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The gun thing is annoying because it embeds the very American belief that guns are exclusively meant for killing other people. The idea that, because human lif
by strken 3y ago
The gun thing is annoying because it embeds the very American belief that guns are exclusively meant for killing other people.
The idea that, because human life is sacred, a farmer must shoot a labrador before shooting rabbits is irritating for a lot of reasons, not least because it does seem like the kind of thing an overtrained American AI elevated to the status of King of the World would do.
- sp332 3y agoIn the note at the bottom, the author says that they own a gun.
- archagon 3y agoI’d argue that most (or at least very many) guns that Americans actually own are specifically designed for killing humans, not hunting.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoMaybe abstractly, but if you were in the room designing them, killing humans wouldn't be one of the metrics. Rather, aesthetics, weight, sound, lifetime, etc. would. The cheapest way to kill humans is drones with co2 canisters, a nail, and computer vision.
- larsiusprime 3y agoAuthor here, for what it's worth I a) own a gun b) have not shot a dog, and c) am not personally endorsing David Mensch for president of the Universe.
- strken 3y agoI didn't mean it was badly written or that I love/hate guns, just that it embeds the beliefs of the writer about what a gun is. Americans tend to disagree on who should have guns, but they generally view them as weapons (which they are) or recreational hunting implements (which they are) and not as agricultural tools (which, again, they are). Consider a hypothetical society which primarily thinks of fertiliser as a bomb-making substance and only belatedly as something that fertilises. The AI from the story but adapted to that society might require anyone who buys fertiliser to explode a kitten. If you read that story you might have a "wait, what?" moment where you notice the culture clash. That's what I found irritating: the way the story casually embeds such an important difference in perspective without commenting on the obvious (to me) double standard of letting people have all sorts of dangerous-but-seemingly-benign things like the AN from ANFO, industrial solvents, and trucks but drawing the line at guns. It's completely correct from your cultural perspective - people really do buy guns primarily to kill other people in your culture - but it reminds me that your cultural perspective is becoming the dominant one for the whole world.