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How can you possibly expect to regulate something like that? Every world power expects that the next major war will be fought with autonomous robots playing a b

How can you possibly expect to regulate something like that? Every world power expects that the next major war will be fought with autonomous robots playing a big role. Whoever has the better technology will have a huge advantage. Consequently you can never trust that the other signatories will honor their promises, and so in turn you cannot risk signing it yourself. Like the Geneva Convention, any robot agreement will be ignored by all combatants as soon as it serves their purposes. War cannot be regulated by gentlemen's agreement.

jMyles 5y ago
I much prefer that the state which capriciously claims dominion over the land mass on which I happen to exist today should lose a war with one of its childish rivals than to acquire and advance more deadly toys. It may not be a gentlemen's agreement, but it's something with which I imagine there are broad consensus across borders.
- JoeyBananas 5y ago
  So basically you don't even value your own life? Is that really the basis of your argument? You don't even try to argue "More deadly weapons are not neccessary for our survival," you just straight up concede "I'm OK with losing the war and having everyone get killed." Good for you, but the rest of us want to survive.
  - jMyles 5y ago
    I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in places "governed" by superpowers that the international affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have no bearing on our individual longevity. The USA state will fall eventually. Will it be in 500 years? 100? 20? Nobody knows for sure. But the fall will cause the end (or even substantial disruption) of a tiny portion of the lives of the people living in the regime's claimed territory. I don't fault your logic; I just think it's out-of-date. The world (especially those parts of it we're discussing here) is really quite different than in the 19th century. Very little of the original impetus for the state (specifically, solving problems of coordination created by the absence of established communications across the land-mass, as a non-trivial portion of The Federalist Papers seek to resolve) remains. In other words; we'll be fine. We won't merely survive.
    - gameman144 5y ago
      I'm curious why you assume this. Genocides have largely been limited by human logistics, time, and labor. Given an enormous quantity of morally agnostic and incorruptible autonomous soldiers, why are you so sure that complete genocide would be less likely?
    - dvlsadvoxate6 5y ago
      I’m going to “agree” but put my own spin on it So we avert drone war and consume our way off the environment cliff? Or die before but leave the sludge for the future? I mean, front row seats to heterogeneous droid swarm mayhem sounds fun. An “I love my job, disposable consumerism, to prop up other peoples grandparents imagined value to society when many in my family got fucked” is not really helping the “but my American civic life story!” crowd. When it was decided in the 80s business taxes were too high, so sad. So is your so called net worth. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; the dead do not rule the living. Madisonian philosophy is that we do. But Jefferson saw servicing generational story of debt as the whole problem in human history. Adam Smith also agreed; he wrote the powers that be would need insure equality of condition to avoid manipulation of a free labor market (the only market he wrote of). Somehow we just get Madisonian policy and tall tails of success in a gender and race biased recent history. If the US wants respect and drone weapons it’s culture should have to prove it’s as capable of behaving responsibly as any other.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      > I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in places "governed" by superpowers that the international affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have no bearing on our individual longevity. Wars generally have a deleterious effect to the life expectancy of the civilian population, even more so in the modern era of mechanized warfare where attacking civilian targets at scale is both practical and practiced (usually not by countries that respect the Geneva conventions, but (a) one cannot guarantee that their opponent will be one of those countries and (b) even those countries have been known to set aside parts of those conventions when they perceive either existential threat or expedience). No, I don't find it likely at all that most people I know live through a hot war on home soil.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Have bans on chemical weapons been completely useless, might as well get rid of them all too? Or nuclear non-proliferation? Certainly have not been entirely succesful, but I wouldn't want to get rid of them. As with chemical weapons, they'll still exist, and they'll still be used. But getting the most powerful nations to agree that they are unacceptable and their use has consequences in the international community matters for whether they quickly become pervasive. Vs. allowing the US and Russian defense industries to be in a race to equip the entire world with them as quickly as possible.

jMyles 5y ago

I much prefer that the state which capriciously claims dominion over the land mass on which I happen to exist today should lose a war with one of its childish rivals than to acquire and advance more deadly toys. It may not be a gentlemen's agreement, but it's something with which I imagine there are broad consensus across borders.

JoeyBananas 5y ago
So basically you don't even value your own life? Is that really the basis of your argument? You don't even try to argue "More deadly weapons are not neccessary for our survival," you just straight up concede "I'm OK with losing the war and having everyone get killed." Good for you, but the rest of us want to survive.
- jMyles 5y ago
  I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in places "governed" by superpowers that the international affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have no bearing on our individual longevity. The USA state will fall eventually. Will it be in 500 years? 100? 20? Nobody knows for sure. But the fall will cause the end (or even substantial disruption) of a tiny portion of the lives of the people living in the regime's claimed territory. I don't fault your logic; I just think it's out-of-date. The world (especially those parts of it we're discussing here) is really quite different than in the 19th century. Very little of the original impetus for the state (specifically, solving problems of coordination created by the absence of established communications across the land-mass, as a non-trivial portion of The Federalist Papers seek to resolve) remains. In other words; we'll be fine. We won't merely survive.
  - gameman144 5y ago
    I'm curious why you assume this. Genocides have largely been limited by human logistics, time, and labor. Given an enormous quantity of morally agnostic and incorruptible autonomous soldiers, why are you so sure that complete genocide would be less likely?
  - dvlsadvoxate6 5y ago
    I’m going to “agree” but put my own spin on it So we avert drone war and consume our way off the environment cliff? Or die before but leave the sludge for the future? I mean, front row seats to heterogeneous droid swarm mayhem sounds fun. An “I love my job, disposable consumerism, to prop up other peoples grandparents imagined value to society when many in my family got fucked” is not really helping the “but my American civic life story!” crowd. When it was decided in the 80s business taxes were too high, so sad. So is your so called net worth. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; the dead do not rule the living. Madisonian philosophy is that we do. But Jefferson saw servicing generational story of debt as the whole problem in human history. Adam Smith also agreed; he wrote the powers that be would need insure equality of condition to avoid manipulation of a free labor market (the only market he wrote of). Somehow we just get Madisonian policy and tall tails of success in a gender and race biased recent history. If the US wants respect and drone weapons it’s culture should have to prove it’s as capable of behaving responsibly as any other.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    > I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in places "governed" by superpowers that the international affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have no bearing on our individual longevity. Wars generally have a deleterious effect to the life expectancy of the civilian population, even more so in the modern era of mechanized warfare where attacking civilian targets at scale is both practical and practiced (usually not by countries that respect the Geneva conventions, but (a) one cannot guarantee that their opponent will be one of those countries and (b) even those countries have been known to set aside parts of those conventions when they perceive either existential threat or expedience). No, I don't find it likely at all that most people I know live through a hot war on home soil.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Have bans on chemical weapons been completely useless, might as well get rid of them all too? Or nuclear non-proliferation? Certainly have not been entirely succesful, but I wouldn't want to get rid of them. As with chemical weapons, they'll still exist, and they'll still be used. But getting the most powerful nations to agree that they are unacceptable and their use has consequences in the international community matters for whether they quickly become pervasive. Vs. allowing the US and Russian defense industries to be in a race to equip the entire world with them as quickly as possible.