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Society only punishes you if society knows about it and has enough power to do something about it. If the US signs a treaty to ban killer robots but builds them

Society only punishes you if society knows about it and has enough power to do something about it. If the US signs a treaty to ban killer robots but builds them anyway then nobody can force them to stop.

reitanqild 8y ago
But then the rest of the world can agree it was evil. Just like the world can mostly agree it was evil to arrange a civil war in Eastern Ukraine or invade Iraq etc etc: There will always be people who more or less genuinely argue that the last invasion of Iraq was necessary or that a certain superpower next to Ukraine has nothing to do with the well supplied rebels in their back yard. For the rest of us we can all agree to despise both of these.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  I don't think the World agrees that it was evil to invade Iraq. A lot of the World participated in that invasion actually... At the end of the day Saddam was not exactly a peaceful dictator. I think hacker news should be above inflammatory posts like these.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Have my upvote. I did not intend it to be inflammatory, in fact I rewrote it once before posting to make sure it wasn't. I posted something I was sure most HN-ers could agree on, - but as someone who frequently disagrees with many of you I probably should have known better.
atoav 8y ago
This is to binary IMO. I think imany ban is about increasing the cost of a certain behaviour and by these means decreasing the likelyhood of an actor to adopt it. No human agreement will ever be able to stop a 100% of anything. But that doesn’t imply it isn’t worth increasing the cost (financial, social and otherwise) to certain types of behaviour. People seem to agree quite uniformly with banning and punishing murder for example, although these laws and punishments don’t seem to stop murder as has been proven over centuries. Few would murder their neighbour over a small dispute, because the cost for doing so is extremely high. Much more people would e.g. kill the rapist of their child, because the notion of cost might be irrelevant under such circumstances and it is much more socially acceptable to do so. Of course there is more than just cost. It can also be a matter of culture. If you live in a culture were getting shot for miniscule reasons is not something that happens, you are also far less likely to see shooting at somebody for miniscule reasons as an option

reitanqild 8y ago

But then the rest of the world can agree it was evil. Just like the world can mostly agree it was evil to arrange a civil war in Eastern Ukraine or invade Iraq etc etc: There will always be people who more or less genuinely argue that the last invasion of Iraq was necessary or that a certain superpower next to Ukraine has nothing to do with the well supplied rebels in their back yard. For the rest of us we can all agree to despise both of these.

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
I don't think the World agrees that it was evil to invade Iraq. A lot of the World participated in that invasion actually... At the end of the day Saddam was not exactly a peaceful dictator. I think hacker news should be above inflammatory posts like these.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Have my upvote. I did not intend it to be inflammatory, in fact I rewrote it once before posting to make sure it wasn't. I posted something I was sure most HN-ers could agree on, - but as someone who frequently disagrees with many of you I probably should have known better.

atoav 8y ago

This is to binary IMO. I think imany ban is about increasing the cost of a certain behaviour and by these means decreasing the likelyhood of an actor to adopt it. No human agreement will ever be able to stop a 100% of anything. But that doesn’t imply it isn’t worth increasing the cost (financial, social and otherwise) to certain types of behaviour. People seem to agree quite uniformly with banning and punishing murder for example, although these laws and punishments don’t seem to stop murder as has been proven over centuries. Few would murder their neighbour over a small dispute, because the cost for doing so is extremely high. Much more people would e.g. kill the rapist of their child, because the notion of cost might be irrelevant under such circumstances and it is much more socially acceptable to do so. Of course there is more than just cost. It can also be a matter of culture. If you live in a culture were getting shot for miniscule reasons is not something that happens, you are also far less likely to see shooting at somebody for miniscule reasons as an option