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"too bad it's gonna be military use first" Wow, I can't believe your comment is what we're discussing. I've seen some version of this on the Internet for 30 y
by melling 8y ago
"too bad it's gonna be military use first"
Wow, I can't believe your comment is what we're discussing. I've seen some version of this on the Internet for 30 years now. I must have answered it a dozen times.
Can we turn this into an Internet FAQ? Basically, it wastes everyone's time. If everyone here agreed with you, would it change anything?
If you think the military spends a lot on research, you should see what they spend on non-research.
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-...
If we could turn all of our military spending into non-military R&D, the future would get here so fast! But alas, ...
- black_puppydog 8y agoYeah, that most probably reflects my bias. Being in academia myself, I have a hard time thinking of good reasons to work for the military vs virtually any civil application. Also, I don't have 30 years of internet experience, so maybe it'll just take some more time for me to get tired of discussing this :)
- melling 8y agoHey, I've got an answer from 6 years ago on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808787 Notice my observation: "Consider that the US economy is $15 trillion. The US handbag market is bigger than DARPA's budget."
- claydavisss 8y agoIts because no one feels they can just log in to say "omg that is so amazing and the people who built it are smarter than me". Instead HN rewards comments that qualify every achievement with an IF, AND or BUT, or even worse: PFFFT. Dear HN, you have permission to not be the smartest person in the room. Its actually liberating. To the people at DARPA who built this - amazing! You are much smarter than me.