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On one hand, I'm pretty excited that something from the universe of Ghost in the Shell would become reality; on the other hand, it's a slippery slope to some dy

On one hand, I'm pretty excited that something from the universe of Ghost in the Shell would become reality; on the other hand, it's a slippery slope to some dystopian reality where ethical considerations are completely removed from battle.

remarkEon 7y ago
Repeat of WWI, to be honest, with all these technologies clashing together for the first time. There weren't a lot of "ethical considerations" to using chemical weapons when the alternative was losing thousands in another doomed charge out of the trenches. Same with WWII, where the US would rather open Pandora's box of the Nuclear Age than risk a ground invasion of mainland Japan.
- tjchear 7y ago
  I'll grant you that there weren't much ethical considerations to speak of in the last world wars, and perhaps my naive view has been unrealistically colored by sci-fi TV shows, but my point is simple: a broken autonomous killing system won't know when to stop. Even unethical war makers have affinity to humankind and know when to stop. And despite the meaning implied by the MAD doctrine, it never meant that humans will nuke themselves to oblivion; it simply says a nash equilibrium will be achieved with both conflicting parties staying out of each other's way.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    Unintended consequences certainly gets more and more dangerous the more advanced autonomy these weapons gets. In keeping with your mention of sci-fi, there's a Star Trek Voyager episode where two sides of killer robots continue to wage war against each other after having killed their makers because their makers had agreed on a truce, and their instructions had been to eliminate anyone that prevented them from beating their enemy and hence by agreeing a truce their makers had become an obstacle to achieving their programmed goal. Having done software development my entire life, I'd never trust anyone to manage to avoid every pitfall in guaranteeing you have a foolproof way of making them stop...
- trimboffle 7y ago
  I put it to you that dropping multiple nukes was not about avoiding ground war in japan. The US simply wanted to drop the nukes and see the outcome and win the war through pure unadulterated terror and fear.
  - thombat 7y ago
    Terror and fear was already present in greater abundance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Meetinghouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Mee... yet five months later Japan maintained an external persona of implacable resistance. For example the subsequent invasion of the Okinawa islands resulted in over 14,000 American deaths. It was reasonable to apprehend that the invasion of the far bigger Japanese home islands would be far more lethal, also for the Japanese population. In the Tokyo raid 96 American airmen were killed, despite the only effective defence being poorly co-ordinated anti-aircraft fire. Given a weapon that claimed the potential to end the war without further American losses it seems unrealistic to expect it not to be used.
  - krageon 7y ago
    Japan was an extremely bad actor. They had death camps just like the Germans did at that time. One can imagine that the German victims wished someone dropped a few nukes so Germany would back off a bit quicker. In the end it wasn't exactly pretty, but saying it was just for terror and fear seems like it takes a complicated situation and makes it one-dimensional. We've all been alive long enough to know real life is generally not that simple.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      Please don't. Hiroshima and Nagasaki hosted mostly old retired people and children, and women in a smaller percentage. It hosted no military equipment of any significance, nor strategic locations, nor any significant factory. A large number of people were [ex] fishermen and quite poor. These people had very little power or ability to either support or resist the militaristic elite. They were well in the bottom 20% of literacy, wealth, fitness for war, political influence and specialized skills. Therefore they were mostly innocent. They were wiped away as a show of force and aggressiveness to intimidate other countries including USSR. > They had death camps just like the Germans did at that time The Nazi did it, not "the Germans". And it still does not justify targeting a large number of retirees and children that are contributing nothing to the war effort. > takes a complicated situation and makes it one-dimensional ...
krisoft 7y ago
> “where ethical considerations are completely removed from battle” I’m surprised you say that. Having tired, squishy humans in a hot, cramped box fearing for their life is not exactly a guarantee of “ethical considerations”. Remotely controlled weaponry removes said humans from the immediate danger. It’s a lot easier to apply ethical considerations, when you can be certain a moment of hesitation won’t cause your death. Fully autonomous weaponry moves the ethical decision making even further up the chain. Where cold heads can do all the thinking beforehand. Now, don’t get me wrong: There is a lot of ills with remotely controlled/autonomous weaponry. Chiefly among them that it removes certain costs from the political calculus. Politicians fear the spectacle of their troops dying. This fear moderates their decision making. Removing this cost will make the world a worse place. But i would hardly call this an “ethical consideration”.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  That is assuming that both sides have them. That is not likely unless we see the major superpowers going to war with each other, and I don't see that happening.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tjchear 7y ago
  And I'd say that ethical decision should never be moved up the chain. War is ugly, and should be ugly so that we think twice before waging one. You can still keep a level head with non-autonomous systems, e.g drones with human operators, or remote controlled marine bots.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> I'm pretty excited that something from the universe of Ghost in the Shell would become reality Pretty excited? Cyberpunk was always intended as a dire warning of the looming dystopian future. And urge people to rebel to it. It literally has "punk" in its name. It's a bit sad to see how it's been flipped on its head.
- A_Parr 7y ago
  GITS is largely post-cyberpunk, but dips into cyberpunk for ideas. Mostly for it's antagonists. The cyberpunk driver of the post-cyberpunk tank being an interesting take on things, at least. Clarification for those who don't know. Cyberpunk spun off of a bunch of genres that call themselves $name-punk but ironically ignore the -punk aspect and just replace $name for the name of the technology they replaced magic with in what's otherwise a fantasy story. (Including literally magic as technology.) Because cyberpunk was taken, the cyber version of $name-punk ended up being called post-cyberpunk instead of cyber-steampunk for whatever reason.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    > GITS is largely post-cyberpunk, but dips into cyberpunk for ideas This does not negate the dire warnings of cyberpunk both as a genre and GITS itself. This thread is about robot tanks built by the military-industral complex. Everything else is besides the point. > Mostly for it's antagonists *its
- tjchear 7y ago
  Excited in the way that the big robots we read so much about in stories become real, but I don't wish for the world in which those death machines become a necessity turn into reality.

remarkEon 7y ago

Repeat of WWI, to be honest, with all these technologies clashing together for the first time. There weren't a lot of "ethical considerations" to using chemical weapons when the alternative was losing thousands in another doomed charge out of the trenches. Same with WWII, where the US would rather open Pandora's box of the Nuclear Age than risk a ground invasion of mainland Japan.

tjchear 7y ago
I'll grant you that there weren't much ethical considerations to speak of in the last world wars, and perhaps my naive view has been unrealistically colored by sci-fi TV shows, but my point is simple: a broken autonomous killing system won't know when to stop. Even unethical war makers have affinity to humankind and know when to stop. And despite the meaning implied by the MAD doctrine, it never meant that humans will nuke themselves to oblivion; it simply says a nash equilibrium will be achieved with both conflicting parties staying out of each other's way.
- vidarh 7y ago
  Unintended consequences certainly gets more and more dangerous the more advanced autonomy these weapons gets. In keeping with your mention of sci-fi, there's a Star Trek Voyager episode where two sides of killer robots continue to wage war against each other after having killed their makers because their makers had agreed on a truce, and their instructions had been to eliminate anyone that prevented them from beating their enemy and hence by agreeing a truce their makers had become an obstacle to achieving their programmed goal. Having done software development my entire life, I'd never trust anyone to manage to avoid every pitfall in guaranteeing you have a foolproof way of making them stop...
trimboffle 7y ago
I put it to you that dropping multiple nukes was not about avoiding ground war in japan. The US simply wanted to drop the nukes and see the outcome and win the war through pure unadulterated terror and fear.
- thombat 7y ago
  Terror and fear was already present in greater abundance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Meetinghouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Mee... yet five months later Japan maintained an external persona of implacable resistance. For example the subsequent invasion of the Okinawa islands resulted in over 14,000 American deaths. It was reasonable to apprehend that the invasion of the far bigger Japanese home islands would be far more lethal, also for the Japanese population. In the Tokyo raid 96 American airmen were killed, despite the only effective defence being poorly co-ordinated anti-aircraft fire. Given a weapon that claimed the potential to end the war without further American losses it seems unrealistic to expect it not to be used.
- krageon 7y ago
  Japan was an extremely bad actor. They had death camps just like the Germans did at that time. One can imagine that the German victims wished someone dropped a few nukes so Germany would back off a bit quicker. In the end it wasn't exactly pretty, but saying it was just for terror and fear seems like it takes a complicated situation and makes it one-dimensional. We've all been alive long enough to know real life is generally not that simple.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    Please don't. Hiroshima and Nagasaki hosted mostly old retired people and children, and women in a smaller percentage. It hosted no military equipment of any significance, nor strategic locations, nor any significant factory. A large number of people were [ex] fishermen and quite poor. These people had very little power or ability to either support or resist the militaristic elite. They were well in the bottom 20% of literacy, wealth, fitness for war, political influence and specialized skills. Therefore they were mostly innocent. They were wiped away as a show of force and aggressiveness to intimidate other countries including USSR. > They had death camps just like the Germans did at that time The Nazi did it, not "the Germans". And it still does not justify targeting a large number of retirees and children that are contributing nothing to the war effort. > takes a complicated situation and makes it one-dimensional ...

krisoft 7y ago

> “where ethical considerations are completely removed from battle” I’m surprised you say that. Having tired, squishy humans in a hot, cramped box fearing for their life is not exactly a guarantee of “ethical considerations”. Remotely controlled weaponry removes said humans from the immediate danger. It’s a lot easier to apply ethical considerations, when you can be certain a moment of hesitation won’t cause your death. Fully autonomous weaponry moves the ethical decision making even further up the chain. Where cold heads can do all the thinking beforehand. Now, don’t get me wrong: There is a lot of ills with remotely controlled/autonomous weaponry. Chiefly among them that it removes certain costs from the political calculus. Politicians fear the spectacle of their troops dying. This fear moderates their decision making. Removing this cost will make the world a worse place. But i would hardly call this an “ethical consideration”.

hvidgaard 7y ago
That is assuming that both sides have them. That is not likely unless we see the major superpowers going to war with each other, and I don't see that happening.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tjchear 7y ago
And I'd say that ethical decision should never be moved up the chain. War is ugly, and should be ugly so that we think twice before waging one. You can still keep a level head with non-autonomous systems, e.g drones with human operators, or remote controlled marine bots.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

> I'm pretty excited that something from the universe of Ghost in the Shell would become reality Pretty excited? Cyberpunk was always intended as a dire warning of the looming dystopian future. And urge people to rebel to it. It literally has "punk" in its name. It's a bit sad to see how it's been flipped on its head.

A_Parr 7y ago
GITS is largely post-cyberpunk, but dips into cyberpunk for ideas. Mostly for it's antagonists. The cyberpunk driver of the post-cyberpunk tank being an interesting take on things, at least. Clarification for those who don't know. Cyberpunk spun off of a bunch of genres that call themselves $name-punk but ironically ignore the -punk aspect and just replace $name for the name of the technology they replaced magic with in what's otherwise a fantasy story. (Including literally magic as technology.) Because cyberpunk was taken, the cyber version of $name-punk ended up being called post-cyberpunk instead of cyber-steampunk for whatever reason.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > GITS is largely post-cyberpunk, but dips into cyberpunk for ideas This does not negate the dire warnings of cyberpunk both as a genre and GITS itself. This thread is about robot tanks built by the military-industral complex. Everything else is besides the point. > Mostly for it's antagonists *its
tjchear 7y ago
Excited in the way that the big robots we read so much about in stories become real, but I don't wish for the world in which those death machines become a necessity turn into reality.