4 ms·

I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone technology, especially if it may have military applications. Is there any affordan

I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone technology, especially if it may have military applications. Is there any affordance given for the possibility that some of this military technology will actually be used for good?

nostrademons 8y ago
Most of the good things in the modern world come from repurposed military technology - microwaves, computers, space exploration, satellites, GPS, modern mining & construction techniques, jet travel, interstate highways, antibiotics, synthetic rubber, encryption, the Internet. While I get why some people don't want to work on things that could potentially be used for evil, the dividing line between good and evil is often a lot blurrier in hindsight than it seems in the moment. Many of the most valuable technologies (see above) have come from the desire to kill people and not be killed in return, while many of the ideas that have killed the most people (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) have come from the desire to make a more perfect world.
- miemo 8y ago
  (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) None of these are tech products, so it's apples to oranges. Additionally, just because most good things have come from military in the past doesn't mean that's the best way to produce good things, now or in general.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. Wartime economy allocates resources where they would never be directed in peaceful times. We all look back at the Apollo program with a kind of a nostalgic sorrow because many of its achievements have not been surpassed yet. We would be capable if we put the resources into a worthy successor project. But the truth is that Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. It would never have happened without that conflict (including the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars).
    - yourapostasy 8y ago
      > ...Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. I've also read the hypothesis that the Apollo project also served as a peaceful demonstration of ICBM capabilities without expending (and revealing actual capabilities of) real ICBMs. Kind of like applying an added layer of assurance in MAD, by demonstrating through technological affinity the missiles aren't duds and the claims of performance not fabrications. If so, then that's one helluva diplomatic gesture for the history books to cover in the future.
    - scotty79 8y ago
      > It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. I think this continues in US in some degree. US military gets as much money as it wants. Military spends how much money it wants on whatever research it wants. For me that's the secret weapon of US science. Other countries struggle to allocate any significant portion of the budget to research while in US it's easy because it goes through army under the guise of protecting the country.
      - sitkack 8y ago
        And when DARPA was ARPA (name has switched a couple times), the Pentagon funded lots of pure research and research that would prevent wars. Afaik, DARPA projects have to a lethality metric for all research.
golergka 8y ago
It's only a thing inside a Silicon Valley bubble. There are plenty of people who are proud to make the world a better and safer place working for the military.
gmueckl 8y ago
Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and 3d data visualizations. I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war has seen some action.
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago
  I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported. I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build weapons!" -- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in practice. So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than building weapons would be. tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more honest about what they do.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't. I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We realized too late that we failed to use it properly.
Pristina 8y ago
if killing is self defense is morally permissible, then i can hardly see any reason why constructions of tools that can be used to effectively kill won't be also morally permissible.

nostrademons 8y ago

Most of the good things in the modern world come from repurposed military technology - microwaves, computers, space exploration, satellites, GPS, modern mining & construction techniques, jet travel, interstate highways, antibiotics, synthetic rubber, encryption, the Internet. While I get why some people don't want to work on things that could potentially be used for evil, the dividing line between good and evil is often a lot blurrier in hindsight than it seems in the moment. Many of the most valuable technologies (see above) have come from the desire to kill people and not be killed in return, while many of the ideas that have killed the most people (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) have come from the desire to make a more perfect world.

miemo 8y ago
(communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) None of these are tech products, so it's apples to oranges. Additionally, just because most good things have come from military in the past doesn't mean that's the best way to produce good things, now or in general.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. Wartime economy allocates resources where they would never be directed in peaceful times. We all look back at the Apollo program with a kind of a nostalgic sorrow because many of its achievements have not been surpassed yet. We would be capable if we put the resources into a worthy successor project. But the truth is that Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. It would never have happened without that conflict (including the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars).
  - yourapostasy 8y ago
    > ...Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. I've also read the hypothesis that the Apollo project also served as a peaceful demonstration of ICBM capabilities without expending (and revealing actual capabilities of) real ICBMs. Kind of like applying an added layer of assurance in MAD, by demonstrating through technological affinity the missiles aren't duds and the claims of performance not fabrications. If so, then that's one helluva diplomatic gesture for the history books to cover in the future.
  - scotty79 8y ago
    > It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. I think this continues in US in some degree. US military gets as much money as it wants. Military spends how much money it wants on whatever research it wants. For me that's the secret weapon of US science. Other countries struggle to allocate any significant portion of the budget to research while in US it's easy because it goes through army under the guise of protecting the country.
    - sitkack 8y ago
      And when DARPA was ARPA (name has switched a couple times), the Pentagon funded lots of pure research and research that would prevent wars. Afaik, DARPA projects have to a lethality metric for all research.

golergka 8y ago

It's only a thing inside a Silicon Valley bubble. There are plenty of people who are proud to make the world a better and safer place working for the military.

gmueckl 8y ago

Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and 3d data visualizations. I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war has seen some action.

NotAnEconomist 8y ago
I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported. I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build weapons!" -- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in practice. So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than building weapons would be. tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more honest about what they do.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't. I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We realized too late that we failed to use it properly.

Pristina 8y ago

if killing is self defense is morally permissible, then i can hardly see any reason why constructions of tools that can be used to effectively kill won't be also morally permissible.