10 ms·
Accepting technological barbarism is a choice. Among engineers there should be a broad refusal to work on such systems and a blacklist for those who do.
by abvdasker 3y ago
Accepting technological barbarism is a choice. Among engineers there should be a broad refusal to work on such systems and a blacklist for those who do.
- snird 3y ago[flagged]
- talldayo 3y ago> Why is it barbarism? Because the civilian death toll far outweighs the militant casualties?
- KikoHeit 3y ago[flagged]
- justin66 3y agoWow, I've seen that a few times. That opinion piece really did its job.
- oa335 3y agoHamas’s Oct 7th attack also had a 2:1 civilian to soldier death ratio, so about the same as this “most efficient urban war in history”. “The latest death toll from the attack is now 767 civilians, 20 hostages and 376 members of the security forces, giving a total of 1,163. One person remains missing.” https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279 https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack...
- hobs 3y agoMore targeted with half a million dead? Sounds like you forgot to take your not crazy pills.
- snird 3y agoThe ~400,000 figure is WITHOUT targeted technology, obviously. Why do you rush to attack?
- justin66 3y ago> The other option here is carpet bomb a la Drezden Right. Because there are always just two options when you're designing a strategy.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoYou act like people individually have agency to make sweeping changes of how the world works
- arp242 3y agoNo, the "other option" is to realize that keeping people in what is effectively little more than a concentration camp with no hope of perspective or solution can only end in violence. Especially if you also start shooting the peaceful protestors like they did a few years ago. And then the government goes in to bed with the most extreme of extreme religious Zionists who quite literally support ethnic cleansing and murder. That is not a justification or a moral judgement, it's just a fact that this will happen. This is what has always happened throughout history. To deny it is to deny reality. Something Oct-7 shaped was bound to happen. You can't kick people in the face for 50 years, give no perspective for improvement, kick them harder in the face when they object, and expect all of them to forever turn the other cheek and have carefully nuanced opinions on the matter. That's just not how people work. Current actions are not just killing Palestinians, it's also killing (future) Israeli. A new Oct-7 shaped event is bound to happen again if the current course is followed. None of this is rocket science. None of this is a novel insight. People have been saying this for decades (have we forgotten the previous events like the intifada, the wide-spread protests 5 years ago, etc. etc.)? Some people were seemingly born on the morning of Oct 7 or something.
- xenospn 3y agoAccording to your logic, Hamas will also inevitably murder thousands of Egyptians as well. No?
- arp242 3y agoEgypt and Hamas have a rather adversarial relationship, But let's not pretend Israel and Egypt are anywhere near equivalent. And Israel controls much of the comings and goings of the Rafah crossing, if that's what you're referring to. Egypt doesn't want any trouble with Israel, doesn't really like Hamas, and is also not really looking forward to a mass exodus of impoverished Palestinians as it's already a poor and extremely densely populated country with its own problems. Could Egypt do better? I suppose. But it's nowhere near equivalent. Egypt is in a near-impossible position.
- tmnvix 3y ago> The other option here is carpet bomb a la Drezden As if that is the only other option. How has Israel succeeded in rescuing hostages so far? With the exception of one, the answer is negotiation. As for the removing Hamas part, could you share an example of a terrorist organisation being bombed out of existence?
- treyd 3y agoIt sure would be nice if this industry had the tiniest shred of collective consciousness and realized our capacity to exert some level of control over what gets built and what doesn't.
- crawfordcomeaux 3y agoI took computer ethics 101 about 20 years ago (that was the only ethics class on my math/cs degree plans). I learned that the ethical thing to do when a system kills unintentionally/accidentally, you stop it and redesign from the ground up from first principles evolved beyond the principles used to design the killing version. This needs to be applied to nation-states & so much more we're engineering. I'd love to see a design methodology grounded in accounting for all nondual needs of humans. This idea usually comes with complaints of that being an impossible task, without really understanding the issue.
- theyinwhy 3y agoLots of us are IEEE members bound to ethical standards: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html There are also numerous other organisations with such standards.
- solarpunk 3y agothis made me curious if the ACM has something similar, sure enough: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThe people working on these understand the alternative looks like a WWII bombing campaign with greater loss of life
- __loam 3y agoNot to be combative with the response here, but the density of destruction in Gaza is on par with the likes of Dresden. It's not really exaggeration to say that Gaza is one of the most bombed places since Vietnam, and you don't have to take anyone's word for it. You can go to companies like Maxor and purchase satellite images on the open market and see for yourself.
- stevenhuang 3y agoThe ratio of civilian deaths to military combatants seem to indicate a different picture: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286 https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
- oa335 3y agoHamas’s Oct 7th attack also had a 2:1 civilian to soldier death ratio. Yet the author of that article credits the IDF for setting a new, humane standard. “The latest death toll from the attack is now 767 civilians, 20 hostages and 376 members of the security forces, giving a total of 1,163. One person remains missing.” https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279 https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack...
- golergka 3y agoNot everyone sees the world as you do. Given this article and other information I know about this system, I would be honoured to work on it and take a significant pay cut, as it actively makes the world a better and safer place.
- 20after4 3y agoTurns out one of your associates has been identified as a terrorist. So sorry.
- golergka 3y agoA lot of my associates has already been identified as Jews, and that's quite enough to get them horrifically killed.
- bitcharmer 3y agoPretty sure these days more people get killed for being Palestinians than for being Jews.
- golergka 3y agoIf this was the case, nobody would use the systems described in this article.
- bitcharmer 3y agoLow effort trolling, you can do better
- golergka 3y agoI don't understand why you consider this trolling. This is my sincere position and the best intellectually honest argument I could use in this argument which I use myself when I put this position to test of doubt.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 83 3y agoNot trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely curious. If everyone was as honorable as you and decided to stop working for the military industrial complex - do you think China and Russia would just sit back and say "That's cool - we didn't want Americas land/resources/overseas territories anyway" ?
- solarpunk 3y agoisn't this somewhat fallacious logic?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- koutetsu 3y agoThis is like a thief saying that they steal something because otherwise another thief would steal it. What the parent is suggesting is that engineers around the world should agree to not make such systems similar to how doctors have the hippocratic oath. It may seem naive and can probably never prevent such systems from being built but I think it's worth a try. We have to collectively agree on systems we should not build.
- 83 3y agoIf you are going to use a thief analogy at least make it accurate. Having a moral objection to defense is like objecting to doors and locks (defense against thieves) and so not only are you going to not work on anything lock related you are going to openly advocate no one else work on them or manufacture them as well, leaving us all at risk.