The real question is when the chinese will be able to supercede american llm tech.
Where things stand with the Department of War
791–800 of 862 posts
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character w…
The late 90s were also a time of Law & Order, The West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan. And today is a time of Andor and Succession....
To be fair, West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan all have very strong counter-authority veins.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be under a mistaken impression that there is some good faith and competence here. Fascists don't give a shit about accuracy. Collateral damage actually increases the fear of being mistakenly caught up and encourages those at risk to loudly support the Party hoping it will protect them.
You are saying fascists don't care if it inaccurately targets themselves?
Not really. Look at the longstanding "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" dynamic. The whole movement is rooted in othering an outgroup for which violence against is moral and good. None of its supporters imagine themselves ever being in that outgroup, and if they do end up there by then it's too late.
In the domestic surveillance context, it's not like decisions of an automated system are ever going to be used to arrest anybody the bossman is protecting.
On the battlefield, commanders don't really care about collateral damage to the grunts, generals don't really care about collateral damage to whole units, etc. Look at how Russia is prosecuting its meat grinder against Ukraine. That type of failed state oligarchy appears to be the Trump regime's grand vision for our country.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#794Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Department of Defense was named as such after the detonations of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back Discussing “AI alignment” in the same breadth as aligning with a “Department of War” (in any country) is simply not an intellectually sound position None of the countries we’ve attacked this year pose an existen…
>We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back We ran out of bombs actually. If there had been more bombs there would have been more bombings.
It wasn't that the US ran out, a 3rd bomb could have been dropped within two weeks of the first 2 had Japan not surrendered after the initial round https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
Executive orders aren’t laws. This is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/111 .
Not all actions that are taken at an executive agency are done because of a law.
Let me state this very simply: executive agencies have only the power granted to them by Congress. So yes, all actions taken by an executive agencies are bound by the law. Anything else is ultra vires and of no effect.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an old German short film called Nicht löschbares Feuer (Inextinguishable Fire, 1969)[1] that I'm fond of. It was a protest film against Napalm and how some companies wouldn't really let their employees know what they were actually working on. "I am a worker and I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner. That's why everyday I pick up a piece. At home I try to assemble the vacuum cl…
Fun fact: DOW Chemical was producing Agent Orange, but was getting a ton of public pushback - so bad it decided to stop production, forcing the Pentagon to look for an alternative supplier. That supplier? A German privately owned pharmaco called Boehringer-Ingelheim. It's Chairman at the time? Richard von Weizsäcker, future President of Germany. The production site was in Hamburg, is contaminated for the next thousan…
Bhopal disaster comes to mind.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forgive me I got the detail wrong. If your point was to deny that my imagined scenario never happened, read this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun
Basically all types of weapons have been used in all sorts of conflicts; the British used aircraft in their mandates, and the Italians used chemical weapons in Ethiopia. That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
> That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
This is a strange take that I didn’t expect to hear. I suppose that the strongest defensive systems do require the most sophisticated offensive systems to defeat, in theory. But there exists asymmetry there as well ($50k drone destroys $1B radar).
My take on weapons development is that there were plenty of mass killing (or mass punishment) devices developed specifically for use by colonial powers against indigenous peoples. This happened alongside weapons development for weapons intended for, as you put them, peer-adversaries.
Revolts happened, and colonial powers needed effective ways to keep indigenous peoples enslaved.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#798Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an Iraq group but we’re just a much smaller group
I’m not trying to erase anyone’s individual experience, but it isn’t a generational defining event broadly across the U.S. population.
No
Me, an Iraq combat veteran had a different experience of that period than an investment baker of similar age
That was not true for WWII and to a lesser extent Vietnam due to the draft
The distinction is draft vs “all volunteer” wars
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how you got that from my comment.
As a recap, my reply to your reply was that DoD is the actual newspeak, and your reply to that evolution of the discussion is that you were not discussing newspeak.
In trying to understand if I'm missing something, I looked up what newspeak means. I (as well as probably a few other commenters based on the contents of their comments) was under the assumption it meant "new speak" meaning it's something new.
In case anyone else reading this was not aware of this, this is what I discovered.
It's a term from George Orwell's 1984, describing a language used to make thoughts unthinkable by removing words from the language. It has nothing to do with "age of the term."
Hence, Dept of Defense is indeed newspeak. Dept of War, while being a new name for the dept, is too literal to be newspeak.
Thanks for the opportunity for me to learn something!
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back We ran out of bombs actually. If there had been more bombs there would have been more bombings.
It wasn't that the US ran out, a 3rd bomb could have been dropped within two weeks of the first 2 had Japan not surrendered after the initial round https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...
It needed to be built first. The us had no bombs left.