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You know, there’s this recent tendency to call people Nazis for no reason that I really dislike. Fact is, you don’t know the details of what they have signed up

You know, there’s this recent tendency to call people Nazis for no reason that I really dislike. Fact is, you don’t know the details of what they have signed up to do, and therefore you can’t make a determination as to the moral standing of all this. For all we know this could very well reduce the overall number of casualties by e.g. spotting IEDs, or letting soldiers avoid areas with high concentration of insurgents if fighting would detract from the main mission. Instead we get histrionics and “killing Jews” comments. I get it, it’s a “woke” thing to do. But there’s a “crying wolf” component to it that one needs to bear in mind as well. There might come time when you’d actually want people to pay attention to you.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Oh, I am not one to throw this around lightly, and I agree with your general view on people who do. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, it's hard to differentiate worthy examples with meaningless flotsam. Perhaps a better analogy would be the development of the atomic bomb. We now have engineers doing engineering for engineering's sake, developing something that will almost certainly be used to kill thousands of people (or more). And it doesn't matter what Google thinks it will use it for, or what Google wants it to be used for. Our government wants drones that can assassinate people better with dubious or nonexistent evidence of their crimes. If you give them the technology to do it better, they will use it, even if you didn't intend it. Fundamentally, Hillary Clinton's complicity in our drone program ended up being the primary reason I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for her (I didn't vote Trump either, mind you).
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  One thing you’re missing once again is that the development of nukes has so far been a net positive. MAD pretty much excludes the possibility that major powers will ever be at war with each other again. Potentially hundreds of millions of people got to live their lives in full rather than be mowed down by conventional weapons in an all out war of attrition.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

Oh, I am not one to throw this around lightly, and I agree with your general view on people who do. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, it's hard to differentiate worthy examples with meaningless flotsam. Perhaps a better analogy would be the development of the atomic bomb. We now have engineers doing engineering for engineering's sake, developing something that will almost certainly be used to kill thousands of people (or more). And it doesn't matter what Google thinks it will use it for, or what Google wants it to be used for. Our government wants drones that can assassinate people better with dubious or nonexistent evidence of their crimes. If you give them the technology to do it better, they will use it, even if you didn't intend it. Fundamentally, Hillary Clinton's complicity in our drone program ended up being the primary reason I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for her (I didn't vote Trump either, mind you).

throwaway84742 9y ago
One thing you’re missing once again is that the development of nukes has so far been a net positive. MAD pretty much excludes the possibility that major powers will ever be at war with each other again. Potentially hundreds of millions of people got to live their lives in full rather than be mowed down by conventional weapons in an all out war of attrition.