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Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. DA

Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. DARPA funded the early internet, DARPA funded AI and NLP research, DARPA funded computer vision. It's not new, it's been going on forever - certainly in our lifetimes.

umeshunni 8y ago
Not to mention the Atomic bomb.
- WaxProlix 8y ago
  Yeah I'm just thinking recent history -- you could probably make a case for fire, flint knapping, etc.
xor1 8y ago
Modern computing only exists because of wartime codebreaking and artillery calculations. This reddit post is a good writeup on the latter: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_american_artillery_more_effective_and/cuwzi9t/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_a...
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  And the Nobel Prize only exists because of dynamite. So what? Now it honors peaceful efforts. Just because something is born one way doesn't define its entire existence.
  - xor1 8y ago
    The current context of this discussion is the primary driving force behind technological innovation, you seem to be addressing a different context entirely.
    - VikingCoder 8y ago
      No, you assert that that's the context. I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. Case in point, it's entirely possible that ARPANET was used by foreign powers to subvert American Democracy in the 2016 election. I'm not advocating that, I'm saying it's worth recognizing. You can retort, yes, that's continued weaponization. And I can respond, that I can want to work on altruistic internet projects, and not feel "guilt" that the internet was invented by the military. And if someone subverts my project to military uses, I have every right to voice my objections.
      - xor1 8y ago
        >I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. How did you get the idea that I disagree with this?
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  We'd have modern computing without those things. There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind. The transistor was invented at a telephone company.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    "There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind" No, there was not.
    - kuschku 8y ago
      Zuse started developing his computers and programming languages before the war. Of course there would have been.
      - sitkack 8y ago
        The Difference Engine was instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. It was later used by Dred Pirate Roberts to manage logistics of rum and parrots to his fleet of leased pirate ships in the Caribbean.
        kuschku 8y ago
        Zuse actually built modern, electromechanical computers, and developed software for it.
VikingCoder 8y ago
You don't have to "fancy yourself a pacifist" to not want to work on military projects directly. For one, you may pragmatically think it hurts your brand more than it helps your company. For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies. For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.
- slededit 8y ago
  That last point was a major driver of leaks to the Soviet Union during the Manhattan project. Many of the scientists thought it was simply too much power to be in the hands of one nation.
  - petre 8y ago
    Weren't they under some sort of NDA? The sort that gets you and your family killed if you break it, perhaps?
    - slededit 8y ago
      They were guilty of treason, however not everyone's morals are directly inline with the law. That isn't to say that all spies were of a noble nature, some just did it for the money or to feel important.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - 0x4f3759df 8y ago
    Jordan implicated Harry Hopkins and other high officials in the transfer of nuclear and other secrets to the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan
    - 8y ago
Jedi72 8y ago
This type of thinking is why we haven't escaped from the prisoners dilemma yet. One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' - and we will realise that its been the fault of the people who do the actual fighting all along.
- rumcajz 8y ago
  > One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' Nah. With autonomous weapons that's not going to happen.
  - SuoDuanDao 8y ago
    Then it's the fault of the people who made the autonomous weapons, which is kind of what the issue is at Alphabet right now.
musage 8y ago
> Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. Naturally. Why would you make a straw man that is not easy to beat down?
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
This isn't really about supporting "the military", it's about supporting an illegal assassination program of innocent children and civilians. One's warfare, one's mass murder, I still believe there's a difference between the two.
- nradov 8y ago
  The civilian deaths are horrifying. But terrorist groups have made a practice of using non-combatants as human shields for propaganda purposes. If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    That's why you don't fight terrorism by blowing up buildings from robot sky drones. And to be clear: If you make the decision to murder a household of children, there is no justification, you are a sick, twisted individual. The justification that you might prevent other indeterminate future innocent lives doesn't change that you carried out a heinous act. You cannot claim the moral high ground against terrorism when you are acting like a terrorist.
    - kazen44 8y ago
      You fight terrorism by using soft power to give people less or no reasons to commit terrorism.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        You fight terrorism by education.
  - trhway 8y ago
    >If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way. so, the real choice i'm facing here is _who_ is going to kill innocent people and children - me today or the terrorist leader tomorrow. Do you really think that it is a non-obvious choice?
pera 8y ago
You could extend this argument to pretty much anything since our own history as humans is completely tied to violence, but not because of this one should consider every person who opposes violence/war naive...
- 3131s 8y ago
  Yes, this is true. War has been a constant for all of human history, so practically any technological advance can be attributed to warfare. Anyone who thinks that war is necessary for technological progress in 2018 has been drinking too much US military koolaid.
_85oz 8y ago
Hey - I am a soon to be Xoogler who just gave notice in ethical objection to Project Maven (btw, I hugely appreciate even simple words of support over the issue from this community). I don't identify as a pacifist - quite the opposite, I think we should fight Project Maven like hell. The DoD wanted to fund a communications network? Cool. A private company recruiting 10k+ engineers on a cool, creative "don't be evil" brand, and then backdooring their work into use by a defense department is not cool (I'm not saying the company doesn't have the legal right to, I'm saying it's a jerk thing to do). Sharing research, open-source code, etc is fine, and of course defense is free to poach away top engineers. But they can do that through recruiting, not their IT budget. Or if Amazon and Microsoft want to do the work, that's their choice, I never wanted to work at those companies. I think Google is missing a huge opportunity to define itself uniquely here by not canceling immediately. I believe true neutrality is to do defense for nobody, I would like there to be a premier technology company that international colleagues can work at that serves no military. I wonder how many of my coworkers can't express their solidarity because of their visa status, because the insane cost of living of the bay area, etc. I don't know.
- tmpz22 8y ago
  Out of curiosity do you really feel "forcing them to do backdoor defense work" is an accurate depiction? Not a googler, just curious if the option to switch team or opt out of the work was available.
  - _85oz 8y ago
    I am not sure about exact plans but I have ideas of the rough ones. Obviously this is not an official statement from Google! Anyone will be able to opt-out of direct work on the project. Not sure about indirect work. In the short-term, only a few people will work directly on the project. Long term maybe some more, since the goal is to get bigger projects. Many more people will indirectly contribute to it. For example, I recently TAed the ML101 class. Will one of my students work on the project, and whats the impact of that on my complicity? Anyway, I basically think that if your company is a DoD contractor then you work for a DoD contractor, especially as an engineer. And I think the typical Googler is massively underestimating the implications of Google becoming a DoD contractor.
js8 8y ago
> The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. It's certainly not given, though. Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. Ever since I learned about Sapolski's baboon troupe, I have been always wondering how many things that people call "natural" for humans to do are actually quite easily culturally changed. I think a fair bit.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. This oversimplifies the issue, and insinuates that the Japanese became pacifist. In fact because of a long imperialist history Japan chose to become personally defensive - while being protected by the US forces through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation [1]. So postwar Japan effectively outsourced their strategic capability to the US and UN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_and_Security_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...
  - js8 8y ago
    I don't think having a good defense is in contradiction with pacifism. Unfortunately, "defense" in the U.S. is more orwellian term. Anyhow, I was addressing the perception that you cannot have technological progress (or prowess) without significant military applications. Of course you can.
  - aikinai 8y ago
    You’re right that Japan’s rapid technological progress wouldn’t have been possible without hiding behind the US shield, but that’s just because it allowed them to divert resources. The development itself was distinctly civilian and not dependent on the military as GP mentioned. Also, Japan’s imperialist history was about 50 years; that’s certainly not “long” in the scheme of world history.
jadedhacker 8y ago
War has been forever, but you have to ask in service of what? For the US, it appears to be in favor of world dominion. The words empire and constitutional government don't really go together very well. Project Maven helps the drone program in some fashion. It helps provide support for a program that assassinates many innocent people. If you choose to not be "naive", then at least pick something that materially contributes to national defense or international peace. This program can only be seen as offense, which is a violation of the UN charter.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
All I can think of is people who eat meat, but find animal slaughter abhorrent. They can find another nice valley office to work in, put their fingers in their ears, and refuse to think about how America was built on the back of war and an effective defence force.
- smcl 8y ago
  I'm not sure whether the point you're trying to make is: - that the high standard of living of all of the wealthy in the USA is enabled by its position as the world's main military power - you can try to appear noble and above it by quitting your job when your employer is too close to the military but you're basically complicit - that these snowflakes need to realise that computers couldn't exist without the military If it's the first then I can sympathise - however it's getting into "oh you dislike capitalism but you bought an iPhone" (or laptop, bank account, home, clothes etc) territory. I would definitely prefer more people open their eyes to the suffering our governments are causing, but objecting to your employer working directly with the military doesn't mean they're ignorant to this. I really hope it's not the second - there are a few comments floating around are getting into this direction.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    The first point is what I was getting at. Although more from the perspective of “enjoying the fruits of”, rather than “complicit in”. Which seems hypocritical to me, no matter how you look at it. Especially considering we’re generally among the most highly paid professionals in the world.
- sjg007 8y ago
  I'm watching the show "War" on PBS and it is very interesting. They start in boot camp and the soldiers (of multiple generations) discuss the process of transformation from a me first attitude to a group first attitude. I find that interesting to think about society in general and how we seem to be just a nation of me me me or at least that is how it is marketed... however, success really only comes by working together for a common cause.
mturmon 8y ago
One earlier example that comes to mind is Galileo demonstrating his prototype telescope to the doge of Venice in the early 1600s. The potential of the new instrument to detect far-away ships who might wish to raid the port city was apparent to the government, and they doubled Galileo's salary.
hinkley 8y ago
National Science Foundation grants had nothing to do with DARPA, and they started the avalanche that is the modern internet. DARPA and colleges bought you an anemic internet. NSF and Silicon Valley brought it into your homes. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...

umeshunni 8y ago

Not to mention the Atomic bomb.

WaxProlix 8y ago
Yeah I'm just thinking recent history -- you could probably make a case for fire, flint knapping, etc.

xor1 8y ago

Modern computing only exists because of wartime codebreaking and artillery calculations. This reddit post is a good writeup on the latter: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_american_artillery_more_effective_and/cuwzi9t/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_a...

VikingCoder 8y ago
And the Nobel Prize only exists because of dynamite. So what? Now it honors peaceful efforts. Just because something is born one way doesn't define its entire existence.
- xor1 8y ago
  The current context of this discussion is the primary driving force behind technological innovation, you seem to be addressing a different context entirely.
  - VikingCoder 8y ago
    No, you assert that that's the context. I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. Case in point, it's entirely possible that ARPANET was used by foreign powers to subvert American Democracy in the 2016 election. I'm not advocating that, I'm saying it's worth recognizing. You can retort, yes, that's continued weaponization. And I can respond, that I can want to work on altruistic internet projects, and not feel "guilt" that the internet was invented by the military. And if someone subverts my project to military uses, I have every right to voice my objections.
    - xor1 8y ago
      >I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. How did you get the idea that I disagree with this?
SamReidHughes 8y ago
We'd have modern computing without those things. There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind. The transistor was invented at a telephone company.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  "There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind" No, there was not.
  - kuschku 8y ago
    Zuse started developing his computers and programming languages before the war. Of course there would have been.
    - sitkack 8y ago
      The Difference Engine was instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. It was later used by Dred Pirate Roberts to manage logistics of rum and parrots to his fleet of leased pirate ships in the Caribbean.
      - kuschku 8y ago
        Zuse actually built modern, electromechanical computers, and developed software for it.

VikingCoder 8y ago

You don't have to "fancy yourself a pacifist" to not want to work on military projects directly. For one, you may pragmatically think it hurts your brand more than it helps your company. For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies. For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.

slededit 8y ago
That last point was a major driver of leaks to the Soviet Union during the Manhattan project. Many of the scientists thought it was simply too much power to be in the hands of one nation.
- petre 8y ago
  Weren't they under some sort of NDA? The sort that gets you and your family killed if you break it, perhaps?
  - slededit 8y ago
    They were guilty of treason, however not everyone's morals are directly inline with the law. That isn't to say that all spies were of a noble nature, some just did it for the money or to feel important.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 0x4f3759df 8y ago
  Jordan implicated Harry Hopkins and other high officials in the transfer of nuclear and other secrets to the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan
  - 8y ago

Jedi72 8y ago

This type of thinking is why we haven't escaped from the prisoners dilemma yet. One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' - and we will realise that its been the fault of the people who do the actual fighting all along.

rumcajz 8y ago
> One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' Nah. With autonomous weapons that's not going to happen.
- SuoDuanDao 8y ago
  Then it's the fault of the people who made the autonomous weapons, which is kind of what the issue is at Alphabet right now.

musage 8y ago

> Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. Naturally. Why would you make a straw man that is not easy to beat down?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

This isn't really about supporting "the military", it's about supporting an illegal assassination program of innocent children and civilians. One's warfare, one's mass murder, I still believe there's a difference between the two.

nradov 8y ago
The civilian deaths are horrifying. But terrorist groups have made a practice of using non-combatants as human shields for propaganda purposes. If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  That's why you don't fight terrorism by blowing up buildings from robot sky drones. And to be clear: If you make the decision to murder a household of children, there is no justification, you are a sick, twisted individual. The justification that you might prevent other indeterminate future innocent lives doesn't change that you carried out a heinous act. You cannot claim the moral high ground against terrorism when you are acting like a terrorist.
  - kazen44 8y ago
    You fight terrorism by using soft power to give people less or no reasons to commit terrorism.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      You fight terrorism by education.
- trhway 8y ago
  >If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way. so, the real choice i'm facing here is _who_ is going to kill innocent people and children - me today or the terrorist leader tomorrow. Do you really think that it is a non-obvious choice?

pera 8y ago

You could extend this argument to pretty much anything since our own history as humans is completely tied to violence, but not because of this one should consider every person who opposes violence/war naive...

3131s 8y ago
Yes, this is true. War has been a constant for all of human history, so practically any technological advance can be attributed to warfare. Anyone who thinks that war is necessary for technological progress in 2018 has been drinking too much US military koolaid.

_85oz 8y ago

Hey - I am a soon to be Xoogler who just gave notice in ethical objection to Project Maven (btw, I hugely appreciate even simple words of support over the issue from this community). I don't identify as a pacifist - quite the opposite, I think we should fight Project Maven like hell. The DoD wanted to fund a communications network? Cool. A private company recruiting 10k+ engineers on a cool, creative "don't be evil" brand, and then backdooring their work into use by a defense department is not cool (I'm not saying the company doesn't have the legal right to, I'm saying it's a jerk thing to do). Sharing research, open-source code, etc is fine, and of course defense is free to poach away top engineers. But they can do that through recruiting, not their IT budget. Or if Amazon and Microsoft want to do the work, that's their choice, I never wanted to work at those companies. I think Google is missing a huge opportunity to define itself uniquely here by not canceling immediately. I believe true neutrality is to do defense for nobody, I would like there to be a premier technology company that international colleagues can work at that serves no military. I wonder how many of my coworkers can't express their solidarity because of their visa status, because the insane cost of living of the bay area, etc. I don't know.

tmpz22 8y ago
Out of curiosity do you really feel "forcing them to do backdoor defense work" is an accurate depiction? Not a googler, just curious if the option to switch team or opt out of the work was available.
- _85oz 8y ago
  I am not sure about exact plans but I have ideas of the rough ones. Obviously this is not an official statement from Google! Anyone will be able to opt-out of direct work on the project. Not sure about indirect work. In the short-term, only a few people will work directly on the project. Long term maybe some more, since the goal is to get bigger projects. Many more people will indirectly contribute to it. For example, I recently TAed the ML101 class. Will one of my students work on the project, and whats the impact of that on my complicity? Anyway, I basically think that if your company is a DoD contractor then you work for a DoD contractor, especially as an engineer. And I think the typical Googler is massively underestimating the implications of Google becoming a DoD contractor.

js8 8y ago

> The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. It's certainly not given, though. Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. Ever since I learned about Sapolski's baboon troupe, I have been always wondering how many things that people call "natural" for humans to do are actually quite easily culturally changed. I think a fair bit.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. This oversimplifies the issue, and insinuates that the Japanese became pacifist. In fact because of a long imperialist history Japan chose to become personally defensive - while being protected by the US forces through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation [1]. So postwar Japan effectively outsourced their strategic capability to the US and UN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_and_Security_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...
- js8 8y ago
  I don't think having a good defense is in contradiction with pacifism. Unfortunately, "defense" in the U.S. is more orwellian term. Anyhow, I was addressing the perception that you cannot have technological progress (or prowess) without significant military applications. Of course you can.
- aikinai 8y ago
  You’re right that Japan’s rapid technological progress wouldn’t have been possible without hiding behind the US shield, but that’s just because it allowed them to divert resources. The development itself was distinctly civilian and not dependent on the military as GP mentioned. Also, Japan’s imperialist history was about 50 years; that’s certainly not “long” in the scheme of world history.

jadedhacker 8y ago

War has been forever, but you have to ask in service of what? For the US, it appears to be in favor of world dominion. The words empire and constitutional government don't really go together very well. Project Maven helps the drone program in some fashion. It helps provide support for a program that assassinates many innocent people. If you choose to not be "naive", then at least pick something that materially contributes to national defense or international peace. This program can only be seen as offense, which is a violation of the UN charter.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

All I can think of is people who eat meat, but find animal slaughter abhorrent. They can find another nice valley office to work in, put their fingers in their ears, and refuse to think about how America was built on the back of war and an effective defence force.

smcl 8y ago
I'm not sure whether the point you're trying to make is: - that the high standard of living of all of the wealthy in the USA is enabled by its position as the world's main military power - you can try to appear noble and above it by quitting your job when your employer is too close to the military but you're basically complicit - that these snowflakes need to realise that computers couldn't exist without the military If it's the first then I can sympathise - however it's getting into "oh you dislike capitalism but you bought an iPhone" (or laptop, bank account, home, clothes etc) territory. I would definitely prefer more people open their eyes to the suffering our governments are causing, but objecting to your employer working directly with the military doesn't mean they're ignorant to this. I really hope it's not the second - there are a few comments floating around are getting into this direction.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  The first point is what I was getting at. Although more from the perspective of “enjoying the fruits of”, rather than “complicit in”. Which seems hypocritical to me, no matter how you look at it. Especially considering we’re generally among the most highly paid professionals in the world.
sjg007 8y ago
I'm watching the show "War" on PBS and it is very interesting. They start in boot camp and the soldiers (of multiple generations) discuss the process of transformation from a me first attitude to a group first attitude. I find that interesting to think about society in general and how we seem to be just a nation of me me me or at least that is how it is marketed... however, success really only comes by working together for a common cause.

mturmon 8y ago

One earlier example that comes to mind is Galileo demonstrating his prototype telescope to the doge of Venice in the early 1600s. The potential of the new instrument to detect far-away ships who might wish to raid the port city was apparent to the government, and they doubled Galileo's salary.

hinkley 8y ago

National Science Foundation grants had nothing to do with DARPA, and they started the avalanche that is the modern internet. DARPA and colleges bought you an anemic internet. NSF and Silicon Valley brought it into your homes. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...