national defense

I agree but I consider improving military capability to be orthogonal to decision making into what the military does. If we wait until the military does only that with which we agree, then it may already be too late.

You raise that in an interesting way. I'm all for national defense. But we aren't using them for national defense. I'm all for having a military strength such that we don't have to have wars with Russia and China, powerful, belligerent countries. Strength is a deterrence.

But the capabilities being built, like drone bombing are primarily used in our endless wars, and used by our 'allies' like Saudi Arabia in places like Yemen.

Have you read the book "Forever Peace" by the author of the more famous "Forever War", Joe Haldeman? F.P. is a world with an endless battle against people that could stand in for the endless wars against Islamic terrorists we fight today. In this world they have robots that can be remotely controlled and you can just walk up to people and kill them. It really reminds me of the way technology could make wars in the future.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#153

Post by Latteland »

partiallypro wrote: post #43
daviross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses It's difficult to say this isn't a net moral good, as things currently stand. Competent tools put to immoral ends aren't somehow more moral than incompetent tools. The only fix is to change the ends.

That's well and good until China is invading Taiwan and Russia is invading Ukraine and there is no deterrence from the west to make them think twice.

But we do have enough strength to have deterrence. Our military budget is equal to the next 8 biggest countries together. The three biggest air forces in the world are, in order, us air force, us navy (their airplanes etc), us army. Each is bigger than any other countries' air forces.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#154

Post by Latteland »

jopsen wrote: post #112
drak0n1c wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, the divide between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon will be bad for national security in the long run. Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses. Technology does not stand still, if Russia and China have more of their most talented engineers willing to work on national projects than us that will inevitably lead to a competence gap. Here is…

You assume the military power has a significant role to play in the future. Building secure civilian products, countering corporate espionage, and building products bæused world wide, all probably play a bigger part. As do diplomacy. Disagreement between the bigs powers haven't been solved with military power for a long time.. why would that change?

It could change if belligerent idiotic leaders get in charge. Remember back in WW 1, at every step of the way leaders of multiple countries thought "surely the other side won't go to that step, they'll stop if we just increase the pressure a bit". Tomorrow a chinese pilot could bomb or crash into a us ship, try to sink a carrier by Taiwan. That could start the war. Someone could take it upon themselves in Russian-occupied Ukraine to move on to the rest, or bomb Poland. Or the bomber flights the us and russia send to each other's borders could crash into the other countries fighters.

We have acting leaders at many levels of the military, and a president who talks the big talk but probably hasn't ever deal with a real crisis where the other side won't fold or de-escalated something ever. He's got no reasonable advisers left.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#155

Post by dang »

izacus wrote: post #24
geoalchimista wrote: post #23

That is virtue signaling on a whole new level. Boycotting Pentagon yet aiding authoritarian regimes with mass-surveillance technologies, I can't help but see the irony in their double standards.

Can you explain more?

Please don't respond to flamewar comments by encouraging more.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#156

Post by sdinsn »

izacus wrote: post #39
sdinsn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I wrong in assuming that if U.S. doesn't develop this tech some other country will? You are not wrong. Alibaba, Baidu, etc. work heavily with the Chinese government in this area.

Is that the old tired "if you won't help build tools to butcher people, evil chinese will?" argument? This zero-sum, jingoisti, outlook on the world has caused most damaging and bloody wars in history. World policy is not a zero sum game and every human does not have to help kill other humans for the world to be at peace.

No, there is a difference: if you aid the US or not, the US will butcher their enemies. Whether or not you aid the US, companies are helping China butcher their enemies... but who are China's enemies? The US is one of them.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#157

Post by sdinsn »

izacus wrote: post #113
xvector wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "if you won't help build tools to butcher people, evil chinese will?" It's not that they will . It's that they are . When someone who most certainly does not have your best interests at heart is building technology capable of crippling or dominating you, what response do you suggest? Passivity? The only recourse here is to either convince them to step down or to - at the very least - match them. Anything else puts…

> It's not that they will. It's that they are. [Citation needed] > When someone who most certainly does not have your best interests at heart is building technology capable of crippling or dominating you, what response do you suggest? Passivity? > The only recourse here is to either convince them to step down or to - at the very least - match them. Anything else puts you at a disadvantage and puts your citizens in da…

> [Citation needed]

The Chinese government has imprisoned 1 million+ members of a ethnic minority. I'm sure you've heard of this, if not, you need to do some research...

> You are presenting a false fallacy where the only two options are "do nothing" and "invest all possible resources available to the country into killing other people".

No one is presenting that.

> A casual look at history book would quickly show you that escalating arms races are not beneficial in the long run

[Citation needed]

From my perspective, it sure did help, as nuclear weapons resulted in the inability for large countries to go to physical wars (for now, at least).

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#158

Post by DannyBee »

bogomipz wrote: post #48
DannyBee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the ole "sitting on the sidelines is helpful" argument. It's morally defensible for sure, and neutral, but pretending it is actually helpful is wrong. It doesn't help in any meaningful way to change things (in any direction) if you sit on the sidelines. Ironically, people who are the ones who always seem to think the have the moral high ground. Of course that doesn't mean you have to join google to make a differe…

>"Ah, the ole "sitting on the sidelines is helpful" argument." That's not even the OPs argument, nor is it some "ole" argument. You have both put words in their mouth and framed it as some classic well-known fallacy of which it is not. The OP is making the distinction between "voting with your feet" which takes real commitment and has immediate effects versus "signing a letter"[1] which involves nothing more than a f…

I have done neither, nor has OP retorted, so ...

Also, voting with your feet takes no real commitment when tech jobs for googlers are plentiful and easy. Avoiding working for Google does precisely nothing on it's own.

The closest you get is the non-cooperation type of movement the other reply mentions, which is an active thing, but that's not being suggested here.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#159

Post by DannyBee »

lallysingh wrote: post #36
DannyBee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the ole "sitting on the sidelines is helpful" argument. It's morally defensible for sure, and neutral, but pretending it is actually helpful is wrong. It doesn't help in any meaningful way to change things (in any direction) if you sit on the sidelines. Ironically, people who are the ones who always seem to think the have the moral high ground. Of course that doesn't mean you have to join google to make a differe…

No it's different. It's closer to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cooperation_movement It has an effect, you just need to have a large mass of people to make it work.

I agree you can have an active non-cooperation movement. That does not appear to be suggested here.

It's the difference between "i won't participate in patenting software" vs "i'm actively avoiding any companies or software that file patents"

The former i see a lot, and it does not help in any meaningful way, in part because their participation is not required. It doesn't help, it's just something people do to pretend they are helping without having to do anything real.

The latter would be something useful, though it does take large groups.

Not working for google "as a way of helping" is clearly the former. Google doesn't need their help, they will do no good by leaving. They have plenty of other jobs, so it's not hard either. They likely can do more good by staying and agitating than by leaving and being ignored.

Additionally, the argument that they must leave google to have an impact is also clearly silly.

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