"As Google defends its contracts from internal dissent, its competitors have not been shy about publicizing their own work on defense projects. Amazon touts its image recognition work with the Department of Defense, and Microsoft has promoted the fact that its cloud technology won a contract to handle classified information for every branch of the military and defense agencies."
Google should stop hiring activists and start hiring pragmatists.
"Google won't take a defense contract and has shed defense projects in the past" was a common theme at Google. Recruiters and employees actively advertised this as a feature of Google's not being evil.
Realistically... how does this affect a senior AI programmer?
I'd argue the more skilled and, well, rich, you become, the less national borders really matter. Unless you're patriotic, I guess.
>What's cooler than that
Speak for yourself! I would find that disgusting. A given company's culture doesn't have to appeal to everyone, it wouldn't be much of a culture if it did.
not killing innocent people in Yemen because they happened to be born into a Shia family is a little bit cooler IMO
That is literally the application of drone technology right now. The application of AI in drones is going to be used in a proxy/civil war in a poor country because one of the US's allies is composed of religious freaks. That's it. So unless you want to be complicit in killing innocent people because people in this country like cheap oil, hopefully you won't see this as very cool: http://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sile... (although this wasn't technically part of the civil war, it's still a highly relevant example)
No, this is a common misconception. Google still has "Don't be evil", but Alphabet also now has "Do the right thing". Both are hilarious in the context of what Google actually does.
Supposedly, and this is hearsay, but when Google bought Skybox Imaging, they cancelled their government contract(s) and kept the private ones. The idea commonly believed amongst employees there was that they did not want to provide intelligence services to the federal government.
They'll start at image recognition and they'll end up doing much more in the end, especially if their government contracts keep increasing in value.
Why go down this path at all? Google doesn't need to be a war contractor (I think "defense contractor" is a misnomer these days - we all know what this tech is used for: bloody violent and usually unfair/illegal war).
Google should avoid becoming a sponsor of death in the world. What happened to "changing the world" (for the better, I assume)? Is feeding the American war machine changing the world for the better? Really?
The defenders of american military in this thread have forgotten that for the past half century, the american war machine has commited war crimes across the world.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
It is commendable that employees with moral fibre at google are saying no to the industrial war machine, that feeds on global conflict.
And there is no apriori reason as to argue that military funding is the only way to do ground breaking research. Ironic that some in the political spectrum who generally defend the military also feverently view goverment spending as inefficient to markets.
Funny, I thought the "A" in AWS stands for Amazon where I as an individual bought a thing recently using my MS Windows powered PC, again as an individual.
A large fraction of the world's best engineers don't want to be associated with military projects. So companies have a choice to hire them and not do military projects, or not hire them and do them.
When I was running a robot company, I made the decision to not do military projects (mostly for personal reasons) and it helped me hire some great people that I couldn't have otherwise.
A "large fraction" has to be a huge overstatement. I have an extremely difficult time believing a "large fraction" of top tier engineers won't work on a military project simply because its associated with the military. More like a very small minority. That number becomes "almost zero" when not taking the military project means having to make a career change.
Ive been around the block a few times, I've worked in the defense industry myself and I've worked in non-defense private sector as well. The quality and quantity of engineers are extremely similar in my experience.
Don't forget, a lot of the tech we use everyday started as military projects, such as the Internet and GPS. Even Siri has its roots as part of a DARPA project. You really think the engineers involved in those technologies are second tier?
[citation needed] on why you think there is a large fraction of the worlds best engineers that don't want to be associated with military projects. It has been my experience that the best engineers want to work on hard problems and solve the worlds pressing needs, that sometimes puts them right in the middle of military projects. For instance almost every modern technological breakthrough has been accomplished by or for a military project, and most large technology companies have done work with the military ( and not just modern technology, historically all the big engineering firms helped with military technology ).
I've previously worked in defense contracting, as I've said in a sibling comment. Getting DARPA money is seen as extremely awesome and exciting in the industry because it usually means you get to work on amazing futuristic technology that they private sector would never fund and without needing a strategy for monetization.
Anyways, is working on software to, for example, improve the day-to-day tasks of soliders and marines really morally inferior to selling people's private data to advertisers? - Most military projects do not involve tactical systems. Let's be honest here, building the "Uber of salads" doesn't change the world.
The out of touch hubis displayed in the GP comment is pretty infuriating.
It's unproductive to sneeringly cast aside the concerns of Google Employees as starry eyed activism but here we are.
Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law. Google is working the military to expand the capabilities to carry out these attacks and to work on these projects is to either agree ideologically that the U.S. military should have these capabilities or to turn a blind eye to its uses for a cushy salary and a chance to play with state of the art toys for your day job. Between the two, the later is far more palatable to me so I feel I'm being quite generous by labeling it as greed.
> Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law.
I don't disagree with this. The question I'm trying to figure out -- which powerful nation should we look to for an example on how to do better?
Also, are there are any benefits to the U.S. maintaining hegemony as the top military power that we need to weigh in this analysis?
I definitely am not fully up to speed on the details of this debate, but it does appear fairly complex at first glance.
Sure in the same way that the Macedonians and Mongols were good for the Silk Road, the United States and the Bretton Woods system is fantastic for international shipping and suppressing regional conflicts.
Even if the US is a net positive I believe that almost none of the campaigns it has engaged in the last 20 years have done anything to contribute to that. I can't abide by that and would urge anyone with a conscience to do the same.
On one hand, I reluctantly appreciate Trump's election because it will force silicon valley to think many times before readily giving up user privacy to the US government. I felt like the attitude was very lax under Obama (despite the Snowden revelations).
On the other hand, this bothers me a bit because it continues to allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doing is "moral". If Google stops working with the Pentagon after this petition, people in the valley will pat their backs and enjoy how they are making the world a better place. They will not have any incentive to rethink the sale of user data to advertisers, creating highly addictive mentally harmful products, etc.
Overall, it's good that at least people in the valley are somewhat mindful of their actions and care about society (compared my current industry, finance). I hope they can be successful at a deeper level.
> On the other hand, this bothers me a bit because it continues to allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doing is "moral"
> They will not have any incentive to rethink the sale of user data to advertisers
Is it not possible that one will lead to the other? We're seeing the beginnings of a real examination of the power Silicon Valley giants have. Recent revelations about Facebook, amongst others, shows that awareness of advertising profiles etc. is increasing as well.
> but maybe that just means I’m just a no-good warmongering fool, right?
More specifically, a warmongering fool who can't discern a false dichotomy - because your options in life are rarely ever drones vs more lethal drones.
These regions we're using drones in. They could probably use more tools to enable true democratic representation. Isn't that what Google should be doing, given that they "don't do evil"? Building tools to blow people up seems slightly counter intuitive.
Id argue it's not a false dichotomy because drone strikes will go on regardless of what Google does. It's very clear that whatever collateral damage drones currently cause is an acceptable cost to the militaries using them.
"If you don't help make drones more accurate, you're the reason for collateralized murder".
Or, you could like, just stop droning innocent people to death. Not saying we all have to agree, but just that factually speaking - it's within the realm of possibilities. And for that reason it's a false dichotomy.
It’s war, not a court. Society hasn’t legislated that those who attack this country should be presumed innocent and convicted only after due process. This is true in any country.
> "If you don't help make drones more accurate, you're the reason for collateralized murder".
I never stated anything about blame, nor do I think that choosing to not participate makes someone culpable.
> Or, you could like, just stop droning innocent people to death.
I have not "droned" anyone.
> Not saying we all have to agree, but just that factually speaking - it's within the realm of possibilities.
It's possible, sure, but certainly not probable. Drone strikes are increasing, not decreasing. I don't think you're thinking about this very pragmatically.
If Google employees wanted to, they could probably put a lot of pressure on the military directly. Imagine Google no longer served ip addresses that belonged to the military unless they ended their drone strikes. Or say they turned off google maps for anyone that is known to work for the military.
Incidentedly, I worked on drones for the Navy and Marines for many years.
My issue is with the hypocracy. Don't claim to be moral and sell this Kool aid. It sounds a lot like religious high priests that I have a viceral reaction to (given where I come from). It could just be my own personal issue with the faux moral sell of the valley.
Just like a criminal might object to being defrauded because they feel it crosses a line.
Everybody is a hypocrite to some extent, you at least seem to be aware of that fact that you are simply a gun for hire which makes it easier to reason about the position of others.
> you at least seem to be aware of that fact that you are simply a gun for hire which makes it easier to reason about the position of others.
That probably is the case. Morality is also very subjective (which, to some, is a matter of belief). Maybe "hypocrisy" is not the right word. Perhaps I was looking for "lack of self awareness". That is kind of what I meant with "delusion".
There are a lot of good, empathetic people in Silicon Valley. More empathetic than probably any other subgroup I have ever encountered. And they have a deep desire to change the world. I have a lot of respect for that.
But they also circle jerk about that all the time (you see this in finance at charity events too). And in that circle jerk, thinking they are improving humanity, they end up cozing up with the federal government, foreign dictators, and even suppressing free thought! And I am not acquitting the Military Industrial Complex of doing a lot of the same things (but at least they are less deluded, having the "American interests" narrative as opposed to "make the world a better place" narrative).
To some extent living in a self-reinforcing bubble will cause people to believe their own bullshit. SV is not unique in this, there are plenty of people who are obviously busy with enriching themselves and their buddies while doing this 'to improve the world'. I don't buy it, and I would prefer it if they were honest about it but then again what does it matter, they're certainly not fooling anybody.
The few that really want to improve the world stand out and don't feel the need to sell themselves as improving the world, they don't need to: it's obvious, their actions speak louder than words.
> allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doing is "moral"
People refusing to work on military technology isn't "appearing moral". It's just "moral", at least if you consider war to be generally amoral.
People here and elsewhere have been throwing the term "virtue signalling" around a lot in the last year or so. This is a perfect counterexample: Google employees speaking out against military tech are shouldering the risk of appearing disloyal to their employer. If Google were to cut their military ties, they would forgo whatever benefit they previously sought in that relationship.
It's an intellectually dishonest argument, because it actually uses someone's profession of good intentions, accepts them, and then somehow turns it against the speaker.
As used on the internet, it's also useless because it always assumes the speaker doesn't actually act on their believes, and there usually is no way for them to prove their willingness to act on their believes.
It also ignores that even just stating such believes can have an effect. After all, these statements are used to convince others to adopt them.
The best proof of the last point may actually be this protest by Google employees: their conviction was probably formed by reading and hearing about the ethical responsibility of engineers, a topic that is certainly teeming with "virtue signalling" according to the common definition. They might even be the product of Google's own "virtue signalling", i. e. "Do no Evil". Maybe Larry Page and Sergey Brin only ever wanted to pay lip service to ethical behaviour. But their employees didn't get the full memo, took them by their word, and are now acting upon it.
In this sense, "virtue signalling" aka "Greenwashing" or "diversity boilerplate" may start as a cynical profit-motivated lie, and end up changing the world for the better.
Yea, I don't think virtue signaling is always wrong, but I think there is wrong virtue signaling.
A lot of the vitriol on the internet is destructive virtue signaling using holier than thou approaches that alienate people close to your position, this causes division, not unity, and is one of the key issues on the Left - i.e. the Left attacking itself over minutiae as the Right marches on.
Sure, and I agree that Google shouldn't stop here. But then again there is a difference, at least in my opinion, between doing something that helps the military in a support role and doing something that actively assists them in killing people. Letting the military use google cloud or google search is different than working on an AI-assisted targeting system for drones. That is where I would draw the line for myself.
There are plenty of jobs that are more immoral than working for Google. You don't even have to look outside of the tech field.
I'm sure someone is making a lot of money helping distribute child pornography over the internet. Plenty of tech jobs in human trafficking, too, I would imagine.
Typical white male excuse.
You are privileged enough to work in Google then you have no problem finding a new job. Strawman right away with child porn? Color me surprised.
Do you think the US should stop developing military technology? I doubt it, and I doubt many Google employees do, either. I doubt they would be happy to live in a world where the U.S. has a weaker military than countries like China or Russia. I also doubt they would approve of throwing out our advanced targeting technology in favor of Vietnam-style carpet bombing.
They are uncomfortable with killing people even though a technologically-advanced military is probably a good thing. They are comfortable with tracking and manipulating millions of people even though it's definitely a bad thing. This is squeamishness, not morality.
What you say about "your country" kinda legitimates anyone saying that about "their" country, too. There's plenty of arms dealer selling to all sorts of sides, are there not? And generally speaking, at best soldiers defend against invading soldiers, at worst they are invading or "just" murdering some or a lot of civilians.
Remember when the cold war ended, for a while, but military budgets didn't exactly collapse? Isn't that "funny" how that works, and how we have no problem realizing that in other contexts.
You make war profitable, you will have more war. The details are trickier, sure. Slogans aren't enough. But if you don't even have the will, don't worry about finding a way.
> I doubt they would be happy to live in a world where the U.S. has a weaker military than countries like China or Russia.
Yeah, nevermind the big nations all having their go at weaker nations, and the US wars of aggression, under exactly that pretense. No, it's really that the every last person in that huuuuuge industry -- shoveling tax dollars into gadgets that can be used to defend, to destroy, to enforce resource extraction as well as for domestic control -- wants to look out for you, because you have the same nationality in the passport. It's the children on non-Americans that get labels like "fun-sized terroris", American children have names. Those lines could not ever blur.
Yes, you can't just unilaterally disarm. But you also can't keep hitting others (and yourself) while gearing up even more, at increasing rate, while subverting self-determination of others and intellectual honesty of self at every corner, and then say "it just happens to be a dangerous world, I'm just reacting". The people you're just reacting to say the same thing, and the people who sell you and them that lie laugh all the way to the bank, and should there be need for it, they won't share their bunker with you. They'd sooner share it with Russian and Chinese war profiteers, so to speak.
>It's just "moral", at least if you consider war to be generally amoral.
The military is also responsible for defense and disaster recovery (national guard). There are many technologies created to be resilient and life-saving by the military (ARPANET). Working with on certain military-funded projects is definitely non black-and-white like you imply.
Not only that, but unless the effort is global, the impact of any AI will deliver greater effect in countries with less citizen rights.
So while it's great these protestors want to protect us from AI, those in China, Russia, India, Iran, will endure a greater threat from AI and it behooves us to be at the forefront lest we fall behind.
In other words a moratorium can only work if all participants agree and participate. Sort of like the anti nuclear proliferation treaty.
Maybe if they're more accurate the marginal cost of killing people in other parts of the world will go down even more so we'll be even less likely to reflect on whether the fact we can easily use robots to kill people on the other side of the world who have no way of responding symmetrically might come back to bite us in the ass?
I don't think the marginal cost of these things has been that much of a consideration in the past.
Less American military personnel will be put in harm's way as technology like this advances. Maybe wars will even be mostly unmanned remotely controlled machine-vs-machine in the future.
Nobody cares how many dimes those drones cost. War isn’t fought using the cheapest means available, but the most effective. Have you seen the size of the U.S. military budget?
This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish it away.
No, that's simply not true. Lots of things were "Just how things are" until enough people stood up and said "No". Googles' employees are actually using their privilege to try to make a high-profile stand. No idea if it will make a difference, but it is far better than not trying.
Wrong attitude. It seems that, at this time in history, we have more tools at our disposal than ever before to avoid war. We have more capacity to organize and communicate now. Why should we continue to just assume that war is inevitable? I'm sure people had the same attitude toward the black plague in the middle ages. They probably thought "Oh well! All this bad air and holy wrath is inevitable. No way to avoid the plague!"
War has never existed due to a lack of tools or technology. If anything, those things made war more deadly than ever (see WW1).
Wars exist because people are willing to kill and die for what they believe in. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means”
You're right about everything. But consider ISIS, what kind of communication should we perform that will make future groups like that stop beheading people and raping children? There are situations where violence unfortunately is the only option left, and in that case you will want it to be as targeted and clean as possible to avoid collateral damage. Currently drone strikes is the best tech for that purpose, and we have an incentive to make it better for the reasons previously mentioned.
If the US only were using drones against ISIS then that would be a different story. The fact of the matter is that the US uses drones on much less morally cut-and-dry groups than ISIS, and will likely continue to do so in the future. It's like if a farmer wanted you to make them a shotgun so they could kill the wolves terrorizing their flock but you knew they were also going to use that shotgun to rob their neighbor for oil
I see your analogy.
But it's not totally perfect, because in a (hopefully functioning) democracy, the farmer can be told what to do by his constituents. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but do we trust the entity we voted for (USA.gov), or the one that makes money off our existence (google.com).
Symmetrical war isn't a good thing either, it's far worse - death tolls are much higher for both sides and wars last longer. See WW1. Sure, question why and when war is necessary - but when a war needs to be fought I don't think making war more symmetrical would be appreciated by anyone and result in less "coming back to bite us in the ass".
But now you're arguing that we need to kill more innocents in order to drum up support for political change. That's cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
Drone strikes aren't going away, especially since there is widespread support among the American public for them (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...). Thus, we should pursue both fronts: making drone strikes more safe, but also informing the public about the potential shortfalls and dangers of using such technologies.
The idea that making technology more sophisticated will inevitably increase its usage is a fallacy. Nuclear weapons technology improved substantially over the 20th century, and yet it still hasn't been used since 1945.
Does a more accurate weapon really kill fewer people in every case? Even if the US government doesn't misuse it, the technology can always be sold to or hacked by some third party.
It's also possible that when a weapon is deemed technically capable, people will be more comfortable with broad use of weapons and with expanding lists of individuals targeted for extrajudicial killing.
Exactly this. So many people in this thread seem to be entirely ignorant of the effect that technology plays in munitions. People seem to look at atomic munitions and think "oh the role of technology is to build bigger weapons that can kill more people." This is an extremely narrow section of munitions research and almost intentionally myopic.
You do not need advanced technology to build simple rockets with simple warheads and wreak havoc. These rockets are guided by nothing better than pointing and shooting. We see this in use in various paramilitaries around the world with little concern for civilian casualties: in Gaza, in Syria, in South Lebanon, in Yemen. If the West was similarly limited to such crude munitions then the civilian cost to destroying legitimate military targets would be enormous. Better guided munitions reduce civilian casualties and as such working on making munitions better-guided is indeed ethical.
If you think that not giving generals the tools to better avoid civilian casualties means they will simply not wage war in ways that endanger civilians, well history is pretty clear that this is quite erroneous. Giving generals the tools to wage war more ethically allows them to make decisions with fewer compromises e.g. civilian casualties.
This is not even to mention work on purely defensive munitions, e.g. Iron Dome, which is inherently ethical.
And if your opposition is rooted in a sense of pacifism, please, freedom is not free, it's not just a slogan. Anarchies (i.e. the lack of a sovereign government with a military defending territory) and their power vacuums result in warlords and the end of civil society. And that Malthusian outcome is clearly less ethical than almost any other. That's just human nature. Defense of civil society requires a military. Ideally, that military will act as ethically as possible while achieving its primary goal which is the stability (in face of external threats) necessary for civil society to flourish. There are two ways to make the military ethical: a) give it ethical tools so that it won't be forced to use less ethical means for achieving its raison d'être, b) set ethical policy. As sad that it may be that we have little control over the latter, as engineers we can have control over the former.
Do you consider all the great scientists who helped the US military during WWII evil? Would you have preferred they sat on the sideline for moral reasons and allowed Germany to win?
Countries aren’t defined by the size of their economy but, at the very least, the monopoly of violence. Google doesn’t hold such a monopoly and likely never will...
Power is more complex than the direct application of violence. Corporate relationships with governments can induce them, and often have induced, violent reactions against people harming a company's interests.
When it comes to life-or-death questions, we should make informed decisions. "Just trust me" fundamentally lacks any valuable information that furthers the discussion. In addition, "just trust me" also endangers less clear thinking people to sway based on emotion instead of well-founded cold hard facts.
The same defense/intelligence that has lied its pants off for how long... Gosh, I don't know when to begin.
You are working on a morally bankrupt program for a morally deficient organization, large parts of which have zero concern for human life. And you tell us to blindly trust you?
Edit: actually your recent comments have been so egregious that I've banned the account. That's a pity, because the comments you posted that were civil and substantive have been quite good. But we can't allow people to treat fellow community members like this.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban people who commit to following the rules in the future.
In case it helps, it's not a question of supporting views or actions you disagree with, but of supporting the community we're all participating in here, so it doesn't slide into war.
Social pressures in that direction seem to be stepping up these days, so if we're to have much hope of preserving HN, we need a corresponding uptick in efforts to take care of it.
Your background isn't nearly as useful as the facts. You're the one who started this thread, but it's completely unsubstantiated. If people aren't going to believe Sundar Pichai (CEO) without evidence, why should anyone believe you?
As you surely know, most people unfortunately do not follow the "gather data, then respond" model.
Most stuff is unfortunately fact-free (or fact-freer than it should be)
R.I.P. your TS/SCI clearance. Identifying yourself as part of any project on the internet is quite possibly the #1 no-no, certainly the #1 internet no-no. In fact, this makes me wonder if you really know anything at all.
it appears from linkedin that he was an AF intelligence officer.
being a military intelligence officer is not the same as, say, being a clandestine service officer. apparently, the AF even sees fit to give you "intelligence wings" to wear on your chest. there appear to be an awful lot of current and former intelligence officers who list their specialty and former duty stations in linkedin.
>"...that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes."
These drone strikes have been happening for decades without interpretive AI, and they will probably continue with or without. So let's make the strikes more precise and save more civilians.
>"But improved analysis of drone video could be used to pick out human targets for strikes, while also better identifying civilians to reduce the accidental killing of innocent people."
The need for human operators to identify targets serves as a hard logistical limit to how many drone strikes can be delivered. Turning them into a machine removes that limit.
Suppose you decrease error rate by 10% (optimistic), but increase volume by 20% (probably underestimated). You'll get an 8% increase in innocent deaths.
No, it actually is the amount of eyeballs to analyze drone footage. They literally have so much footage feeding in that they can no longer review it with humans. This tech is designed to make the surveillance dragnet feeding into military decisions more automated and efficient.
This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing. Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process.
Sure, I'll bite. Just falsify it: the Pentagon's killing machines have never brought about world peace, and world peace has never occurred while the Pentagon received killing machines.
I didn't bring world peace into the thread, but at any rate there's also the saying that "All war represents a failure of diplomacy," which I tend to agree with. I also think "are indifferent toward" should replace "hate" there.
You are blatantly embedding a false premise here; that the goal is or should be world peace.
That is an absolutely inane stance to take. How about instead of the obviously unattainable and unrealistic goal of "world peace", we just go for "more peace", or "less violent death" or similar goals. It is very hard to argue that American hegemony has not significantly reduced conflicts around the world. Not all of them, not equitably, and generally in pursuit of economic rather than ideological interests, but there is basically nothing to be gained by opening up the US to actually being threatened by competing powers.
Idealists on the left would apparently prefer China getting a complete monopoly on military AI and expanding their dictatorship globally instead of being pragmatic.
Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite
>the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography
For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.
> Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else.
That's an excuse people without any morals often use. It's up to each one of us to do the right thing.
After all: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing” - or I would add that evil also rises when "good men" actually do the evil thing "because otherwise the bad men would do it anyway."
Google likely has the most advanced AI tech in the world right now. That means if that they allow the US government to use it, they will be directly responsible for accelerating the progress of autonomous killer robots or making them real in the first place. After all, I don't see too many other companies with AI that can learn the Go game within days and beat world champions.
Alternatively, there is an abundance of private sources of funding.
One of the founding principles of American government was the freedom from state surveillance and intrusion into private homes. Nowadays, the federal government of the USA can legally use any technology that is patented, so why should they be allowed to restrict inventors from disclosing or selling IP that inhibits surveillance?
The classification of cryptography as munitions was an interesting choice. The first amendment may protect domestic encryption capabilities as stated by the wikipedia article. From a legal standpoint, does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? As information becomes weaponized, it's an interesting thought. The first amendment is arguably more vulnerable these days, so I wonder if perhaps a second amendment argument could be made in support of domestic encryption. It certainly would help with marketing the argument to a certain segment of the population.
"well-regulated militia," but it's pretty much an open question how much that actually has to do with the right described in the second clause. Gun rights activists tend to down-play that first bit, as it implies a collective perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with unlimited individual gun ownership rights.
Some context into the mindset and beliefs of the people who penned the original amendment is helpful in this case, but you find very little in support of the level of control that the anti-2A people want.
Gun rights antagonists tend to downplay that bit, as it implies an individual perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with tightly-controlled gun ownership permissions.
They also downplay that in every case of a gun being used in some criminal way, numerous laws and regulations are already being broken. So what difference will more regulations make? The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns, and even if that were somehow possible there would be a civil war over that if it were to be seriously attempted.
> The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns
Strawmen are so unhelpful in reasonable debate.
Not all gun control advocates are either anti-second amendment, nor in favor of eliminating all guns. To say otherwise, creating a false black/white dichotomy in the gun debate, does a massive disservice to both gun advocates and gun control proponents.
Ironically, by making the choice "all guns" or "no guns", gun advocates themselves are forcing the "no guns" option to the center of the debate. As a wave of frustrated anti-gun youth become voters and reasonable political moderates look at options to "protect the children", I really think it's in gun proponents' best interests to provide a better alternative than "do nothing" on one side and "civil war" on the other.
It ceases to be a strawman when it's on a sign held by protestors acting in good faith[1].
At the end of the day, these stances, even the "moderate" ones you mention, are irreconcilable all the way down to first principles. If you are for gun control, you are necessarily for measures that will restrict the right to bear arms as it is recognized today, some more, some less, but restrictions on the right all the same.
agar said that not all gun control advocates want to repeal the second amendment, not that there aren't any gun control advocates who want to repeal the second amendment.
Of course some gun control advocates want a "we've come to collect your guns" law. I never said that no one holds extreme positions.
But that does not mean that everyone holds extreme positions, which is what you claimed.
Arguing that the extremes are the only options is a problem.
How productive would health debates be if the only two options presented were veganism and paleo? If the only sex ed options are abstinence or polyamory?
There must be room for compromise, or there is no debate, only argumentation.
The problem is that the "compromise" touted by gun control advocates is entirely one-sided - more restrictions, no concessions. No quid-pro-quo, only further restrictions on the right.
What concessions would gun rights advocates accept in order to allow some restrictions? What's there left to give on this issue that wouldn't undermine any controls.
Say, for example, I wanted gun owners/users to be required to be as responsible as car users, i.e. pass a test, maintain a license and registration for weapons and weapon users, and hold liability insurance to cover damage either intentional or accidental (that would obviously scale with the likelihood and amount of damage the gun can do). What can gun control advocates give that will get that done?
I think part of the reason the gun debate can be one sided from the "control" side is that the US already is quite far to the "rights" side of the spectrum, relative to the rest of the developed world. It can be difficult to see where we could plausibly move further in that direction without causing more of the problems we're (hopefully) all trying to solve: unnecessary bloodshed.
In your example, since we now have a mandatory testing/licensing scheme and insurance, I see no reason why CCW's countrywide shouldn't become shall-issue. There should also be a stipulation that licensing is a thing you grant to people, not individual weapons.
Another example I floated in previous threads is surfacing psychological issues in NICS checks (stuff like certain diseases or involuntary holds) and granting access to that system to everyday people rather than just retailers.
Yes, it likely does. With English lacking a gender-neutral pronoun, "he" or "him" or "his" historically did not necessarily imply the male sex, depending on context. As "man" can refer to all of humankind, again it's a matter of context.
Yet the actual second amendment seems to avoid the problem as far as I can see.
Edit: And of all the second amendment issues that could be argued, I somehow picked this one.
I wish this was the only surprising bit in the constitution of Alabama. The section outlawing interracial marriage was only removed in 2000, and it still contains a section mandating segregated public schools.
That's not necessarily true. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.
> The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.
This was true only between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, the Supreme Court clarified that it was incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.
To be fair, militias of the day weren't generally standing militias, and needed to be mustered.
We do have definitions as to what militias are informed to us by writings of the founders, the federalist papers, previous drafts of the second amendment and, failing that, codified by law in 10 US Code § 311. The definition of militia there ("consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard") will likely have been expanded by our recent advances in military equality.
IAANAL but I'm pretty sure the second amendment is actually really vague in terms of what it refers to, and has actually been tested in court less often than one might think.
It depends how you look at it. What was the purpose. Presumably after fighting in the Revolutionary War the goal was not to give people hunting privileges, they had something else in mind. From that point of view, maybe RPGs should be allowed, but so should attack helicopters, surveillance capabilities, private spy satellites, etc.
> IANAL but I’m pretty sure the second amendment only applies to guns; you can’t walk around with an RPG on your shoulder.
Surprisingly perhaps you can buy a military grade flamethrower complete with a napalm package: https://throwflame.com/ it's not even classified as a firearm, and is illegal in only two states I think.
Never really thought about it. But it makes sense to cut a "gap" in the forest using fire, to prevent a fire from crossing the gap. Once burned, something aint gonna burn again...
> What use does a flamethrower have though besides burning buildings, that a normal gun wouldn't?
It can be more effective at clearing bunkers and closed rooms? The military were using these in WWII for trenches, bunkers, clearing brush. My friend's grandpa in US was operating one in the Pacific during WWII.
I just brought it was an example how something potentially more deadly than guns or RPGs is not much regulated and how laws are not very rational sometimes.
I recently purchased the Federalist Papers so I could have a better understanding of "how" to read it, what the context was, and what types of discussions to anticipate having with those who'd like to look at it differently
The Federalist Papers don't matter much in 2017. The doctrinal position of the courts today is the 2nd Amendment is not wide open. It's for defense of self and family IN THE HOME or defense of state.
It doesn't restrict states from legalizing further concessions, though.
Been reading about it with the Parkland stories.
Antonin Scalia wrote that the 2nd is not unlimited, it doesn't allow possession of any type of weapon for any use case, just a couple years before he died.
I can't find the article he was quoted in, but around the time of the last SCOTUS case related to 2nd, an NRA exec was on record, I'm paraphrasing, something like "the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting."
The right side of the argument allows the romanticized notions to flourish as political ammo.
And what have you learned for those of us who haven’t read the federalist papers?
Also, why do they need to be purchased? Isn’t that information in the public domain? Surely enough time has passed and Alexander Hamilton’s family don’t need to continue to profit from it?
They don't need to be purchased(http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1404). Some people still read physical books, though, which generally requires purchasing if they wish to keep the book.
Can’t speak for the parent, but I buy public domain books because it tends to be cheaper than the paper and toner required to print it. And it looks nicer.
This has always been my way of looking at the 2A. It's clearly intended to give citizens the rights and tools to fight wars, otherwise it wouldn't mention it along with militias. Thus, it does seem logical that it extends to armaments of war, such as knives, firearms, artillery, bombs, etc (perhaps even hacking tools).
I'm a gun owner myself, and I've (long ago) taken the stance that the 2A isn't really compatible with modern life, as the people who originally wrote it could not have anticipated the weapons militaries deploy today. It makes sense in my mind that it is Congress' responsibility to regulate what it reasonable weapons for civilized society.
There's a reason you can't just walk into a Wal-Mart and walk out with a machine gun, or a rocket launcher.
That said, I don't much care for the fact that the requirement to have legal access to machine guns is "be rich enough to buy your way around the law".
Personally, I do think we need a complete re-work of the way we treat weapons to reflect the realities of the modern world.
(1) We have four hundred million weapons in the United States. It is horribly negligent that safe weapon handling is not taught in schools, at multiple levels. Also a good touchpoint to get police interacting positively with the community.
(2) The current background check system should be replaced with a Swiss-style one; e.g., you get a code, valid for say a week or two, that any seller can use to verify that you have passed a background check.
This doesn't create a de-facto registry, so no problem getting gun owners (or the NRA) to go for this one.
(4) A red-flag law that allows immediate family members and healthcare professionals to temporarily bar an individual from purchasing weapons, with safeguards in-place to keep bad actors from abusing the system (e.g., a psychiatrist that just reports all of his patients to the system because he opposes gun ownership).
(5) Removing gun rights only in the case of violent crime. Right now, in most states, misdemeanor assault won't cost you your gun rights, but a felony for tax evasion will. That's ass-backwards.
(6) Machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, and the like should be available with a license. You really need to be able to show that you can handle these things safely. Right now, it's just "be rich".
(7) Treat short-barreled rifles and shotguns as normal firearms, and silencers like any other accessory.
(8) Concealed-carry should be the same for police as it is for normal citizens. Same licensing requirements: a one-day course, including a test on safe weapon handling. This also ends gun-free zones: if you have a license, you can carry wherever you want.
(9) Open carry needs to work differently for urban and rural areas. The above permit will allow you to open-carry a pistol in an urban area. Rifles, no. Put it in a case. In the countryside, open carry just makes sense.
(10) Actually prosecute straw sellers. Buy a gun for somebody that can't legally buy one on their own, you permanently lose your gun rights, plus whatever punishment makes sense.
(11) Secure storage requirements. If one of your weapons is stolen and used for a crime, you are legally an accessory if you can not demonstrate that you took reasonable measures to store the weapon securely (e.g., a gun safe or lockable case). This doesn't require police inspections, but provides a strong incentive for personal responsibility.
All of this would enjoy massive support from gun owners, and address a lot of existing problems.
How it's written I personally think you should be able to buy any weapon available on the open market. Or at least any weapon that could realistically be used by an infantryman (as the wording is "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,."
I'd rather have a new amendment then have judges be able to decide what the definition of arms is. Slippery slope. They really could one day decide that 'arms' is only muskets, or even just knives.
Broadly speaking, that's been the holding of the courts since 1939.
U.S. v. Miller loosely established the test (later solidified in 2008's Heller v DC) that weapons commonly used in militia service are inherently deserving of second amendment protections.
Miller, a known mobster who was caught with a sawed off shotgun lost his case because
a) the military testified that they had never used sawed off shotguns, so they were not useful to a military, ergo a militia (which was a lie -- they had used them, and found them useful for trench-clearing)
b) Miller's attorney was not very good, and didn't even challenge that testimony, much less so by totally disproving it -- I offer a little sympathy here as they didn't have Google at the time
Also noteworthy, Miller was actually dead when the decision came down, as he'd been murdered, and because /shrug, the trial kept going, but the defense (for obvious reasons) quit trying. He was sentenced in absentia.
You say solidified, but it was a 5-4 ruling. To determine if handguns could be banned by the city. And an 'arm' that has been used by infantry forces for generations.
Which I find just insane. People say no one wants to take Americans guns rights away, but we were literally one vote from effectively doing so.
Except you can own an RPG in the US... It's an NFA classified destructive device. You can also own cannons, tanks, or attack helicopters if you have the money.
There's a school of thought that the word "arms" in the Constitution might have referred mainly to sidearms, not to canons, catapults, warships, etc. The theory is that there were other words like "artillery" to describe larger weapons.
This school only makes sense if you throw out the entire section that mentions a well regulated militia. A militia would be expected to have artillery.
>"Justice Scalia also wrote:
“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”
I think for a weapon to be 'compliant' with US's second amendment a couple of criteria must be met
a) must be in current wide use in military
b) must be capable of being carried by a single person (which is why tanks and fighter jets will not qualify)
This follows form 'individual' focus of the bill of right.
c) must be capable to aim it at a single person (which is why explosive or RPGs would not qualify).
This follows from the notion that Bill of Right in general, does not condone collateral damage or collateral effect.
As this is Individual's right, and therefore presumes individual's responsibility.
does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory?
It doesn't much matter. Even if somebody made the case that "crypto is a form of 'Arms', subject to 2A protection," the 2A doesn't grant an unregulated right to own whatever "arms" one chooses. All the rights granted by the Constitution are subject to reasonable regulation.
So, Congress could simply legislate a restriction on crypto, much as they have done with machine guns, grenades, and nukes.
Stop quoting that case. That was SCOTUS upholding the right of the government to clamp down on speech that encouraged draft dodging or could even be marginally interpreted as disagreeing with it during wartime.
It ain't Dred Scott dumb, but it's up there in stupidity and retarded law.
Well regulated doesn't mean the feds get to control the details of what the militia can use either. The militia is every able-bodied 18-47 year old. The regulated part implies a command structure which the National Guard provides.
I'm not sure what case you're thinking of, because I didn't explicitly mention one.
Chaplinsky v. NH was in 1942 and had nothing to do with draft dodging.
Since then, the courts have ruled inconsistently on the matter. The only common thread is the courts mostly agree that some restriction on speech is permissible - where that line lays is very much up for debate.
WRT the militia - the government disagrees with your assertion. A random citizen cannot go into the gun store and buy a machine gun, or grenades. Special (and expensive) permitting is required. If you're contention is that these restrictions are unConstitutional, I'm not really sure we should bother debating the point.
Regulated does not imply a command structure, look up the 18th century definition of that word please. Also, to be clear, the National Guard IS the government. The purpose of the 2nd A was to provide a check against the government— it wasn’t a protection for the states — it was a protection for individuals — the Bill of Rights was a declaration of individual liberties not protections for the states. The tenth amendment is an outlier, but even that was part of a coordinated effort to limit the size, scope and power of government.
>The regulated part implies a command structure which the National Guard provides.
That's completely wrong. Each of the 1st ten Amendments - The Bill of Rights - enumerates rights of the individual against government power. Its absolutely absurd to argue that the 2nd amendment somehow refers to a government commanded and organized military body and not to the right of citizens to remained armed to prevent the government from getting out of line.
"Well regulated" in it's historical context doesn't mean anything close to what we think of as "regulation" today. The phrase means "functional" or "functioning". E.g. “If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations.”,
or "The equation of time … is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial.”
It could be argued that the 2nd amendment was put in place to ensure a means of the citizenry to overthrow the government (as an absolute check on an unjust government). Unfortunately it's now just a vestige of an older time and the 2nd amendment only serves to protect the rights of gun hobbyists.
The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, and the modern arms such as encryption and freedom from surveillance are not even guaranteed by the 2nd amendment.
I believe he's referring to the Taliban's ability to hold off two modern armies (USSR in the 80s, USA in the 00s) with a much more basic arsenal than either super-power brought to bear.
You can do a lot of damage with IEDs, but you can’t overthrow the government with IEDs.
Look at Turkey. The primary tool was encrypted communications and information dissemination. That’s modern power that citizens should have. Right now power comes from information and the preservation of speech and private communications, not a few handguns and rifles (or IEDs).
When the 2nd amendment was written a gun was relatively way more powerful than it is in today’s world. If you had a group of men with guns you were basically on par with the government military.
>The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military,
You're getting into spherical cow[1] territory if you think the US citizenry couldn't defeat the US military.
The US military will not be fighting the US citizenry in a hypothetical clean room, it'll be fighting in America. Who are you going to bomb, who are you going to strafe, when your opposition can quietly fade into the populace that provides your material?
380 million Americans, 2 million members of the military.
Unless the US were to nuke itself, given the geography, a motivated citizenry could easily take on the US military. Not a scenario I want to imagine, but the US military has troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq — imagine that kind of conflict in the US. Just look at rebels in Syria to see this on a smaller scale.
The 2nd amendment doesn't apply to foreigners. Classifying encryption as a munition meant that I have never truthfully answered all the visa waiver questions on entering the US.
Fischer v Massachussetts[1] (and other cases won by the second amendment foundation) holds that resident aliens are counted amongst "the people" for purposes of second amendment protection (and other rights too!)
Then there may be a de facto restriction against the exercise of such a right by such a person, as one needs to have a permanent address to comply with the laws as they are currently interpreted.
this itar business had a huge chilling effect on the formative years of internet protocol design. public key was available at the time. here were alot of loud voices in ietf clamoring for strong foundational security. The US position made it highly impractical to use, and may have cost us an effective and ubiquitous security/identity model.
Yes, they made some bad choices, and then they corrected them. They also funded the research that created the field. Things can be morally mixed. On balance though, the US military funding for cryptography has been pretty clearly a good thing.
there is no inherent reason that these technologies need to be developed by the military, they could just as well be developed for civilian use when given the funding.
also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations.
That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI
China is currently heavily funding genetically engineering geniuses and AI. The US can either wake up or sit around and wait to be subjugated via an autonomous drone swarm developed by 250IQ Chinese scientists
One thing is acknowledging that if you pour lots of money into getting better at anything (space exploration, waging war, etc) you'll get cool technological advances applicable in other areas.
Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)
I hear you, and I want to make a "times change" argument.
This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years.
1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed.
2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community (if not wholly, then at least nearly so regarding scientific resources), and colonized.
I draw such a sharp line because I don't see how the resources to colonize can be mustered without justifying it with an arms race unless peaceful cooperation is established. Without this, I think somebody is going to put a nuke in orbit around Mars and call themselves King/Queen of the inner solar system.
Therefore, I think we should be working towards the cultural changes that I believe necessary immediately. This is why I'm a staunch proponent of universal education, universal healthcare, gun control, etc. I think there's no better time than the present to "be in the race together" globally than now. Given climate change, death of bees, super-bacterias, and narcissists with penis-size complexes holding fingers over red buttons, I see a ticking clock.
Avoid (1) by tackling culture, is my theory, and I think that's what these googler employees are here. (I post this very much looking forward to being challenged on all points)
I worry that culture doesnt help at the top of leadership.
Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you.
Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial.
I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.
Can you clarify your second line, "Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you." Are you saying that everyone has to do what you say because you pay them? If so, I don't think that point applies to this situation - we're talking Google engineers, they shouldn't be hard pressed to pick up their things and find a job elsewhere that aligns better with their values.
I honestly cling to the hope daily that the internet has changed what people's reactions to power will be in the future. It's the one of the few deep things that's changed.
Globalism == lack of agency, the end of voting and elections.
Universal education == total indoctrination and ideological consistency of the collectivistic variety.
Universal healthcare == the end of individual choice, individual responsibility, all new extensive taxing regimes, the destruction of the individual on many levels.
Gun Control == People control. Then total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force. Which, by the way, has never worked out well for any citizen anywhere.
I think you probably need to study some history before spouting off on HN about your perfect utopia and realize that it's all been attempted in the past with terrible consequences.
> Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed.
If the probability of a kind of disaster is sufficient to blow up Earth, it is likely that the same kind of disaster will blow up all the handful of colonies we can hope to build. At astronomic scale, the speed of light is quite slow.
after removing insulting remarks, ataturk's comments looks like this (which i personally agree with):
Globalism == lack of agency, the end of voting and elections.
Universal education == total indoctrination and ideological consistency of the collectivistic variety.
Universal healthcare == the end of individual choice, individual responsibility, all new extensive taxing regimes, the destruction of the individual on many levels.
Gun Control == People control. Then total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force. Which, by the way, has never worked out well for any citizen anywhere.
Thank you for taking the time to find and share the points. I'd like to rebuke :
>Globalism == lack of agency, end of voting and elections
If federalism didn't lead to this, why would globalism? What even is globalism? I am skeptical of this because "globalism" seems to be used as a catch-all alt-right bogeyman lately.
>universal education == total indoctrination, ideological consistency
Universal access to education doesn't have to mean homogeneous curriculum. It doesn't have to mean lack of education choices. It doesn't even have to mean requirement to receive education.
Another thing I find curious - the very people I find rejecting education "collectivism" are often people who wouldn't blink before forcing their own "indoctrination" upon others. We fight this fight in Texas far too often - should schools teach facts (evolution), or give "fair credence" to falsehoods (intelligent design) because of religion? Woops, out goes falsehoods as soon as the satanists get involved and also flex their constitutional rights, never mind, we'll take evolution!
>universal healthcare == the end of individual choice
I don't see why this has to be true, it isn't in any of the current implementations of universal healthcare.
>end of individual responsibility
Are you presently responsible for your water being clean? Are you presently responsible for the quality of your roadways? Are you presently responsible for the guarantee that your medication contains advertised active ingredients that do as it says on the label?
>Extensive taxing regimes
Shift military funding, close ultra-rich tax loopholes.
>destruction of the individual
Fail to see how this is true. Unsupported by argument.
>gun control == people control
False equivalence.
>then, total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force
Currently working just fine in countries with gun control laws, which, by the way, completely nullifies the false "has never worked out well" absolute you ended with. Furthermore, the USA has right now a monopoly on the use of force. The US and its laws have sovereign control over whether you are allowed to use force or not. You have almost no say in the matter. Furthermore, this isn't 1776. The gap in armament between civilians and a martial state is so large as to be hilarious. Were the need to arise, US combined armed forces could drone strike, Tomahawk, artillery, AC130, or just door to door ground and pound any organized militia to dust. Or, you know, nuke it.
Are you, private US citizen, allowed to build a nuke?
I see this kind of response a lot to "the globalist threat."
What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines? Is there a fear that the "wrong" culture will persist into the future?
Not the author of the dead post, and definitely not a fan of the alt-right, but the term globalism immediately resonated with me when I first heard it:
> What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines?
If we didn't have several superpowers on this planet, but only one unified government instead, what would whistleblowers do? Right now Snowden can fly to Russia, and Chinese dissidents can voice their opinions in the West. In a truly globalized world, there'd be nowhere to run.
We try to maximize competition and avoid monopolies and cartels in our economy. Why should we aim straight for the opposite when it comes to our governments?
Exactly. China just turned dictatorship, and has already installed AI facial recognition and soon voice recognition software for its police. This could allow China to better manage its Uighyr concentration camps and kidnap freedom fighters in Hong Kong. Along with its ambition to have everything 'Made in China' in 2025, and invade Taiwan, China is looking like a AI enhanced Hitler Germany 2.0.
We need weapons to fight an enemy like this, with help from US technology companies.
I am OK with weapons development. What I don't like is that these weapons get turned into big business selling them to unstable regions and in the case of the NSA the technology gets used against its own citizens.
This depiction of China is blown way out of proportion and it's basically thanks to US propaganda which is used to justify the kinds of military spending and activities it undertakes.
You are saying that military R&D is important no matter what they are involved in. This incredibly stupid reasoning can be used to justify the development viruses that can erradicate the human species.
> DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing.
Let's be spesific: they are using current AI algorithms to track everyone's movements from airborn imagery. It will be used to kill people in drone strikes and for population control.
The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them:
$700,000,000,000
Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union:
"We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED."
Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies.
I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think we would be fine with a smaller military. Nobody is talking about completely stopping military expenditures. The question is whether it really needs to be as big as it is right now.
Overturning so many regimes in petrol filled countries is a messy business. I think a big chunk of the spending goes to intelligence and misinformation.
Personally I think a big chunk goes to not well thought out missions like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It seems nobody is willing to admit that there is no path to winning or ending things so they just keep going and spending a lot of money and energy. And the defense contractors are certainly happy with this.
Or how about having to deal with the rapidly ascendant Chinese military that is annexing vast territory in Asia right now? There's nothing they respect except for strength, they're not even subtle about that fact.
Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea.
There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.
The reason we aren't going to war with Russia is because Russian leaders know that it is impossible to win a war against the current US military.
The reason it's impossible to win a war against the current US military is because the US has spent an obscene amount of money building it for decades.
If the US military were not capable of defending Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics would be under Russian rule today.
Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.
If we spent 1 tenth the amount on our military, we'd still have the power to blow up the entire world X times over.
I just think that if you have the ability to destroy the entire world, then that's a powerful enough military and you don't need anything more for defense.
You actually believe that the US would use nuclear weapons against Russia, ensuring the deaths of 10s of millions of Americans and sparking global nuclear war, if Russia invaded Estonia?
The only thing preventing Eastern Europe from being invaded is the conventional military. The US will never risk it's own existence for another country. The Russians know this.
I suspect conventional war is a thing of the past.
Cyber-warfare is going to be where it's at. You spend years infiltrating adversary networks, backdooring critical systems/infrastructure and exfiltrating intelligence so when the time comes for conflict, you already know what cards they're going to play, where all the pieces are on the map and you can shut it all down with a few commands. Then you start your blitzkrieg unopposed.
It's telling Russia, China and North Korea so heavily encourage cyber-espionage and malware development. Meanwhile in the US, we've got idiots passing laws criminalizing mere infosec research. We're handicapping ourselves against a threat our adversaries are all too eager to employ.
India and Pakistan went to war briefly in 1999 and both of them had nuclear weapons at the time (and still do, I think). I wouldn't rule out the possibility of future wars between them.
The Cold War ended in the 90s, not when the Wall came down. Now how would we possibly handle all those T-72s with just M1 Abrams? If anyone still fought conventional wars.
Naming it 'defense' is already a huge stretch. I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.
> I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.
I disagree that "every country" does this. Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries. And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).
(While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.)
I meant that they call their armies/airforces/navies 'defense'.
> Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries.
I wished that were true, but almost all deployments of EU troops over the last 4 decades fall into that category. And there have been a lot of those.
> And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).
Ditto Iraq, Afghanistan.
> While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.
Agreed, they are invasions, and the worst ones are the ones under some kind of pretext.
Spending on its own isn't the only measure. The US is incredibly wasteful with its military spending where other countries with better political systems are more savvy. Plus the US has to invent 80% of the tech in the first place, something that costs 10x what it does to replicate it.
While the US military is wasteful, I don't think you'll find a military that is enormously less wasteful. After all, the largest line item in the DOD budget by far is salaries.
Military funding is used as a slight of hand. The legislature scares the public, the public hands over money, and then the military is used to invest the money in long term goals to build a future technological society that the private sector is wholly unwilling to do because of short term profit focus.
This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe.
The military also funded advances in airplanes, trucks, and medicine, but that doesn't mean that doctors should have no qualms about working on biological weapons.
Also, many people, including myself, consider drone strikes to be state-sponsored terrorism. Just because some part of the military may be justifiable, does not mean all of it is.
It's perfectly possible to remember every technological invention the military has ever been involved in and still object to participation in military research.
Possible reasons, using Wernher von Braun's rocket development as an example:
- He, or somebody else, would have invented rockets anyway at some point
- That 'some point' would have been much earlier if the money spent on military (research & some of the rest) would instead have been put into rockets in the first place
- even if the two mechanisms abovc were not true: I'd probably be willing to forgo the benefits of the space age if it meant undoing WW2 and the Holocaust
- In most ethical frameworks except utilitarianism, it's strongly discourage to accept some evil for some perceived greater good. Meaning: Even if rockets have saved far more lives than WW2 vanquished, participating in the project is morally dubious at best
Specifically to Google's project:
- This seems to actually invert the usual idea of the military funding basic research that later gets adapted for civilian use. They are building on the fundamental research into AI already done by Google and others, and using it very specifically to kill people. Any advances useful for other purposes would seem to be even more coincidental than usual.
- While "minimising collateral damage" i. e. civilian casualties may seem to be a worthy cause, it cannot be ignored that such advances are likely to result in greater use of the technology. Drones are actually the best example of this effect. Just look at the Obama administration's willingness to expand the use of drone strikes, which was a direct result of the technology appearing to be the lesser evil compared to manned missions on the ground.
While that may be the reality of things, it surely can't be a justification in any way. If anything, I'd be afraid to revert back to those dark times where technological advancements were driven mainly by military needs.
have you watched "Good Kill" or maybe even are familiar with the work of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung's research on US military drone program at Ramstein airbase? I guess not, because what you're proposing are further crimes against humanity. If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice.
People also seem to forget that the Google self driving car was initially developed by the team that one the DARPA challenge. Government, especially the military have been funding all the risky tech that Google profits from. Even google itself was funded by a government grant. Google's logo has been on the side of rockets launching spy satellites for years. Google Maps was originally a government contractor. Google the company knows who butters their bread.
What the google employees need to do is push for a civilian government research and science funding effort, like ARPA was back in the day. Unfortunately that sort of funding is politically dead, while military funding is always in style.
Or maybe they remember it perfectly, but don't consider it a valid argument to say, "X supported something you like 40 years ago, therefore X is beyond reproach"?
I strongly disagree with this comparison. In the prior, successful cases, the military funded research which was open, while in this case, the direction of information is reversed and the outcome is secret.
Broken glass fallacy. Just because government and military funded some technology does not mean that technology would not be in an advanced state otherwise. Especially if you consider the countless failures and unnecessary excessive spending that took the resources indirectly from people and inventors. Besides brains that worked for military and government funded projects would perhaps find much better things to work on otherwise.
> This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, [...]
And what do we have to show for it? Wikipedia is great and Youtube is entertaining, but the rest of the internet is horrible. I say that as a software developer.
Due to the wonderful internet our children now have attention spans far below the time a typical class lesson takes. The smartest brains on Earth are not building spaceships or curing disease, but rather implementing systems to get you to click on ads. Our bodies and habits are being tracked, our opinions manipulated, and our privacy is being handed of willingfully for a chat and photo-sharing platform.
Military tech _often_ has implications far beyond what the original scientists and engineers intended. Sometimes for the best. But as you allude AI to the internet, don't forget how much damage the internet is doing to us even as we enjoy it and profit from it.
> Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process.
I'd say it's stupid for people to fuel those "powers" that use real, threatened or imagined conflict with each other to exploit and control mostly them.
> WALLACE: Of course, our, our main concern as human beings, certainly in this part of the world, is to survive, and to stay free, and to realize ourselves. How does all that you've said affect our ability to survive, and to stay free, in this world that is now in crisis?
> FROMM: Well, I think you touch upon a very important point here: namely, we must make a decision of values...If our supreme value is the development of the Western tradition - of a man for whom the highest thing in life is man, for whom love for man, respect for man, and the dignity of man, are supreme values - then we cannot ask the question that says, "if it is better for our survival, might we drop these values?" If these are supreme values, then they are there, and whether we live or we die, we shall not change these values. But if we begin to say, "Well, maybe we can cope better with the Russians if we also transform ourselves into a managed society......if we, as somebody put it the other day, train our soldiers to be like the Turks, who have fought so bravely in Korea...if we are willing to change our whole way of life for the sake of so-called "survival," then I think we do exactly that which threatens our survival. Because our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces. I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing.
Generally, whenever I hear people talk about inevitability, while ignoring how much of our world "is" because of the things we repeatedly decide to do, I have to think of Richard Stallman:
> Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.
As for China and how we must not allow a mineshaft gap, there's this Chinese proverb:
> He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.
If you don't have corpses in your basement, there's a lot of people scared shitless of you, and they'd love nothing more than for you to get onboard. Don't get onboard.
This idea of justifying military buildup by it's beneficial trickle down into civilian technology always struck me as very odd. It seems like an absurdly inefficient and roundabout way of funding R&D. If the government wants to invest in research they should just invest in research.
Whilst agreeing in part, the history of martially-motivated technical development through all of human history is remarkable. I'd argue it's been a vastly greater influence than so-called market motivations.
As an evolutionary selective pressure, war and military necessity are unparalleled.
Re-reading Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War, I noticed that he mentions, in 1963, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, which had only begun delivering volumes (the work remains in progress). That would include not only metalurgy, but entire volumes devoted to both martial and marine technologies.
yes but the weapon systems may be sold or transferred to some countries like Israel/Saudi Arabia eventually.. how would you view their use on protesters or civilians by them or would their be international laws that would prevent such use ?
As Carl Jung might say, just because a thing has base origins, it doesn't mean that it has to be a base thing. Google should not shrug and say "from violence we came to violence we will return." I'm moved by the people speaking out, as much as I am disappointed to hear of Mr. Schmidt's involvement with the Pentagon.
They cost a great deal of R&D budget for their role in the development IT technology, and the larger part of development came from non military research, from academia and companies like Bell Labs.
The Google workers urging their CEO to pull out of Pentagon projects are the ones who do not have such short memories as to be distracted from the blatant deceptions and disasters carried out in recent history, with no sign of relenting.
This has been by far one of the most shameful things Google has done.
And their excuse that "they're only analyzing images" is a joke. Analyzing the images and "identifying objects" (their words) is probably 95-99% of the job in a drone strike. So if they're trying to make people think that their role is minimal in drone strikes, they're failing hard at that.
I also think Eric Schimidt, who until last December was both Alphabet Chairman and working for the Pentagon, played a big role in this. Now he's still a "technical advisor" but if he continues working for the Pentagon I'd prefer he has no official affiliation with Alphabet.
It seems Schmidt would like Google/Alphabet and Pentagon to have a much deeper relationship, if you can read between the lines in this post:
Slightly more nuanced. I think there is a clear difference between, say, selling food to the military (the service you provide generally allows the military to run better and the military is frequently responsible for killing people) versus selling bullets to the military (the service you provide allows the military to kill people).
Weapons-targeting systems clearly falls into the latter category. I've worked on military-funded projects for machine translation and I don't feel guilty about that. I would not work on projects (military-funded or otherwise) that were used for targeting. I think that my position is internally-consistent.
Fair points. I think I agree with you that there is a distinction to be made between say, selling food and making bullets - the latter being a direct tool of violence.
Its perfectly reasonable for a person to decide they would rather not spend their short time on earth developing such tools (especially if it would be easy for bad actors to abuse them). I suppose that is the objection many Googlers are making.
IMHO, it's a specific problem of our drone program. It's being used often for a civilian agency (the CIA) to use military hardware to conduct assassinations of various individuals overseas in countries we are not even at war with.
And then there's the fact that we've killed hundreds of children with it. It's hard not to view everyone involved with the program as guilty of war crimes.
I don't have a problem with our military in a general sense, or even the idea of using drones to keep our pilots out of harm's way.
So, honest question, what's worse, helping the military be more accurate in who they attack, or abstaining and perhaps there are more mistakes, and/or collateral damage as they choose the best times/locations to strike that they can find, not the best that could be found. On the one hand, your involvement might help limit "innocent" deaths. On the other, a more effective system might see more use, so more people overall might be killed (and it might lead to more "innocent" deaths than otherwise, even if they are a reduced percentage of the total). Additionally, there's no guarantee that other actors are not developing the same technology, and it could either be obtained by the government through them, or used against the government and its citizens by them, reducing overall safety.
Take, for example, RADAR. Should those that developed RADAR, during or just prior to WWII, and abstained because of its possible wartime use? Wikipedia says "In the 1934–1939 period, eight nations developed independently, and in great secrecy, systems of this type"[1], so those that were left out faced a real danger in the coming years if they didn't have something to compete. Yet, RADAR has been used to great effect in many weapon systems and by many countries since WWII in ways that that most would agree are horrible. Then again, it's made commercial air travel much safer than we could have hoped to achieve at this scale without RADAR.
It's a complex situation, and I think it deserves a complex discussion. Distilling it to "working with the government is bad because I don't like what the government is doing" doesn't really do it justice.
Research for the military isn't the issue here, it's Google's changing agenda.
If the DoD or Raytheon or Weapons Systems Startup LLC hired someone to develop a better system for analyzing drone images, I don't believe that person would be complaining that their work was being used for war -- that's exactly what they signed up for.
The problem here is that Google sold their engineers on "Don't Be Evil" and libertarianism and "we're a sweet little tech company that people like" and is now delivering military contracts.
Engineers have a right to complain, and to attempt to steer the company, and to leave if they don't like where it's going. I'm more referencing the parent comment that calls Google out as shameful. Not all military work is shameful, and some that is viewed one way initially might be viewed otherwise over time as future uses are found for the fruits of that labor.
> The problem here is that Google sold their engineers on "Don't Be Evil" and libertarianism and "we're a sweet little tech company that people like" and is now delivering military contracts.
And they specifically dropped that when they changed to Alphabet, so the writing was on the wall for people to see. That said, I still think the immediate jump to military work == shameful is far too broad a brush to paint with. What if a contract was for better field medical kits? That's still going to help any military engagement for one side, but does keeping one side's soldiers in better health so they can kill more the other side make it okay? What about future public uses of the technology?
The world isn't that simple, and people acting like it is just so they have an easy target for their anger doesn't really help anything other than to make that person feel a little better about themselves for a little while.
> The problem here is that Google sold their engineers on "Don't Be Evil" and libertarianism and "we're a sweet little tech company that people like" and is now delivering military contracts.
I'm not sure I ever felt Google was libertarian but maybe I just don't understand what that means?
Your comment makes me think this might be a strange viewpoint, but I don't consider "don't be evil" and military contracts to be mutually exclusive. I consider the military to be necessary. Perhaps one day we can live in a world where it won't be, but we are very far from that now, and given we can't even stop people within our own country from killing one another, I don't believe we will be able to stop other countries from invading us if they have nothing to deter them.
Do you consider the people who join the military to also be evil?
So, war is still going to be a thing regardless of what position Google takes. Would you rather have less concerned engineers delivering a subpar product? Suppose because the technology is not as good, it misidentifies innocent civilians as targets. Is it "shameful" for Google to develop this software, or to cover their eyes and pretend this isn't happening to avoid bad PR?
As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about not furthering the goals of our military.
After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ultimate sacrifice that my grandparents generation gave to create this quite nifty Liberty bubble that these few generations get to play in.
That's a fair point but it also treats life as a zero sum game that's played in a steady-state arena where the threat of Tartars over the next hill is ever present. That's a good way to prevent progress and to defend yourself perfectly against the Last War but one would think the last 30 years of terrorism would have shown us the flaw in that.
Put another way: who benefits from $Giant_New_Military_Platform like new fighter planes? They don't really keep me safe as a citizen of the US: they don't prevent terrorists and they don't threaten other thermonuclear states. Yet we spend trillions on stuff like this any justify it with bellicose rhetoric and it seems like the only people benefiting from it are people selling it.
Yet we spend trillions on stuff like this any justify it with bellicose rhetoric and it seems like the only people benefiting from it are people selling it.
And the people who work at those military/government contractors. In some sense, military spending is a job-work program that transfers funds from the public coffers to citizens. That it's for useless tech means it has attributes of an entitlement. That it's called military spending and has bellicose rhetoric is part of making that entitlement palpable to citizens it wouldn't be otherwise.
Please realize that all state militaries are coevolving together and competing in an on-going global tournament for dominance at all times whether there is an official war or not, that a weakness in one area will be weaponized by a competitor (e.g. our military weakness in preventing Russian disinformation leading to a political upset), that we must continually improve, enhance, and expand our capabilities just to maintain our status quo, and that it is essential to perform well in this competitive environment just to be able to buy items from Walmart, get 15% off your car insurance, drink your Starbucks latte, and carry a placard at the local activist rally.
There are indeed warlords just over the hill, and they have names like Entropy and Resource Availability.
People immediately want to paint these truths as only products of fear.
Yes, fear is a large part of it. But it takes courage to fight against that fear and be responsible for the future of your people (whomever they are). Pretending that there is no evil in the world is cowardice.
The Tartars are over the hills. Democracy is in decline. Authoritarianism is on the mega-rise. The state of democracy is bad and looking worse, and if the Brexit/Trump trend of destroying the EU and breaking up the Atlantic Alliance bear just a bit more fruit, you may find that these "Tartars" are a lot closer to you than you once believed.
You call me blind to the future by looking at the past, but quite frankly, you appear to be repeating the mistakes of the past by not learning from them.
Democracy was not "won". Liberty for all does not exist.
The EU under its unelected President and unaccountable unelected lawmakers (the EU parliament can't propose laws) with a constitution that would be thrown out anywhere else (and never put to the electorate as a whole) is doing a pretty good job of destroying itself never mind the rats deserting the sinking ship.
It's not obvious to me that democracy is in decline, or authoritarianism on the rise.
Over what time-frame? Do you have supporting data you can point me to ("In the past 10 years, more countries have switched from democratic to non-democratic government than vice versa")?
You’d probably be interested in the book “How democracies die” by two Harvard political scientists. They walk through the warning signs of a failing democracy and how many others have collapsed - and the answer is actually yes, there are plenty of warning signs that American democracy in particular is in trouble.
Some of the evidence they walk through: the collapse of political norms, political restraint and the rise of win at all costs brinksmanship, the delegitimization and dehumanization of political rivals, attacks against independent institutions and neutral arbiters, and much more.
For many, the current actions of our military weigh much more heavily than good things it did half a century or more ago. Of course, each person's morality is their own, so you may feel that working in favor of the military is justified by its past actions. For others, they see working for the military as enabling bad present and future actions, and therefore see it as immoral to offer support.
The US military in fact defended Stalin's military in resettling Germans who were pushed by Nazi Germany to settle Eastern Europe - of course the initial settlement wasn't legitimate either, but somewhere between half a million and two million Germans died in the resettlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
Before Stalin died, he believed that a conflict with the US was imminent. There was blatantly a hot war brewing between the US and the USSR along the borders of the West/East divide in Europe.
The comment's grandparent could have just as well been defending Western Europe from Stalin's USSR territorial lust. They didn't stop moving west just to be polite.
That vast military stand-off, which became the cold war, was a military conflict. The US deployed over three million soldiers to Europe in the 1950s almost entirely to stop the USSR from advancing any further.
Our industry was literally born from the Cold War, yet now everyone wants to pretend it didn't exist. The Cold War was not just rhetoric and flag-waving. Even outside of Korea/Vietnam/Afghanistan there was continual military activity and those engaged in it took it as seriously as if the world could end.
The USSR's "territorial lust" was aided and abetted by FDR and Churchill and guaranteed by their militaries. They divvied up Europe into spheres of influence at Yalta, and the US and UK were perfectly happy to gift Stalin Eastern Europe to further their own geopolitical objectives.
I'm by no means equating the three, but it's ahistorical to present the American military as an idealistic organization that exists to battle evil. Hell, Mao killed more Soviet soldiers than the USA ever did.
Honestly, would you have done things differently, if you were Churchill or FDR?
In the 20th century we had already gone through a war so terrible it was called the war to end all wars, until 20 years later when we made it look small by comparison. The deaths in WW2 accounted for 3% of the entire population of the world. And we hadn't even invented the atomic bomb until the very end.
After WW2 we were on the precipice of the next war potentially eliminating the human race. I can see why we were reluctant to jump into it all over again by "battling evil" and forcing Russia to give back the territory they took from Germany.
Their choice was entirely reasonable. War is rarely the right answer.
It's just kind of silly to portray the American military as "standing up to Stalin" because Americans are taught Stalin equals evil and America equals good and ipso facto America must have stood up to Stalin.
I think the west did a pretty good job of standing up to Stalin as much as they could without actually igniting WW3. The cold war ended without any direct conflict between belligerents after all, and the soviet union fell.
That is, if you take as a constraint that you don't actually want to start an all-out war, the post-WW2 west stood up to Stalin in probably the best way it possibly could have.
Moreover, the Red Army did the majority of the 'heavy lifting' in Europe during WW2. There are some pretty striking political cartoon from Dr. Seuss about this, depicting the US and Britain traveling in comfort to Germany, while the USSR carries all of their luggage.
Without UK/US, all of Europe would have been in the USSR
It's extremely glib to point out that the Nazi's lost to the Russian winter (let's be frank, Russian weather did more to the Nazi's than Russian soldiers ever could...) without recognizing that:
- Hitler's strategy that lost in Russia was completely predicated on the knowledge of the Western Front. No UK/USA, we may not have had Hitler losing in Russia.
- The USSR would have taken all of Europe had it not been for the USA liberating France and meeting the USSR in Berlin.
Easy to say Russians did the heavy lifting when the truth is that Hitler fucked it all up.
Easy to say that Russians did the work, when the truth is that the reason why France and UK aren't post-communist bloc countries is because of what Americans did.
I'm not trying to be glib. In America the Soviet contribution to killing the Nazis is almost entirely written out of mandatory education so I think it's often relevant in American-heavy discussions to point it out.
Also, I recall hearing a talk about how one of the effects of post-WW2 soviet communism on western/northern europe was the creation of lots of social welfare programs. (Sadly I'm not in a place where I can source this but I could have sworn it was a talk by Michael Parenti.) The reason I bring this up is because I think it's disingenuous to claim that if it hadn't been for Britain and the US that France would today resemble the Balkans or Ukraine. What we typically associate with "post-communist bloc" countries happened far later when the USSR fell apart. It's a big jump to say that places like Britain would have become part of then suffered under Soviet Communism.
In the past, I have actually about the historical education of several people who went to school between 1985-2009 and no one I've met has had any education of history past reconstruction covered in primary & secondary education (outside of Civil Rights-era, which is independently covered).
Even if you are one of the ~1% of APAM students it's spoken about in broad terms and hazy generalities after Teapot Dome (unless you count history of Baseball, which somehow is somewhat inexplicably regarded as a critical component of America history).
I find this interesting because many Americans broadly understand the succession of events leading up to and constituting WWII. On the other hand, the topics that are covered to death are barely recalled: The Revolutionary War? Washington fought that one. Civil War? Harper's Ferry & Manassas? 1812? "The time we fought the Canadians".
I don't think it's useful to refer to a military without also including its leaders. The military that fought against Hitler and Stalin and Mao isn't the same military that invades countries and topples governments under false pretenses.
How so? Eisenhower finished the WW2, and then went on to topple the government of Iran and restore the Shah. Plus he gave bombers and napalm to help the French keep their colonies in Indochina.
yes your freedom wouldn’t be here if we weren’t drone bombing weddings of goat farmers in yemen (the poorest people in the world). Or maybe if we weren’t setting civilians on fire in laos or cambodia or bombing pharmaceutical factories in Sudan. Where would our freedom be without that?
you already lost this game when you had to go back to ww2 for a just war.
World War II wasn't just, either. It's simply that the Allies were less evil than the Axis. The Allies literally included Stalin. The US placed an ethnic minority of its own people in concentration camps despite zero evidence that these people were going to help an enemy country. And so forth.
Without defending the morality of the Hitler/Stalin/Mao governments (or of the US government), it's very much worth noting that scientific researched flourished in the USSR and technological research continues to flourish in China. A lot of discoveries in computer science had roughly simultaneous Soviet / US discovery (the Cook-Levin theorem is a good example). There are a huge number of technology companies in China, and all your chips come from there anyway.
So if your goal is "I should further the goals of a military because it provides room for the sort of work I enjoy" and not "I should further the goals of a military because the military does good things," it is not at all clear that backing the US military over those of the USSR and China is the right option.
It is also worth remembering that plenty of people the US killed could have had grandchildren who wanted to work in these same fields.
haha, USSR research flourished? Do you mean how the USSR crushed any research into computing because it contradicted their ideology? And "Chinese chips" are all foreign designs.
I'm sure Soviet times joke that "our microschemes are biggest!" came out of nowhere.. I wonder why all the consumer tech in USSR was so backwards if research was so flourishing :)
> worth noting that scientific researched flourished in the USSR
You seem to be talking about two totally different things. The grandparent did not talk about scientific advancement. He also wasn't talking about the USSR's military, he was specifically talking about the US's. The US, you may be surprised to discover, pursued, and continues to pursue, a
political agenda quite different than that of the USSR.
> "I should further the goals of a military because it provides room for the sort of work I enjoy"
He didn't say that at all. He said specifically 'create this quite nifty Liberty bubble', which is not the same thing.
There was definitely a reference to scientific advancement: "As an engineer ... After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist ... this quite nifty Liberty bubble that these few generations get to play in."
That is why I interpreted the "quite nifty Liberty bubble" as referring to the ability to participate in technical / scientific endeavors - the "freedom I have to do this work" - not about liberty in the abstract.
('criley2, if I'm misreading you, please let me know.)
No. The West since 1950 has done FAR MORE scientific research than the USSR did. Soviet scientists did good work and were smart. But the Western Enlightenment model -- open communication, tolerance of dissenting voices, pursuit of truth and rejection of propaganda, and funding for basic science -- was a huge shining scientific success over the past century. Its success dwarfed that of other models. (Today the biggest threat to that model is propaganda - largely from wealthy oligarchs pursuing maximal wealth, both Russian oligarchs and Western oligarchs like the Koches and Murdoch.)
There's a reason to be proud of Western enlightenment values, which are closely connected to Western liberal democracy.
I don't know that the causal link between the West's scientific output and the West's enlightenment values is that clear. It's certainly correlated.
But the reason the US was able to do so much fundamental research in the 20th century is not (just) because the US culturally valued fundamental research - it's because the US was able to get popular support for taxing people and spending it on the war effort (both the World Wars and the Cold War) and decided that fundamental research was necessary for the war effort.
The politicians today who are cutting NASA's budget, talking about shutting down DoE, etc. aren't simply victims of Koch propaganda or disbelievers in the enlightenment - they just no longer have political cover for publicly funding research to the same extent that it was funded previously. Nobody believes that the US is at a technical disadvantage against the people we're currently at war against. They still have the political cover to fund the military itself, which continues to get large amounts of funding from political parties that generally want to lower taxes, but that base won't let them fund basic research as much as it did in the past.
>But the reason the US was able to do so much fundamental research in the 20th century is not (just) because the US culturally valued fundamental research - it's because the US was able to get popular support for taxing people and spending it on the war effort (both the World Wars and the Cold War) and decided that fundamental research was necessary for the war effort.
Are you implying that the USSR spent a smaller percentage of tax revenue on the war effort?
The US NIH has a $30B budget to do research on cancer and human disease. Most of that is about helping people and has zero connection to the military.
---
Edit: also, the movement to close down DoE and cut NASAs budget certainly WAS created by American oligarchs like the Koches. They have created a propaganda machine to push for tax cuts for the rich. And part of the propaganda, pushed by outlets funded or controlled by GOP billionaires, like Fox, Limbaugh, Cato(founded as Koch), Sinclair, Heritage, SPN, Cit U, Jud Watch, Bradley, Searle, etc etc. is that we need to shrink government (so we can cut taxes on the rich.)
One description of that strategy is here [1]
Today’s Republican Party is the party that those activists made. Congressional Republicans who came up in the populist tax revolts of the 1970s abandoned the old party orthodoxy of balanced budgets and rebranded themselves as the tax-cutting party. They embraced the idea that deficits don’t matter as long as those deficits result from Republican tax cuts.
Stalin's favorite scientist was Trofim Lysenko, to whom he gave an enormous amount of power to direct research in the USSR. And Lysenko was pretty ruthless in using that power to suppress science he didn't like, esp with regards to genetics and evolution. He set back Soviet science by decades. And Mao repeated his mistakes: Lysenko's literal bad seeds contributed to the famine of the Great Leap Forward.
> There are a huge number of technology companies in China, and all your chips come from there anyway.
The vast majority of chips produced in Asia come from Taiwan, not the RoC. That’s a big difference, given that this discussion is about the innovation of democratic vs. autocratic governments, and the Taiwanese and Chinese governments are on completely opposite sides of that spectrum.
I’m not saying that Taiwan innovates more than a China because it has a democratic government, but it’s at least worth distinguishing between the two countries.
You would be here. Your job would be the same. In fact, it would be hard to tell the difference. With all due respect, the 'ultimate sacrifices' might have been given, but many believe, including those that survived the horrors of war, that it was never to safeguard you, but rather a feast for those that prey on volatility.
That’s not a safe assumption. The US was awfully busy fighting the Japanese. Had they stayed out of Europe, Hitler would certainly have defeated Britain (leaving Africa unprotected) and likely had the resources spare to defeat the USSR too. From there Hitler could support the Japanese against the US and would have massive resources to do so.
Hitler’s plan really was world domination. He had plans for a rocket-powered trans-Atlantic plane to bomb New York. Not to mention that the Nazis had the V2 and even a jet fighter by the end of the war (but too few resources to build/deploy them). With more resources the Nazis may well have developed their nuclear bomb.
It's not at all certain that Hitler would have defeated Britain if the US had stayed out of Europe.
As far as I know, most historians agree that the US hastened the Allies victory over Germany but the Allies would have (eventually, probably) won anyways.
I was born and raised in Normandy, and saw the dire sacrifice a generation had to make. On my way to school, I could see the bullet holes in the walls, the tombstones of nameless soldiers, the bombs and mines we had to defuse in the fields.
What our grandfathers did was noble. What we do now is the business of war. I find it diminishing to compare what they did to what Google does now.
I completely agree with this. Trying to compare WWII to the actions of the modern military is absurd.
How can you possibly compare it with overthrowing governments in South America and the Middle East, Vietnam, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, drone strikes on hospitals, up to 200k civilians dead in Iraq, and much more - and of coursr the deeply, deeply questionable motives of all of these.
The actions of our ancestors in WWII were borne out of necessity - those of the modern military are driven by money, greed, propaganda and political point-scoring.
>drone strikes on hospitals, up to 200k civilians dead in Iraq
You are looking at allied actions in WWII through rose colored glasses if you think that's worse.
Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Berlin, Saint-Nazair... the allies engaged in total war.
Civillians are part of the war making capability of a nation, and in WWII all sides considered them to be valid targets.
In Saint-Nazair's case it wasn't even enemy civillians. The German U-boat port was too heavily fortified, so the British wiped out the occupied French town that fed it.
I'd add Nanking, London, Warsaw, Auschwitz, Amsterdam, and Bataan to your list, and that's off the top of my head.
The British, U.S., USSR, Germans, Japanese, and Italians all practiced atrocities and mass warfare and/or genocide against civilian populations. I'm not challenging the credibility of your list, only the one-sidedness.
You made your point: war is dirty. But that was not my claim either.
If we want to defend the necessity and impact of those weapons, they should be taken in the context of modern american and NATO warfare, not in the context of WW2. Normandy 1944 was a very different conflict than Libya 2011 for instance.
They didn't step up to Stalin and Mao. Hitler was because of alliance with Britain and the Japanese attack, not because of how awful the Nazis regime was. The US for the most part didn't want to get dragged back into another European conflict. Hitler was bad, yes. But what happened in Germany was rooted in the outcome of WW1, which was rooted in all the alliances and what not proceeding it, which was rooting in yet prior conflicts. A lot of which had to do with the colonial powers fighting over how to divide up the world, or because of religious differences.
A pacifist might say Hitler, Stalin and Mao are just symptoms of the deeper problem, which is the willingness of human beings to engage in violent conflicts just because somebody tells them to.
Why was the US an ally of GB/France/etc and not Germany/Italy? Contrary to your belief, greed can be ideological -- striving for global free trade is an example of this.
It took 2 years for a country that values personal freedoms and international free trade/security to decide that the Axis powers winning the war would be bad for both.
Also, the US formally joined the war in 1941, but were providing material support to the Allies and otherwise prepping before then.
The US was always on the allied side, through funding and supplies. The whole reason the Lusitania was sunk was because the US was sending arms to support the Allied war effort, even if it wasn't officially declared. Even if it wasn't until Pearl Harbor that the US joined the war officially, there is little doubt what side Roosevelt and much of the American people wanted to win.
The US in the early 20th century had a very strong non-interventionist policy, at least vis-a-vis Europe (Latin America was a different story). The general standpoint was "we don't want to get involved with whatever mess is going on in Europe." Note that this strain was so strong that one Congresswoman actually refused to vote for war even after Pearl Harbor.
However, by 1940, it was very clear that the US was going to get dragged in anyways, and it would serve the US interests first to start preparing for war before it starts (note that the draft was instituted over a year before Pearl Harbor). Moreover, the US was neutral only in name: various acts passed more or less saying that the US would give aid to anybody so long as they were British or French. (Originally, it was cash-and-carry, but when Britain exhausted its cash reserves, it became Lend-Lease instead).
A correction to your otherwise correct comment: Lend-Lease was extended to the Soviets as well (and perhaps equally if not much larger than to the Franco-British military).
Lend-lease was the last of the neutrality gimmicks, and was the first one that really applied to the Soviets--mere weeks before the US entered the war proper and lend-lease became the vehicle for general military and logistical aid to all Allies.
Well you asked why wasn't the US allied to Germany in the war. Asking that makes it sound like you weren't aware that Germany declared war on the US, because that's a pretty obvious reason for the US not to be allied to Germany.
The US was allied with the "Allies" before the US become formally involved in the war. They were already providing material aid to Britain/France before Pearl Harbor / war declared by Germany. I'm definitely not the one who is "unaware" of the key details in this discussion.
The US provided support to the side they ideologically agreed with -- it wasn't just a case of "Germany randomly declares war on the US".
Well, certainly, the Roosevelt Administration was, but they were (prior to Pearl Harbor) also forced to maintain an outward pretense of neutrality while backing the Allies, because a large part of the rest of the US was also motivated by ideology...to either be sympathetic to the Axis Powers (one large, well-bankrolled faction) or to be opposed to intervention (another large, well-bankrolled faction, that often worked together with the preceding one against any interventionist policy.)
I'll admit I was modifying what I would have said IRL for this medium. You are absolutely right: one of the most brilliant victories of so-called "neoliberal" capitalism is how it's utterly convinced people that it represents human nature. That it's not ideological. What I meant by my comment was that "saving the world from the evil of global Fascism" was a post-hoc rationalization, not what motivated America to join the war years after it had begun.
I'd like to be clear that I know and love that the soldiers and everyone else who fought fascism did so to defeat fascism: it's very possible that I wouldn't be commenting today had your grandfather not made that decision. That's not what i meant to imply here.
EDIT: To make clear what I meant, re: your comment: the state-building narrative the US has adopted substitutes the righteous struggle of people like your grandfather in order to avoid acknowledging, among many things, the reluctance to participate in world affairs and the frankly brazen pro-Nazi stances of many in the american public and the government at the time.
Of course they did. It wasn't always open warfare nor does it have to be. The simple fact that the United States and her allies had a large capable military fixed a line on the map that held for 50 years until the Soviet block self-destructed. As for Mao, I'm pretty sure that having the US as a buddy kept Taiwan free as well as secured South Korea and provided a lot of security to Japan and the Philippines. The UK did the same for Hong Kong.
It's not correct to say that we have to attack a country/dictator in order to stand up to them.
Oh, the US didn't meet the USSR in Berlin, stop the westward movement of the Soviet advance, saving dozens of countries from communism?
My bad, I totally forgot that the Cold War never happened and that the soldiers of WW2 didn't form a hard border in Berlin that they were not friendly over.
As far as I know, no? The US was quite far from Berlin by the end of the war, and did not engage the USSR in battle for territorial control of Germany.
> saving dozens of countries from communism?
Surely not "dozens", but was there even one? The other Allies essentially handed Poland over to Stalin.
>> the US didn't meet the USSR in Berlin
>As far as I know, no? The US was quite far from Berlin by the end of the war, and did not engage the USSR in battle for territorial control of Germany.
I believe GP was referring to a few years later, when the Berlin airlift broke the Soviet blockade of West Berlin - a clear attempt by the Soviet Union to expand their spehere of control to West Berlin and eventually West Germany as a whole.
But they did tho. At least to Stalin. Had they not, all of Europe would now be Soviet Union. This is also why Japan was nuked — to ensure compliance, and create better leverage in negotiations. Otherwise the red army could just continue as far as it wished to go and take over the rest of Europe.
I would strongly argue that the motivation for nukeing Japan was not to give the Soviets an impression but to ensure that American troops didn't have to land on hostile beaches on the Japanese mainland. The decision was mainly made to save American lives by forcing a Japanese surrender
The Emperor was weeks away from capitulating on his own, and Soviets were invading the place already. Nuking Japan was mostly to tell Stalin he can’t win. Japan capitulating sooner was a nice side effect.
There's a depressingly large number of authors who say that, but the Japanese islands have little in the way of natural resources except farmland and a good climate for growing things.
The whole reason Japan started their program of military expansion in the first place was to guarantee access to natural resource, e.g., petroleum, needed by their industry.
By 1943 Japan was facing chronic shortages of petroleum products, rubber and other essential supplies because of interdiction by the US Navy's "Silent Service" (submarine force). And that was before Japan lost most of her navy, most of her large transport ships (by 1945 Japan was reduced to using mostly small wooden transport ships) the Phillipines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa (which while in Japanese hands could be used to operate aircraft to give Japanese shipping some protection from the US Navy).
It is unlikely that Japan could have done much more than feed itself after 1945.
And yet, had all of the engineers in the US refused to participate in military work, guess who'd be running the world right now just the same? The world actually exists and the choices people make in it have real consequences. Not participating in military technology is an unbelievably childish option. If you are at all serious about the ethics of this, you have to choose to support the entity you trust the most. For me, that's the US. Feel free to make your own choices, though.
Nobody stood up to Stalin and Mao. Cherry picking the good stuff doesn’t make the bad stuff acceptable. Carpet bombing of civilians in German cities for example - an act of zero military value.
The takeaway from WWII is not that the military is a wonderful thing but that the UN is a wonderful thing.
The only thing the UN has shown is how utterly weak it is. It's ability to force compliance is limited to those members willingness to do so. It's just another puppet of the superpowers.
> The takeaway from WWII is not that the military is a wonderful thing but that the UN is a wonderful thing.
The same UN that causes Cholera outbreaks, protects rapists (as long as they wear blue helmets), and steps aside to allow massive genocides to occur on a not-irregular basis ( Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, South Sudan for starters).
Or are you talking about the UN that funded the Oil for Food program so a bunch of super-elite rich people could get kickbacks from an evil dicatator?
Maybe it's the UN that has stood by for decades while more and more dictators and legitimately horrible people acquire and use WMDs (Libya, Syria, North Korea, and on and on)...
Seriously, how much good has the UN actually done that wasn't backedstopped by a US Super Carrier or two?
your grandfather was probably considered by leadership to be just as disposable as every other low-income male in the population at that time... he's lucky that he didn't die in the trenches. you are, too. war is power and money.
glowing historical illusions of "responsibility" and "valor" don't protect us from nuclear holocaust.
One of the bigger issues I have with this that Google is only doing this kind of work for the US military, which for me as a non-US Googler makes me a bit uncomfortable. Because some relatives have been fighting the US military not even that long ago.
I understand this perspective, but I think it oversimplifies the reality of why we (the US) go to war. I am a veteran of the war in Iraq, a conflict that could be reduced to a one-line "defend our way of life" sound bite if you are willing to ignore everything else that happened. I do not want my children to use my involvement in that conflict to remove their responsibility to make hard ethical choices.
That these Google engineers support a global surveillance network that stalks and spies on everyone while taking a moral stances against military projects is truly laughable.
Keeping "free" nations safe and prosperous is as fine a goal as any.
You should understand that building basically anything will further the goal of some military over another.
Technology is neutral - who it's used by and how is not.
I don't care what you build, if it has the goal of improving a workflow or automating a process then it will de-facto support one organization over another.
Exactly right. Somehow people keep explaining high salaries of FANG in terms of cities/area in US. Truth is more likely that these companies have immense market cap and profitability and being helmed by first generation liberal entrepreneurs they are happy with sharing benefits.
IBM, Cisco or any other typical IT company pays 120-150K salaries in bay area and not much of profit sharing/ equity.
FANGs defeat themselves by putting themselves in COL areas that are really high thus reducing their relative compensation to 1/3 or less, even with all that stock. That's pretty easy for govt to beat.
As opposed to the col in the areas the government is in? Don't forget the limits of civil service pay oh and regular sequesters and budget cuts and reductions in the value of DB pensions.
It barely matters. If you won't do it, someone else will happily step in to earn that paycheck. I have fought against the MIC my whole life and have been extremely careful about what kind of work I take on. It hasn't made a bit of difference. Ethics are dead.
The total state is likely our future whether we like it or not.
These smug generalizations, if you did not vote for X, you are racist! If you are not for A, you are for Genocide!
are not going to win you over people that are not already in your camp.
That's fair enough but you have to decide if your cool with that and resign if you have moral beliefs that run counter to your employers
You come across as wanting that sweet sv $ and benefits without having to make any moral choices - if you got to work for CNI company's you know what the deal is.
And before you ask yes I did face that at my first job when I analysed some high speed film from one experiment and though oh I know what that "objct" is and my office mates said yes that's probably REDACTED.
I disagree strongly. Employees are a stakeholder in the company, and if they can band together to enact change on the companies goals for a moral purpose, then that is an option as well.
If their efforts fails, they can choose to resign, or take other actions as employees in history have. It's not the only option, it may be the only option ultimately that succeeds in removing yourself from complicity.
I don't agree with this. Many open source projects have been used for sinister means (not just by governments). But does that make those contributors complicit? Should those contributors be safe-guarding against all possible unintended use cases?
It seems like you're painting all military efforts and funding in evil terms. But these efforts are directed by many different people, each with their own goals and agendas. Some of those efforts are intended for the betterment of humanity, while other efforts are at the detriment of humanity (at least in my opinion).
I worked for several years at a large defense contractor. The majority of our funding came from military contracts. I worked on a project intended to help detect and disarm explosive devices. And I worked next to a team that was trying to rapidly detect infectious diseases. We all thought we were doing work that would benefit society. But virtually any technology can be used for malicious purposes. Does that make us complicit if those technologies are ever used in malicious ways? Do the evil actions of some people in an organization make the entire organization evil? Does that mean that all military efforts are unjust?
> Does that make us complicit if those technologies are ever used in malicious ways?
Yes. If you choose to work for an entity you help further their work. Militaries are made for war and by contributing to a military, you directly help them commit atrocities. Working for a military is simply war profiteering [1].
> Do the evil actions of some people in an organization make the entire organization evil?
Yes, if you voluntarily join an organization knowing they have evil people doing evil things.
> Does that mean that all military efforts are unjust?
Yes, with probably the only exception being a defensive war.
By using this "logic" you draw a very blurry line, that wont lead to any decision making, just arguing over who is most evil.
I can now assume that miners and forgery workers are complicit in murder because they harvest and refine the metals that build weapons. And that farmers are complicit because they produce the food that is used in military rations, the wool or cotton that is used to make their uniforms.
Google is a huge company, turning down big money from the US Gov't for legal purposes is probably not a realistic option (at what point would shareholders sue if they turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue?)
A petition by 3000 employees (or, to be honest, 30) is enough to claim that it was in the company's interest to forgo this revenue to improve their standing among potential hires. Remember that tech companies live and die by the quality of their workforce.
Moreover, the idea that companies always have to act according to strict profit motivations is a myth. Just look at the billions corporations spend each year on charitable causes.
Yes, you could claim that these donations are done for PR purposes. But that would render your argument meaningless, because I can reframe any such altruistic actions in terms of PR. I have also personally witnessed many decisions that cost money but served some greater good and were never publicised.
It's a law in Delaware, only. It is almost never litigated. You haven't addressed my point that any altruistic motive can be reframed as marketing and that therefore the law is largely meaningless.
While I appreciate the engineers speaking out, it isn't really practical for a company the size of Google, with the resources it has, to not have programs that work with the military in one form or another.
If, as an engineer, it is against your moral code to do any work that supports the military, your choices are limited to working in small companies where everyone is focused on the commercial products and services you are delivering. And even then, as some games companies found out, the CEO might do some collaborative work with the military for training or something.
It should come as no surprise that Google teams up with the Federal government on things.
> While I appreciate the engineers speaking out, it isn't really practical for a company the size of Google, with the resources it has, to not have programs that work with the military in one form or another.
This is nonsense, Google has plenty of revenue and other non-defense avenues for growth.
Companies are not beholden to chase every last dollar, especially if it could alienate their workforce.
I don't have the same anti-defense leanings as others around here, but to say Google has no choice is ridiculous.
Google probably couldn't (and shouldn't IMO) stop the DoD using Android phones if they want to, but they can certainly refuse to work with the defense sector.
I agree with you somewhat, but I imagine the shareholders would revolt against upper-management from the significant loss in revenue + media backlash that would be inevitable ("Google hates the US government!" etc etc.)
As a comparison, imagine if Tim Cook took a stronger privacy stance in China that we have in the states on moral grounds, and the result was China banning all Apple sales there. He would be tossed immediately, even though most of the comments here would be in support of the ethical position.
2) A very small group of people control all the votes in Google, thanks to different classes of shares. While this is not foolproof, courts rarely overrule decisions.
3) You can incur in loss of revenue too if a non-insignificant part of your workforce is resentful.
> it isn't really practical for a company the size of Google, with the resources it has, to not have programs that work with the military in one form or another
Perhaps not, but that doesn't necessarily imply that Google can't pick and choose what technology it sells or provides to the military. They can, for example, serve the administrative needs of the military (e.g. Google Apps), but not necessarily provide technology that directly improves their weaponry.
The richest man in town calls up the local newspaper and complains that he didn't get the store coupons in this week's Sunday supplement. The clerk responds, "Why do you care about the coupons? You're the richest man in town!" Then he responds, "How do you think I got to be so rich?"
Several things come into play in these scenarios.
In Google's case it makes essentially no actual money on "Google Brain", sure it gets headlines for beating Go, sure it attracts top talent (that needs to be paid!) and it still gives those folks free lunches and nice office space etc. So anything that offsets that expense is good.
And in Google, for all of its "lavish" perks, is a penny pincher like our rich man in the story. One of the stories when I was working there, they used to have a brand name juice cases where you could pick up any of the varieties of juice or smoothies that they made. The smoothies were very popular. Then one day out of the blue they swapped them for a different, and by every measure, inferior brand and fewer choices. There were lots of stories about why they switched, but after a lot of internal debate and investigation, the reason was that the replacements were cheaper (by about 25 cents each on their most expensive smoothie as I recall). It angered a lot of employees and one allegedly quit over it (well technically they called it the latest in a string of bad choices). The cost savings, assuming that every employee drank a case of their most expensive smoothie every day (which would represent an upper bound) was about $18M. That was 1% of the quarterly free cash flow (money that had been deposited into cash after all other uses). All of that pain for what was sure less than $18M in "savings".
The third factor is dual use. Sure you can use AI research into interpreting images to build killer robots that can identify and assassinate only those targets you specify. But you can also use it to pick out where the roadway has changed subtly indicating a roadside bomb, or a hazard that a self driving car should avoid, etc.
When you combine these three factors; one that AI team is just overhead, two the corporate willingness to alienate and possibly lose some of their employees over saving a nickel, and the ability to rationalize any number of non-evil uses for the technology, you get a recipe where of course they will sell things to the government without any regard to how that technology will be used. Just look at their main business, selling advertising. They just "sell ads" even when those ads are promoting illegal or unethical acts by consumers whether it is payday loans or Canadian pharmacies. Only when the FTC comes in and tells them to stop do they stop, not through some inner altruism.
Well then, Google employees should start with moving out of the US. Because, they seem to benefit and enjoy the safety and security provided to them by the Pentagon.
Grow the fuck up - part of living in a democracy is tolerating the implementation of measures one disagrees with. Republicans might oppose birth control, but companies continue to support it in their health plans. Likewise, a state of the art offensive military is democratically wanted in the US, state your disagreement and tolerate it's implementation
No, the suggestion that any conflicting viewpoint is a sign of immaturity. No one would ever suspect someone who can't speak to a fucking stranger without cursing struggles with maturity as well.
Not to mention, encourages them to leave the country, or at the very least, state their objections and then put up with something they deeply morally disagree with (and basically violates international laws on human rights). Oh, and it's an action that's probably self-defeating. Offensive military capabilities indeed.
I for one would rather have a drone strike program that actually actively avoids civilian casualties as much as possible. There are certainly gray areas here as far as the use of that program from a political standpoint (whether the strikes are warranted or whether it is part of regime changes). On the other hand, by not helping the military become more efficient we also risk losing existing lives (our own and civilian casualties) due to a lack of efficient analysis. We already use statistical analysis and many other methods (human and otherwise) to determine where to make military strikes, might as well improve on this to make fewer mistakes where possible (as gray as that may seem).
I'm fairly sure the push-back to this kind of point is thus: if you make it less costly (in the form of "civilian" lives, money, or whatever measure) to do drone strikes, more people are killed overall. Our government hasn't exactly been good about reporting casualties from strikes or careful in targeting (a group of people gathered outside of a city may just be considered up-to-no-good and bombed).
I am not able to understand because I'm stuck at "the government uses autonomous robots to kill people extra-judiciously with missiles from the sky and nobody seems to care."
And you want to make the program "more efficient."
This is the gulf which I cannot seem to bridge.
Extra-judicial killings of "terrorists" in "bad places" using flying killer robots is just batshit insane to me. I cannot for the life of me understand how that conversation would go with, e.g. Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. Or really anyone who believes in human rights.
Because there was no involvement of the judiciary system. See the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, and more to the point, his son. Oh, and also his daughter now, I guess.
I'm familiar with that specific case but it's an exception to the rule. The OP seems to think that extra-judicial killings by drone strike are a common occurrence and the evidence does not support that.
I'm not saying I support it from a moral standpoint but I don't think it's fair to call them extra-judicial except in a few cases.
> I'm familiar with that specific case but it's an exception to the rule. The OP seems to think that extra-judicial killings by drone strike are a common occurrence and the evidence does not support that.
No, it is the rule.
Drone strikes are incredibly high in collateral damage. The estimate is 28 unidentified people for each 1 target;
A non-military entity (the CIA), which should not be operating military hardware (but does), assassinates targets without due process (or really, any hard evidence at all), in countries we aren't at war with (formally or otherwise). Depending on our relationship with the country in question, we may or may not bother to let that country know we're going to kill some of their citizens ahead of time.
Putting aside moral issues with the CIA, what's the legal reason that they should not be operating military hardware?
As far as I know, CIA assassinations of foreign citizens aren't illegal as long as they take place outside of the US.
There was at least one instance of a drone strike killing one or two American citizens which is definitely extra-judicial. Most drone strikes do not kill American citizens so referring to drone strikes in general as extra-judicial doesn't seem accurate to me.
I would like to clarify that I don't necessarily think that the US's use of drone strikes is morally correct. I just think it's not correct to refer to it as extra-judicial.
It certainly is illegal in the country in which they do it. As far as I know, pretty much all foreign intelligence work is technically illegal where it's conducted.
I wouldn't. The end-game of having governments with the hyper-selective power to kill a particular individual is not pretty. This is the sort of thing that we want to keep expensive as long as possible, not cheaper and easier.
Yes and thoroughly yes. Because our military's allegiance is to the Constitution not to any single executive administration; because the military have far more resources to purchase bots or counterbots than the police do; and because only an idiot would actually have that tech and yet fail to also have, at minimum, an equally-maneuverable ablative countermeasure drone.
That's like saying only an idiot would have a nuke and not have a counter weapon for a nuke. It's not a given at all.
The video implies that people will have to hide behind iron curtains for (partial) security.
As usual, the devil is in the details. These are drones, not nukes. Nukes have effects for miles away and are so powerful that their detonations cannot be shaped at all; whereas suicide-drones have to fly directly to their target and reach it intact.
The same amount of shaped-explosive that can crack a skull, can neutralize one of these drones. As such, the braindead countermeasure is to retarget these same drones at the stolen drones. At worst, the IFF radios might add a negligible amount of mass ... but that won't matter for long, because once the enemy knows you're deploying counterdrones, they'll need their own IFF radios in order to try to avoid your counterdrones. (Or the enemy could add armor to their drones, but that will make them massive/unmaneuverable enough that you can increase your counterdrones' explosive payload to penetrate their armor, while still being able to intercept them.)
If you're looking for historical analogy, try military aviation in general. During the first World War, bomber planes would have been game-changing ... if not that there were fighters, too. A slaughterbot is a bomber; a slaughterbot that seeks the enemy's slaughterbots is a fighter.
I heard an interesting view on this. Engineers build technologies like TensorFlow and demos of object recognition, which have obvious applications in drone combat (just stuff your model into the missile targeting system). Yet then when this tech is used for this purpose they're shocked, shocked -- and as long as they're not specifically building the missile targeting systems themselves they feel like their hands are clean?
I'm not even sure what the consequence of this argument is; pretty much anything you build can indirectly contribute to the military industrial complex, even something innocuous like dev infra. But I also don't think that weak "everything is equivalent" argument means you're suddenly absolved of responsibility. One thing I am pretty sure of is that it must feel awful to waste your short time on earth on building tools specifically for killing.
It's nothing more than an attempt for Silicon Valley to pretend that they're a bastion of pure innovation, where all advancements are only for good. It's naive and extremely holier-than-thou.
As I said yesterday, if someone needs something, they’ll just go out and buy it. Ads are fundamentally about using psychological tricks to make people buy things they don’t need, or even want once the manipulation has worn off
For example, I tried to find a pair of quality underwear that did not have some guys name above the crotch for years. I heard mention of me undies on a podcast, checked it out, and am now a happy customer. ( this is not a paid post )
> trying to connect users with products they might like
It is delusional to suggest that this is the goal of ad-tech. The only people thinking about the users and the products are the creative teams that make the ads themselves.
Ad-tech, on the other hand, engages in dragnet data mining operations that serve the creative/design teams at ad agencies. The way the ad-tech industry has decided to go about things absolutely is inherently unconscionable. The unrestrained nonsense they've unleashed on the web over the past two decades have resulted in leaving nearly all internet users vulnerable to malicious code, privacy loss, and other horrible things.
> some of them just got shot at yesterday
Nice appeal to emotion there. But how do you know what the people at YouTube HQ did for a living? Do you have insider information? By all means, don't hold back.
I do know people who work in ad-tech. However, I don't see why that should matter in the least. Who I know in the ad-tech industry is not pertinent to my argument.
> how awful, insulting, and dangerous ads were before
You seem to be missing the point. Yes, advertisements are awful, insulting to our intelligence, and dangerous psychologically. But that has nothing to do with ad-tech. Your conflation of advertisement production with ad-tech is especially curious, considering your strangely dogmatic defense of this reprehensible industry.
It's even more curious that you didn't reference any of the things I actually brought up in my post about the ad-tech industry. The content of an advertisement is not nearly as important as the means by which people are consuming the content. This is a fundamental premise of Marshall McLuhan, on whose ideas much of the advertising industry has operated for decades now. ("The medium is the message.") The real problem with ad-tech is not the advertising content that it helps propagate, but rather the techniques employed by ad-tech to achieve its goals. Why don't you respond to those problems I raised, rather than ones that are both wholly irrelevant to the discussion and entirely absent from my comment? Ad-tech is what introduced malicious code, unethical privacy breaches, and absurdly non-scientific measurement practices to the advertisement industry as a whole. The ads distributed on yesterday's television and radio broadcasts, and on yesteryear's magazines and newspapers, could never have come close to the destruction today's internet ads achieve - because those older media were not capable of being leveraged as irresponsibly as ad-tech leverages the world wide web.
> However, I don't see why that should matter in the least. Who I know in the ad-tech industry is not pertinent to my argument.
Of course it should. You denied any users X exist, (Ad-Tech who think about the users.)
I was hoping to demonstrate that your sample size of X that you know well enough to judge them so, is too small to be meaningful. I say that because I know many people in Ad-Tech, and almost all of them care very much about users. Since our conclusions are different, I can conclude our samples are different populations, or you're speaking in hyperbole.
You said:
> The only people thinking about the users and the products are the creative teams that make the ads themselves. ... is inherently unconscionable.
If you know people in Ad-Tech, and you tell them, "You don't care about users, and your business is inherently unconscionable" I'd like to hear what responses you get. Genuinely. Would they agree with you? Or, more likely would they say something like, "At my place, even when I think about the user, it doesn't matter much," which seems much more likely the kind of human response you'd get.
> It's even more curious
You opened with bald-faced hyperbole. I'm trying to get you to admit that your most outrageous claims are based on nothing but lies. Once I do that, maybe I'll dive into the rest of what you said.
My concession to you is that there are awful ways to do ads - exploitative, manipulative, bad for the user. And there are ways to do ads that are not those things. You claim there's no difference - it's all homogeneously bad. That's hyperbole or delusion.
Moreover, none of it is particularly helpful. It's just spite. You don't have any actionable proposals for making the world a better place. You're just making "dead lawyer" jokes.
And I did respond directly, reminding you that ads used to be far worse. You haven't responded to that at all.
Yes, it's inherently tasteless and makes the world a worse place. No-one needs or wants the "help" of advertisers providing suggestions about what products they might want to buy.
Yes, even when searching. Of course, impartial help with the search could be beneficial (by definition of "help"). But advertising is by definition not impartial. I do not want my search results to be influenced by those who have a financial incentive to bias my search outcome. That's obvious -- surely you don't either?
> Out of morbid curiosity, do you get that ads fund most of the internet?
Yes. But that does not mean that we want or need advertising, or that it is not tasteless. It might mean that we cannot conceive of or achieve an alternative version of the world without advertising and with the internet.
More generally, I'd say it's important to make a clear distinction between statements of principle, and statements of pragmatic policy.
Oh, I don't think I'm well-informed enough to answer that question properly. Let's suppose by "capitalism" you meant allowing market forces to operate freely. No, I wouldn't say that's entirely tasteless, but yes it has tasteless aspects.
And a principle one is advertising, i.e. standing up and saying "Hey, I suggest you buy this, and here's why" when
(a) you have a financial motivation to encourage the sale
(b) quite obviously, that motivation corrupts your role as the recommender
(c) despite being educated people you make no acknowledgement of that corruption.
Ideally, the best way for consumers to choose between competing products would be for them to read peer-reviewed scientific literature comparing the merits of the products and their suitability for the intended use. That again is basically definitional -- that's what science means.
Now, do you think science should be conducted by people with a financial interest in the conclusions of each paper? No, you don't. And that's why you shouldn't have a hard time accepting that advertising is inherently undesirable.
> As a matter of principle, if you have something and don't need it, and someone else needs it, you should give it to them, right?
Yes.
> I'm just trying to understand your principle and where the boundaries of it are
Owning something which you do not make use of and denying access to others who would make good use of it is not a good thing to do.
> Why are people trying to sell something? Shouldn't they just give it to me?
I'm not arguing against the whole of free market capitalism, just advertising. We can still have a free market without advertising. A bit like how we can and do have democracies while severely restricting political campaign funding.
> And then scientists should determine which products should be made.
> And scientists should determine who is the best at making those goods and services.
> And scientists should decide who doesn't deserve to live or reproduce.
Scientists provide information. They do not enforce anything; they are not an executive branch of government.
"Science" is the word we use for the process of rationally answering questions about the universe. That includes comparing products. And comparing who is best at making goods and services.
If it were the case that there were a subset of people who didn't "deserve" to live or reproduce (for some definition of "deserve") then yes, we would want scientists to be involved in identifying that subset of people. The obvious example is criminal punishment. The USA and other countries decide that some people no longer deserve to live. (Other societies in history have sterilized people). Yes, of course we would want those decisions to be based on science -- science as the provider of information and as the process for arriving at conclusions from data; the legal system and government to actually execute and enforce things.
> ... So... I purposely tried to go too far. At which point do you think I went too far?
You didn't go too far. I think you confused two things: (1) scientists making information available to society, and (2) some group of people enforcing a policy.
So why can't I pay someone to help me spread the word about how good my product is?
> A bit like how we can and do have democracies while severely restricting political campaign funding.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I do not believe any democracy has actually limited political campaign funding. There have been limits, but they have all had loopholes that have made them completely ineffective.
> Scientists provide information. They do not enforce anything
But, it's scientifically proven that if I only do business with science-based companies, that the products and services I get are better and safer. I therefore boycott all other businesses.
Then, scientists absolutely do enforce everything.
> And comparing who is best at making goods and services.
Actually, no, that's economics. And economics say the best solution is the free market. Not a body of decision makers. Because each person measures their own utility. People can provide evidence and opinions. But each person makes their own decisions.
There's no accounting for taste.
Which movie is scientifically proven to be the most enjoyable by people who like Quentin Tarantino movies, but hate Oliver Stone movies?
Oh, scientists hadn't even gotten to review Snatch yet. If only some advertiser enticed me into giving it a try, I would find out that my opinions change over time in unpredictable and unique ways, that no science board could ever predict.
> some people no longer deserve to live. (Other societies in history have sterilized people). Yes, of course we would want those decisions to be based on science
Science is a tool. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Science is not humanistic, any more than Capitalism is. That's why science must be regulated. Otherwise, we'd be cloning people with no brains, so we can harvest their organs. We'd instantly kill everyone with an un-treatable infectious disease, because the good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one. We'd set up a surveillance state to enforce our laws, because it's scientifically proved to be the best way to enforce laws.
Opinions and ethics are human factors you are not accounting for.
The Google/Youtube/Alphabet people are justifying why they are going to get into the business of shooting people, and making drones that shoot people, and you're trying to stir up sympathy for them by saying they were shot? Just as they decide to become murderers, a woman comes in and shoots a bunch of them. Not too many tears in my eyes.
I would suggest that there is a very large difference between designing FOSS software, such as Tensorflow, that can be used for a multitude of applications, and developing for a company or project that is explicitly funded by military purposes. Advancing technology that has secondary applications in warfare is very different from focusing on the military aspect, and is not complicity.
Qualifying rahulmehta95's comment below a bit. The government and military ought to be accountable to the citizenry, not the other way around. Having said that, DOD will just find other companies to continue this research, so it actually behooves Google to stays on and to actually contribute in making the technology more accurate.
Indeed, they know few to none of these petitioners will quit. 3,000 petition signatures will do nothing. 3,000 resignations would, but Googlers aren't going to pass up on the high paychecks, three five-star meals a day, and massages in the office based on moral grounds.
(In the same vein, Google's NetPAC has been quietly donating the max to Republicans like Paul Ryan and Steve Scalise, while most of their engineers openly oppose them.)
I know at least one Googler who really will quit if Google continues to contribute to drone warfare research.
Yes, they like the high paychecks, five-star meals and massages, but the market for ML and AI experts is very strong right now. The high paycheck can be matched elsewhere, and the benefits of not contributing to drone warfare research are worth spending a bit of that money on food and massages.
But as I said, I only know of one for sure. Whether or not there are enough to sway Google is yet to be seen.
Respect to that one Googler. But are those 3000 in the category of experts which would hurt Google if they leave.
I am doubtful that paycheck can be match elsewhere in companies which are more morally upright than Google. However if it is single issue protest about military but acts regarding user data usage, financial, environmental or other type of dodgy behavior is okay then these people can definitely move on to different employers.
Any three thousand people leaving would be a huge hit. There's massive retraining costs and inefficiencies with lost knowledge, even if you could extremely quickly hire 3,000 qualified replacements above their existing hiring rate. The article does suggest some very senior names are signatories, but obviously doesn't disclose who.
That’s generally not how collective bargaining works. After petition, the next step would be a strike, not mass resignations. Then if there is no resolution between management and labor, there will be terminations and regulations.
Perhaps before going to premature conclusions, it might be worthwhile to wait and see how management reacts.
There really isn't a formal structure for this yet, is there? AFAIK, Googlers aren't unionized, though I definitely know a few interested that are in being so.
I am also curious if you know of prior examples of strikes being on moral grounds, I usually associate a strike with demands for employee rights or compensation, not corporate behavior.
This starts to move past the edge of my zone of knowledge, I've never been union, my knowledge of them is relatively basic.
There have been many strikes on moral grounds, maybe most of them. Unions were invented as much for civil rights as they were for worker's rights. Martin Luther King basically went around the South organising and staging strikes. Civil rights couldn't have been won otherwise.
I know multiple people who work at Google that are quitting because of this. Lots of people have lines in the sand when it comes to violence and military work, but those lines are deep for a reason and they don't really want to talk about them so you'd never know.
That a tech worker on a tech website knows some people at a major tech company? Guess what I know people that work at almost every tech company you've heard of, that's what happens when you get old.
Try just going to eat at the Pho place across the street from Google in Boulder sometime, you'll hear people openly complaining about Sundar and Susan and chatting about their latest projects at full volume without a care in the world.
I assume the parent meant that it was convenient they didn't talk about the topic, or that you couldn't give examples. Most everyone on HN knows a lot of people at major tech companies.
Anyways, we'll see what happens, if the company doesn't give in perhaps we will see some more "why I quit Google" blogs down the road.
Do you mean these people have handed in notices or are planning on quitting in the next day or so? Or do you mean these people are considering quitting if google doesn't change its ways? Or do you mean "Some people I know are saying that they will quit" but have no short term plan for actually quitting?
Quitting a job over an ethical issue doesn't take long. It goes like this: "I quit!"
And then, those people are no longer 'quitting' but now have become 'have quit.'
Attractiveness as an employer is among Google's top priorities. If this research is a significant concern to their employees, and starts to have an effect on their image and new recruiting, they are almost certain to drop it, considering it's unlikely to bring in revenue that's significant at Google's size.
To put a number on it: I am absolutely certain that Facebook would be willing right now to sacrifice 25% of their revenue for a bump in their reputation (among developers only) that puts them at Google's level.
Given more than 70% of ownership is by investors, I have to disagree. These aren't companies or people interested in Facebook's reputation among employees, they're interested in the stock price.
Yes, it's beneficial to have more talent and better PR if they were to do that - but I'd say it's much easier to spend 1B/yr on positive PR and influencing developers than it is to lose out on 10B in revenue and 4B in profit (based on their 2017 numbers).
If you're an engineer working for Google, I think you can most likely afford to be an idealist, and in my opinion that's a much better option than just blindly following orders.
Don't most of us want less war? Does it really drive you to enhance the capabilities of those committing acts of violence? How does one start to believe that by supporting the military you are somehow working towards a better world?
If you're not going to be an idealist, then in all likelihood you're helping to work towards the vision of an idealist with more power than you.
I think the problem can stem from the urge for everyone to try and find the exact same ideal world. It's so obviously clear that this is impossible, and so obvious that there is no civil way for anyone to enforce an ideology across a massive population.
IMO, the best hope is for each man to pursue their ideal world for themselves. What else can we really control?
AI is needed, the sooner we can make or create it to hold consciousness the better. We're constantly changing as a species and what we are 10,000 years from now, will far more different than we are to the ancient Egyptians. The universe will go on with out us and if intelligence is rare and spaced far apart AI is really the only chance that we have to be able to communicate or even find other intelligences.
Do we really want to test a theory that we can have a repeat of the 1930s when the democracies fell far behind an autocratic regime in the arms race, and again the autocratic regimes will not win? Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late.
The military-industrial complex may have become far bigger and perhaps in some ways a burden, but the world is a dangerous place and becoming more so. In my view, there is a perfectly valid argument that working with the military is the right thing to do.
At the same time if individuals have pacifist leanings and do not want to work for the military, i would hope corporations respect that.
The graph you are linking to ends in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in power, the US was the sole superpower, the EU was increasing in size, China's GDP was a tenth of what it is now, and i think Boris Yeltsin was running Russia, and most people had not heard of Osama bin laden. I think it is safe to say the world is different now.
Look at the backsliding in Turkey, Phillipines, Burma, Venezuela, Egypt. Look at the regimes which have come to power in Hungary, Poland. And of course Russia itself. China, which at one time seemed to be heading for more moderation has taken a sharply authoritarian turn. I would argue just in the last five years things have turned sharply for the worse.
We can all look at the data. The graph I linked ends in 2003 (like indicated in the graph itself), and jpollock posted the value for 2016, which is 70, so even higher than 2003. In other words, you are telling incorrect things and when called out, instead of giving in to reality, you are doubling down telling even more incorrect things. Not good. And it's quite saddening that in this forum dedicated to rational discourse, your flawed reasoning is being rewarded with so much attention, currently sitting at fifth place among all root comments.
Sorry for being out of the loop - it was night time in India, and i had gone to sleep.
You are right that the title says 2003 - i looked at the scale below which ended at 1998. I was not so much doubling down, but rather talking of a slightly different point that the ones you and jpollock were making. When I said democracies were in retreat, there are two or three different phenomena.
First - the western democracies seem to be internally weaker, and unable to arrive at consensus even for important national priorities. This may be because of the rise of social media echo chambers. In Europe there is a growth of right-wing parties in all countries, even Germany. As an Indian this worries me, because for all their warts, the liberal democracies of US and the European countries are the model of governance I would like to have succeed across the world.
Second - there seems to be no answer to the salami-slicing tactics of the autocratic regimes in Africa and Asia. You have to see the bullying of countries like Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Phillipines, even Vietnam and wonder. As the western democracies look to be in retreat, countries are surrendering their interests to the regional bullies. This will ultimately hurt all democracies in the long run.
Thirdly - there is the increasingly blatant and surprisingly successful interference in open societies from the closed ones. The US election is only the most advertised one. But similar interference has happened in Australia, in UK, in various part of Europe. There are at last signs of response to this - Australia has passed a law against foreign interference, and the Skripal episode has led to (some) concerted effort. But the response still seems much weaker than the provocation.
In summary, by "retreat of democracies" my focus was on their will and ability to stand up to autocratic forces, not a retreat of democracy itself (which i think is what jpollock and your responses were about). That may be why we were talking at cross purposes. I fervently wish i am wrong - and I hope i never try to avoid rational discourse.
> Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late.
What are you advocating? Arming governments with autonomous killer drones in order to "protect democracy"? Because the world is a "dangerous place"? I don't even...
Well "governments" already have nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, drones and what have you. It's not some new concept. You can take it as given that regimes you will never want to live under will be putting their best people in using AI for military purposes.
It's dangerous to imagine one is sitting on some moral high ground by refusing to work for the military. We all owe our freedom to previous generations of scientists and engineers who worked for the military, sometimes inspite of strong ethical concerns.
India and Pakistan aren't really powerful nations in the nuclear sense that the US and Russia are. I assume the person you are replying means powerful nation as "nation with a lot of nukes", which is pretty much only the US and Russia.
Even if you restrict it to the US and USSR (and later Russia) there have been direct armed conflict, including both being on opposing sides in war (notably, but not exclusively, both Korea and Vietnam during the Soviet period, but also extending into the current war in Syria), though there have been political cover done to limit risk of escalation (e.g., Soviet Air Force flying NK-badged fighters and, initially, prohibiting use of Russian over the radio in Korea; Russian forces on the ground fighting, sometimes directly against US forces, being the “Wagner PMC”—a GRU-backed notionally-private group.) op
The US and USSR/Russia did fight a good number of proxy wars throughout the cold war and beyond but those are distinctly different than the kind of all out war I think the original poster was referring to.
There's a reason they were all proxy wars and they never escalated into direct conflict on the scale of WWII (or beyond), and that reason is nuclear deterrence.
> The US and USSR/Russia did fight a good number of proxy wars throughout the cold war and beyond but those are distinctly different than the kind of all out war I think the original poster was referring to.
But they did fight them, including direct conflict with eachother. Which answers the upthread comment “If you have nuclear, why do you need anything else?” which was supported with the claim “Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.”
Nukes don't prevent “any war” from happening between powerful nations, though they do seem to have some utility in restricting the escalation of such conflicts.
(Now, you could argue that unilateral conventional disarmament would leave no choice but to escalate to nuclear war, which would improve deterrence and prevent even small scale conventional, politically-covered attacks, but that argument would be highly speculative.)
Nukes are an instrument of last resort, but you don't want to get to the point where that is your only option. And it is possible that technical advances in missile defence may blunt this advantage.
Being able to prevent friendly (and even neutral) countries from being bullied or going over to the dark side is also important because ultimately the best defence against rising autocratic forces is to ensure a broad alliance of friendly, democratic countries who are secure against interference by unfriendly regimes.
If a country like the USA can have its elections manipulated, how vulnerable might smaller democracies be?
Ah yes, the "I have to do evil things because if I didn't, someone else would" argument...
Just think about what you wrote: "our enemies". Why do you (whichever country you are from) have enemies in the first place? What did your country do to make others hate it? A lot of people seem to focus on how to defend against "those who hate us" without spending a passing thought on the why of it.
Solving "why" also solves the "how", but those who profit from conflict have no interest in the former, as their livelihood depends on the latter.
War is not primarily about hatred. It's about irreconcilable differences, where the calculated risk and cost of war is preferred to losing some perceived national interest. Your sweet sentiment that we should all just act nicely and get along does not survive serious contemplation of the incentive structures that drive nations (or individuals, for that matter), or the thousands of years of human history marked by pervasive warfare.
Philosophically, it is strange to make agreeableness the standard for the behavior of nations. Being good is much more than being nice, and any thoughtful conception of moral goodness will sometimes require actions that upset others.
And finally, you seem to be assuming that my country is the only possible bad actor. But of course, that’s not true. My country could do everything “right”, only for someone else to start a war.
>Why do you (whichever country you are from) have enemies in the first place? What did your country do to make others hate it? A lot of people seem to focus on how to defend against "those who hate us" without spending a passing thought on the why of it.
Are you really arguing that it's Poland's fault for having a country in the same place that Hitler wanted lebensraum?
> What did your country do to make others hate it?
You have a very simplistic view of geopolitics.
What did Poland do to Germany in 1939 to make Germany hate it? What did the Jews do to the Nazis to make them hate them so much?
Wars get started for all kinds of reasons, some predictable, others not. It's a simple matter of survival to equip yourself as best you can to defend yourself.
How is that a strawman? You said "it's a matter of survival" to "defend yourself" and I'm saying that's not really a valid argument for the country in the article.
> Hegemonic stability theory (HST) is a theory of international relations, rooted in research from the fields of political science, economics, and history. HST indicates that the international system is more likely to remain stable when a single nation-state is the dominant world power, or hegemon.
Not that I explicitly agree, but there is some theory.
I like your idealism. But there's often not a why. And if there is, it's not necessarily 'what they did' but rather 'what they have', like water or land or whatever.
Considering that democracy means people choosing their government, the power would need to be in the hands of the people, not the government, to protect democracy. What will the population do if the government goes rogue and imposes autocracy?
Some might say this is the purpose of the second amendment.
"the world is a dangerous place and becoming more so."
Are you basing this statement on a general feeling or on a specific data-based metric?
The military industrial complex greatly benefits from this common sentiment, but by most all quantitative measurements the world continues growing slowly safer, average lifespans increase, etc. While years-long aberrations exist (e.g. civil wars), the overall trend is very clearly antithetical to your statement.
There’s a balance to strike between the fear monger if news cycle and the Steven Pinker-esque wave of progress.
As Pinker notes, progress is not monotonicly increasing. While it is true that things have gotten better on average across the world, we should be wary of those who do not champion enlightenment ideals, particularly in autocratic China with the apparently life term of Xi Jinpeng. We should be wary that those without our interests at heart don’t overtake us.
The world is currently the least dangerous it's ever been in history, and all data and all trends point that it will be even less dangerous in the future. Sorry but you're simply wrong.
The doomsday clock is a human institution of scientists, though hardly scientific. They see it as their duty to raise alarms. But ask yourself- are we really closer to civilization ending Doomsday than at the height of the Cold War?
I have to disagree with you, all his arguments held back then, there was just less data. He also concedes that the statistical modeling relies on violence afflicting a proportion of the population, rather than absolute numbers - all well and good but an important distinction. Also your point is entirely fallacious anyway in the context of this thread. His book highlights a trend which cannot be disentangled from the historical context which gave rise to it.
I don't understand what you mean by "all his arguments held back then" when a significant portion of the book explicitly shows and discusses data regarding the number of wars fought during 1800 and before, compared to 1900 and early 2000. And the fact that another significant portion of the book deals with data about how much more likely a person is to die from violence in general during that period compared to the more recent period. I'm still convinced you have not read the book, and I suspect that is why your counterargument to it resembles a strawman.
All the trends are longer term, the theory about lessening violence first emerged in the 1700s[1]. WW2 doesn't change Pinker's conclusions, by his own admission. So, it is reasonable to conclude this book could have been written in 1930, and would be no less correct than it is now.
Democracies are in retreat because of corruption and failings of its leaders, people are losing faith in the democratic process. Not because their militaries aren't powerful enough.
Pacifism isn't viable when some of the biggest countries in the world are run by totalitarian regimes. Objections to participating in the military industrial complex are a luxury of countries verging on global irrelevance. The proclivities of the West to engage in self-flagellation over these issues are well known to and exploited by less liberal regimes. If only it were not so, but I don't know what the alternative is, just as the physicists in the Manhattan project saw no alternative.
I support Google workers. The hubris of US Military is unprecedented. Our military is already trying to pick a fight mostly for no reason. The more the cost of war drops for them (less killed personnel) the more they will create devastation, look Middle East since Iraq invasion.
The US Military has zero hubris in and of itself. The 'US Military' has so many moving parts and sub-cultures, not including all the support systems, contractors and so on. On a unit by unit basis; it is just a job for many many people.
You might be talking about the big picture 'US Military' - it doesn't wield itself either.
I'm not sure if you meant to imply that the 2nd amendment is a fundamental human right but if so I think that's a bit of a stretch.
'Fundamental rights' (under US law) I think is defensible as fundamental is treated as an alias for constitutional so guns are in.
'Fundamental human rights' to me implies broad and fundamental applicability, i.e. the UN declarations and covenants on human rights, which don't iterate guns as a right.
Case in point, when non-US countries talk about human rights, none of them are talking about guns.
I was more talking about some of the roots of the 2nd amendment - the uks' gun control laws started to be brought in during a panic over the general strike.
Yes, the entire Bill of Rights in fact pertains to our inalienable, universal rights. There is no difference from what one may term "fundamental" or "human" rights. It doesn't matter what the UN or anyone in other countries say or talk about -- just as the laws of physics are facts regardless of what some people may say or feel.
If we have the right to life, we have the right to self-defense. If we have the right to overthrow tyranny, we have the right to fight it and install a new form of government.
Then please petetion your senator to deregulate tanks, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, submarines etc. If you are serious about arming civilians as protection to overthrow tyranny, do a better job.
We already have the National Guard [1] --aka militias-- which provide ample check from the State level against a would-be dictatorship at the Federal level. For further self-education, one may want to read The Federalist Papers, in particular no 46 written by Madison (see [2] for a discussion of the issue).
The constitutional concept of the militia is universal (well, universal for adult free males, at least, but arguably the limitations their relate to limitations applicable to the concept of full citizenship at the time, not special ones for the militia); the National Guard is a subset of or overlaps with the militia (and is, as it is structured, in some ways, in conflict with the conceptualized role of the militia in securing liberty) but is not equivalent to the militia.
I agree, militia is a wider concept and there can be many such free-formed associations. I merely wanted to mention that the National Guard are also known as militias, and they have always had very powerful weapons at their disposal.
>Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.
George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", Tribune (19 October 1945)
It is a myth that the Vietnam war was mostly a war between US conventional forces against Vietnamese guerrilla forces.
In point of fact, the majority of the battles the US military and ARVN engaged in were against the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). That is, conventional forces vs other conventional forces. While the VC (VietCong) were very active and played a crucial role in the eventual victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, they were never the primary military force deployed by the communists.
Moreover, the VC were not just guys with AK's. They had the full panoply of military hardware that light infantry uses: from anti-tank rockets to mortars to light anti-air missiles. The VC even had a few tanks. The VC did not engage solely in small unit guerilla operations either. Once in a while, they would launch major offensives using coordinated assaults of 10's of thousands of soldiers.
What history has shown is that while insurgencies can cause problems for established regimes, without outside logistical and financial support (i.e. supply of arms, food, money, etc) they usually cannot win.
That school of thought dates from the 18th century when thinkers appealed to a Creator who endowed those rights (even if it was a rather aloof Deist conception of God). However, in the following century it faced strong competition from the utilitarian school that suggests that rights are only a convenient fiction that society recognizes for the common good. Plus, these days ever more people do not believe in any particular Creator who could have endowed anyone with rights.
Human ethics, metaethics and politics is definitely nowhere near "laws of physics" settled and agreed on.
Not at all. The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights. The schools of thought that led to that identification and to the foundation of the US based on the ideal of a government exclusively tasked with securing these rights goes back at least to the 15th century (Aristotle and other Greek thinkers already were inching towards the idea that there are things that are right to protect in the polis despite what others may think or the laws may impose; for example, read Antigone by Sophocles).
What is it in human nature that concretely and morally entails our having rights? the faculty of reason and its crucial role in human life, as long as we are free to act according to our thoughts. No faith involved, no mysticism required.
[added] The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. I don't see what point you are trying to make -- the concept of natural rights does not require a god, and it is irrelevant whether some person invoked deism or not. The fact is that we are all born with inalienable rights by virtue of our nature, what we are and how we ought to live together.
> The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights.
The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence of a Creator.
John Locke and many American Founding Fathers definitely do cite the existence of a Creator, but that isn't a fundamental requirement of the argument. Part of the derivations of natural rights (at least in Locke) comes from observing animals in nature, and applying these "natural" rules to humanity.
The french rights pronounced by the French Revolution had nothing to do with the idea of a Creator and were very similar in concept with many of the Founding Fathers'. So this does not seem like a reasonable argument to make.
FWIW, and I use this example in discussions with non-scientists all the time, Newtonian Gravity, aka the "Law of Gravity", not only isn't a fact, it isn't even correct. General relativity appears to be a closer approximation to nature, as Sir Arthur Eddington demonstrated in 1919[1], and Albert Einstein put forth in 1915[2].
That writers continue to conflate the definition of legal "law" with scientific "law" is in some ways amusing, but it weakens the analogies. A physical theory (testable hypothesis making specific predictions) isn't a law. The analogies aren't merely suspect, they are often fatally flawed with appeals to authority amongst other practices which are not relevant in science.
What I am saying, more simply is that "laws" of physics aren't facts. Using them as the basis for an analogy results in flawed reasoning.
With regard to the original subject matter, fundamental rights mean different things to different people, countries, governments, and other entities. It would be nice if everyone adopted a single minimal definition that we all interpreted and supported in the same manner.
This wish is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, as fundamental human rights often run counter to power structures of various types across the world. These rights could potentially constrain other entities rights, so they may choose to adopt some or none of them, or interpret them in as wildly different a manner as they wish.
This is vastly different than how physicists interpret and test theories. We don't set h_bar == 0 because we don't want the world to have a quantum character in some locations. But entities in power can set FundamentalRight_type == 0 for a specific type (pick speech, life, liberty, pursuit of happyness) if they so choose.
In this way, "fundamental" rights are really not so fundamental. They aren't like the theories of physics, the same everywhere.
You're muddying the water and completely missing the point:
Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.
Scientific fact is testable and falsifiable. If you're going to claim that natural rights are fact, I'm going to ask that you provide a testable hypothesis that demonstrates the right to life as a law.
Irrelevant. Things are what they are regardless of what you think, pray, ask, claim, test, or emote. If you truly want to learn about the factual basis of individual rights, there is ample literature for you to look up and read. If you wish to believe or claim that rights are not grounded in the facts of human nature, that's one of your rights.
Scientific "law" is an artifice, more of something created by someone attempting to explain using a poor mapping of language to the way scientists do their work. Scientific theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Gravity is a theory, not a law. It makes testable and falsifiable predictions.
Specifically, Newtonian gravity, what you call the law of gravity or a "law of physics" is known to be wrong.
Given this, how can you claim that they are what they are "regardless of what people may say or feel about them" ?
As a (non-practicing Ph.D) physicist, I have this discussion with many non-scientists, to try to help them move beyond the concept of "laws of physics" (there are none), and into the concept of testable predictions arising from the hypotheses in the theory.
Ohms "Law" is yet another example. Ohm's law breaks down spectacularly for certain materials under specific conditions. Quantum systems like Josephson junctions most definitely do not obey Ohm's "law".
In science, absolute laws do not generally exist. Using your words "regardless of what people may say or feel about them", they are irrelevant, and often incorrect. Scientific "law" is not absolute. They are not "facts".
Language, english or otherwise, is a very poor substitute for the language that testable hypotheses are written in. There is often a fundamentally severe impedance mismatch between what is written out, and what the language of science (mathematics FWIW) actually says, or even how to interpret or describe what is going on.
Without constructing a strawman, I'd like to point out that in previous centuries, people were so enamored of the fixed natural "laws", that they actually persecuted those who poked holes in them. One that comes to mind is the geocentric model of the universe.
This one is particularly interesting, as it had both religious overtones and support, and made specific predictions. The predictions of geocentricism about other planetary orbits did not match observations.
That is the fundamental Ptolemaic system law of planetary motion was wrong.
But it couldn't be.
But it was.
So astronomers developed modifications to the laws. Epicycles were invented.[1]. Which made the calculations harder. And it meant you had to discuss a mechanism by which this worked. That is the law which you are claiming to be inviolate, must be modified at best, or discarded at worse.
Add in to this very accurate measurements and analysis by Brahe, Kepler, and others, this lead Galileo, Newton and others to formulate a new model of the solar system, backed up by testable predictions. It took a while for this "law" to supplant the previous "law". But supplant it, it did.
Because science is not based upon absolute, legalistic versions of laws. Science is based upon testable hypotheses. If the tests fail, so does the hypothesis.
This mechanism survived unscathed for about 250 years or so. Until Einstein pointed out the problems with it.
My point was simply that just because the popular science writers call it a law, doesn't mean it is a "law".
Physics and its development is not the sole, nor the primary, reference for man's means and acquisition of knowledge. Ohm's Law is valid within certain limits, and these limits are also facts. (I misstated something earlier -- Ohm's Law itself is not a fact, it is conceptual framework, an identification of facts.) Just as our understanding of blood groups and their compatibility has improved over time -- the underlying facts did not change, the knowledge and theories changed to take into account the expanded knowledge of facts. Science is a systematic body of knowledge, that is: knowledge of nature -- nature being the facts.
I'd argue that fundamental human rights means rights that exist inherently regardless of whether the UN or any given country recognizes them.
My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in the united states.
self defense is a human right only in a lawless society. The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force, and all matters should be resolved in a civil court of law. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense. Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law). I get it, guns are fun. But a human right? Definitely not
You're quite incorrect. The state properly has a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force (and none other) under objective laws and legal processes. But self-defense is an emergency, and there is no rational argument to claim that one may not protect oneself, one's family, or one's property against beasts or thugs. On the other hand, if you kill someone in self-defense, you had better be prepared to explain how necessary it was, in the court of law; which is exactly how things work in the USA.
If one is so depraved as to argue that self-defense is unacceptable as such, then one should be prepared to live and die as a slave to the first thug or dictator who walks by one's neighborhood or country.
The past few years have seen a LOT of law enforcement officers getting away with brutal killings that weren't retaliatory in nature at all. (Not that this is a new phenomenon, it's only newly visible thanks to increased citizen vigilance, bodycams, etc.) So I'd empirically dispute your position that the state's monopoly on force is only retaliatory-- we don't and have never truly lived in a society of objective laws and legal processes.
This strikes me as a trolling comment. But if you're serious, and if you can pull the idea that the state owns all manifestations of the application of force out of thin air, then there is no limit to how many of your other human rights that state will take away from you. By giving up the right to self defense, something so fundamental to all living things, you effectively chain yourself in irons and tell your masters to do with you as they will. That's basically North Korea today.
That's an incredible amount of trust to have in the state. Have governments shown to be infallible or incapable of abuse of power? You can argue guns aren't essential to protect yourself but I don't think you can argue that protecting yourself isn't an innate human right.
I can only reply to myself (low score?) but my point was not that self defense is not justifiable in extreme cases (though I made that point. I didn't choose my words wisely).
What I mean is that by no means is the citizen expected to engage in vigilante justice or apply force against the state. That leads to lawlessness and was kind of hinted by the parent comment. The state should have the monopoly of force _to apply in a lawful manner and mantain the rule of law_
The state decides what a lawful manner is, thats about as useful a statement as "it's not illegal when the president does it". The states only rules as long as a certain X% of the populace agress with it. The second amendment tries to balance that X so that it doesn't become something like o ly 1% of the populace needs to agree with the government for it to maintain power.
There's arguments to be made as to what percentage of the populace needs to agree for a stable society to be formed. Both extremes of 100% and 0% are obviously bad as you either get no agreement or total dictatorship.
Just saying that you should listen to the government though ignores the majority of the history of governments
Vigilantism isn't self defense. Even in states with the strongest self defense laws (e.g. stand your ground laws), you can only use force to defend yourself (and I think also your family or immediate companions) when you are threatened. You can't just prowl around shooting suspected drug dealers.
> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.
I think you are wrong. At least in Norway where I've lived for the last few decades I'm pretty certain people are found not guilty because of self defense.
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law).
Persecuting minorities where completely lawful in nazi Germany.
I guess you should be looking for another word because as much as I'm against lawlessness that doesn't cut it here IMO.
> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.
If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way?
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.
Not all states are benevolent, nor are they guaranteed to stay benevolent. Many Americans are wary of our gov't (and IMO rightly so.)
You make a great point. Police forces have been sued for responding slowly or not at all to threats on lives and found to have no responsibility to respond to a particular crime.
Many people don’t actually know this, but police has “no duty to protect”, meaning that they can perfectly legally not Intervene even if they know with 100% certainty people are being hurt or murdered. Look up “no duty to protect”.
Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?
Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nope, some of us citizens believe that the US military ranks will by and large not obey unlawful/unconstitutional orders to attack its own citizenry on our soil. If they choose to do so anyway - good luck, there's more of us than there are of them.
> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?
The loss of property, and the violation of one's home and sense of security are real harms. But the point is not to make the violator pay, so much as it is to merely prevent an injustice.
And many (I believe most) defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing the weapon. Most people do not relish the thought of taking another's life.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
It makes more sense when you realize that there is significant overlap between "gun owners" and "past or present military service".
As I agree with your statement, I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. One can be under threat, prepared to use a weapon, brandish it, and yet not actually use it. Discipline and restraint are import aspects of firearm training.
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Well, yeah.
There are no illusions that a group of people with dubious levels of training could square off against the government and come out on top. However, you can certainly raise the cost of occupation _significantly_.
Despite the US rolling into the middle east with all of its technological might, planes, helicopters, and modern armor, its still bands of people with guns and bombs who, years after "mission accomplished", drag the conflict onward.
Who is the threat to invade the United States? Last time I checked, Canada and Mexico are pretty peaceful Nations and Russia is in charge of our current president.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Note that the US military is sworn to the constitution, not to any current administration. When anti-citizen measures are proposed, the military aligns with the citizens.
>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?
I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be. I'm not going to wait and find out if you would attempt to kill me as a result of discovering you are burglarizing my home.
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nobody is under any illusions that the US military could roll through with tanks and cluster bombs and annihilate any opposition, but I doubt the government is particularly keen on ruling over a pile of ruined infrastructure. If that's the case, they instead have to deal with a large population of armed guerillas, which the Mid-East conflicts have proven the US is rather poor at dealing with. To say nothing of the fact that a large portion of the US military would defect upon being told to fire upon the people they've signed up to defend. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to deter the government from using overt force.
> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.
to shooting someone would in most countries be considered a illogical and reckless act.
I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.
>I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.
Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.
People have been murdered by burglars many times so you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend that's not an outcome.
In your ideal world, do you prefer that the victims allow the burglar to eliminate them as a witness?
> ... the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.
The right to kill in self defense exists in many countries but I belive in most countries it will result in an investigation and you'll probably have to go to court to convince a judge that you had
1. Reason to fear for your or someone elses life
2. considered (and if possible: tried) other reasonable options.
I think it would be extremely cruel to punish someone for defending themselves or someone else.
Also keep in mind that stopping an attacker without the option of hurting them seriously is way harder than if you are allowed to use any means.
Committing a home invasion, whether to steal, to harm, or something else, is a dangerous, immoral, illogical and reckless act. Lethal force is a justified response, period.
Deadly force IS a proportional response to a home invasion - in both the moral and legal sense.
Its not the victim's obligation to quiz the home invader on their intentions before they act to protect themselves, their family and/or their property. A person knowingly and foreseeably puts their own life up for forfeit by invading another's home... and for what - a material crime, as you say? (But I hope we all acknowledge that the stakes are often far more serious and irrevocable than having your ipad stolen while you sleep).
The big open secret here is, no government today or in the past has had a monopoly on deadly force (nor will they ever). They only have a monopoly on punishing deadly force via the judicial system.
Deadly force can be legally prohibited and morally justified. It can be legally justified and morally abhorrent.
They may just be there to take my stuff. They may be there to do far worse. Why should I risk my life, and the life of my family, on the restraint and kindness of burglars?
I don't even agree that I should have to let burglars take my things. If I want to stop them why should their greed put my well-being at risk?
Gun owners do believe they can overthrow the government, or at the very least that guns would be useful if that had to happen. A lot of anti-gun folks like to use this like of argument, but I don't think they are really thinking clearly. If I had to violently overthrow the government it would not look like getting together with a group of like minded friends and marching on Washington to be killed by all manner of military hardware. It would look like taking potshots at patrolling soldiers to demoralize them, attacking mid level government bureaucrats when they are at home or unprotected in order to damage the government internally and dissuade people from working for it, or luring police into ambushes to make them hesitate to enforce the law. Imagine what harm a few motivated people with rifles might do. Now multiply that by a thousand. Now multiply that by a thousand.
The government would break under the strain. That doesn't mean that revolutionaries would take DC and occupy the Whitehouse, though they might after years or decades, but it does mean the government would give up tyranny.
An armed populace ensures the government has the consent of the people. Anything else is tyranny, even if your tyrants are treating you alright now.
> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?
Why would a guy who grabs a cop's gun and waves it around pointing it at people for a thrill have to pay with the actions of their life when another cop shoots them?
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Do you really think gun owners would line up on the field to take on the military in the open? Ruling over a country where half of the people are supporters and the other half are armed dissidents would be impossible regardless of military strength. Just look at the failures of the last Iraq war to see how a tiny fraction of the population was able to throw off the whole thing.
Crypto is a human right only in a lawless society. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to complete privacy even from the govrenment.
Even more, many think they should be able to hide their actions from the state...that is the definition of a lawless society.
I get it, HTTPS is fun. But a human right? Definitely not.
The Catholic Church teaches that killing in self-defense in self defense is legitimate. In fact, it can even be a grave duty. So that means this is hardly just an American idea.
Self defense should definitely be a right, and I'm not American - I'm Swedish. There's a big difference between responding with full force, or as Swedish law allows, responding with reasonable force proportional to the harm that you're at risk of.
Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.
You can put this through some translation software of your choice;
Nazi Germany was a country full of laws. (I realize I am Godwin’s law-ing, but the parent implied that self-defense ought not be a right in a society with legal institutions and laws; Nazi Germany is a perfect counter example of how “laws” aren’t always just and that a fear of government is a legitimate concern.)
Why do you pay your taxes? Is it altruism on your part, or fear of retaliation if you don´t? What happens if you were more powerful than the IRS (or whatever force the IRS might send your way to coerce you into paying your debts)?
How can a state impose a law on criminals if criminals are stronger than itself? See mexico for example, where drug cartels are arguably stronger than the state in certain parts they control. Or brasilian favelas.
This part is not an opinion my friend.
Also I don´t claim to have invented this concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
Things aren't black and white. Every country is lawless to a certain degree. Otherwise there wouldn't be any robberies in countries that aren't "lawless" (whatever that means). One difference between EU and US is that a robber has a decent chance of being shot in US and not in EU meaning you become a sitting duck the moment you stop living the socialist life that state deems appropriate.
Codified rights are effectively statements of belief of a government, to which they are binding themselves. As a statement of belief, there's no legal structures or arguments upholding them. They are simply installed by declaration (either dictatorially or by some measure of consensus) as an official part of the government's world view.
> I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate?
The US was built upon the idea that rights are inherent and not granted to citizens by a government.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Curious wording. The vast majority of even modern human history seems to provide an incredible amount of contradictory evidence—at least if you’ll grant that “forced” can also mean socialized into a certain cultural and ideological narrative from birth. Sure, there are notable moments when resistance forms quietly, and perhaps even makes its way into the public sphere. However, resistance does not appear to me to be a default human trait. That’s usually only found in a smaller portion of what is typically non-boat-rocking humanity—those who hope to convince their fellow citizens to join them. The majority of humans appear to rarely make it habit to question anything at all.
> Simply put, those who are attacked will fight back.
Well not that I'm Christian, but Christian teaching is basically the opposite of this (Matthew 5:39 - i.e. turn the other cheek). And Gandhi's resistance was also an example of the opposite. In fact the opposite is the only way to deescalate a fight (or, as the US chooses to do, create the biggest weapons, but isn't that then affecting the rights of the people on the other side of the argument?)
> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Really? Advertising, religion, nation states, even your belief that these are "natural" laws are examples of your inherent bias. As a smaller example, even politeness - civility - is a counter example.
The fact that people have to be taught other ways goes against saying it's human nature, doesn't it? Why would you teach someone to do things they already do?
And then you bring up every method of manipulation as if people don't hate all of those things. Why would we need to invent clever tricks to manipulate people if it was human nature to like it?
Sure, we're plenty effective both at hurting others and manipulating people, but it seems odd to express examples of our capability at doing that to unwilling people as evidence that we like those things being done to us...
Why would we have to go to such lengths to develop these capabilities if it was something we naturally liked? You're kind of proving the opposite of the point you think you are here....
If you want to be closed minded, and not accept that you are choosing your axioms in the same way as someone else exposed to different upbringings is - as per my examples, then I guess I have no chance of convincing you otherwise.
Well, you seem to be under the misconception that I think these are some kind of platonic ideals or whatnot. There was a time when the law tried to describe the values of the people rather than to dictate it and they came up with common law and some ideas about human rights after considering human nature and what did and did not work.
You can say there's construction there, but there's a limit to it. I mean, just as you can't simply construct a functional bridge out of anything you want, neither can you reasonably construct any sort of right and have a functioning society. There are both positive and negative rights, tensions among the rights of different people, and responsibilities imposed on individuals and society by any particular conception of rights.
John Locke talks extensively about Natural Rights (and he was the source of inspiration to America's founding fathers). His Second Treatise of Government goes deep into his explanation.
There have been many thinkers that have challenged Locke. I am currently reading the Second Treatise to try and really understand Locke's position before I make up my mind.
My belief is that natural rights are defined by God and therefore exist regardless of whether people agree with them or not. Sort of the rights equivalent of divine command theory.
To me that's kind of like the sound a falling tree makes when no-one is there to hear it. As I see it, rights exist in the context of a social framework that defines the limits of acceptable behaviour. They can be seen as actually curtailing freedoms, since if we're defining rights, we're also implying there are things an entity does not have a right to. In any case, a right is not very meaningful to me if there is no system in place to ensure it is respected.
This is, of course, not an argument about moral rigts and wrongs, just a pragmatic one about how rights work.
> I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate?
From our own human nature, actually. Think about this for a minute. Would a normal person be willing to believe something because you were forced to? If someone was violently attacked, would they not fight back?
By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.
Now, the current conflict is being caused by pitting these against each other. Because people believe they are unsafe because of people who own guns or use hate speech, you now have two groups of people who believe that the other group is making them unsafe.
This is ironic, because we're actually becoming statistically safer over time, but it does lead to some very real conflict because people believe there's another group out there that wants to harm them, instead of realizing that both sides really just want to protect themselves, barring a few fringe whackos on either side.
> By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.
If human nature is ultimately "not controllable by law", then that would certainly apply broadly, not just to cherry picked aspects of it.
Certainly assault, murder, rape, theft, harassment, abuse, cheating, and the like are facets of feral humanity; just as much as positive traits like self-preservation, compassion, parental instincts, social bonding, etc. Law usually stands in a directly contrary position to the former list, to wide agreement.
If there are natural human rights, what does that mean for, e.g., prisoners? Is the right to personal freedom not a natural right? If it is, can natural rights be taken away? Under what conditions? Or is imprisonment a breach of natural rights, and what does that imply?
It's pretty hard to pin down what natural rights are. That a society ought to consider the limits of normal human behaviour I don't dispute, but that just informs the rights a society grants its members. Rights are still a human social construct.
The second amendment is not there solely for self defense, its main reason is to be there to protect citizens from an overpowered government. The only people trying to pull the 2nd amendment are centrists/liberals (the corporate parties).
Gun rights are a popular idea on the right and the far left. I was surprised to learn Marx's positions on the removal of guns from the working class.
The gravity of the second amendment isn't arms per se, it's the right to retain enough personal power to repel a dictator from taking over the government and just as importantly, making it so that even if a dictator succeeds, the country will be ungovernable for them.
It is funny you mention that actually - as a personal anecdote, I can say that many of my friends who happen to be advocates for free distro of crypto tech - or more commonly, cryptocurrencies - also tend to be fairly strong 2A advocates.
TL;DR; - IMO there is some significant crossover between crypto* people, and 2A people.
I have noticed this correlation as well (I am an example of it in fact). I think there is a common thread of decentralization and bringing power closer to the people that resonates with the two groups.
That's the classic example, though folks will often argue it doesn't apply because there were only muskets and cannon, not machine guns (though that's technically not true).
Every example of yours had plenty of external help without which I am doubtful they would have as much success.
No idea what your definition of totalitarian state is, but there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany nor in many of post WW2 socialist countries (e.g. hunters).
> there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany
It actually started post-WWI (due to Treaty of Versailles).
> In 1919 the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership...anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks. [1]
Laws were later relaxed from a total ban, though ownership was low, as all guns and ammo had been confiscated earlier. And Jews and companies with at least some Jewish ownership were forbidden to own any firearms or participate in their manufacture.
When oppressing a group, either selectively or indiscriminately, guns + speech for that group must go.
The VC, Taliban and everything that followed also heavily leveraged explosives against an underarmored opponent in their fights-- it wasn't just a matter of small arms. It should be telling that you can currently keep your toy guns, but god help you if you try to buy fertilizer and blasting caps in America without a damn good reason.
Waco and Ruby Ridge had an endless arsenal of small arms. It didn't help them.
The 2nd amendment states that the right to bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. This implies that the right to gun ownership predates the constitution because you can not infringe on a right that doesn't yet exist. Thus our forefathers saw it as an inalienable right that predates our nation.
Thinking of it as "guns" being a fundamental right is... kinda backwards.
And, for the record, I think that "because the Second Amendment" is a horrible and fantastically lazy argument for gun ownership.
Now, let us take a look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically, Article 3:
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
From this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone has the right to protect the above -- within reason!
Everyone has an innate right to defend their life, liberty, and security of person. Without that, those rights are meaningless.
This is not the job of the police. You should definitely call them if you have the time! But they are under no obligation to protect you, or even to show up.
(Most people don't know that, by the way.)
When you encounter a threat to the above, you have the right to fight until that threat ends, with some leeway granted for the adrenaline dump of combat.
This is not an indiscriminate license to kill or even to engage in violence!
Even if you "feel threatened". You must be able to demonstrate that you acted in defense of life -- yours or another's -- in order to justify your use of force against an attacker.
Weapons are the means by which individuals use force.
Allowing for self-defense allows for the use of weapons.
There is no such thing as a "non-lethal" weapon.
Your hands and feet are natural, and lethal, weapons. More people die by these every year in the United States than by "assault weapons".
Clubs and knives? Definitely lethal. The difference between the winner and a loser in a knife fight, is that the winner dies on the way to the hospital.
Tasers kill more people annually in the United States than "assault weapons". Tasers are also one-time use only. Miss your attacker? Too bad. Attacker has a thick jacket? Better luck next time. Multiple attackers? That sucks.
Pepper spray is probably the least-lethal thing you can use, but it still can and does kill people. Pepper spray is horribly ineffective. Use it indoors, or against the wind, and you will incapacitate yourself. It is useless in the rain. Or if your attacker is wearing a face mask. Or if you have multiple attackers.
A gun, on the other hand, works in the rain. It works in the wind. It works equally well regardless of how strong or weak you are. It works against multiple attackers.
Guns, even if "silenced", are also amazingly loud, which is a big advantage when you're defending yourself, because you want people to hear that noise and call the cops.
So, in a world where we respect peoples' human rights, allowing gun ownership really is common sense.
How do you think the 2nd amendment is under assault? If you look at the list of things our youth were marching for[1], it doesn't say anything about taking guns away. Just like you can't yell "fire" in a movie theater, you shouldn't be able to walk around with a rocket launcher or semi-automatic weapon. Also, there's no way in hell any group of citizens can fight the US army these days so it seems like a moot point. You don't need automatic weapons to defend your house from intruders, but for some reason our leaders tell these kids that the solution is to shut up, wear invisible back-packs and learn CPR.
> you shouldn't be able to walk around with a rocket launcher or semi-automatic weapon
Generally speaking, this statement speaks to a lack of information regarding what semi-automatic is or what it means. Most firearms sold today are semi-automatic. Banning semi-automatic firearms bans the majority of firearms.
That you later go on to state "You don't need automatic weapons to defend..." implies to me that you've conflated automatic and semi-automatic. You cannot conflate those two terms in good faith and claim to be having a reasonable and informed debate.
You also assert that nobody's saying anything about taking guns away, but Hillary Clinton (and other politicians) repeatedly called for Australian-style gun buybacks, which were mandatory, which are the same as confiscation. I'll broadly agree that it isn't the popular sentiment, but suggesting that nobody's calling for it is disingenuous at the very least.
Moreover, from your link, the following statements are at odds with your assertion that the second amendment isn't under attack.
> Weapons of war have no place in our communities. Our nation requires a comprehensive assault weapons ban
> Limiting high-powered weapons to the military has worked elsewhere to eliminate the opportunity for mass shootings
> These magazines are devastating and need to be banned.
Finally, you make a very common mistake when you assert "you can't yell 'fire' in a movie theater". That has been covered here by me, by others, and by prominent first amendment attorneys all over the map, but despite the common misconception, there's no law or regulation that prohibits you from yelling fire in a movie theater.
Nobody ever believes that, so please enjoy some citations:
So, _Schenck_ has largely been overturned on a number of occasions, but the following (untested) likely still holds as punishable (but not forbidden against through ante-hoc regulations):
* _Falsely_ shouting fire
* in a crowded theater
* for the purpose of imminently inciting harm to others
To be fair, the thing that is most oft intended by the idiom is "look, if the cherished first amendment can be restricted, then so too can the second amendment".
It isn't a law, and where I say "might" in my follow-up, it should not be confused with "is" or "will". There are no laws that forbid you from exclaiming fire in a theater. People think there are because Oliver Wendell Holmes made a clumsy aside while explaining a bad decision that has since been overturned.
Either way, the real point to this is that a punishment for negligent use of one's rights (e.g., falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater for the purposes of causing harm to others) is still not remotely the same as banning free exercise of that right, or converting that right into a privilege through licensure, as is being suggested as rational compromises for the second amendment, predicated on a clumsy and wrong-headed interpretation on the first.
We might all prefer it if you had to obtain a license to speak in a theater, on the grounds that yelling fire in one might prove too dangerous a responsibility for average citizens, but I think most of us would agree that it would violate the first amendment quite heinously. The only way to imagine that equivalent restrictions are less heinous when applied to the second amendment is if one takes the second amendment less seriously as a "real" right, or to imagine that such restrictions are common on the first amendment. It isn't less real a right, and such restrictions are not common on the first, despite misuse of the aforementioned idiom.
We started at submission about Google employees waving around a paper tiger petition, we proceeded to top ranked reminder to everyone of DARPA and how military funding is the One True Way, then on to crypto export controls, rolling onward into a gun control debate, conflating semi-automatic weapons with rocket launchers, and finally into yes, the meaning behind "fire in a crowded theater."
The comment section on HN is now second only to the comments from Yahoo news stories. Keep up the great work everyone.
> repeatedly called for Australian-style gun buybacks, which were mandatory, which are the same as confiscation.
They were mandatory, however gun owners with reasonable reasons (i.e. hunting, sport, recreation) were free to acquire a license to keep their guns (excluding military style weapons). You can currently acquire a semi-automatic rifle (under 10 rounds) with the proper licenses and reasons (farm worker, sport etc.)[1]
- There were no repercussions for illegal guns being handed in (someone handed in a rocket launcher).
- There were no laws preventing someone acquiring a license to keep their gun if they wanted (within the laws which were introduced).
- No police invaded homes to take weapons by force during the amnesty.
Australia's gun-amnesties/buybacks were not the same as confiscation.
Regardless of whether you agree with the current interpretation of the second ammendment or not, it's hard to deny that those currently wishing to re-interpret it are suggesting an application that will impose new, more strict limits, on ordinary citizens and their rights to bear arms.
> Literally tens of millions of responsible Americans walk around, every day, carrying semi-automatic weapons, and this is not a problem.
The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted
Objectors to this climate of easy access to firearms -wrong or right- will point to things like:
* criminal gun violence and mass shootings (a phenomenon that is staggeringly rare in most other comparable nations) but also to
* accidental gun deaths, frequently including of children, to
* suicides facilitated by this easy access to firearms, to
* the trigger-happiness of American cops being directly related to the significant likelihood that anyone those cops interact with is armed, compared to countries like the Australia, Japan, or New Zealand.
They also point to a political climate in which research into gun violence is blocked, and where measures such as universal background checks are supported by huge number citizens, but the political situation prevents these from being enacted.
> The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted.
There are sixteen million Americans with concealed-carry licenses, plus fourteen states that allow for "constitutional carry" (e.g., no license required).
(Keep in mind that I do think that we should require training and licensing for concealed carry, although this needs to be balanced with not imposing an undue economic burden or disenfranchising minorities)
According to the Violence Policy Center -- a very solidly anti-gun group -- there were 27 murders committed by licensed concealed carriers in 2017 across the United States. That's a murder rate of 0.16 per 100,000 people.
By comparison, the total UK murder rate for the same year was six times that.
Likewise, the Czech Republic, which also has a lower murder rate than the UK, has "shall-issue" concealed carry licensing for gun owners -- just like Texas -- and the majority of Czech gun owners have such a license.
I think it's fair to say that concealed carriers are not the problem.
Bear in mind, my above comment highlighted that for objectors the issue is far wider than murder, and also involves the presence of accessible weaponry's influence on: accidental deaths, suicides, and drivers of militarization of police, all of which were introduced before your response - and absolutely none of which would even be visible through the statistical lens you have chosen to employ.
>you shouldn't be able to walk around with a rocket launcher or semi-automatic weapon
That's a ridiculous statement to many people. Most handguns are semi-automatic weapons and you will find little agreement from pro-2nd amendment people to eliminate both handguns and any rifles that aren't muzzle-loaders or bolt-action.
I think it's very important to consider the increase in military spending over the past decade and decrease in funding for universities.
More and more funding in the military means more funding for specifically defense projects rather than straight up knowledge or public good.
What is the long term affect of this? Perhaps research far more focused on destruction instead of public good. More better drones, less general knowledge or cures for diseases?
It's a sad state of affairs, and workers standing up against military research within their companies is a good first step.
---
One of the first sources I found on this is below, but I've specifically heard about it being vexing from AI researchers, as many don't want to directly support military applications, but don't have much of an opportunities for funding otherwise.
1,105 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 402 ms ] threadGoogle should stop hiring activists and start hiring pragmatists.
I mean who's stopping China from using AI powered military robots? they should think about the bigger picture.
Also I think they should invoke AI powered military robots in recruiting, what's cooler than that?!
Rather say that he's apolitical
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department, says says Werner von Braun"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
I'd argue the more skilled and, well, rich, you become, the less national borders really matter. Unless you're patriotic, I guess.
>What's cooler than that
Speak for yourself! I would find that disgusting. A given company's culture doesn't have to appeal to everyone, it wouldn't be much of a culture if it did.
That is literally the application of drone technology right now. The application of AI in drones is going to be used in a proxy/civil war in a poor country because one of the US's allies is composed of religious freaks. That's it. So unless you want to be complicit in killing innocent people because people in this country like cheap oil, hopefully you won't see this as very cool: http://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sile... (although this wasn't technically part of the civil war, it's still a highly relevant example)
Why go down this path at all? Google doesn't need to be a war contractor (I think "defense contractor" is a misnomer these days - we all know what this tech is used for: bloody violent and usually unfair/illegal war).
Google should avoid becoming a sponsor of death in the world. What happened to "changing the world" (for the better, I assume)? Is feeding the American war machine changing the world for the better? Really?
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdD9uSrNFT4
https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/
It is commendable that employees with moral fibre at google are saying no to the industrial war machine, that feeds on global conflict.
And there is no apriori reason as to argue that military funding is the only way to do ground breaking research. Ironic that some in the political spectrum who generally defend the military also feverently view goverment spending as inefficient to markets.
If your goal in not working on them is to bring about political or social change as a result, then you are, by definition, an activist.
If not, no :)
(though i admit different dictionaries seem to have fairly different definitions here)
Google hasn't been doing that, ever. That's really the point of the story - the agency of the people who work at Google.
When I was running a robot company, I made the decision to not do military projects (mostly for personal reasons) and it helped me hire some great people that I couldn't have otherwise.
Ive been around the block a few times, I've worked in the defense industry myself and I've worked in non-defense private sector as well. The quality and quantity of engineers are extremely similar in my experience.
Don't forget, a lot of the tech we use everyday started as military projects, such as the Internet and GPS. Even Siri has its roots as part of a DARPA project. You really think the engineers involved in those technologies are second tier?
Anyways, is working on software to, for example, improve the day-to-day tasks of soliders and marines really morally inferior to selling people's private data to advertisers? - Most military projects do not involve tactical systems. Let's be honest here, building the "Uber of salads" doesn't change the world.
The out of touch hubis displayed in the GP comment is pretty infuriating.
Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law. Google is working the military to expand the capabilities to carry out these attacks and to work on these projects is to either agree ideologically that the U.S. military should have these capabilities or to turn a blind eye to its uses for a cushy salary and a chance to play with state of the art toys for your day job. Between the two, the later is far more palatable to me so I feel I'm being quite generous by labeling it as greed.
I don't disagree with this. The question I'm trying to figure out -- which powerful nation should we look to for an example on how to do better?
Also, are there are any benefits to the U.S. maintaining hegemony as the top military power that we need to weigh in this analysis?
I definitely am not fully up to speed on the details of this debate, but it does appear fairly complex at first glance.
Even if the US is a net positive I believe that almost none of the campaigns it has engaged in the last 20 years have done anything to contribute to that. I can't abide by that and would urge anyone with a conscience to do the same.
On the other hand, this bothers me a bit because it continues to allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doing is "moral". If Google stops working with the Pentagon after this petition, people in the valley will pat their backs and enjoy how they are making the world a better place. They will not have any incentive to rethink the sale of user data to advertisers, creating highly addictive mentally harmful products, etc.
Overall, it's good that at least people in the valley are somewhat mindful of their actions and care about society (compared my current industry, finance). I hope they can be successful at a deeper level.
> They will not have any incentive to rethink the sale of user data to advertisers
Is it not possible that one will lead to the other? We're seeing the beginnings of a real examination of the power Silicon Valley giants have. Recent revelations about Facebook, amongst others, shows that awareness of advertising profiles etc. is increasing as well.
I don’t really get why anyone would want drones to be less accurate, but maybe that just means I’m just a no-good warmongering fool, right?
More specifically, a warmongering fool who can't discern a false dichotomy - because your options in life are rarely ever drones vs more lethal drones.
These regions we're using drones in. They could probably use more tools to enable true democratic representation. Isn't that what Google should be doing, given that they "don't do evil"? Building tools to blow people up seems slightly counter intuitive.
If you can accept existence contains horror in all forms, then you can go on your way to make the best impact you can for those you care about.
If you can't accept that, you just sit around arguing if life could be perfect.
Or, you could like, just stop droning innocent people to death. Not saying we all have to agree, but just that factually speaking - it's within the realm of possibilities. And for that reason it's a false dichotomy.
And of those who had been, how many were sentenced to death?
I never stated anything about blame, nor do I think that choosing to not participate makes someone culpable.
> Or, you could like, just stop droning innocent people to death.
I have not "droned" anyone.
> Not saying we all have to agree, but just that factually speaking - it's within the realm of possibilities.
It's possible, sure, but certainly not probable. Drone strikes are increasing, not decreasing. I don't think you're thinking about this very pragmatically.
If Google employees wanted to, they could probably put a lot of pressure on the military directly. Imagine Google no longer served ip addresses that belonged to the military unless they ended their drone strikes. Or say they turned off google maps for anyone that is known to work for the military.
My issue is with the hypocracy. Don't claim to be moral and sell this Kool aid. It sounds a lot like religious high priests that I have a viceral reaction to (given where I come from). It could just be my own personal issue with the faux moral sell of the valley.
There are degrees of morality.
Just like a criminal might object to being defrauded because they feel it crosses a line.
Everybody is a hypocrite to some extent, you at least seem to be aware of that fact that you are simply a gun for hire which makes it easier to reason about the position of others.
That probably is the case. Morality is also very subjective (which, to some, is a matter of belief). Maybe "hypocrisy" is not the right word. Perhaps I was looking for "lack of self awareness". That is kind of what I meant with "delusion".
There are a lot of good, empathetic people in Silicon Valley. More empathetic than probably any other subgroup I have ever encountered. And they have a deep desire to change the world. I have a lot of respect for that.
But they also circle jerk about that all the time (you see this in finance at charity events too). And in that circle jerk, thinking they are improving humanity, they end up cozing up with the federal government, foreign dictators, and even suppressing free thought! And I am not acquitting the Military Industrial Complex of doing a lot of the same things (but at least they are less deluded, having the "American interests" narrative as opposed to "make the world a better place" narrative).
The few that really want to improve the world stand out and don't feel the need to sell themselves as improving the world, they don't need to: it's obvious, their actions speak louder than words.
People refusing to work on military technology isn't "appearing moral". It's just "moral", at least if you consider war to be generally amoral.
People here and elsewhere have been throwing the term "virtue signalling" around a lot in the last year or so. This is a perfect counterexample: Google employees speaking out against military tech are shouldering the risk of appearing disloyal to their employer. If Google were to cut their military ties, they would forgo whatever benefit they previously sought in that relationship.
We shouldn't make fun of people because they "do the right thing". That sounds like something Facebook would do
So no, it's not wrong to virtue signal necessarily, but often is seen as an empty gesture by people who don't talk/act towards the actual problems.
As used on the internet, it's also useless because it always assumes the speaker doesn't actually act on their believes, and there usually is no way for them to prove their willingness to act on their believes.
It also ignores that even just stating such believes can have an effect. After all, these statements are used to convince others to adopt them.
The best proof of the last point may actually be this protest by Google employees: their conviction was probably formed by reading and hearing about the ethical responsibility of engineers, a topic that is certainly teeming with "virtue signalling" according to the common definition. They might even be the product of Google's own "virtue signalling", i. e. "Do no Evil". Maybe Larry Page and Sergey Brin only ever wanted to pay lip service to ethical behaviour. But their employees didn't get the full memo, took them by their word, and are now acting upon it.
In this sense, "virtue signalling" aka "Greenwashing" or "diversity boilerplate" may start as a cynical profit-motivated lie, and end up changing the world for the better.
In decrying “virtue signaling”, I think critics express “talk is cheap” not just “talk can be false.”
Saying "virtue signaling" implores the listeners to stop expressing their views.
A lot of the vitriol on the internet is destructive virtue signaling using holier than thou approaches that alienate people close to your position, this causes division, not unity, and is one of the key issues on the Left - i.e. the Left attacking itself over minutiae as the Right marches on.
I'm sure someone is making a lot of money helping distribute child pornography over the internet. Plenty of tech jobs in human trafficking, too, I would imagine.
They are uncomfortable with killing people even though a technologically-advanced military is probably a good thing. They are comfortable with tracking and manipulating millions of people even though it's definitely a bad thing. This is squeamishness, not morality.
Remember when the cold war ended, for a while, but military budgets didn't exactly collapse? Isn't that "funny" how that works, and how we have no problem realizing that in other contexts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
You make war profitable, you will have more war. The details are trickier, sure. Slogans aren't enough. But if you don't even have the will, don't worry about finding a way.
> I doubt they would be happy to live in a world where the U.S. has a weaker military than countries like China or Russia.
Yeah, nevermind the big nations all having their go at weaker nations, and the US wars of aggression, under exactly that pretense. No, it's really that the every last person in that huuuuuge industry -- shoveling tax dollars into gadgets that can be used to defend, to destroy, to enforce resource extraction as well as for domestic control -- wants to look out for you, because you have the same nationality in the passport. It's the children on non-Americans that get labels like "fun-sized terroris", American children have names. Those lines could not ever blur.
Yes, you can't just unilaterally disarm. But you also can't keep hitting others (and yourself) while gearing up even more, at increasing rate, while subverting self-determination of others and intellectual honesty of self at every corner, and then say "it just happens to be a dangerous world, I'm just reacting". The people you're just reacting to say the same thing, and the people who sell you and them that lie laugh all the way to the bank, and should there be need for it, they won't share their bunker with you. They'd sooner share it with Russian and Chinese war profiteers, so to speak.
The military is also responsible for defense and disaster recovery (national guard). There are many technologies created to be resilient and life-saving by the military (ARPANET). Working with on certain military-funded projects is definitely non black-and-white like you imply.
So while it's great these protestors want to protect us from AI, those in China, Russia, India, Iran, will endure a greater threat from AI and it behooves us to be at the forefront lest we fall behind.
In other words a moratorium can only work if all participants agree and participate. Sort of like the anti nuclear proliferation treaty.
Less American military personnel will be put in harm's way as technology like this advances. Maybe wars will even be mostly unmanned remotely controlled machine-vs-machine in the future.
This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish it away.
Wars exist because people are willing to kill and die for what they believe in. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means”
I don't always know.
Drone strikes aren't going away, especially since there is widespread support among the American public for them (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...). Thus, we should pursue both fronts: making drone strikes more safe, but also informing the public about the potential shortfalls and dangers of using such technologies.
The idea that making technology more sophisticated will inevitably increase its usage is a fallacy. Nuclear weapons technology improved substantially over the 20th century, and yet it still hasn't been used since 1945.
It's also possible that when a weapon is deemed technically capable, people will be more comfortable with broad use of weapons and with expanding lists of individuals targeted for extrajudicial killing.
You do not need advanced technology to build simple rockets with simple warheads and wreak havoc. These rockets are guided by nothing better than pointing and shooting. We see this in use in various paramilitaries around the world with little concern for civilian casualties: in Gaza, in Syria, in South Lebanon, in Yemen. If the West was similarly limited to such crude munitions then the civilian cost to destroying legitimate military targets would be enormous. Better guided munitions reduce civilian casualties and as such working on making munitions better-guided is indeed ethical.
If you think that not giving generals the tools to better avoid civilian casualties means they will simply not wage war in ways that endanger civilians, well history is pretty clear that this is quite erroneous. Giving generals the tools to wage war more ethically allows them to make decisions with fewer compromises e.g. civilian casualties.
This is not even to mention work on purely defensive munitions, e.g. Iron Dome, which is inherently ethical.
And if your opposition is rooted in a sense of pacifism, please, freedom is not free, it's not just a slogan. Anarchies (i.e. the lack of a sovereign government with a military defending territory) and their power vacuums result in warlords and the end of civil society. And that Malthusian outcome is clearly less ethical than almost any other. That's just human nature. Defense of civil society requires a military. Ideally, that military will act as ethically as possible while achieving its primary goal which is the stability (in face of external threats) necessary for civil society to flourish. There are two ways to make the military ethical: a) give it ethical tools so that it won't be forced to use less ethical means for achieving its raison d'être, b) set ethical policy. As sad that it may be that we have little control over the latter, as engineers we can have control over the former.
Google/Alphabet is already a country in its own right, and libertarians would already be sceptical of Google's role in society.
This is just another step down a long road of Technocracy...
Also, wasn't "Don't be evil" dropped as a motto? I thought I read that.
There’s a vaguesly worded Authorization of Use of Military Force, I think, from post 9/11, but, last I checked the US hasn’t declared war on anyone.
Common misconception, and pointless to even bring it up. Because while "Don't be evil" is in their code of conduct, they regularly do evil.
Choose to believe me or not. My background is all out there for people to see.
You are working on a morally bankrupt program for a morally deficient organization, large parts of which have zero concern for human life. And you tell us to blindly trust you?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: actually your recent comments have been so egregious that I've banned the account. That's a pity, because the comments you posted that were civil and substantive have been quite good. But we can't allow people to treat fellow community members like this.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban people who commit to following the rules in the future.
In case it helps, it's not a question of supporting views or actions you disagree with, but of supporting the community we're all participating in here, so it doesn't slide into war.
Social pressures in that direction seem to be stepping up these days, so if we're to have much hope of preserving HN, we need a corresponding uptick in efforts to take care of it.
The fact that you are outing yourself (now and in your HN profile) is very unlike any other "spook" I know.
It's laughable that you say your " background is all out there for people to see".
being a military intelligence officer is not the same as, say, being a clandestine service officer. apparently, the AF even sees fit to give you "intelligence wings" to wear on your chest. there appear to be an awful lot of current and former intelligence officers who list their specialty and former duty stations in linkedin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-...
I wonder if Eric Schmidt left Google because of this.
These drone strikes have been happening for decades without interpretive AI, and they will probably continue with or without. So let's make the strikes more precise and save more civilians.
>"But improved analysis of drone video could be used to pick out human targets for strikes, while also better identifying civilians to reduce the accidental killing of innocent people."
Suppose you decrease error rate by 10% (optimistic), but increase volume by 20% (probably underestimated). You'll get an 8% increase in innocent deaths.
Asking the business to reconsider before leaving is legitimate.
That is an absolutely inane stance to take. How about instead of the obviously unattainable and unrealistic goal of "world peace", we just go for "more peace", or "less violent death" or similar goals. It is very hard to argue that American hegemony has not significantly reduced conflicts around the world. Not all of them, not equitably, and generally in pursuit of economic rather than ideological interests, but there is basically nothing to be gained by opening up the US to actually being threatened by competing powers.
I don’t think people of ex-Yugoslavia would stop killing each other without being forced to.
Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite
For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.
I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using.
Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.
That's an excuse people without any morals often use. It's up to each one of us to do the right thing.
After all: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing” - or I would add that evil also rises when "good men" actually do the evil thing "because otherwise the bad men would do it anyway."
Google likely has the most advanced AI tech in the world right now. That means if that they allow the US government to use it, they will be directly responsible for accelerating the progress of autonomous killer robots or making them real in the first place. After all, I don't see too many other companies with AI that can learn the Go game within days and beat world champions.
The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!
You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK )
Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) systems?
I don't think the government (and specifically, the military) should be viewed as a non-partisan actor when it comes to technology.
One of the founding principles of American government was the freedom from state surveillance and intrusion into private homes. Nowadays, the federal government of the USA can legally use any technology that is patented, so why should they be allowed to restrict inventors from disclosing or selling IP that inhibits surveillance?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List
Gun rights antagonists tend to downplay that bit, as it implies an individual perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with tightly-controlled gun ownership permissions.
Strawmen are so unhelpful in reasonable debate.
Not all gun control advocates are either anti-second amendment, nor in favor of eliminating all guns. To say otherwise, creating a false black/white dichotomy in the gun debate, does a massive disservice to both gun advocates and gun control proponents.
Ironically, by making the choice "all guns" or "no guns", gun advocates themselves are forcing the "no guns" option to the center of the debate. As a wave of frustrated anti-gun youth become voters and reasonable political moderates look at options to "protect the children", I really think it's in gun proponents' best interests to provide a better alternative than "do nothing" on one side and "civil war" on the other.
At the end of the day, these stances, even the "moderate" ones you mention, are irreconcilable all the way down to first principles. If you are for gun control, you are necessarily for measures that will restrict the right to bear arms as it is recognized today, some more, some less, but restrictions on the right all the same.
There's no real evading that.
[1] https://pics.me.me/yes-i-do-want-to-take-away-youur-guns-you...
But that does not mean that everyone holds extreme positions, which is what you claimed.
Arguing that the extremes are the only options is a problem.
How productive would health debates be if the only two options presented were veganism and paleo? If the only sex ed options are abstinence or polyamory?
There must be room for compromise, or there is no debate, only argumentation.
That's not compromise, that's capitulation.
What concessions would gun rights advocates accept in order to allow some restrictions? What's there left to give on this issue that wouldn't undermine any controls.
Say, for example, I wanted gun owners/users to be required to be as responsible as car users, i.e. pass a test, maintain a license and registration for weapons and weapon users, and hold liability insurance to cover damage either intentional or accidental (that would obviously scale with the likelihood and amount of damage the gun can do). What can gun control advocates give that will get that done?
I think part of the reason the gun debate can be one sided from the "control" side is that the US already is quite far to the "rights" side of the spectrum, relative to the rest of the developed world. It can be difficult to see where we could plausibly move further in that direction without causing more of the problems we're (hopefully) all trying to solve: unnecessary bloodshed.
Another example I floated in previous threads is surfacing psychological issues in NICS checks (stuff like certain diseases or involuntary holds) and granting access to that system to everyday people rather than just retailers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_Unit...
This was true only between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, the Supreme Court clarified that it was incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.
And it was indeed the case well before 2008-2010. See United States v. Cruikshank (1875), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894).
so says you. it's not clear to me at all that militia members don't support collective action
Even the NRA removed references to that first clause from their material.
We do have definitions as to what militias are informed to us by writings of the founders, the federalist papers, previous drafts of the second amendment and, failing that, codified by law in 10 US Code § 311. The definition of militia there ("consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard") will likely have been expanded by our recent advances in military equality.
> IANAL but I’m pretty sure the second amendment only applies to guns; you can’t walk around with an RPG on your shoulder.
Surprisingly perhaps you can buy a military grade flamethrower complete with a napalm package: https://throwflame.com/ it's not even classified as a firearm, and is illegal in only two states I think.
I may have missed my calling . . . .
That is where the saying comes from.
It can be more effective at clearing bunkers and closed rooms? The military were using these in WWII for trenches, bunkers, clearing brush. My friend's grandpa in US was operating one in the Pacific during WWII.
I just brought it was an example how something potentially more deadly than guns or RPGs is not much regulated and how laws are not very rational sometimes.
I recently purchased the Federalist Papers so I could have a better understanding of "how" to read it, what the context was, and what types of discussions to anticipate having with those who'd like to look at it differently
It doesn't restrict states from legalizing further concessions, though.
Been reading about it with the Parkland stories.
Antonin Scalia wrote that the 2nd is not unlimited, it doesn't allow possession of any type of weapon for any use case, just a couple years before he died.
I can't find the article he was quoted in, but around the time of the last SCOTUS case related to 2nd, an NRA exec was on record, I'm paraphrasing, something like "the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting."
The right side of the argument allows the romanticized notions to flourish as political ammo.
Also, why do they need to be purchased? Isn’t that information in the public domain? Surely enough time has passed and Alexander Hamilton’s family don’t need to continue to profit from it?
I'm a gun owner myself, and I've (long ago) taken the stance that the 2A isn't really compatible with modern life, as the people who originally wrote it could not have anticipated the weapons militaries deploy today. It makes sense in my mind that it is Congress' responsibility to regulate what it reasonable weapons for civilized society.
There's a reason you can't just walk into a Wal-Mart and walk out with a machine gun, or a rocket launcher.
That said, I don't much care for the fact that the requirement to have legal access to machine guns is "be rich enough to buy your way around the law".
Personally, I do think we need a complete re-work of the way we treat weapons to reflect the realities of the modern world.
(1) We have four hundred million weapons in the United States. It is horribly negligent that safe weapon handling is not taught in schools, at multiple levels. Also a good touchpoint to get police interacting positively with the community.
(2) The current background check system should be replaced with a Swiss-style one; e.g., you get a code, valid for say a week or two, that any seller can use to verify that you have passed a background check.
This doesn't create a de-facto registry, so no problem getting gun owners (or the NRA) to go for this one.
(4) A red-flag law that allows immediate family members and healthcare professionals to temporarily bar an individual from purchasing weapons, with safeguards in-place to keep bad actors from abusing the system (e.g., a psychiatrist that just reports all of his patients to the system because he opposes gun ownership).
(5) Removing gun rights only in the case of violent crime. Right now, in most states, misdemeanor assault won't cost you your gun rights, but a felony for tax evasion will. That's ass-backwards.
(6) Machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, and the like should be available with a license. You really need to be able to show that you can handle these things safely. Right now, it's just "be rich".
(7) Treat short-barreled rifles and shotguns as normal firearms, and silencers like any other accessory.
(8) Concealed-carry should be the same for police as it is for normal citizens. Same licensing requirements: a one-day course, including a test on safe weapon handling. This also ends gun-free zones: if you have a license, you can carry wherever you want.
(9) Open carry needs to work differently for urban and rural areas. The above permit will allow you to open-carry a pistol in an urban area. Rifles, no. Put it in a case. In the countryside, open carry just makes sense.
(10) Actually prosecute straw sellers. Buy a gun for somebody that can't legally buy one on their own, you permanently lose your gun rights, plus whatever punishment makes sense.
(11) Secure storage requirements. If one of your weapons is stolen and used for a crime, you are legally an accessory if you can not demonstrate that you took reasonable measures to store the weapon securely (e.g., a gun safe or lockable case). This doesn't require police inspections, but provides a strong incentive for personal responsibility.
All of this would enjoy massive support from gun owners, and address a lot of existing problems.
I'd rather have a new amendment then have judges be able to decide what the definition of arms is. Slippery slope. They really could one day decide that 'arms' is only muskets, or even just knives.
U.S. v. Miller loosely established the test (later solidified in 2008's Heller v DC) that weapons commonly used in militia service are inherently deserving of second amendment protections.
Miller, a known mobster who was caught with a sawed off shotgun lost his case because
a) the military testified that they had never used sawed off shotguns, so they were not useful to a military, ergo a militia (which was a lie -- they had used them, and found them useful for trench-clearing)
b) Miller's attorney was not very good, and didn't even challenge that testimony, much less so by totally disproving it -- I offer a little sympathy here as they didn't have Google at the time
Also noteworthy, Miller was actually dead when the decision came down, as he'd been murdered, and because /shrug, the trial kept going, but the defense (for obvious reasons) quit trying. He was sentenced in absentia.
Which I find just insane. People say no one wants to take Americans guns rights away, but we were literally one vote from effectively doing so.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illinois-town-votes-to-ban-assa...
[1] https://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/justice-scal...
I think for a weapon to be 'compliant' with US's second amendment a couple of criteria must be met
a) must be in current wide use in military
b) must be capable of being carried by a single person (which is why tanks and fighter jets will not qualify) This follows form 'individual' focus of the bill of right.
c) must be capable to aim it at a single person (which is why explosive or RPGs would not qualify). This follows from the notion that Bill of Right in general, does not condone collateral damage or collateral effect. As this is Individual's right, and therefore presumes individual's responsibility.
I also find this linguistic analysis of what 'bear arms' meant in 1791s, interesting/educational [2] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=255
It doesn't much matter. Even if somebody made the case that "crypto is a form of 'Arms', subject to 2A protection," the 2A doesn't grant an unregulated right to own whatever "arms" one chooses. All the rights granted by the Constitution are subject to reasonable regulation.
So, Congress could simply legislate a restriction on crypto, much as they have done with machine guns, grenades, and nukes.
WRT other rights... Explicitly? Not always in the Constitution. But, if you think you can cry "Fire!" in a theater, you would be mistaken.
SCOTUS has upheld reasonable restrictions on rights over and over. It's a settled matter.
(edited - cleaned up my thoughts a bit)
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
It ain't Dred Scott dumb, but it's up there in stupidity and retarded law.
Well regulated doesn't mean the feds get to control the details of what the militia can use either. The militia is every able-bodied 18-47 year old. The regulated part implies a command structure which the National Guard provides.
Chaplinsky v. NH was in 1942 and had nothing to do with draft dodging.
Since then, the courts have ruled inconsistently on the matter. The only common thread is the courts mostly agree that some restriction on speech is permissible - where that line lays is very much up for debate.
WRT the militia - the government disagrees with your assertion. A random citizen cannot go into the gun store and buy a machine gun, or grenades. Special (and expensive) permitting is required. If you're contention is that these restrictions are unConstitutional, I'm not really sure we should bother debating the point.
That's completely wrong. Each of the 1st ten Amendments - The Bill of Rights - enumerates rights of the individual against government power. Its absolutely absurd to argue that the 2nd amendment somehow refers to a government commanded and organized military body and not to the right of citizens to remained armed to prevent the government from getting out of line.
The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, and the modern arms such as encryption and freedom from surveillance are not even guaranteed by the 2nd amendment.
I'm tired of reminding HNers about Aghanistan.
Who has the better chance at ambushing and getting away with the enemys weapons: the one with the gun or the one without a gun?
Look at Turkey. The primary tool was encrypted communications and information dissemination. That’s modern power that citizens should have. Right now power comes from information and the preservation of speech and private communications, not a few handguns and rifles (or IEDs).
When the 2nd amendment was written a gun was relatively way more powerful than it is in today’s world. If you had a group of men with guns you were basically on par with the government military.
However, I'm not saying I'd want them a civil war, just that it failed despite doing everything "right" it seems.
You're getting into spherical cow[1] territory if you think the US citizenry couldn't defeat the US military.
The US military will not be fighting the US citizenry in a hypothetical clean room, it'll be fighting in America. Who are you going to bomb, who are you going to strafe, when your opposition can quietly fade into the populace that provides your material?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
Unless the US were to nuke itself, given the geography, a motivated citizenry could easily take on the US military. Not a scenario I want to imagine, but the US military has troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq — imagine that kind of conflict in the US. Just look at rebels in Syria to see this on a smaller scale.
[1] - http://ia800500.us.archive.org/20/items/gov.uscourts.mad.135...
I believe GP was referring to times s/he's entered the US on a visitor visa of some sort.
[1]: https://www.xkcd.com/504/
I’m sure people have been saying that for decades if not centuries. Terrible things just get declassified slowly so we only learn about them later.
also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations.
That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI
Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)
This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years.
1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed.
2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community (if not wholly, then at least nearly so regarding scientific resources), and colonized.
I draw such a sharp line because I don't see how the resources to colonize can be mustered without justifying it with an arms race unless peaceful cooperation is established. Without this, I think somebody is going to put a nuke in orbit around Mars and call themselves King/Queen of the inner solar system.
Therefore, I think we should be working towards the cultural changes that I believe necessary immediately. This is why I'm a staunch proponent of universal education, universal healthcare, gun control, etc. I think there's no better time than the present to "be in the race together" globally than now. Given climate change, death of bees, super-bacterias, and narcissists with penis-size complexes holding fingers over red buttons, I see a ticking clock.
Avoid (1) by tackling culture, is my theory, and I think that's what these googler employees are here. (I post this very much looking forward to being challenged on all points)
Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you.
Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial.
I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.
Globalism == lack of agency, the end of voting and elections.
Universal education == total indoctrination and ideological consistency of the collectivistic variety.
Universal healthcare == the end of individual choice, individual responsibility, all new extensive taxing regimes, the destruction of the individual on many levels.
Gun Control == People control. Then total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force. Which, by the way, has never worked out well for any citizen anywhere.
I think you probably need to study some history before spouting off on HN about your perfect utopia and realize that it's all been attempted in the past with terrible consequences.
If the probability of a kind of disaster is sufficient to blow up Earth, it is likely that the same kind of disaster will blow up all the handful of colonies we can hope to build. At astronomic scale, the speed of light is quite slow.
history should be a guid here.
presuming penis-size conversation is anything more than an intentional dig by a chauvinist powermonger, probably isn't helpful here.
Globalism == lack of agency, the end of voting and elections.
Universal education == total indoctrination and ideological consistency of the collectivistic variety.
Universal healthcare == the end of individual choice, individual responsibility, all new extensive taxing regimes, the destruction of the individual on many levels.
Gun Control == People control. Then total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force. Which, by the way, has never worked out well for any citizen anywhere.
>Globalism == lack of agency, end of voting and elections
If federalism didn't lead to this, why would globalism? What even is globalism? I am skeptical of this because "globalism" seems to be used as a catch-all alt-right bogeyman lately.
>universal education == total indoctrination, ideological consistency
Universal access to education doesn't have to mean homogeneous curriculum. It doesn't have to mean lack of education choices. It doesn't even have to mean requirement to receive education.
Another thing I find curious - the very people I find rejecting education "collectivism" are often people who wouldn't blink before forcing their own "indoctrination" upon others. We fight this fight in Texas far too often - should schools teach facts (evolution), or give "fair credence" to falsehoods (intelligent design) because of religion? Woops, out goes falsehoods as soon as the satanists get involved and also flex their constitutional rights, never mind, we'll take evolution!
>universal healthcare == the end of individual choice
I don't see why this has to be true, it isn't in any of the current implementations of universal healthcare.
>end of individual responsibility
Are you presently responsible for your water being clean? Are you presently responsible for the quality of your roadways? Are you presently responsible for the guarantee that your medication contains advertised active ingredients that do as it says on the label?
>Extensive taxing regimes
Shift military funding, close ultra-rich tax loopholes.
>destruction of the individual
Fail to see how this is true. Unsupported by argument.
>gun control == people control
False equivalence.
>then, total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force
Currently working just fine in countries with gun control laws, which, by the way, completely nullifies the false "has never worked out well" absolute you ended with. Furthermore, the USA has right now a monopoly on the use of force. The US and its laws have sovereign control over whether you are allowed to use force or not. You have almost no say in the matter. Furthermore, this isn't 1776. The gap in armament between civilians and a martial state is so large as to be hilarious. Were the need to arise, US combined armed forces could drone strike, Tomahawk, artillery, AC130, or just door to door ground and pound any organized militia to dust. Or, you know, nuke it.
Are you, private US citizen, allowed to build a nuke?
I see this kind of response a lot to "the globalist threat."
What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines? Is there a fear that the "wrong" culture will persist into the future?
> What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines?
If we didn't have several superpowers on this planet, but only one unified government instead, what would whistleblowers do? Right now Snowden can fly to Russia, and Chinese dissidents can voice their opinions in the West. In a truly globalized world, there'd be nowhere to run.
We try to maximize competition and avoid monopolies and cartels in our economy. Why should we aim straight for the opposite when it comes to our governments?
It's not nearly as easy as that but that's the basic summation of my philosophy around the idea.
We need weapons to fight an enemy like this, with help from US technology companies.
> DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing.
Let's be spesific: they are using current AI algorithms to track everyone's movements from airborn imagery. It will be used to kill people in drone strikes and for population control.
I'd rather have neither, but I'm realistic.
$700,000,000,000
Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union:
"We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED."
Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies.
I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea.
There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.
Wars between nuclear countries don't happen any more.
The reason it's impossible to win a war against the current US military is because the US has spent an obscene amount of money building it for decades.
If the US military were not capable of defending Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics would be under Russian rule today.
Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.
If we spent 1 tenth the amount on our military, we'd still have the power to blow up the entire world X times over.
I just think that if you have the ability to destroy the entire world, then that's a powerful enough military and you don't need anything more for defense.
The only thing preventing Eastern Europe from being invaded is the conventional military. The US will never risk it's own existence for another country. The Russians know this.
So no, I don't believe that the US would do that and I am happy about that.
The US would only use Nukes if there was an attack on the US.
I want the US to stay out of all wars that aren't directed related to attacks on US soil and US citizens.
If the EU is worried about invasion, then they should have their own military to defend themselves.
Cyber-warfare is going to be where it's at. You spend years infiltrating adversary networks, backdooring critical systems/infrastructure and exfiltrating intelligence so when the time comes for conflict, you already know what cards they're going to play, where all the pieces are on the map and you can shut it all down with a few commands. Then you start your blitzkrieg unopposed.
It's telling Russia, China and North Korea so heavily encourage cyber-espionage and malware development. Meanwhile in the US, we've got idiots passing laws criminalizing mere infosec research. We're handicapping ourselves against a threat our adversaries are all too eager to employ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0
I disagree that "every country" does this. Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries. And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).
(While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.)
I meant that they call their armies/airforces/navies 'defense'.
> Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries.
I wished that were true, but almost all deployments of EU troops over the last 4 decades fall into that category. And there have been a lot of those.
> And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).
Ditto Iraq, Afghanistan.
> While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.
Agreed, they are invasions, and the worst ones are the ones under some kind of pretext.
Where are you from originally?
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe.
https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundi...
Also, many people, including myself, consider drone strikes to be state-sponsored terrorism. Just because some part of the military may be justifiable, does not mean all of it is.
That's a direct application of tech to killing people, not some abstract network or compiler tech. There's a big difference.
Possible reasons, using Wernher von Braun's rocket development as an example:
- He, or somebody else, would have invented rockets anyway at some point
- That 'some point' would have been much earlier if the money spent on military (research & some of the rest) would instead have been put into rockets in the first place
- even if the two mechanisms abovc were not true: I'd probably be willing to forgo the benefits of the space age if it meant undoing WW2 and the Holocaust
- In most ethical frameworks except utilitarianism, it's strongly discourage to accept some evil for some perceived greater good. Meaning: Even if rockets have saved far more lives than WW2 vanquished, participating in the project is morally dubious at best
Specifically to Google's project:
- This seems to actually invert the usual idea of the military funding basic research that later gets adapted for civilian use. They are building on the fundamental research into AI already done by Google and others, and using it very specifically to kill people. Any advances useful for other purposes would seem to be even more coincidental than usual.
- While "minimising collateral damage" i. e. civilian casualties may seem to be a worthy cause, it cannot be ignored that such advances are likely to result in greater use of the technology. Drones are actually the best example of this effect. Just look at the Obama administration's willingness to expand the use of drone strikes, which was a direct result of the technology appearing to be the lesser evil compared to manned missions on the ground.
- The Global Assassination Grid: The Infrastructure and People behind Drone Killings: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_gr...
- The Drone Papers: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/
- Graphs, Drones & Phones: The role of social-graphs for Drones in the War on Terror: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones
Why would US agree to that if Russia or China couldn't care less about it? That'd be just handicapping the military.
What the google employees need to do is push for a civilian government research and science funding effort, like ARPA was back in the day. Unfortunately that sort of funding is politically dead, while military funding is always in style.
And what do we have to show for it? Wikipedia is great and Youtube is entertaining, but the rest of the internet is horrible. I say that as a software developer.
Due to the wonderful internet our children now have attention spans far below the time a typical class lesson takes. The smartest brains on Earth are not building spaceships or curing disease, but rather implementing systems to get you to click on ads. Our bodies and habits are being tracked, our opinions manipulated, and our privacy is being handed of willingfully for a chat and photo-sharing platform.
Military tech _often_ has implications far beyond what the original scientists and engineers intended. Sometimes for the best. But as you allude AI to the internet, don't forget how much damage the internet is doing to us even as we enjoy it and profit from it.
I'd say it's stupid for people to fuel those "powers" that use real, threatened or imagined conflict with each other to exploit and control mostly them.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from...
> WALLACE: Of course, our, our main concern as human beings, certainly in this part of the world, is to survive, and to stay free, and to realize ourselves. How does all that you've said affect our ability to survive, and to stay free, in this world that is now in crisis?
> FROMM: Well, I think you touch upon a very important point here: namely, we must make a decision of values...If our supreme value is the development of the Western tradition - of a man for whom the highest thing in life is man, for whom love for man, respect for man, and the dignity of man, are supreme values - then we cannot ask the question that says, "if it is better for our survival, might we drop these values?" If these are supreme values, then they are there, and whether we live or we die, we shall not change these values. But if we begin to say, "Well, maybe we can cope better with the Russians if we also transform ourselves into a managed society......if we, as somebody put it the other day, train our soldiers to be like the Turks, who have fought so bravely in Korea...if we are willing to change our whole way of life for the sake of so-called "survival," then I think we do exactly that which threatens our survival. Because our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces. I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing.
Generally, whenever I hear people talk about inevitability, while ignoring how much of our world "is" because of the things we repeatedly decide to do, I have to think of Richard Stallman:
> Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.
As for China and how we must not allow a mineshaft gap, there's this Chinese proverb:
> He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.
If you don't have corpses in your basement, there's a lot of people scared shitless of you, and they'd love nothing more than for you to get onboard. Don't get onboard.
As an evolutionary selective pressure, war and military necessity are unparalleled.
Re-reading Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War, I noticed that he mentions, in 1963, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, which had only begun delivering volumes (the work remains in progress). That would include not only metalurgy, but entire volumes devoted to both martial and marine technologies.
The Google workers urging their CEO to pull out of Pentagon projects are the ones who do not have such short memories as to be distracted from the blatant deceptions and disasters carried out in recent history, with no sign of relenting.
And their excuse that "they're only analyzing images" is a joke. Analyzing the images and "identifying objects" (their words) is probably 95-99% of the job in a drone strike. So if they're trying to make people think that their role is minimal in drone strikes, they're failing hard at that.
I also think Eric Schimidt, who until last December was both Alphabet Chairman and working for the Pentagon, played a big role in this. Now he's still a "technical advisor" but if he continues working for the Pentagon I'd prefer he has no official affiliation with Alphabet.
It seems Schmidt would like Google/Alphabet and Pentagon to have a much deeper relationship, if you can read between the lines in this post:
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/pentagon-needs-...
Or is there something specific to Google's Maven project that makes it shameful, while other types of military commissioned projects might not be?
Weapons-targeting systems clearly falls into the latter category. I've worked on military-funded projects for machine translation and I don't feel guilty about that. I would not work on projects (military-funded or otherwise) that were used for targeting. I think that my position is internally-consistent.
Its perfectly reasonable for a person to decide they would rather not spend their short time on earth developing such tools (especially if it would be easy for bad actors to abuse them). I suppose that is the objection many Googlers are making.
And then there's the fact that we've killed hundreds of children with it. It's hard not to view everyone involved with the program as guilty of war crimes.
I don't have a problem with our military in a general sense, or even the idea of using drones to keep our pilots out of harm's way.
Take, for example, RADAR. Should those that developed RADAR, during or just prior to WWII, and abstained because of its possible wartime use? Wikipedia says "In the 1934–1939 period, eight nations developed independently, and in great secrecy, systems of this type"[1], so those that were left out faced a real danger in the coming years if they didn't have something to compete. Yet, RADAR has been used to great effect in many weapon systems and by many countries since WWII in ways that that most would agree are horrible. Then again, it's made commercial air travel much safer than we could have hoped to achieve at this scale without RADAR.
It's a complex situation, and I think it deserves a complex discussion. Distilling it to "working with the government is bad because I don't like what the government is doing" doesn't really do it justice.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radar
If the DoD or Raytheon or Weapons Systems Startup LLC hired someone to develop a better system for analyzing drone images, I don't believe that person would be complaining that their work was being used for war -- that's exactly what they signed up for.
The problem here is that Google sold their engineers on "Don't Be Evil" and libertarianism and "we're a sweet little tech company that people like" and is now delivering military contracts.
> The problem here is that Google sold their engineers on "Don't Be Evil" and libertarianism and "we're a sweet little tech company that people like" and is now delivering military contracts.
And they specifically dropped that when they changed to Alphabet, so the writing was on the wall for people to see. That said, I still think the immediate jump to military work == shameful is far too broad a brush to paint with. What if a contract was for better field medical kits? That's still going to help any military engagement for one side, but does keeping one side's soldiers in better health so they can kill more the other side make it okay? What about future public uses of the technology?
The world isn't that simple, and people acting like it is just so they have an easy target for their anger doesn't really help anything other than to make that person feel a little better about themselves for a little while.
Still there actually. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
I'm not sure I ever felt Google was libertarian but maybe I just don't understand what that means?
Your comment makes me think this might be a strange viewpoint, but I don't consider "don't be evil" and military contracts to be mutually exclusive. I consider the military to be necessary. Perhaps one day we can live in a world where it won't be, but we are very far from that now, and given we can't even stop people within our own country from killing one another, I don't believe we will be able to stop other countries from invading us if they have nothing to deter them.
Do you consider the people who join the military to also be evil?
The fact that the military funds research doesn't change that.
After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ultimate sacrifice that my grandparents generation gave to create this quite nifty Liberty bubble that these few generations get to play in.
Put another way: who benefits from $Giant_New_Military_Platform like new fighter planes? They don't really keep me safe as a citizen of the US: they don't prevent terrorists and they don't threaten other thermonuclear states. Yet we spend trillions on stuff like this any justify it with bellicose rhetoric and it seems like the only people benefiting from it are people selling it.
Military Industrial Complex
Yet most act like that "friendly reminder" never happened. The collective memory is in fact short.
And the people who work at those military/government contractors. In some sense, military spending is a job-work program that transfers funds from the public coffers to citizens. That it's for useless tech means it has attributes of an entitlement. That it's called military spending and has bellicose rhetoric is part of making that entitlement palpable to citizens it wouldn't be otherwise.
There are indeed warlords just over the hill, and they have names like Entropy and Resource Availability.
Yes, fear is a large part of it. But it takes courage to fight against that fear and be responsible for the future of your people (whomever they are). Pretending that there is no evil in the world is cowardice.
You call me blind to the future by looking at the past, but quite frankly, you appear to be repeating the mistakes of the past by not learning from them.
Democracy was not "won". Liberty for all does not exist.
These are fights that every generation must wage.
Or we will (and are currently) losing.
Over what time-frame? Do you have supporting data you can point me to ("In the past 10 years, more countries have switched from democratic to non-democratic government than vice versa")?
Thanks!
Some of the evidence they walk through: the collapse of political norms, political restraint and the rise of win at all costs brinksmanship, the delegitimization and dehumanization of political rivals, attacks against independent institutions and neutral arbiters, and much more.
Is a great place to start.
That standing up to Hitler also involved a peer partnership with the USSR's military.
Also, as part of war reparations, millions of Germans were placed in forced labor by agreement of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_...
The comment's grandparent could have just as well been defending Western Europe from Stalin's USSR territorial lust. They didn't stop moving west just to be polite.
That vast military stand-off, which became the cold war, was a military conflict. The US deployed over three million soldiers to Europe in the 1950s almost entirely to stop the USSR from advancing any further.
I'm by no means equating the three, but it's ahistorical to present the American military as an idealistic organization that exists to battle evil. Hell, Mao killed more Soviet soldiers than the USA ever did.
In the 20th century we had already gone through a war so terrible it was called the war to end all wars, until 20 years later when we made it look small by comparison. The deaths in WW2 accounted for 3% of the entire population of the world. And we hadn't even invented the atomic bomb until the very end.
After WW2 we were on the precipice of the next war potentially eliminating the human race. I can see why we were reluctant to jump into it all over again by "battling evil" and forcing Russia to give back the territory they took from Germany.
It's just kind of silly to portray the American military as "standing up to Stalin" because Americans are taught Stalin equals evil and America equals good and ipso facto America must have stood up to Stalin.
That is, if you take as a constraint that you don't actually want to start an all-out war, the post-WW2 west stood up to Stalin in probably the best way it possibly could have.
It's extremely glib to point out that the Nazi's lost to the Russian winter (let's be frank, Russian weather did more to the Nazi's than Russian soldiers ever could...) without recognizing that:
- Hitler's strategy that lost in Russia was completely predicated on the knowledge of the Western Front. No UK/USA, we may not have had Hitler losing in Russia.
- The USSR would have taken all of Europe had it not been for the USA liberating France and meeting the USSR in Berlin.
Easy to say Russians did the heavy lifting when the truth is that Hitler fucked it all up.
Easy to say that Russians did the work, when the truth is that the reason why France and UK aren't post-communist bloc countries is because of what Americans did.
Also, I recall hearing a talk about how one of the effects of post-WW2 soviet communism on western/northern europe was the creation of lots of social welfare programs. (Sadly I'm not in a place where I can source this but I could have sworn it was a talk by Michael Parenti.) The reason I bring this up is because I think it's disingenuous to claim that if it hadn't been for Britain and the US that France would today resemble the Balkans or Ukraine. What we typically associate with "post-communist bloc" countries happened far later when the USSR fell apart. It's a big jump to say that places like Britain would have become part of then suffered under Soviet Communism.
Even if you are one of the ~1% of APAM students it's spoken about in broad terms and hazy generalities after Teapot Dome (unless you count history of Baseball, which somehow is somewhat inexplicably regarded as a critical component of America history).
I find this interesting because many Americans broadly understand the succession of events leading up to and constituting WWII. On the other hand, the topics that are covered to death are barely recalled: The Revolutionary War? Washington fought that one. Civil War? Harper's Ferry & Manassas? 1812? "The time we fought the Canadians".
you already lost this game when you had to go back to ww2 for a just war.
So if your goal is "I should further the goals of a military because it provides room for the sort of work I enjoy" and not "I should further the goals of a military because the military does good things," it is not at all clear that backing the US military over those of the USSR and China is the right option.
It is also worth remembering that plenty of people the US killed could have had grandchildren who wanted to work in these same fields.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_...
> worth noting that scientific researched flourished in the USSR
You seem to be talking about two totally different things. The grandparent did not talk about scientific advancement. He also wasn't talking about the USSR's military, he was specifically talking about the US's. The US, you may be surprised to discover, pursued, and continues to pursue, a political agenda quite different than that of the USSR.
> "I should further the goals of a military because it provides room for the sort of work I enjoy"
He didn't say that at all. He said specifically 'create this quite nifty Liberty bubble', which is not the same thing.
That is why I interpreted the "quite nifty Liberty bubble" as referring to the ability to participate in technical / scientific endeavors - the "freedom I have to do this work" - not about liberty in the abstract.
('criley2, if I'm misreading you, please let me know.)
There's a reason to be proud of Western enlightenment values, which are closely connected to Western liberal democracy.
But the reason the US was able to do so much fundamental research in the 20th century is not (just) because the US culturally valued fundamental research - it's because the US was able to get popular support for taxing people and spending it on the war effort (both the World Wars and the Cold War) and decided that fundamental research was necessary for the war effort.
The politicians today who are cutting NASA's budget, talking about shutting down DoE, etc. aren't simply victims of Koch propaganda or disbelievers in the enlightenment - they just no longer have political cover for publicly funding research to the same extent that it was funded previously. Nobody believes that the US is at a technical disadvantage against the people we're currently at war against. They still have the political cover to fund the military itself, which continues to get large amounts of funding from political parties that generally want to lower taxes, but that base won't let them fund basic research as much as it did in the past.
Are you implying that the USSR spent a smaller percentage of tax revenue on the war effort?
--- Edit: also, the movement to close down DoE and cut NASAs budget certainly WAS created by American oligarchs like the Koches. They have created a propaganda machine to push for tax cuts for the rich. And part of the propaganda, pushed by outlets funded or controlled by GOP billionaires, like Fox, Limbaugh, Cato(founded as Koch), Sinclair, Heritage, SPN, Cit U, Jud Watch, Bradley, Searle, etc etc. is that we need to shrink government (so we can cut taxes on the rich.)
One description of that strategy is here [1] Today’s Republican Party is the party that those activists made. Congressional Republicans who came up in the populist tax revolts of the 1970s abandoned the old party orthodoxy of balanced budgets and rebranded themselves as the tax-cutting party. They embraced the idea that deficits don’t matter as long as those deficits result from Republican tax cuts.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/opinion/republicans-tax-c...
The vast majority of chips produced in Asia come from Taiwan, not the RoC. That’s a big difference, given that this discussion is about the innovation of democratic vs. autocratic governments, and the Taiwanese and Chinese governments are on completely opposite sides of that spectrum.
I’m not saying that Taiwan innovates more than a China because it has a democratic government, but it’s at least worth distinguishing between the two countries.
But history paints a different picture, with events like Iraq, the Kontras, NSA Dragnetting just to name a very select few.
Governments are willfully violent towards its own citizens and others for what is often not much of a reason at all.
Hitler’s plan really was world domination. He had plans for a rocket-powered trans-Atlantic plane to bomb New York. Not to mention that the Nazis had the V2 and even a jet fighter by the end of the war (but too few resources to build/deploy them). With more resources the Nazis may well have developed their nuclear bomb.
As far as I know, most historians agree that the US hastened the Allies victory over Germany but the Allies would have (eventually, probably) won anyways.
What our grandfathers did was noble. What we do now is the business of war. I find it diminishing to compare what they did to what Google does now.
How can you possibly compare it with overthrowing governments in South America and the Middle East, Vietnam, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, drone strikes on hospitals, up to 200k civilians dead in Iraq, and much more - and of coursr the deeply, deeply questionable motives of all of these.
The actions of our ancestors in WWII were borne out of necessity - those of the modern military are driven by money, greed, propaganda and political point-scoring.
You are looking at allied actions in WWII through rose colored glasses if you think that's worse.
Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Berlin, Saint-Nazair... the allies engaged in total war.
Civillians are part of the war making capability of a nation, and in WWII all sides considered them to be valid targets.
In Saint-Nazair's case it wasn't even enemy civillians. The German U-boat port was too heavily fortified, so the British wiped out the occupied French town that fed it.
The British, U.S., USSR, Germans, Japanese, and Italians all practiced atrocities and mass warfare and/or genocide against civilian populations. I'm not challenging the credibility of your list, only the one-sidedness.
If we want to defend the necessity and impact of those weapons, they should be taken in the context of modern american and NATO warfare, not in the context of WW2. Normandy 1944 was a very different conflict than Libya 2011 for instance.
The business of war most of the time makes us the aggressors.
A pacifist might say Hitler, Stalin and Mao are just symptoms of the deeper problem, which is the willingness of human beings to engage in violent conflicts just because somebody tells them to.
Why was the US an ally of GB/France/etc and not Germany/Italy? Contrary to your belief, greed can be ideological -- striving for global free trade is an example of this.
Also, the US formally joined the war in 1941, but were providing material support to the Allies and otherwise prepping before then.
Businesses in the US were serving both sides of the conflict.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_ref...
However, by 1940, it was very clear that the US was going to get dragged in anyways, and it would serve the US interests first to start preparing for war before it starts (note that the draft was instituted over a year before Pearl Harbor). Moreover, the US was neutral only in name: various acts passed more or less saying that the US would give aid to anybody so long as they were British or French. (Originally, it was cash-and-carry, but when Britain exhausted its cash reserves, it became Lend-Lease instead).
The intelligence services knew. The general public didn't.
The US provided support to the side they ideologically agreed with -- it wasn't just a case of "Germany randomly declares war on the US".
Well, certainly, the Roosevelt Administration was, but they were (prior to Pearl Harbor) also forced to maintain an outward pretense of neutrality while backing the Allies, because a large part of the rest of the US was also motivated by ideology...to either be sympathetic to the Axis Powers (one large, well-bankrolled faction) or to be opposed to intervention (another large, well-bankrolled faction, that often worked together with the preceding one against any interventionist policy.)
That's a big difference, and one you chose not to respect.
His CiC may not have agreed, but my grandfather told me, to my face, that he fought fascism and was proud to do so.
EDIT: To make clear what I meant, re: your comment: the state-building narrative the US has adopted substitutes the righteous struggle of people like your grandfather in order to avoid acknowledging, among many things, the reluctance to participate in world affairs and the frankly brazen pro-Nazi stances of many in the american public and the government at the time.
It's not correct to say that we have to attack a country/dictator in order to stand up to them.
My bad, I totally forgot that the Cold War never happened and that the soldiers of WW2 didn't form a hard border in Berlin that they were not friendly over.
As far as I know, no? The US was quite far from Berlin by the end of the war, and did not engage the USSR in battle for territorial control of Germany.
> saving dozens of countries from communism?
Surely not "dozens", but was there even one? The other Allies essentially handed Poland over to Stalin.
I believe GP was referring to a few years later, when the Berlin airlift broke the Soviet blockade of West Berlin - a clear attempt by the Soviet Union to expand their spehere of control to West Berlin and eventually West Germany as a whole.
The whole reason Japan started their program of military expansion in the first place was to guarantee access to natural resource, e.g., petroleum, needed by their industry.
By 1943 Japan was facing chronic shortages of petroleum products, rubber and other essential supplies because of interdiction by the US Navy's "Silent Service" (submarine force). And that was before Japan lost most of her navy, most of her large transport ships (by 1945 Japan was reduced to using mostly small wooden transport ships) the Phillipines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa (which while in Japanese hands could be used to operate aircraft to give Japanese shipping some protection from the US Navy).
It is unlikely that Japan could have done much more than feed itself after 1945.
The takeaway from WWII is not that the military is a wonderful thing but that the UN is a wonderful thing.
Btw I am lucky as my fathers house was bombed (when he wasn't in it) oh but he did live near the larges spitfire plant - which was a military target.
The same UN that causes Cholera outbreaks, protects rapists (as long as they wear blue helmets), and steps aside to allow massive genocides to occur on a not-irregular basis ( Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, South Sudan for starters).
Or are you talking about the UN that funded the Oil for Food program so a bunch of super-elite rich people could get kickbacks from an evil dicatator?
Maybe it's the UN that has stood by for decades while more and more dictators and legitimately horrible people acquire and use WMDs (Libya, Syria, North Korea, and on and on)...
Seriously, how much good has the UN actually done that wasn't backedstopped by a US Super Carrier or two?
glowing historical illusions of "responsibility" and "valor" don't protect us from nuclear holocaust.
Keeping "free" nations safe and prosperous is as fine a goal as any.
Technology is neutral - who it's used by and how is not.
I don't care what you build, if it has the goal of improving a workflow or automating a process then it will de-facto support one organization over another.
Boy they pay great though...
Doesn't really explain why google pays less in London UK for that google does in low col states in the states.
And I don't think Lockheed and BAE pay their engineers as much as FANG companies do and they certainly don't out compete on benefits.
IBM, Cisco or any other typical IT company pays 120-150K salaries in bay area and not much of profit sharing/ equity.
The total state is likely our future whether we like it or not.
These smug generalizations, if you did not vote for X, you are racist! If you are not for A, you are for Genocide! are not going to win you over people that are not already in your camp.
You come across as wanting that sweet sv $ and benefits without having to make any moral choices - if you got to work for CNI company's you know what the deal is.
And before you ask yes I did face that at my first job when I analysed some high speed film from one experiment and though oh I know what that "objct" is and my office mates said yes that's probably REDACTED.
If their efforts fails, they can choose to resign, or take other actions as employees in history have. It's not the only option, it may be the only option ultimately that succeeds in removing yourself from complicity.
You will find that in general that a lot more googlers probably wouldn't take that view.
I don't agree with this. Many open source projects have been used for sinister means (not just by governments). But does that make those contributors complicit? Should those contributors be safe-guarding against all possible unintended use cases?
It seems like you're painting all military efforts and funding in evil terms. But these efforts are directed by many different people, each with their own goals and agendas. Some of those efforts are intended for the betterment of humanity, while other efforts are at the detriment of humanity (at least in my opinion).
I worked for several years at a large defense contractor. The majority of our funding came from military contracts. I worked on a project intended to help detect and disarm explosive devices. And I worked next to a team that was trying to rapidly detect infectious diseases. We all thought we were doing work that would benefit society. But virtually any technology can be used for malicious purposes. Does that make us complicit if those technologies are ever used in malicious ways? Do the evil actions of some people in an organization make the entire organization evil? Does that mean that all military efforts are unjust?
Yes. If you choose to work for an entity you help further their work. Militaries are made for war and by contributing to a military, you directly help them commit atrocities. Working for a military is simply war profiteering [1].
> Do the evil actions of some people in an organization make the entire organization evil?
Yes, if you voluntarily join an organization knowing they have evil people doing evil things.
> Does that mean that all military efforts are unjust?
Yes, with probably the only exception being a defensive war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering
I can now assume that miners and forgery workers are complicit in murder because they harvest and refine the metals that build weapons. And that farmers are complicit because they produce the food that is used in military rations, the wool or cotton that is used to make their uniforms.
A petition by 3000 employees (or, to be honest, 30) is enough to claim that it was in the company's interest to forgo this revenue to improve their standing among potential hires. Remember that tech companies live and die by the quality of their workforce.
Moreover, the idea that companies always have to act according to strict profit motivations is a myth. Just look at the billions corporations spend each year on charitable causes.
Yes, you could claim that these donations are done for PR purposes. But that would render your argument meaningless, because I can reframe any such altruistic actions in terms of PR. I have also personally witnessed many decisions that cost money but served some greater good and were never publicised.
The example you used on charitable causes, falls directly into marketing.
If, as an engineer, it is against your moral code to do any work that supports the military, your choices are limited to working in small companies where everyone is focused on the commercial products and services you are delivering. And even then, as some games companies found out, the CEO might do some collaborative work with the military for training or something.
It should come as no surprise that Google teams up with the Federal government on things.
This is nonsense, Google has plenty of revenue and other non-defense avenues for growth.
Companies are not beholden to chase every last dollar, especially if it could alienate their workforce.
I don't have the same anti-defense leanings as others around here, but to say Google has no choice is ridiculous.
Google probably couldn't (and shouldn't IMO) stop the DoD using Android phones if they want to, but they can certainly refuse to work with the defense sector.
As a comparison, imagine if Tim Cook took a stronger privacy stance in China that we have in the states on moral grounds, and the result was China banning all Apple sales there. He would be tossed immediately, even though most of the comments here would be in support of the ethical position.
2) A very small group of people control all the votes in Google, thanks to different classes of shares. While this is not foolproof, courts rarely overrule decisions.
3) You can incur in loss of revenue too if a non-insignificant part of your workforce is resentful.
Perhaps not, but that doesn't necessarily imply that Google can't pick and choose what technology it sells or provides to the military. They can, for example, serve the administrative needs of the military (e.g. Google Apps), but not necessarily provide technology that directly improves their weaponry.
The richest man in town calls up the local newspaper and complains that he didn't get the store coupons in this week's Sunday supplement. The clerk responds, "Why do you care about the coupons? You're the richest man in town!" Then he responds, "How do you think I got to be so rich?"
Several things come into play in these scenarios.
In Google's case it makes essentially no actual money on "Google Brain", sure it gets headlines for beating Go, sure it attracts top talent (that needs to be paid!) and it still gives those folks free lunches and nice office space etc. So anything that offsets that expense is good.
And in Google, for all of its "lavish" perks, is a penny pincher like our rich man in the story. One of the stories when I was working there, they used to have a brand name juice cases where you could pick up any of the varieties of juice or smoothies that they made. The smoothies were very popular. Then one day out of the blue they swapped them for a different, and by every measure, inferior brand and fewer choices. There were lots of stories about why they switched, but after a lot of internal debate and investigation, the reason was that the replacements were cheaper (by about 25 cents each on their most expensive smoothie as I recall). It angered a lot of employees and one allegedly quit over it (well technically they called it the latest in a string of bad choices). The cost savings, assuming that every employee drank a case of their most expensive smoothie every day (which would represent an upper bound) was about $18M. That was 1% of the quarterly free cash flow (money that had been deposited into cash after all other uses). All of that pain for what was sure less than $18M in "savings".
The third factor is dual use. Sure you can use AI research into interpreting images to build killer robots that can identify and assassinate only those targets you specify. But you can also use it to pick out where the roadway has changed subtly indicating a roadside bomb, or a hazard that a self driving car should avoid, etc.
When you combine these three factors; one that AI team is just overhead, two the corporate willingness to alienate and possibly lose some of their employees over saving a nickel, and the ability to rationalize any number of non-evil uses for the technology, you get a recipe where of course they will sell things to the government without any regard to how that technology will be used. Just look at their main business, selling advertising. They just "sell ads" even when those ads are promoting illegal or unethical acts by consumers whether it is payday loans or Canadian pharmacies. Only when the FTC comes in and tells them to stop do they stop, not through some inner altruism.
Grow the fuck up - part of living in a democracy is tolerating the implementation of measures one disagrees with. Republicans might oppose birth control, but companies continue to support it in their health plans. Likewise, a state of the art offensive military is democratically wanted in the US, state your disagreement and tolerate it's implementation
And tolerating the opinions of others.
Then “AI” should be the least of your worries. Not everything is a software problem.
And you want to make the program "more efficient."
This is the gulf which I cannot seem to bridge.
Extra-judicial killings of "terrorists" in "bad places" using flying killer robots is just batshit insane to me. I cannot for the life of me understand how that conversation would go with, e.g. Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. Or really anyone who believes in human rights.
I'm not saying I support it from a moral standpoint but I don't think it's fair to call them extra-judicial except in a few cases.
No, it is the rule.
Drone strikes are incredibly high in collateral damage. The estimate is 28 unidentified people for each 1 target;
https://reprieve.org.uk/press/2014_11_25_us_drone_strikes_ki...
As far as I know, CIA assassinations of foreign citizens aren't illegal as long as they take place outside of the US.
There was at least one instance of a drone strike killing one or two American citizens which is definitely extra-judicial. Most drone strikes do not kill American citizens so referring to drone strikes in general as extra-judicial doesn't seem accurate to me.
I would like to clarify that I don't necessarily think that the US's use of drone strikes is morally correct. I just think it's not correct to refer to it as extra-judicial.
Their only intention here is to scale up their drone programs.
Which is exactly what they have been doing since day one, but to keep growing they need some help to make these robots a bit more autonomous.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/drone-pilots-ar...
The same amount of shaped-explosive that can crack a skull, can neutralize one of these drones. As such, the braindead countermeasure is to retarget these same drones at the stolen drones. At worst, the IFF radios might add a negligible amount of mass ... but that won't matter for long, because once the enemy knows you're deploying counterdrones, they'll need their own IFF radios in order to try to avoid your counterdrones. (Or the enemy could add armor to their drones, but that will make them massive/unmaneuverable enough that you can increase your counterdrones' explosive payload to penetrate their armor, while still being able to intercept them.)
If you're looking for historical analogy, try military aviation in general. During the first World War, bomber planes would have been game-changing ... if not that there were fighters, too. A slaughterbot is a bomber; a slaughterbot that seeks the enemy's slaughterbots is a fighter.
I'm not even sure what the consequence of this argument is; pretty much anything you build can indirectly contribute to the military industrial complex, even something innocuous like dev infra. But I also don't think that weak "everything is equivalent" argument means you're suddenly absolved of responsibility. One thing I am pretty sure of is that it must feel awful to waste your short time on earth on building tools specifically for killing.
The other extreme is that some folks actually have a conscience.
Reality is probably on a continuum in between.
Those people are not working in AdTech.
Is it hyperbole, or do you honestly feel that trying to connect users with products they might like is inherently unconscionable?
For example, I tried to find a pair of quality underwear that did not have some guys name above the crotch for years. I heard mention of me undies on a podcast, checked it out, and am now a happy customer. ( this is not a paid post )
It is delusional to suggest that this is the goal of ad-tech. The only people thinking about the users and the products are the creative teams that make the ads themselves.
Ad-tech, on the other hand, engages in dragnet data mining operations that serve the creative/design teams at ad agencies. The way the ad-tech industry has decided to go about things absolutely is inherently unconscionable. The unrestrained nonsense they've unleashed on the web over the past two decades have resulted in leaving nearly all internet users vulnerable to malicious code, privacy loss, and other horrible things.
> some of them just got shot at yesterday
Nice appeal to emotion there. But how do you know what the people at YouTube HQ did for a living? Do you have insider information? By all means, don't hold back.
Or are you making uninformed hyperbolic statements?
> The unrestrained nonsense they've unleashed on the web over the past two decades
I feel sometimes like I'm the only one who remembers how awful, insulting, and dangerous ads were before.
> But how do you know what the people at YouTube HQ did for a living? Do you have insider information? By all means, don't hold back.
I asked, "You want to have that conversation with them?"
I'll ask you the same thing.
You know some of them are here.
They're your peers.
But feel free to demonize them without talking to them.
> how awful, insulting, and dangerous ads were before
You seem to be missing the point. Yes, advertisements are awful, insulting to our intelligence, and dangerous psychologically. But that has nothing to do with ad-tech. Your conflation of advertisement production with ad-tech is especially curious, considering your strangely dogmatic defense of this reprehensible industry.
It's even more curious that you didn't reference any of the things I actually brought up in my post about the ad-tech industry. The content of an advertisement is not nearly as important as the means by which people are consuming the content. This is a fundamental premise of Marshall McLuhan, on whose ideas much of the advertising industry has operated for decades now. ("The medium is the message.") The real problem with ad-tech is not the advertising content that it helps propagate, but rather the techniques employed by ad-tech to achieve its goals. Why don't you respond to those problems I raised, rather than ones that are both wholly irrelevant to the discussion and entirely absent from my comment? Ad-tech is what introduced malicious code, unethical privacy breaches, and absurdly non-scientific measurement practices to the advertisement industry as a whole. The ads distributed on yesterday's television and radio broadcasts, and on yesteryear's magazines and newspapers, could never have come close to the destruction today's internet ads achieve - because those older media were not capable of being leveraged as irresponsibly as ad-tech leverages the world wide web.
Of course it should. You denied any users X exist, (Ad-Tech who think about the users.) I was hoping to demonstrate that your sample size of X that you know well enough to judge them so, is too small to be meaningful. I say that because I know many people in Ad-Tech, and almost all of them care very much about users. Since our conclusions are different, I can conclude our samples are different populations, or you're speaking in hyperbole.
You said:
> The only people thinking about the users and the products are the creative teams that make the ads themselves. ... is inherently unconscionable.
If you know people in Ad-Tech, and you tell them, "You don't care about users, and your business is inherently unconscionable" I'd like to hear what responses you get. Genuinely. Would they agree with you? Or, more likely would they say something like, "At my place, even when I think about the user, it doesn't matter much," which seems much more likely the kind of human response you'd get.
> It's even more curious
You opened with bald-faced hyperbole. I'm trying to get you to admit that your most outrageous claims are based on nothing but lies. Once I do that, maybe I'll dive into the rest of what you said.
My concession to you is that there are awful ways to do ads - exploitative, manipulative, bad for the user. And there are ways to do ads that are not those things. You claim there's no difference - it's all homogeneously bad. That's hyperbole or delusion.
Moreover, none of it is particularly helpful. It's just spite. You don't have any actionable proposals for making the world a better place. You're just making "dead lawyer" jokes.
And I did respond directly, reminding you that ads used to be far worse. You haven't responded to that at all.
Out of morbid curiosity, do you get that ads fund most of the internet?
> Out of morbid curiosity, do you get that ads fund most of the internet?
Yes. But that does not mean that we want or need advertising, or that it is not tasteless. It might mean that we cannot conceive of or achieve an alternative version of the world without advertising and with the internet.
More generally, I'd say it's important to make a clear distinction between statements of principle, and statements of pragmatic policy.
As a matter of principle, if you have something and don't need it, and someone else needs it, you should give it to them, right?
I'm just trying to understand your principle and where the boundaries of it are.
Oh, I don't think I'm well-informed enough to answer that question properly. Let's suppose by "capitalism" you meant allowing market forces to operate freely. No, I wouldn't say that's entirely tasteless, but yes it has tasteless aspects.
And a principle one is advertising, i.e. standing up and saying "Hey, I suggest you buy this, and here's why" when
(a) you have a financial motivation to encourage the sale
(b) quite obviously, that motivation corrupts your role as the recommender
(c) despite being educated people you make no acknowledgement of that corruption.
Ideally, the best way for consumers to choose between competing products would be for them to read peer-reviewed scientific literature comparing the merits of the products and their suitability for the intended use. That again is basically definitional -- that's what science means.
Now, do you think science should be conducted by people with a financial interest in the conclusions of each paper? No, you don't. And that's why you shouldn't have a hard time accepting that advertising is inherently undesirable.
> As a matter of principle, if you have something and don't need it, and someone else needs it, you should give it to them, right?
Yes.
> I'm just trying to understand your principle and where the boundaries of it are
Sure, happy to continue the discussion.
> Yes.
So, is property tasteless?
Why are people trying to sell something? Shouldn't they just give it to me?
And then scientists should determine which products should be made.
And scientists should determine who is the best at making those goods and services.
And scientists should decide who doesn't deserve to live or reproduce.
... So... I purposely tried to go too far. At which point do you think I went too far?
Owning something which you do not make use of and denying access to others who would make good use of it is not a good thing to do.
> Why are people trying to sell something? Shouldn't they just give it to me?
I'm not arguing against the whole of free market capitalism, just advertising. We can still have a free market without advertising. A bit like how we can and do have democracies while severely restricting political campaign funding.
> And then scientists should determine which products should be made.
> And scientists should determine who is the best at making those goods and services.
> And scientists should decide who doesn't deserve to live or reproduce.
Scientists provide information. They do not enforce anything; they are not an executive branch of government.
"Science" is the word we use for the process of rationally answering questions about the universe. That includes comparing products. And comparing who is best at making goods and services.
If it were the case that there were a subset of people who didn't "deserve" to live or reproduce (for some definition of "deserve") then yes, we would want scientists to be involved in identifying that subset of people. The obvious example is criminal punishment. The USA and other countries decide that some people no longer deserve to live. (Other societies in history have sterilized people). Yes, of course we would want those decisions to be based on science -- science as the provider of information and as the process for arriving at conclusions from data; the legal system and government to actually execute and enforce things.
> ... So... I purposely tried to go too far. At which point do you think I went too far?
You didn't go too far. I think you confused two things: (1) scientists making information available to society, and (2) some group of people enforcing a policy.
Free Market good? Free Speech good?
So why can't I pay someone to help me spread the word about how good my product is?
> A bit like how we can and do have democracies while severely restricting political campaign funding.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I do not believe any democracy has actually limited political campaign funding. There have been limits, but they have all had loopholes that have made them completely ineffective.
> Scientists provide information. They do not enforce anything
But, it's scientifically proven that if I only do business with science-based companies, that the products and services I get are better and safer. I therefore boycott all other businesses.
Then, scientists absolutely do enforce everything.
> And comparing who is best at making goods and services.
Actually, no, that's economics. And economics say the best solution is the free market. Not a body of decision makers. Because each person measures their own utility. People can provide evidence and opinions. But each person makes their own decisions.
There's no accounting for taste.
Which movie is scientifically proven to be the most enjoyable by people who like Quentin Tarantino movies, but hate Oliver Stone movies?
Oh, scientists hadn't even gotten to review Snatch yet. If only some advertiser enticed me into giving it a try, I would find out that my opinions change over time in unpredictable and unique ways, that no science board could ever predict.
> some people no longer deserve to live. (Other societies in history have sterilized people). Yes, of course we would want those decisions to be based on science
Science is a tool. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Science is not humanistic, any more than Capitalism is. That's why science must be regulated. Otherwise, we'd be cloning people with no brains, so we can harvest their organs. We'd instantly kill everyone with an un-treatable infectious disease, because the good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one. We'd set up a surveillance state to enforce our laws, because it's scientifically proved to be the best way to enforce laws.
Opinions and ethics are human factors you are not accounting for.
The Google/Youtube/Alphabet people are justifying why they are going to get into the business of shooting people, and making drones that shoot people, and you're trying to stir up sympathy for them by saying they were shot? Just as they decide to become murderers, a woman comes in and shoots a bunch of them. Not too many tears in my eyes.
That moment when you realize your mega-corp employer's "culture" is merely just another tool to get your to do their bidding.
How do the share holders feel? I'm sure they're betting that almost every employee will stay no matter how their technology is used.
(In the same vein, Google's NetPAC has been quietly donating the max to Republicans like Paul Ryan and Steve Scalise, while most of their engineers openly oppose them.)
Yes, they like the high paychecks, five-star meals and massages, but the market for ML and AI experts is very strong right now. The high paycheck can be matched elsewhere, and the benefits of not contributing to drone warfare research are worth spending a bit of that money on food and massages.
But as I said, I only know of one for sure. Whether or not there are enough to sway Google is yet to be seen.
I am doubtful that paycheck can be match elsewhere in companies which are more morally upright than Google. However if it is single issue protest about military but acts regarding user data usage, financial, environmental or other type of dodgy behavior is okay then these people can definitely move on to different employers.
Perhaps before going to premature conclusions, it might be worthwhile to wait and see how management reacts.
I am also curious if you know of prior examples of strikes being on moral grounds, I usually associate a strike with demands for employee rights or compensation, not corporate behavior.
This starts to move past the edge of my zone of knowledge, I've never been union, my knowledge of them is relatively basic.
Try just going to eat at the Pho place across the street from Google in Boulder sometime, you'll hear people openly complaining about Sundar and Susan and chatting about their latest projects at full volume without a care in the world.
Anyways, we'll see what happens, if the company doesn't give in perhaps we will see some more "why I quit Google" blogs down the road.
Do you mean these people have handed in notices or are planning on quitting in the next day or so? Or do you mean these people are considering quitting if google doesn't change its ways? Or do you mean "Some people I know are saying that they will quit" but have no short term plan for actually quitting?
Quitting a job over an ethical issue doesn't take long. It goes like this: "I quit!"
And then, those people are no longer 'quitting' but now have become 'have quit.'
To put a number on it: I am absolutely certain that Facebook would be willing right now to sacrifice 25% of their revenue for a bump in their reputation (among developers only) that puts them at Google's level.
Yes, it's beneficial to have more talent and better PR if they were to do that - but I'd say it's much easier to spend 1B/yr on positive PR and influencing developers than it is to lose out on 10B in revenue and 4B in profit (based on their 2017 numbers).
Don't most of us want less war? Does it really drive you to enhance the capabilities of those committing acts of violence? How does one start to believe that by supporting the military you are somehow working towards a better world?
If you're not going to be an idealist, then in all likelihood you're helping to work towards the vision of an idealist with more power than you.
The military-industrial complex may have become far bigger and perhaps in some ways a burden, but the world is a dangerous place and becoming more so. In my view, there is a perfectly valid argument that working with the military is the right thing to do.
At the same time if individuals have pacifist leanings and do not want to work for the military, i would hope corporations respect that.
Nope. Not even in the slightest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waves_of_democracy.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy#Waves_of_...
Look at the backsliding in Turkey, Phillipines, Burma, Venezuela, Egypt. Look at the regimes which have come to power in Hungary, Poland. And of course Russia itself. China, which at one time seemed to be heading for more moderation has taken a sharply authoritarian turn. I would argue just in the last five years things have turned sharply for the worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series
There's no regime in Poland.
You are right that the title says 2003 - i looked at the scale below which ended at 1998. I was not so much doubling down, but rather talking of a slightly different point that the ones you and jpollock were making. When I said democracies were in retreat, there are two or three different phenomena.
First - the western democracies seem to be internally weaker, and unable to arrive at consensus even for important national priorities. This may be because of the rise of social media echo chambers. In Europe there is a growth of right-wing parties in all countries, even Germany. As an Indian this worries me, because for all their warts, the liberal democracies of US and the European countries are the model of governance I would like to have succeed across the world.
Second - there seems to be no answer to the salami-slicing tactics of the autocratic regimes in Africa and Asia. You have to see the bullying of countries like Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Phillipines, even Vietnam and wonder. As the western democracies look to be in retreat, countries are surrendering their interests to the regional bullies. This will ultimately hurt all democracies in the long run.
Thirdly - there is the increasingly blatant and surprisingly successful interference in open societies from the closed ones. The US election is only the most advertised one. But similar interference has happened in Australia, in UK, in various part of Europe. There are at last signs of response to this - Australia has passed a law against foreign interference, and the Skripal episode has led to (some) concerted effort. But the response still seems much weaker than the provocation.
In summary, by "retreat of democracies" my focus was on their will and ability to stand up to autocratic forces, not a retreat of democracy itself (which i think is what jpollock and your responses were about). That may be why we were talking at cross purposes. I fervently wish i am wrong - and I hope i never try to avoid rational discourse.
What are you advocating? Arming governments with autonomous killer drones in order to "protect democracy"? Because the world is a "dangerous place"? I don't even...
It's dangerous to imagine one is sitting on some moral high ground by refusing to work for the military. We all owe our freedom to previous generations of scientists and engineers who worked for the military, sometimes inspite of strong ethical concerns.
Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.
The only use for the other types of weapons is to participate in some other civil war in another country that we shouldn't be in.
So no, I don't care if we "fall behind" because we still have nukes and those are enough to protect us in the conflicts that matter.
So, in the universe you are writing from, the Kargil War would have been an impossibility?
US Nukes: 7300
Russia Nukes: 8000
India Nukes: 90-100
Pakistan nukes: 100-120
Everyone except the US and Russia nukes: ~1100
(source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/nine-nations-have-n...)
There's a reason they were all proxy wars and they never escalated into direct conflict on the scale of WWII (or beyond), and that reason is nuclear deterrence.
Nukes don't prevent “any war” from happening between powerful nations, though they do seem to have some utility in restricting the escalation of such conflicts.
(Now, you could argue that unilateral conventional disarmament would leave no choice but to escalate to nuclear war, which would improve deterrence and prevent even small scale conventional, politically-covered attacks, but that argument would be highly speculative.)
100 nukes is powerful enough.
Being able to prevent friendly (and even neutral) countries from being bullied or going over to the dark side is also important because ultimately the best defence against rising autocratic forces is to ensure a broad alliance of friendly, democratic countries who are secure against interference by unfriendly regimes.
If a country like the USA can have its elections manipulated, how vulnerable might smaller democracies be?
The CIA could most certainly help you answer that quite quantitatively.
This has to be a joke, right? The USA has been responsible for undermining democracy all over the world more than any other country.
This is a just a partial list that we are aware of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
It is also implicated (though not directly proved), that USA was responsible for Arab spring.
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-USA-behind-the-Arab-Spring-upr...
Just think about what you wrote: "our enemies". Why do you (whichever country you are from) have enemies in the first place? What did your country do to make others hate it? A lot of people seem to focus on how to defend against "those who hate us" without spending a passing thought on the why of it.
Solving "why" also solves the "how", but those who profit from conflict have no interest in the former, as their livelihood depends on the latter.
Philosophically, it is strange to make agreeableness the standard for the behavior of nations. Being good is much more than being nice, and any thoughtful conception of moral goodness will sometimes require actions that upset others.
And finally, you seem to be assuming that my country is the only possible bad actor. But of course, that’s not true. My country could do everything “right”, only for someone else to start a war.
>Why do you (whichever country you are from) have enemies in the first place? What did your country do to make others hate it? A lot of people seem to focus on how to defend against "those who hate us" without spending a passing thought on the why of it.
Are you really arguing that it's Poland's fault for having a country in the same place that Hitler wanted lebensraum?
You have a very simplistic view of geopolitics.
What did Poland do to Germany in 1939 to make Germany hate it? What did the Jews do to the Nazis to make them hate them so much?
Wars get started for all kinds of reasons, some predictable, others not. It's a simple matter of survival to equip yourself as best you can to defend yourself.
And when was the last time the US actually defended its own territory instead of invading somone elses?
Not that I explicitly agree, but there is some theory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory
Some might say this is the purpose of the second amendment.
Well no, that's just one aspect of democracy that can't even remotely serve as a sufficient condition for democracy.
Are you basing this statement on a general feeling or on a specific data-based metric? The military industrial complex greatly benefits from this common sentiment, but by most all quantitative measurements the world continues growing slowly safer, average lifespans increase, etc. While years-long aberrations exist (e.g. civil wars), the overall trend is very clearly antithetical to your statement.
As Pinker notes, progress is not monotonicly increasing. While it is true that things have gotten better on average across the world, we should be wary of those who do not champion enlightenment ideals, particularly in autocratic China with the apparently life term of Xi Jinpeng. We should be wary that those without our interests at heart don’t overtake us.
The source of my claims is the book by Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory
His conclusion from the data is that wars between great powers become less frequent but more deadly. Please read the book you're critiquing.
Pacifism isn't viable when some of the biggest countries in the world are run by totalitarian regimes. Objections to participating in the military industrial complex are a luxury of countries verging on global irrelevance. The proclivities of the West to engage in self-flagellation over these issues are well known to and exploited by less liberal regimes. If only it were not so, but I don't know what the alternative is, just as the physicists in the Manhattan project saw no alternative.
Our military doesn't get to pick the fights. They get to fight the fights.
It seems to me that 1st and 2nd amendment rights are both under particularly intense bombardment these days.
'Fundamental rights' (under US law) I think is defensible as fundamental is treated as an alias for constitutional so guns are in.
'Fundamental human rights' to me implies broad and fundamental applicability, i.e. the UN declarations and covenants on human rights, which don't iterate guns as a right.
Case in point, when non-US countries talk about human rights, none of them are talking about guns.
And this "other countries" mm a lot of this had constitutions where the citizens where given some rights by the king and not have universal rights.
[1].https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/pensioner-arrested-stabbing-susp...
[2]. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1361028/Martin-is-cl...
If we have the right to life, we have the right to self-defense. If we have the right to overthrow tyranny, we have the right to fight it and install a new form of government.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...
[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...
George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", Tribune (19 October 1945)
In point of fact, the majority of the battles the US military and ARVN engaged in were against the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). That is, conventional forces vs other conventional forces. While the VC (VietCong) were very active and played a crucial role in the eventual victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, they were never the primary military force deployed by the communists.
Moreover, the VC were not just guys with AK's. They had the full panoply of military hardware that light infantry uses: from anti-tank rockets to mortars to light anti-air missiles. The VC even had a few tanks. The VC did not engage solely in small unit guerilla operations either. Once in a while, they would launch major offensives using coordinated assaults of 10's of thousands of soldiers.
What history has shown is that while insurgencies can cause problems for established regimes, without outside logistical and financial support (i.e. supply of arms, food, money, etc) they usually cannot win.
That school of thought dates from the 18th century when thinkers appealed to a Creator who endowed those rights (even if it was a rather aloof Deist conception of God). However, in the following century it faced strong competition from the utilitarian school that suggests that rights are only a convenient fiction that society recognizes for the common good. Plus, these days ever more people do not believe in any particular Creator who could have endowed anyone with rights.
Human ethics, metaethics and politics is definitely nowhere near "laws of physics" settled and agreed on.
What is it in human nature that concretely and morally entails our having rights? the faculty of reason and its crucial role in human life, as long as we are free to act according to our thoughts. No faith involved, no mysticism required.
[added] The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. I don't see what point you are trying to make -- the concept of natural rights does not require a god, and it is irrelevant whether some person invoked deism or not. The fact is that we are all born with inalienable rights by virtue of our nature, what we are and how we ought to live together.
The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence of a Creator.
That writers continue to conflate the definition of legal "law" with scientific "law" is in some ways amusing, but it weakens the analogies. A physical theory (testable hypothesis making specific predictions) isn't a law. The analogies aren't merely suspect, they are often fatally flawed with appeals to authority amongst other practices which are not relevant in science.
What I am saying, more simply is that "laws" of physics aren't facts. Using them as the basis for an analogy results in flawed reasoning.
With regard to the original subject matter, fundamental rights mean different things to different people, countries, governments, and other entities. It would be nice if everyone adopted a single minimal definition that we all interpreted and supported in the same manner.
This wish is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, as fundamental human rights often run counter to power structures of various types across the world. These rights could potentially constrain other entities rights, so they may choose to adopt some or none of them, or interpret them in as wildly different a manner as they wish.
This is vastly different than how physicists interpret and test theories. We don't set h_bar == 0 because we don't want the world to have a quantum character in some locations. But entities in power can set FundamentalRight_type == 0 for a specific type (pick speech, life, liberty, pursuit of happyness) if they so choose.
In this way, "fundamental" rights are really not so fundamental. They aren't like the theories of physics, the same everywhere.
[1] see https://www.space.com/37018-solar-eclipse-proved-einstein-re... though like almost all writers, they misunderstand what "proven to be correct" means in the context of a physical theory.
[2] see https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters_20...
Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.
The fact is that I'm a brain in a jar, therefore you don't really exist and have no rights whatsoever.
For what you say to be fact, and not just your personal belief wrongly presented as such, you first need to prove to me that you really exist.
All this to say, anyone who claims to know the "truth" or "facts" in a discussion about ethics and morals doesn't know what they're talking about.
Fact in law is not the same as a fact in science.
Scientific "law" is an artifice, more of something created by someone attempting to explain using a poor mapping of language to the way scientists do their work. Scientific theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Gravity is a theory, not a law. It makes testable and falsifiable predictions.
Specifically, Newtonian gravity, what you call the law of gravity or a "law of physics" is known to be wrong.
Given this, how can you claim that they are what they are "regardless of what people may say or feel about them" ?
As a (non-practicing Ph.D) physicist, I have this discussion with many non-scientists, to try to help them move beyond the concept of "laws of physics" (there are none), and into the concept of testable predictions arising from the hypotheses in the theory.
Ohms "Law" is yet another example. Ohm's law breaks down spectacularly for certain materials under specific conditions. Quantum systems like Josephson junctions most definitely do not obey Ohm's "law".
In science, absolute laws do not generally exist. Using your words "regardless of what people may say or feel about them", they are irrelevant, and often incorrect. Scientific "law" is not absolute. They are not "facts".
Language, english or otherwise, is a very poor substitute for the language that testable hypotheses are written in. There is often a fundamentally severe impedance mismatch between what is written out, and what the language of science (mathematics FWIW) actually says, or even how to interpret or describe what is going on.
Without constructing a strawman, I'd like to point out that in previous centuries, people were so enamored of the fixed natural "laws", that they actually persecuted those who poked holes in them. One that comes to mind is the geocentric model of the universe.
This one is particularly interesting, as it had both religious overtones and support, and made specific predictions. The predictions of geocentricism about other planetary orbits did not match observations.
That is the fundamental Ptolemaic system law of planetary motion was wrong.
But it couldn't be.
But it was.
So astronomers developed modifications to the laws. Epicycles were invented.[1]. Which made the calculations harder. And it meant you had to discuss a mechanism by which this worked. That is the law which you are claiming to be inviolate, must be modified at best, or discarded at worse.
Add in to this very accurate measurements and analysis by Brahe, Kepler, and others, this lead Galileo, Newton and others to formulate a new model of the solar system, backed up by testable predictions. It took a while for this "law" to supplant the previous "law". But supplant it, it did.
Because science is not based upon absolute, legalistic versions of laws. Science is based upon testable hypotheses. If the tests fail, so does the hypothesis.
This mechanism survived unscathed for about 250 years or so. Until Einstein pointed out the problems with it.
My point was simply that just because the popular science writers call it a law, doesn't mean it is a "law".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle
My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in the united states.
If one is so depraved as to argue that self-defense is unacceptable as such, then one should be prepared to live and die as a slave to the first thug or dictator who walks by one's neighborhood or country.
Really? Your profile was created 15 minutes ago, and this seems like an absurd statement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide
There's arguments to be made as to what percentage of the populace needs to agree for a stable society to be formed. Both extremes of 100% and 0% are obviously bad as you either get no agreement or total dictatorship.
Just saying that you should listen to the government though ignores the majority of the history of governments
I think you are wrong. At least in Norway where I've lived for the last few decades I'm pretty certain people are found not guilty because of self defense.
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law).
Persecuting minorities where completely lawful in nazi Germany.
I guess you should be looking for another word because as much as I'm against lawlessness that doesn't cut it here IMO.
If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way?
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.
Not all states are benevolent, nor are they guaranteed to stay benevolent. Many Americans are wary of our gov't (and IMO rightly so.)
Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
They have the option of wearing a bullet proof vest or use trained monkeys to do their bidding.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nope, some of us citizens believe that the US military ranks will by and large not obey unlawful/unconstitutional orders to attack its own citizenry on our soil. If they choose to do so anyway - good luck, there's more of us than there are of them.
The loss of property, and the violation of one's home and sense of security are real harms. But the point is not to make the violator pay, so much as it is to merely prevent an injustice.
And many (I believe most) defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing the weapon. Most people do not relish the thought of taking another's life.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
It makes more sense when you realize that there is significant overlap between "gun owners" and "past or present military service".
Well, yeah.
There are no illusions that a group of people with dubious levels of training could square off against the government and come out on top. However, you can certainly raise the cost of occupation _significantly_.
Despite the US rolling into the middle east with all of its technological might, planes, helicopters, and modern armor, its still bands of people with guns and bombs who, years after "mission accomplished", drag the conflict onward.
They shouldn't. But what guarantee does someone have that the intruder won't harm them?
Note that the US military is sworn to the constitution, not to any current administration. When anti-citizen measures are proposed, the military aligns with the citizens.
I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be. I'm not going to wait and find out if you would attempt to kill me as a result of discovering you are burglarizing my home.
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nobody is under any illusions that the US military could roll through with tanks and cluster bombs and annihilate any opposition, but I doubt the government is particularly keen on ruling over a pile of ruined infrastructure. If that's the case, they instead have to deal with a large population of armed guerillas, which the Mid-East conflicts have proven the US is rather poor at dealing with. To say nothing of the fact that a large portion of the US military would defect upon being told to fire upon the people they've signed up to defend. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to deter the government from using overt force.
> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.
to shooting someone would in most countries be considered a illogical and reckless act.
I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.
Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.
People have been murdered by burglars many times so you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend that's not an outcome.
In your ideal world, do you prefer that the victims allow the burglar to eliminate them as a witness?
That is assuming a lot of thinking from a scenario that started as:
> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.
Even assuming what you said, the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.
The right to kill in self defense exists in many countries but I belive in most countries it will result in an investigation and you'll probably have to go to court to convince a judge that you had
1. Reason to fear for your or someone elses life
2. considered (and if possible: tried) other reasonable options.
I think it would be extremely cruel to punish someone for defending themselves or someone else.
Also keep in mind that stopping an attacker without the option of hurting them seriously is way harder than if you are allowed to use any means.
Using deadly force to counter a purely material crime is madness.
Its not the victim's obligation to quiz the home invader on their intentions before they act to protect themselves, their family and/or their property. A person knowingly and foreseeably puts their own life up for forfeit by invading another's home... and for what - a material crime, as you say? (But I hope we all acknowledge that the stakes are often far more serious and irrevocable than having your ipad stolen while you sleep).
The big open secret here is, no government today or in the past has had a monopoly on deadly force (nor will they ever). They only have a monopoly on punishing deadly force via the judicial system.
Deadly force can be legally prohibited and morally justified. It can be legally justified and morally abhorrent.
I don't even agree that I should have to let burglars take my things. If I want to stop them why should their greed put my well-being at risk?
Gun owners do believe they can overthrow the government, or at the very least that guns would be useful if that had to happen. A lot of anti-gun folks like to use this like of argument, but I don't think they are really thinking clearly. If I had to violently overthrow the government it would not look like getting together with a group of like minded friends and marching on Washington to be killed by all manner of military hardware. It would look like taking potshots at patrolling soldiers to demoralize them, attacking mid level government bureaucrats when they are at home or unprotected in order to damage the government internally and dissuade people from working for it, or luring police into ambushes to make them hesitate to enforce the law. Imagine what harm a few motivated people with rifles might do. Now multiply that by a thousand. Now multiply that by a thousand.
The government would break under the strain. That doesn't mean that revolutionaries would take DC and occupy the Whitehouse, though they might after years or decades, but it does mean the government would give up tyranny.
An armed populace ensures the government has the consent of the people. Anything else is tyranny, even if your tyrants are treating you alright now.
Why would a guy who grabs a cop's gun and waves it around pointing it at people for a thrill have to pay with the actions of their life when another cop shoots them?
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Do you really think gun owners would line up on the field to take on the military in the open? Ruling over a country where half of the people are supporters and the other half are armed dissidents would be impossible regardless of military strength. Just look at the failures of the last Iraq war to see how a tiny fraction of the population was able to throw off the whole thing.
Even more, many think they should be able to hide their actions from the state...that is the definition of a lawless society.
I get it, HTTPS is fun. But a human right? Definitely not.
Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.
You can put this through some translation software of your choice;
http://www.domarbloggen.se/sodertorns-tingsratt/ansvarsfrihe...
Nazi Germany was a country full of laws. (I realize I am Godwin’s law-ing, but the parent implied that self-defense ought not be a right in a society with legal institutions and laws; Nazi Germany is a perfect counter example of how “laws” aren’t always just and that a fear of government is a legitimate concern.)
Note that like most other points made in discussions involving "rights," this is an opinion, presented as if it were an objective fact.
Another opinion is that you have only the rights that you can defend. That one, at least, has some empirical proof behind it.
Things aren't black and white. Every country is lawless to a certain degree. Otherwise there wouldn't be any robberies in countries that aren't "lawless" (whatever that means). One difference between EU and US is that a robber has a decent chance of being shot in US and not in EU meaning you become a sitting duck the moment you stop living the socialist life that state deems appropriate.
For every right that most people hold evident, you'll find people who disagree. This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.
Codified rights are effectively statements of belief of a government, to which they are binding themselves. As a statement of belief, there's no legal structures or arguments upholding them. They are simply installed by declaration (either dictatorially or by some measure of consensus) as an official part of the government's world view.
The US was built upon the idea that rights are inherent and not granted to citizens by a government.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
> This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.
Which is what the US Constitution is. (Just because the say "We hold these truths to be self-evident" doesn't mean that they are)
Mind blown huh?
Simply put, those who are attacked will fight back. Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Therein you have a basis for the first and second amendment, i.e. freedom to think and freedom to defend yourself.
Curious wording. The vast majority of even modern human history seems to provide an incredible amount of contradictory evidence—at least if you’ll grant that “forced” can also mean socialized into a certain cultural and ideological narrative from birth. Sure, there are notable moments when resistance forms quietly, and perhaps even makes its way into the public sphere. However, resistance does not appear to me to be a default human trait. That’s usually only found in a smaller portion of what is typically non-boat-rocking humanity—those who hope to convince their fellow citizens to join them. The majority of humans appear to rarely make it habit to question anything at all.
Well not that I'm Christian, but Christian teaching is basically the opposite of this (Matthew 5:39 - i.e. turn the other cheek). And Gandhi's resistance was also an example of the opposite. In fact the opposite is the only way to deescalate a fight (or, as the US chooses to do, create the biggest weapons, but isn't that then affecting the rights of the people on the other side of the argument?)
> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Really? Advertising, religion, nation states, even your belief that these are "natural" laws are examples of your inherent bias. As a smaller example, even politeness - civility - is a counter example.
And then you bring up every method of manipulation as if people don't hate all of those things. Why would we need to invent clever tricks to manipulate people if it was human nature to like it?
Sure, we're plenty effective both at hurting others and manipulating people, but it seems odd to express examples of our capability at doing that to unwilling people as evidence that we like those things being done to us...
Why would we have to go to such lengths to develop these capabilities if it was something we naturally liked? You're kind of proving the opposite of the point you think you are here....
If you want to be closed minded, and not accept that you are choosing your axioms in the same way as someone else exposed to different upbringings is - as per my examples, then I guess I have no chance of convincing you otherwise.
You can say there's construction there, but there's a limit to it. I mean, just as you can't simply construct a functional bridge out of anything you want, neither can you reasonably construct any sort of right and have a functioning society. There are both positive and negative rights, tensions among the rights of different people, and responsibilities imposed on individuals and society by any particular conception of rights.
OP quoted the Declaration of Independence, which is neither law nor agreement.
There have been many thinkers that have challenged Locke. I am currently reading the Second Treatise to try and really understand Locke's position before I make up my mind.
This is, of course, not an argument about moral rigts and wrongs, just a pragmatic one about how rights work.
From our own human nature, actually. Think about this for a minute. Would a normal person be willing to believe something because you were forced to? If someone was violently attacked, would they not fight back?
By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.
Now, the current conflict is being caused by pitting these against each other. Because people believe they are unsafe because of people who own guns or use hate speech, you now have two groups of people who believe that the other group is making them unsafe.
This is ironic, because we're actually becoming statistically safer over time, but it does lead to some very real conflict because people believe there's another group out there that wants to harm them, instead of realizing that both sides really just want to protect themselves, barring a few fringe whackos on either side.
If human nature is ultimately "not controllable by law", then that would certainly apply broadly, not just to cherry picked aspects of it.
Certainly assault, murder, rape, theft, harassment, abuse, cheating, and the like are facets of feral humanity; just as much as positive traits like self-preservation, compassion, parental instincts, social bonding, etc. Law usually stands in a directly contrary position to the former list, to wide agreement.
It's pretty hard to pin down what natural rights are. That a society ought to consider the limits of normal human behaviour I don't dispute, but that just informs the rights a society grants its members. Rights are still a human social construct.
We value our safety from, e.g., rapists more than the rapist's liberty.
Gun rights are a popular idea on the right and the far left. I was surprised to learn Marx's positions on the removal of guns from the working class.
TL;DR; - IMO there is some significant crossover between crypto* people, and 2A people.
But history shows otherwise: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Empirically, every totalitarian state bans citizen firearms (Nazi Germany, USSR, Cuba, N. Korea). For "good" reason.
While of course different, crypto has many of the same pros and cons as firearms, and it should be supported for the same reasons.
https://xkcd.com/504/
No idea what your definition of totalitarian state is, but there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany nor in many of post WW2 socialist countries (e.g. hunters).
It actually started post-WWI (due to Treaty of Versailles).
> In 1919 the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership...anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks. [1]
Laws were later relaxed from a total ban, though ownership was low, as all guns and ammo had been confiscated earlier. And Jews and companies with at least some Jewish ownership were forbidden to own any firearms or participate in their manufacture.
When oppressing a group, either selectively or indiscriminately, guns + speech for that group must go.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_legislation_in_Germany#Reg...
Waco and Ruby Ridge had an endless arsenal of small arms. It didn't help them.
And, for the record, I think that "because the Second Amendment" is a horrible and fantastically lazy argument for gun ownership.
Now, let us take a look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically, Article 3:
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
From this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone has the right to protect the above -- within reason!
Everyone has an innate right to defend their life, liberty, and security of person. Without that, those rights are meaningless.
This is not the job of the police. You should definitely call them if you have the time! But they are under no obligation to protect you, or even to show up.
(Most people don't know that, by the way.)
When you encounter a threat to the above, you have the right to fight until that threat ends, with some leeway granted for the adrenaline dump of combat.
This is not an indiscriminate license to kill or even to engage in violence!
Even if you "feel threatened". You must be able to demonstrate that you acted in defense of life -- yours or another's -- in order to justify your use of force against an attacker.
Weapons are the means by which individuals use force.
Allowing for self-defense allows for the use of weapons.
There is no such thing as a "non-lethal" weapon.
Your hands and feet are natural, and lethal, weapons. More people die by these every year in the United States than by "assault weapons".
Clubs and knives? Definitely lethal. The difference between the winner and a loser in a knife fight, is that the winner dies on the way to the hospital.
Tasers kill more people annually in the United States than "assault weapons". Tasers are also one-time use only. Miss your attacker? Too bad. Attacker has a thick jacket? Better luck next time. Multiple attackers? That sucks.
Pepper spray is probably the least-lethal thing you can use, but it still can and does kill people. Pepper spray is horribly ineffective. Use it indoors, or against the wind, and you will incapacitate yourself. It is useless in the rain. Or if your attacker is wearing a face mask. Or if you have multiple attackers.
A gun, on the other hand, works in the rain. It works in the wind. It works equally well regardless of how strong or weak you are. It works against multiple attackers.
Guns, even if "silenced", are also amazingly loud, which is a big advantage when you're defending yourself, because you want people to hear that noise and call the cops.
So, in a world where we respect peoples' human rights, allowing gun ownership really is common sense.
[1] https://marchforourlives.com/how-we-save-lives/
> you shouldn't be able to walk around with a rocket launcher or semi-automatic weapon
Generally speaking, this statement speaks to a lack of information regarding what semi-automatic is or what it means. Most firearms sold today are semi-automatic. Banning semi-automatic firearms bans the majority of firearms.
That you later go on to state "You don't need automatic weapons to defend..." implies to me that you've conflated automatic and semi-automatic. You cannot conflate those two terms in good faith and claim to be having a reasonable and informed debate.
You also assert that nobody's saying anything about taking guns away, but Hillary Clinton (and other politicians) repeatedly called for Australian-style gun buybacks, which were mandatory, which are the same as confiscation. I'll broadly agree that it isn't the popular sentiment, but suggesting that nobody's calling for it is disingenuous at the very least.
Moreover, from your link, the following statements are at odds with your assertion that the second amendment isn't under attack.
> Weapons of war have no place in our communities. Our nation requires a comprehensive assault weapons ban
> Limiting high-powered weapons to the military has worked elsewhere to eliminate the opportunity for mass shootings
> These magazines are devastating and need to be banned.
Finally, you make a very common mistake when you assert "you can't yell 'fire' in a movie theater". That has been covered here by me, by others, and by prominent first amendment attorneys all over the map, but despite the common misconception, there's no law or regulation that prohibits you from yelling fire in a movie theater.
Nobody ever believes that, so please enjoy some citations:
* https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
* https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
* http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-st...
I thought the 'mistake' would be assuming that this action is prohibited even in the event of a fire.
Now I question if it is assumed to apply unconditionally, even during a fire. And if so, what is the appropriate way to deal with such an event
* _Falsely_ shouting fire
* in a crowded theater
* for the purpose of imminently inciting harm to others
It isn't a law, and where I say "might" in my follow-up, it should not be confused with "is" or "will". There are no laws that forbid you from exclaiming fire in a theater. People think there are because Oliver Wendell Holmes made a clumsy aside while explaining a bad decision that has since been overturned.
Either way, the real point to this is that a punishment for negligent use of one's rights (e.g., falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater for the purposes of causing harm to others) is still not remotely the same as banning free exercise of that right, or converting that right into a privilege through licensure, as is being suggested as rational compromises for the second amendment, predicated on a clumsy and wrong-headed interpretation on the first.
We might all prefer it if you had to obtain a license to speak in a theater, on the grounds that yelling fire in one might prove too dangerous a responsibility for average citizens, but I think most of us would agree that it would violate the first amendment quite heinously. The only way to imagine that equivalent restrictions are less heinous when applied to the second amendment is if one takes the second amendment less seriously as a "real" right, or to imagine that such restrictions are common on the first amendment. It isn't less real a right, and such restrictions are not common on the first, despite misuse of the aforementioned idiom.
We started at submission about Google employees waving around a paper tiger petition, we proceeded to top ranked reminder to everyone of DARPA and how military funding is the One True Way, then on to crypto export controls, rolling onward into a gun control debate, conflating semi-automatic weapons with rocket launchers, and finally into yes, the meaning behind "fire in a crowded theater."
The comment section on HN is now second only to the comments from Yahoo news stories. Keep up the great work everyone.
They were mandatory, however gun owners with reasonable reasons (i.e. hunting, sport, recreation) were free to acquire a license to keep their guns (excluding military style weapons). You can currently acquire a semi-automatic rifle (under 10 rounds) with the proper licenses and reasons (farm worker, sport etc.)[1]
- There were no repercussions for illegal guns being handed in (someone handed in a rocket launcher).
- There were no laws preventing someone acquiring a license to keep their gun if they wanted (within the laws which were introduced).
- No police invaded homes to take weapons by force during the amnesty.
Australia's gun-amnesties/buybacks were not the same as confiscation.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#Firearms...
Note: the statement above does not choose a side.
Literally tens of millions of responsible Americans walk around, every day, carrying semi-automatic weapons, and this is not a problem.
This is also true in the Czech Republic! Shall-issue, just like Texas. They are one of the safest countries in the EU.
You are far more likely to be shot by a cop, than by a citizen legally carrying a semi-automatic weapon.
The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted
Objectors to this climate of easy access to firearms -wrong or right- will point to things like:
* criminal gun violence and mass shootings (a phenomenon that is staggeringly rare in most other comparable nations) but also to
* accidental gun deaths, frequently including of children, to
* suicides facilitated by this easy access to firearms, to
* the trigger-happiness of American cops being directly related to the significant likelihood that anyone those cops interact with is armed, compared to countries like the Australia, Japan, or New Zealand.
They also point to a political climate in which research into gun violence is blocked, and where measures such as universal background checks are supported by huge number citizens, but the political situation prevents these from being enacted.
There are sixteen million Americans with concealed-carry licenses, plus fourteen states that allow for "constitutional carry" (e.g., no license required).
(Keep in mind that I do think that we should require training and licensing for concealed carry, although this needs to be balanced with not imposing an undue economic burden or disenfranchising minorities)
According to the Violence Policy Center -- a very solidly anti-gun group -- there were 27 murders committed by licensed concealed carriers in 2017 across the United States. That's a murder rate of 0.16 per 100,000 people.
By comparison, the total UK murder rate for the same year was six times that.
Likewise, the Czech Republic, which also has a lower murder rate than the UK, has "shall-issue" concealed carry licensing for gun owners -- just like Texas -- and the majority of Czech gun owners have such a license.
I think it's fair to say that concealed carriers are not the problem.
Afghanistan is the 8th poorest nation in the world [1]
The US spent over a decade and over a trillion dollars fighting there [2]
We did not decisively "win" by any measure [3]
[1] https://financesonline.com/a-list-of-third-world-countries-1...
[2] https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-afghanistan-war-timeline-...
[3] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-will-never-win-t...
That's a ridiculous statement to many people. Most handguns are semi-automatic weapons and you will find little agreement from pro-2nd amendment people to eliminate both handguns and any rifles that aren't muzzle-loaders or bolt-action.
More and more funding in the military means more funding for specifically defense projects rather than straight up knowledge or public good.
What is the long term affect of this? Perhaps research far more focused on destruction instead of public good. More better drones, less general knowledge or cures for diseases?
It's a sad state of affairs, and workers standing up against military research within their companies is a good first step.
---
One of the first sources I found on this is below, but I've specifically heard about it being vexing from AI researchers, as many don't want to directly support military applications, but don't have much of an opportunities for funding otherwise.
https://www.bu.edu/research/articles/funding-for-scientific-...