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You're definitely right that war is bad, and a war fought well is still worse than a war not fought at all. However if a violent conflict is going to happen, yo

You're definitely right that war is bad, and a war fought well is still worse than a war not fought at all. However if a violent conflict is going to happen, you want to keep as many people out of harms way as possible. In this case the taliban is setting up truck bombs in downtown Kabul to kill as many people indiscriminately as possible. The US military has drones that capture video full-time of every part of kabul. But the data is too huge to go through manually. If maven had succeeded in it's goal suspicious truck bombs could be intercepted and lives of everyday people just trying to live their lives in Kabul would be saved. Sometimes the line between combatants and civilians gets blurry, but in this case it's quite clear.

lawrenceyan 8y ago
Perhaps additional usage of military force isn’t the right way to solve our problems in the Middle East? Have you considered that there might be other ways of resolving this conflict other than just resorting to taking out humans and replacing them with an autonomous counterpart? People always seem so resigned and certain in their beliefs that warfare and killing are inevitable and impossible to avoid. It always strikes me as almost irrational in a way, or perhaps it’s a sort of sunk cost fallacy wherein once you’ve committed to military conflict, it’s extremely difficult to go back on it as that would require admitting the already existing destruction and death that has accumulated was all for nothing. And so to protect themselves from such a truth, they continue the cycle of death and destruction knowingly or unknowingly acting to condemn their children to the same fate.
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  There’s probably some debate we could be having about the Tao of action in general. And you’re right that the best intended use of force reverberates back in unintended ways. Your second paragraph sounds like a mix of concerns about Vietnam and Iraq, but it’s mostly just vague.
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    The second paragraph is somewhat directed at you, as you would be in this subset that believes violent conflict and warfare is inevitable, which you then used to argue in your comments that if it really is inevitable, you might as well aim to come out on top by contributing whatever you can. Thus the resignation of fate, giving up, and falling into an endless cycle of destruction with which the second paragraph consists of. What parts do you find vague?
    - mips_avatar 8y ago
      I guess you’re right that I think that there are some people in some situations who you can’t talk out of violence. But being so generic and vague doesn’t help you understand the situation better. If you want to understand a situation you need to look at specific situations. Like I think by cycle of destruction you’re talking about something like how after the Iraq invasion a lot of Iraqi ex-soldiers had nothing to do and became a force for ISIS. That specific situation is a lot more of an interesting discussion to be had, and I think you can learn more from it than you can learn from a discussion about vague ideas.

lawrenceyan 8y ago

Perhaps additional usage of military force isn’t the right way to solve our problems in the Middle East? Have you considered that there might be other ways of resolving this conflict other than just resorting to taking out humans and replacing them with an autonomous counterpart? People always seem so resigned and certain in their beliefs that warfare and killing are inevitable and impossible to avoid. It always strikes me as almost irrational in a way, or perhaps it’s a sort of sunk cost fallacy wherein once you’ve committed to military conflict, it’s extremely difficult to go back on it as that would require admitting the already existing destruction and death that has accumulated was all for nothing. And so to protect themselves from such a truth, they continue the cycle of death and destruction knowingly or unknowingly acting to condemn their children to the same fate.

mips_avatar 8y ago
There’s probably some debate we could be having about the Tao of action in general. And you’re right that the best intended use of force reverberates back in unintended ways. Your second paragraph sounds like a mix of concerns about Vietnam and Iraq, but it’s mostly just vague.
- lawrenceyan 8y ago
  The second paragraph is somewhat directed at you, as you would be in this subset that believes violent conflict and warfare is inevitable, which you then used to argue in your comments that if it really is inevitable, you might as well aim to come out on top by contributing whatever you can. Thus the resignation of fate, giving up, and falling into an endless cycle of destruction with which the second paragraph consists of. What parts do you find vague?
  - mips_avatar 8y ago
    I guess you’re right that I think that there are some people in some situations who you can’t talk out of violence. But being so generic and vague doesn’t help you understand the situation better. If you want to understand a situation you need to look at specific situations. Like I think by cycle of destruction you’re talking about something like how after the Iraq invasion a lot of Iraqi ex-soldiers had nothing to do and became a force for ISIS. That specific situation is a lot more of an interesting discussion to be had, and I think you can learn more from it than you can learn from a discussion about vague ideas.