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To sum up: "If crushing resistance doesn't require blood, what's to stop an epidemic of resistance-crushing?" Nothing. Already, there's nothing. Resistance ha

To sum up: "If crushing resistance doesn't require blood, what's to stop an epidemic of resistance-crushing?" Nothing. Already, there's nothing. Resistance has been crushed. On some other thread, they're about to lock a guy in a cage for an eighth of his natural life span - for circumventing video game copy protection. All we can do is fucking blog about it. It's crushed, and there's nothing we can do about it, and robots will just make it a little more crushed.

rw 17y ago
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." -- John Dewey
wooby 17y ago
There have existed, and do exist, cultures which value human lives lost in combat the same way we will view robots lost in combat. In a sense, our enemy already thinks this way. Each Jihadist's death, to them, is a victory in itself, and but one of many to come; a mark of progress in what is certainly the most glorious and successful guerilla campaign of all time. I thought the author's arguments were heavily culturally-bound, and I don't think the use of robots in combat will change anything about the nature of war. Killing can be automated; war, and winning wars, cannot. There will always be repercussions the belligerent's society will be able to understand as "loss." Our current definition is lost troops. Our future enemies will figure it out if it changes, and make it as clear to us as possible in terms we can understand why we will not win. Nowadays, their tools are insurgency and domestic terrorism. Who knows what they will be in the future. Preventing the start of future wars doesn't have anything, in my view, to do with stopping the Pentagon from further automating killing. As long as we as a country feel the need to maintain a military, we must continue innovating with the tools and techniques of war. A larger and scarier problem with our country, in my view, is our society's perspectives - on itself, on the world, on the meaning of life and death in general. It is this perspective, and collective awareness, that will guide the way we use both our military and its robots in the future to solve problems and protect ourselves. The average American has never served in the military, seen directly or even heard second-hand the nature of war or the military. The average American hasn't even ever left the country, nor spoken another language. How can our leaders, products of such a society, be expected to make decisions about the application of war? It's a question that saddens me because I don't think there's an answer, and this post has turned into a rant. Forgive me, back to coding!
asciilifeform 17y ago
> Resistance has been crushed. ... All we can do is fucking blog about it. More precisely: we are all cowards. A nation of "please don't hurt me," over-civilized doormats. Were we not cowards, you would see: dead judges, dead police, dead politicians, dead CEOs. Until the lesson is learned.

rw 17y ago

"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." -- John Dewey

wooby 17y ago

There have existed, and do exist, cultures which value human lives lost in combat the same way we will view robots lost in combat. In a sense, our enemy already thinks this way. Each Jihadist's death, to them, is a victory in itself, and but one of many to come; a mark of progress in what is certainly the most glorious and successful guerilla campaign of all time. I thought the author's arguments were heavily culturally-bound, and I don't think the use of robots in combat will change anything about the nature of war. Killing can be automated; war, and winning wars, cannot. There will always be repercussions the belligerent's society will be able to understand as "loss." Our current definition is lost troops. Our future enemies will figure it out if it changes, and make it as clear to us as possible in terms we can understand why we will not win. Nowadays, their tools are insurgency and domestic terrorism. Who knows what they will be in the future. Preventing the start of future wars doesn't have anything, in my view, to do with stopping the Pentagon from further automating killing. As long as we as a country feel the need to maintain a military, we must continue innovating with the tools and techniques of war. A larger and scarier problem with our country, in my view, is our society's perspectives - on itself, on the world, on the meaning of life and death in general. It is this perspective, and collective awareness, that will guide the way we use both our military and its robots in the future to solve problems and protect ourselves. The average American has never served in the military, seen directly or even heard second-hand the nature of war or the military. The average American hasn't even ever left the country, nor spoken another language. How can our leaders, products of such a society, be expected to make decisions about the application of war? It's a question that saddens me because I don't think there's an answer, and this post has turned into a rant. Forgive me, back to coding!

asciilifeform 17y ago

> Resistance has been crushed. ... All we can do is fucking blog about it. More precisely: we are all cowards. A nation of "please don't hurt me," over-civilized doormats. Were we not cowards, you would see: dead judges, dead police, dead politicians, dead CEOs. Until the lesson is learned.