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Sending robots into combat is better than sending humans I suppose

tokenizerrr 12y ago
Only for the country employing them... What if the Americans will have "freedom robots" who will "liberate" those poor middle eastern countries, who will never be able to afford something like that? Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldier's lifes at stake?
- sp332 12y ago
  Only for the country employing them... That still counts. Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldiers' lives at stake? Yes. It's not like the Americans' decision-makers' lives have been on the line in this war anyway.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    > It's not like the Americans' decision-makers' lives have been on the line in this war anyway. Right, they're not. They do still have to convince their people and the families of their soldiers that it wasn't an absolute waste of life to send the soldiers into death. There will be no such concerns with robots, because hey, who cares? It's just a small % of funding.
- dankohn1 12y ago
  Check out the occupation of Tehran in the first 10 minutes of the new Robocop movie.
- jimmaswell 12y ago
  >Only for the country employing them... So? >What if the Americans will have "freedom robots" who will "liberate" those poor middle eastern countries, who will never be able to afford something like that? If that's what's going to be done anyway, better to use robots for it than humans >Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldier's lifes at stake? Even if the presence of robots instead of humans results in more combat occurring, it'd still probably save more lives than if the robots hadn't been invented. And I'll admit that I just might care more about American soldiers' well-being than that of whoever they fight against.
  - naturalethic 12y ago
    There's a somewhat popular novel that deals with this called The Forever War.
ddebernardy 12y ago
Or not. Try to picture yourself minding your own business, and then the next thing you know your neighborhood is stormed by soulless metallic murderers striking from the air and on land.
- riffraff 12y ago
  I saw an interesting discussion about this some years ago. One of the person involved pointed out that yes, it does feel worrying to think that a soulless machine may not feel anything while killing people. But on the other hand, if robots were used in place of people, the nanking massacre[0] would likely not have happened. It has historically required humans to really fuck up things. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
- jimmaswell 12y ago
  Is that any worse than if it were humans doing the storming? Probably better because robots aren't going to do extra damage outside the scope of their orders.

Only for the country employing them... What if the Americans will have "freedom robots" who will "liberate" those poor middle eastern countries, who will never be able to afford something like that? Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldier's lifes at stake?

sp332 12y ago
Only for the country employing them... That still counts. Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldiers' lives at stake? Yes. It's not like the Americans' decision-makers' lives have been on the line in this war anyway.
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  > It's not like the Americans' decision-makers' lives have been on the line in this war anyway. Right, they're not. They do still have to convince their people and the families of their soldiers that it wasn't an absolute waste of life to send the soldiers into death. There will be no such concerns with robots, because hey, who cares? It's just a small % of funding.
dankohn1 12y ago
Check out the occupation of Tehran in the first 10 minutes of the new Robocop movie.
jimmaswell 12y ago
>Only for the country employing them... So? >What if the Americans will have "freedom robots" who will "liberate" those poor middle eastern countries, who will never be able to afford something like that? If that's what's going to be done anyway, better to use robots for it than humans >Will there still be a reason to back down when there are no American soldier's lifes at stake? Even if the presence of robots instead of humans results in more combat occurring, it'd still probably save more lives than if the robots hadn't been invented. And I'll admit that I just might care more about American soldiers' well-being than that of whoever they fight against.
- naturalethic 12y ago
  There's a somewhat popular novel that deals with this called The Forever War.

ddebernardy 12y ago

Or not. Try to picture yourself minding your own business, and then the next thing you know your neighborhood is stormed by soulless metallic murderers striking from the air and on land.

riffraff 12y ago
I saw an interesting discussion about this some years ago. One of the person involved pointed out that yes, it does feel worrying to think that a soulless machine may not feel anything while killing people. But on the other hand, if robots were used in place of people, the nanking massacre[0] would likely not have happened. It has historically required humans to really fuck up things. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
jimmaswell 12y ago
Is that any worse than if it were humans doing the storming? Probably better because robots aren't going to do extra damage outside the scope of their orders.