4 ms·
If they solved P = NP, their first intention would be selling it to the highest bidder. NSO hackers are the digital equivalent of mercenary soldiers.
by ASalazarMX 5y ago
If they solved P = NP, their first intention would be selling it to the highest bidder. NSO hackers are the digital equivalent of mercenary soldiers.
- sterlind 5y agokinda like Werner von Braun, maybe. he just wanted to make rockets. whether they were for Nazi Germany or the US didn't matter, whether they were missiles or spacecraft didn't matter, he just wanted to build them.
- earthscienceman 5y agoWhich we have a descriptive word for: unethical. The colorful word would be: disgusting
- sterlind 5y ago"When the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Werner von Braun." ~ Tom Lehrer
- ASalazarMX 5y ago"Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical"
- flyinglizard 5y agoThere’s nothing unethical about a scientist working on weapon development for their country in the middle of a war. Imagine it’s 1935 and you lack the modern perspective. I mean you might not like it, but I don’t think there’s an ethical violation here.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoI think it's beyond barbaric to calmly send a request for more slaves (Jews other minorities) for the factory work, due to them inconveniently dying too fast. Because of the inhuman working conditions. I read that he did that all. He wasn't merely a patriotic, unaffected scientist, he played a part in the holocaust.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoI think it's barbaric to calmly send a request for more slaves (Jews other minorities) for the factory work, due to them inconveniently dying too fast. Because of the inhuman working conditions. I read that he did that all. He wasn't merely a patriotic, unaffected scientist, he played a part in the holocaust.
- flyinglizard 5y agoYou’re moving the goalposts - the subject discussed was the participation of scientists in weapon programs. He might have been a scum (I think it’s trivializing what happened in Germany at that time, I digress), but his participation in the war effort is not unethical in itself. Thousands of kilometers away, other scientists toiled on a weapon that makes all the weapons the Nazis developed seem benign.
- earthscienceman 5y agoI'm not sure what world you live in where saying "I don't care if I'm making missiles for Germany or the USA" is not an ethical violation and is somehow patriotism... but I don't want to live in it with you.
- flyinglizard 5y agoYou’re being unfair by enforcing a modern perspective, shaped by the victors, on an enemy from 80 years ago. Were Soviet weapons scientists unethical too?
- fnord77 5y agomaybe "amoral"
- xiphias2 5y agoThey don’t really have to, they can just mine Bitcoin by reversing SHA256 in polynomial time, inspect https messages to banks, or send Bitcoin to themselves by creating an ECDSA signature… or just set up a software as a service and have the biggest business in the world.
- charcircuit 5y ago>they can just mine Bitcoin by reversing SHA256 in polynomial time This wouldn't be faster than ASICs. The coefficients would be too big for it to be practical.
- 63 5y agoThat's assuming that the solution to whether P=NP is P=NP and not P≠NP, isn't it?
- Dylan16807 5y agon^10 is a polynomial too. The equality of P and NP would not itself mean there are fast solutions.
- throw10920 5y agoHeck, even if P=NP meant there were fast solutions, merely proving that P=NP wouldn't necessarily give you those solutions, and they might turn out to be even harder problems!
- imajoredinecon 5y ago> digital equivalent In fact, many are literally mercenary soldiers!