[HN Gopher] Maybe there's a pattern here?
___________________________________________________________________
Maybe there's a pattern here?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 153 points
Date : 2026-03-05 02:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| morninglight wrote:
| We need to break this pattern of kinetic weapons.
|
| How about some modern, safe bio-weapons.
| rationalist wrote:
| It has bio in the name - it must be good!
|
| That means they're made from renewable resources, right?
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| As long as they're USDA Organic
| jiehong wrote:
| I just watched an episode of Babylon 5 in which an entire race
| gets wiped by a virus in that way In a matter of days.
| ares623 wrote:
| Clincally proven bio-weapons
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Side effects may include victory.
| zabzonk wrote:
| How do you test "safe bio-weapons"?
| hackyhacky wrote:
| tldr: many great scientific advancement were created by well-
| intentioned researchers who were subsequently shocked to find
| their work applied to military, often to the great detriment of
| mankind.
|
| The unwritten implication is that this applies to AI, as well. I
| find it hard to disagree. I don't know what to do about it.
|
| The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side
| projects, while the ruling class is already using AI to subvert
| democracy, spread misinformation, and develop weapons. "If _we_
| don 't build these weapons, someone else will." If we can learn
| nothing else from history, we should learn that you can't turn
| back the clock.
| 6177c40f wrote:
| Reminds me a quote from Gibson's _Spook Country_ : "That's
| something that tends to happen with new technologies generally:
| the most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield,
| or in a gallery."
| lich_king wrote:
| I think both things can simultaneously be true. There is a
| certain inevitability to technological progress. Once you reach
| a critical mass of collective knowledge, the resulting "thing"
| will get developed. If not by you, then by someone else.
|
| But also, inevitability is not an argument for complicity. If
| you personally decide to work on bioweapons, I don't think you
| can shrug and say "eh, it was going to happen either way". As
| tech workers, we've really mastered the art of coming up with
| justifications for what essentially just boils down to "all my
| friends have gotten rich and now it's my turn".
|
| I've met hundreds of sharp engineers from Facebook, Google,
| Microsoft, etc. None of them could look me straight in the eye
| and say "yeah, you know, what we're doing with ad tech is
| actually good". They just always had an explanation along the
| lines of "it's not that bad, and besides, if we don't do it,
| someone else will, and we're the good guys here".
| godelski wrote:
| > besides, if we don't do it, someone else will, and we're
| the good guys here".
|
| It's funny that people justify themselves that way
| considering it's the literal phrase is discussed in every
| ethics 101 course... and not because a bunch of good people
| were saying it...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| If the comments on this website are any indication I'd
| wager a great many people in tech haven't spent even a
| single minute of their lives seriously thinking about
| ethics, nevermind studying ethics in a classroom
| bdangubic wrote:
| - first 10 years of my career, ethics was last thing on
| my mind
|
| - second 10 years of my career, started seriously
| thinking about ethics
|
| - last 10 years of my career (including now) - would not
| work for Big Tech etc if they gave me 9-digit / year
| compensation package
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I guess that's why I'm always angry when I'm reading
| comments here
|
| I know I don't have all the answers, but I minored in
| philosophy in school. I studied ethics quite a lot and
| being ethical has always been very important to me
|
| I never had 20 years of "let's burn down everything in my
| way as long as it pays well"
| user2722 wrote:
| Do you have privatized healthcare in your country?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| No, I live in a first world country
| user2722 wrote:
| That has probably more to do with you bank account
| digits.
|
| I'm on the inverse moral ladder currently, specially as
| more and more services are privatized (public health here
| is on fast-track to be americanized).
| watwut wrote:
| I see so many rich people act in awfull manner just to
| get mote money ... so no.
|
| People who make ethical decisions end up with less money
| on average. But that is it, poor people and low paid
| people and average paid techies make ethical decisions
| all the time.
| bdangubic wrote:
| It _really_ did not have anything to do with money.
| Obviously I make more money now than in my "junior" days.
| I just did not give a F.
|
| I worked for Monsanto, I mean as evil of a company as
| you'd find (during that time, nothing compared to today's
| Big Tech evil). I just honestly did not give a F at all.
| 9dev wrote:
| Yep. From Putin to Kim Yong Un, everyone is convinced to be
| the good guy doing bad things for the right reasons.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| No, this does not apply to AI because they're not well
| intentioned and very open about it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That's a weird tldr and not my takeaway. More like "scientists
| convinced their new ultra destructive weapon is sure to bring
| about peace this time around". Spoiler: it does not. Arguably
| maybe nuclear weapons but even then I'd say the use of nuclear
| weapons in armed conflict hasn't really been tested yet and
| people are generally hesitant to do so, preferring instead
| illegal chemical and biological warfare.
| nwhnwh wrote:
| If you wanted the core of all of this... Check this book
| "Irrational Man" by William Barrett.
| godelski wrote:
| > The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side
| projects, while the ruling class is
|
| happy that they can finish their side projects too.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > were created by well-intentioned researchers who were
| subsequently shocked to find their work applied to military
|
| oh please.
|
| Most scientific development especially root-node stuff has been
| funded and kick-started by the military for centuries. You
| can't take funds from DARPA and then be shocked to see the air
| force using it. You can't work at ecole polytechnique and be
| shocked to see your work being used in libya.
|
| Humans would have never gone to space [as quick and as at much
| scale as they did] if they didn't want spy satellites and
| ICBMs.
|
| Shannon invented a whole new field while working with money
| earmarked for cryptography work in WW2.
|
| Machine translation was first posed and funded by anyone for
| russian-english translation - 1949 Warren Weaver memo at the
| Rockefeller Foundation.
|
| Do see my other comment for more examples.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45364917
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45365211 [Context: the
| creator of waymo was the winner of that challenge]
|
| And need I mention the internet itself...
|
| As the first comment I linked mentions, even many medicines
| were developed only cos soldiers were dying in theater, not
| because normal people were dying at home. So it's not just
| limited to tech.
|
| > the ruling class
|
| No, we don't get to deflect blame like that. If we take money
| from DARPA/similar to invent something, we are part of the
| system and are responsible. Everyone involved in the space race
| in the 50s, Transit (sat nav) in the 60s _knew_ it was to make
| ICBMs. The creator of waymo surely read that DARPA document I
| linked in my second comment. And need I mention that
| oppenheimer knew why nuclear energy was being harnessed :) You
| can 't "oh the evil few tricking the innocent majority, what
| ever will they do" it away.
|
| A logically defensible position might be that you agree that
| war is a timeless motivation and that you are fine with stuff
| being used for military purposes and continue to develop the
| technology with government money, OR not taking any money from
| the government. There are not that many others that aren't
| hypocritical.
| duskdozer wrote:
| It's definitely a dread-inducing state of time. I'm not sure
| that there is a way to get through to the "move fast and break
| things" crowd.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is such a tiresome take. Anything is a weapon if you work
| hard enough at it, but do you really think the main thing that
| will stop us killing each other is access or lack thereof to
| weapons?
|
| Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of
| traumatic injury inflicted by tools.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of
| traumatic injury inflicted by tools.
|
| No one is arguing that modern technology is the sole or even
| principal cause of military deaths. The argument is simply that
| technology has _greatly facilitated the ease and scale_.
|
| Imagine a world without nuclear weapons, automatic weapons,
| rockets, and explosives (other than gunpowder). There would
| still be wars, certainly, but they would be a lot less
| destructive.
| XorNot wrote:
| The number of casualties from the American civil war was
| estimated at 700,000 soldiers from both sides.
|
| The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at
| about 200,000.
|
| Nuclear weapons have killed far fewer people then any other
| type in history, whereas the musket did some work.
|
| And you know, a bunch of Romans with the pinnacle of
| technology - the sharp thing on a long stick - in the Battle
| of Carthage collectively had about 100,000 casualties and
| also demolished a city. And that was one of _many_ battles in
| many wars.
|
| The masses of man and ground into the masses of man in
| conflict, at scale, at every turn that we've had organized
| society. We live in a time where casualty scales are actually
| shockingly low in conflict.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Interesting perspective. One could argue that nuclear
| weapons are among the less harmful things invented, since
| they killed fewer people than knives, clubs, spears, guns,
| cars, cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos, coal power plants, and
| probably a lot of other things. Plus they probably prevent
| a 3rd world war with killing on the same scale as WW1 and
| WW2, tens of millions each.
| AdamN wrote:
| Yeah that's part of Nuclear Peace Theory. It's
| interesting and compelling - but also prone to some major
| tail risk.
| 9dev wrote:
| They prevent the third world war, until they don't. Then
| they will bring mayhem and misery. And with the current
| lunatics in charge I am not really at ease just because
| nobody pushed the big red button yet.
| duskdozer wrote:
| >Plus they probably prevent a 3rd world war with killing
| on the same scale as WW1 and WW2, tens of millions each.
|
| Or, they've had no effect, and there hasn't been a "WW3"
| due to other factors. Or, they've made one more likely,
| it just hasn't happened yet.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated
| at about 200,000.
|
| Nice of you to omit the 50 million _other_ civilian
| casualties in WW2, plus around 20 million military
| casualties a 5 million prisoners. Nothing in the classical
| world comes close to that left of destruction.
| testaccount28 wrote:
| famously, the bombs were what _ended_ the war.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You're comparing a 4 year bloodbath to 10 minutes and being
| underimpressed? Also those weapons are several orders of
| magnitude less powerful than what they're capable of
| today...
|
| Battle of Carthage was also 3 years and was a siege of a
| city, so you know... not a lot of places for the people
| inside to escape. Also took about 20-50k expertly trained
| Roman soldiers vs a few trained guys in a plane pressing a
| button.
|
| And sibling comment is right. The application of
| industrialization to the death process in WW2 and similar
| application of the idea (eg Pol Pot and Stalin) also led to
| death on an unprecedented scale.
| nwhnwh wrote:
| > You're comparing a 4 year bloodbath to 10 minutes...
|
| Poor me having hard time trying to understand how he
| didn't notice that by himself.
| jryle70 wrote:
| > 4 year bloodbath
|
| That caused endless tragedy and trauma. Perhaps the 10
| mins terror was the less worse outcome of the two, mode
| decisive, that ended the war quicker. Who can decide?
| Wars aren't statistic.
| watwut wrote:
| WWII was not 10min of terror. Those 10min was small part
| of 5 year long warfare. Which caused endless trage and
| trauma.
|
| So, if you want to make apples to apples comparison,
| compare it to how many people a small unit killed on
| 10min.
| watwut wrote:
| You literally refenced WWII. Which features a peek of
| people killed in military conflict. And yes, holocaust
| counts, civilian deaths by soldiers count.
| chihuahua wrote:
| The Gatling quote is hilarious. Did the inventor of the machine
| gun really think that each company of 100 men was going to be
| reduced to one guy with a Gatling gun, and 99 of them send him to
| the battlefield by himself, saying "good luck buddy, let us know
| how it works out?"
|
| The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny
| armies were going to face off while the majority of men of
| fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape
| paintings? Really?
| mmcromp wrote:
| I don't know if this is your point, but we're hearing the same
| stores with AI. Do these people really mean what they say or
| are they just lying to paint themselves as honorable
| zmgsabst wrote:
| But... it did do that.
|
| > that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of
| large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease
| [would] be greatly diminished.
|
| Our force structure shifted towards logistics and
| infrastructure from combatants as we moved up the weapon
| complexity hierarchy. First automatic guns, then tanks, then
| airplanes.
|
| To a large extent, a tank or air crew is 50 guys waving off
| 1-5, while they sit back at base and do hobbies between bouts
| of mechanic labor. They're not literally at home, but we do
| fight with small mechanized armies while most soldiers watch on
| from the base.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Right
|
| It wasn't over night but it did exactly what it intended and
| sped up a battle significantly as though you had multiples of
| troops compared to a musket firing line
|
| Then miniaturized it becomes the SAW
| closewith wrote:
| Yes, even for infantry, the tooth to tail ratio for deployed
| expeditionary armies is now 10-20:1. Even that's down from
| cold war ratios due to mechanisation and automation on the
| logistics side.
| knollimar wrote:
| Huh isn't the tail bigger?
| jdndbdjsj wrote:
| Yet everyone is saying this about LLMs and coders
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| A little "How many people were soldiers in ancient Rome" type
| searches gave me these numbers...
|
| 16% of adult males in the Roman mid-republic
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-
| Republic...), call that 8% of adults of all genders.
|
| Wikipedia says that there's about 1.34 million people in active
| duty in the US military, out of about 342 million people, 21.5%
| of which are under 18. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph
| ics_of_the_United_Sta...,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)
|
| I think that's 0.5%? Down from 8% in ancient Rome?
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| That has little to do with technological advances, just the
| fact that the US is at an imperial peace; ie. it is under
| zero threat of invasion and is currently only engaged in
| small-scale imperial adventurism across the globe which does
| not require a large standing army. ~16% of adult Americans
| served in WW2, or ~33% of adult men.
| closewith wrote:
| Is Iran enjoying an imperial peace, too?
|
| Even including Aative + reserves + paramilitaries, less
| than 2% of Iranian adults are in the military.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Iran hasn't fought a ground war since the (America
| backed) Saddam invasion.
| closewith wrote:
| And what kind of advancement has allowed Iran to engage
| in numerous direct conflicts (ignoring the proxy wars)
| without engaging in invasion?
|
| At this point, I'm actually not sure if you're trolling
| or unironically don't get it?
| closewith wrote:
| US/Israel and Iran each have millions of military and military-
| industrial personnel, and yet the actual combat is being
| performed by a few thousand at most. There might a thousand
| people in uniform for each one directly engaging the enemy
| (flying a sortie, launching a missile, firing a torpedo) on any
| given day.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| That's because there's no ground invasion (yet).
| closewith wrote:
| So these nations are at war, but the ground troops aren't
| invading in foot? Instead, they're in barracks or never
| raised to begin with? What relevance could this have to the
| quote from Gattling?
|
| Probably none at all.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Probably the same relevance as the type of war you're
| referring to (asymmetrical strike exchange). The war of
| conquest between countries of comparable population and
| military power Gatling referred to still needs a lot more
| people on the ground doing the actual takeover part.
| closewith wrote:
| Nearly there!
|
| So how might a global and region powers engage in a war
| without engaging in territorial invasion? What kind of
| advancement might allow such a conflict to take place
| with only a tiny number of combatants?
| Aerolfos wrote:
| > and 99 of them send him to the battlefield by himself, saying
| "good luck buddy, let us know how it works out?"
|
| >The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two
| tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of
| fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape
| paintings? Really?
|
| Well, for a time greek city states _did_ fight pretty much like
| this. Small armies of hoplites were raised outside harvest
| season, went out, fought almost show-battles with very few
| casualties, and tribute changed hands based on the results.
| Everyone went home for the harvest.
|
| I believe there's even instances where a battle wasn't fought
| at all in favour of two appointed champions dueling (origin of
| the popular fiction trope)
|
| It didn't last, but for a time the greek city states had a kind
| of equilibrium with relatively few resources (or people) spent
| on war.
| MediaSquirrel wrote:
| Nukes gave us peace and freedom.
|
| We've had no WW3 (so far) and no one here needs to worry about
| being drafted into a war. Gatling might have thought his gun
| would reduce the number of war fatalities, but but Oppenheimer
| thought he would end the world. Both were wrong.
|
| Alternative take: Inventors are bad at predicting the downstream
| societal effects of their inventions.
| jiehong wrote:
| It very much depends on where "here" is.
|
| At least, it gives impunity to attack others with less fear of
| retaliation...
| treebeard901 wrote:
| Let's assume a nuclear exchange happens at some point during a
| war. There is a very high chance that this will cause an
| escalation leading to a nuclear apocalypse.
|
| Since this result is presumably inevitable at increasing
| frequency, it's more like nukes prevented another major world
| war and stole a form of peace from the future, temporarily.
| That peace debt might be repaid with the end of everything.
| ares623 wrote:
| well whatever society is left will definitely be "peaceful"
| for at least a couple of decades.
| testaccount28 wrote:
| let's assume the trees rise up and set fire to the
| ionosphere.
| KronisLV wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls
| nehal3m wrote:
| Funny how the unintentional close calls become more sparse
| with time. I wonder if that's because humanity got better
| at dealing with the responsibility or because the oopsies
| haven't been declassified yet.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war
|
| Lots of talk in the UK recently about conscription.
| awjlogan wrote:
| I haven't heard a peep about conscription, can you provide a
| source? There was some vague national service proposal for
| school leavers a couple of years ago, but that was it.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Among many others:
| https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2178935/uk-issued-
| conscrip...
| awjlogan wrote:
| One person in the Lords raising the issue in no way
| constitutes widespread calls for conscription.
| imjonse wrote:
| Croatia:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-
| defense/croatia-r...
| watwut wrote:
| Germany is already working on it. Austria made it longer.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Nuclear weapons traded a high probability of a major war for a
| low probability of an apocalyptic war.
|
| My question is, how low is that probability, exactly? Because
| the tradeoff looks very different if it's one in a million per
| year, versus one in a hundred per year.
|
| My assessment, looking at the history and the close calls, is
| that it's more like one in a hundred.
| 9dev wrote:
| It certainly rises if the USA votes for an irresponsible
| crook.
| imjonse wrote:
| > no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war.
|
| here meaning the US or HN?
| expedition32 wrote:
| Nuclear PROLIFERATION gave us peace and freedom.
|
| The Americans wanted to keep it all to themselves you know...
| nilirl wrote:
| I see the pattern the author wants to show me, but what about it?
|
| Civilization is a complex, evolving system. How much
| predictability and control do we really have?
| seydor wrote:
| Yeah the pattern is , "with great power comes great
| irresponsibility" , which is only confained when the power is
| matched by rivals
| notarobot123 wrote:
| Yet the Cold War taught us that competition between rivals
| _doesn 't_ contain power at all.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Should power be contained? Humans always rise up against
| their oppressors and I find that a comforting thought.
|
| Tyranny, slavery, colonialism- it never lasts.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Humans always rise up against their oppressors
|
| Successfully?
| rschiavone wrote:
| The number of people trapped in modern slavery today is an
| all-time high across the whole history.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Indeed one of the reasons to advocate for the Nuclear
| Holocaust is because it will eliminate slavery once and
| for all. Under sufficient nuclear bombardment, we could
| guarantee zero slaves.
| redhanuman wrote:
| Gatling died in 1903 and he never saw his gun used in a trench
| and the engineers at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google they're watching
| it happen on X in real time..that's the difference nobody's
| talking about So Does seeing it change anything? I genuinely
| don't know.
| abetusk wrote:
| A pattern that keeps repeating:
|
| https://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
| ineedasername wrote:
| "Maybe there's a pattern here"
|
| Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret
| and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it?
|
| Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in
| 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts
| is-- while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the
| dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body
| counts racked up in those days.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in
| 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed
| conflicts is-- while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years
| around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently
| dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days._
|
| That's true if your definition of 'die in armed conflicts' is
| limited to 'the soldiers on the battlefield.' If you extend
| that definition a little to 'people who would not have died if
| there hadn't been an armed conflict' then you need to scale it
| up to about a million people a year today. That's just from 5
| countries where it's been studied. Globally it's likely to be
| much more. There's some good information about it, from a
| credible source, here:
| https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
| ineedasername wrote:
| No, you are mistaken, inconsistent.
|
| Analysis cannot be _X in ~1900 's_ vs. _x + y these days_ - >
| "Oh wow things have changed".
|
| Do you think "would not have died if there hadn't been an
| armed conflict" wasn't a thing in 1900? I know such things to
| have been high then, though not with precision, but
| starvation followed conflict whether because crops went
| unharvested or were burned or scavenged by the armies.
| Logistic to rapidly transport food from other regions easily,
| humanitarian aid, not very good compared to today. That's
| just one area things may have been worse at those times.
| watwut wrote:
| A deliberate bombing of hospitals and whole cities were not
| a feature in 1900. Deliberate attempts to create refugee
| crisis or just kill then all are feature now.
|
| By all means, count in all the civilians killed in 1900
| too. But it is completely ridiculous to count only
| soldiers.
|
| Civilians are more likely to die due to wars. And soldiers
| kill civilians intentionally.
|
| > proportion of people that die in armed conflicts
|
| That must include the majority of victims of it all.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm not counting only soldiers. I didn't pull these
| estimates out of thin air they're not hard to find so I'm
| not going to take my time.
|
| I'll say this: the difference isn't small around this
| general question, hospitals don't get bombed every day,
| and if you're going to disagree with something that would
| be commonly known among knowledge among people familiar
| with a topic if you pause for a moment to reflect then
| the habit of checking to see if your instinct or sense of
| a thing is actually correct is a useful habit. Analysis
| is both a profession for me as well as a habit so I'll
| stipulate I could be wrong and would welcome discussion
| of anything I've missed.
|
| That said: things like bombing a hospital is now possible
| yes but destroying them has ever been so, or simply
| slaughtering their residents as you march through, and
| there were far fewer norms against that sort of thing.
| Much worse things done more often. Deliberate slaughter
| of non combatants isn't new. Prohibitions against it
| arose for a good reason and strong precedent of the
| practice from times where marching armies were more
| common and therefore systematic slaughter of this sort
| more convenient to those inclined. Accidentally or on
| purpose, giving smallpox via infected blankets to people
| forcibly removed from their land and marked across
| thousands of miles is just one variety. Cholera and other
| disease outbreaks are another.
|
| These too are not unobvious things to if you consider
| possible modes of death by or adjacent to military
| campaigns and they too are also not hard to find
| estimates for.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Analysis cannot be X in ~1900 's vs. x + y these days ->
| "Oh wow things have changed"._
|
| Very true. I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the
| tens of millions killed in wars and as the indirect result
| of wars decades ago. I'm only saying that there's still a
| really large number of people killed. If you take a war
| like World War 2 that resulted in an estimated 10 million
| deaths per year (60 million dead over 6 years) we've only
| reduced that by a factor of 10 (at most, because the study
| I linked to is not all conflicts) which isn't very much,
| and that's still a catastrophic and tragic number of
| deaths.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| you also need to compare people injured so badly that they are
| significantly worse off for life after the war is over, as most
| of those people would probably have been killed in previous
| wars but thanks to modern medicine can be kept alive to suffer
| for years afterwards.
|
| not a knock on modern medicine, and probably the people who
| survive are happy that they did for the most part, however if
| you compare the results in the way you did, you should compare
| those as well.
| ineedasername wrote:
| No, incorrect. You're conflating "People injured died much
| more often" with other outcomes. Survivors in past times were
| often more commonly crippled in more severed ways, even when
| the initiating injury was minor.
|
| At those times the only redress for any injury was
| amputation. These days a very large numbers of injuries can
| be addressed with less life changing impact.
|
| >"should compare"
|
| I'm not going to include "better dead than crippled" in my
| considerations here. It seems both absurd and also not
| something that was encompassed in the orignal point I was
| adressing.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| OK I thought the comparison was the cost to human beings of
| war. But call it what rhetorically suits you best.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| nobody here noticed?
|
| None of them were women.
| synecdoche wrote:
| I'm puzzled to what point is tried to be made.
|
| Is the parent statement supposed to be an argument that women
| are not capable, or even less likely, of providing means for,
| or inflicting massive destruction?
|
| How would that follow from what is said here or in the article?
|
| Certainly women can be destructive too. What would make it a
| sex issue?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > argument that women are not capable
|
| I know this is called techbro crowd for a reason, but you
| know that plenty of women invented things and did scientific
| discoveries right? especially after they were unbanned from
| it
|
| > Certainly women can be destructive too
|
| Sure if you say so.
|
| It's just that 0% of these destructive weapons and tech in
| the article was developed by women.
|
| Maybe there's a pattern here
| arjie wrote:
| This business about Alberto Santos-Dumont does put most of the
| thing into question:
|
| > _North Americans think the Wright Brothers invented the
| airplane. Much of the world believes that credit belongs to
| Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian inventor working in Paris._
|
| Much of the world? It's a minority viewpoint both among scholars
| and lay people. Some people in the insight porn "actually, the
| thing they won't tell you" genre of blogs and so on also do it.
| Certainly it's standard in China and India, so at the least you
| have to put Asia on that list as well. And Wright is the standard
| teaching in Australia, and the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
| Egypt and Botswana and I'd be surprised if other places in Africa
| are different.
|
| In general, when I look in my rice at a restaurant and I see a
| cockroach, I assume there are more cockroaches in the restaurant.
| So, too, I assume there are other cockroaches in this article. I
| don't have the time to verify the other things, but this is wrong
| enough that I'd rather eat elsewhere.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Nah, before the Internet if you asked a random German on the
| street, who'd they think invented the airplane I'm pretty sure
| you'd had gotten _Otto Lilienthal_ as an answer. I guess the
| reality is that before the world got hyper connected every
| country had its own set of inventors for almost everything.
| There are numerous examples but they are hard to find now.
|
| In the early days of Wikipedia I thought about writing a
| crawler that makes a table with inventor per country. It would
| have been an interesting experiment. Maybe it could be done
| with an archive even now.
| arjie wrote:
| I'll happily grant that claim but today it is after the
| Internet was invented and therefore this "much of the world
| believes" claim from OP is nonsense since it uses the present
| tense.
| astrolx wrote:
| And in France you'd have gotten Clement Ader as reply.
| reshlo wrote:
| Dozens of credible witnesses, including several who authored
| sworn affidavits, claim they saw Richard Pearse achieve powered
| flight before the Wright brothers. Pearse is a much better
| option if someone wants to claim the Wright brothers were not
| the first.
| alexwebb2 wrote:
| Those claims were way, way after the fact. Like, 50+ years
| later. Zero documentation or contemporary evidence of ANY
| kind. The claim isn't taken particularly seriously by
| historians.
| alexwebb2 wrote:
| Interesting that you're getting downvoted. This passage also
| stuck out like a sore thumb to me - it's like seeing some
| antivax stuff thrown into an otherwise serious discussion.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I grew up outside of the US and learnt that the Wright Brothers
| invented the airplane, but I don't really care for the
| cockroach speech. Unless you're a defense lawyer trying to get
| a guilty client off by casting doubt on one of many pieces of
| evidence, just point out the mistake and let other people judge
| for themselves whether it's bad enough to ignore the rest of
| the article.
| arjie wrote:
| Haha, certainly, if you're willing to go take a Flat Earther
| at his word on everything but the Earth, you're welcome to.
| For me, a sufficiently nonsensical claim casts doubt on all
| relaying of source material. And I arrogate to myself the
| right to judge all other men. All Rights Reserved as the news
| media say.
|
| The rice made by Flat Earthers is full of cockroaches. Though
| you do present a compelling proposition which I will
| entertain. For the right sum, I am willing to point out
| mistakes and withhold opinion - leaving that to the rest of
| you to have. I'll go with my rate on the usual experts
| platforms: for $1200/hour I will tell you when people are
| claiming the Earth is Flat and I will make no other judgment
| of their epistemics.
| lilytweed wrote:
| For any readers who liked this essay, check out Benjamin
| Labatut's fantastic novel "When We Cease to Understand the
| World," about scientists and mathematicians who were more or less
| driven mad by their discoveries. The history of modern warfare
| and dual use technologies is a big part of the book.
| trevyn wrote:
| Sorry, this is fiction about real-life scientists being driven
| mad, when in fact the real-life scientists in question were not
| driven mad?
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Tangential, but one thing that really irks me is when people
| advocate for nuclear proliferation as a safety feature.
|
| Aside from just the potential for _accidents_ , one has to
| consider the potential for irrational actors or those who choose
| to employ game theory more recklessly. And when I think of
| Metcalfe's law, I feel this sort of horror about the idea of
| proliferation and the loss of control in communication (which was
| of course vital in preventing Armageddon during the Cold War.)
|
| I think ultimately, future security will come from defensive
| technology and I believe that's the most noble pursuit for
| engineers wishing to leave an indelible mark on humanity.
|
| There is of course no defensive solution against those who wish
| to build Sundial [0] or Poseidon [1]. Humanity appears to be
| unequipped to carry the mantle of life.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon) [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_(unmanned_underwater_...
| hyperific wrote:
| You might like "The Bomb" documentary from 2016. "[It] explores
| the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they
| inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert."
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5596034/
|
| https://www.thebombnow.com/
| watwut wrote:
| The truble is, that with current new world order, not having
| nuclear power means you are helpless sitting duck for active
| insatiable bullies.
|
| Like, there is no other option - not having them means you will
| be turned into rubble or will have to pay a lot for not being
| tuned into rubble.
|
| The most aggressive states have nuclear power. The countries
| they attacked dont.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| You are arguing in favour of a nuclear apocalypse.
| krapp wrote:
| They're arguing in favor of MAD, which kept the US and
| Soviets from bathing the entire world in radioactive fire
| for approximately 45 years, and is the only thing keeping
| American and Chinese imperialism even slightly constrained.
|
| If you have a better idea, we're all ears. Disarmament
| isn't an option, the destroyer is here so choose its form.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| MAD assumes rational actors and perfect game play.
| Ultimately what stopped armageddon wasn't MAD but the
| blind faith of Stanislav Petrov.
|
| States seeking nuclear defence should join the nuclear
| umbrella of a greater power.
| krapp wrote:
| >States seeking nuclear defence should join the nuclear
| umbrella of a greater power.
|
| "Joining the nuclear umbrella of a greater power" implies
| MAD as a doctrine, unless there is only one nuclear
| power.
|
| And that's just imperialism. Ask former Soviet states or
| Europe or Canada currently how things work out as a
| vassal of their liege lord.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| I'm not saying MAD is a bad doctrine, I'm saying it
| breaks down as the complexity of diplomacy increases
| quadratically with the number of nuclear equipped actors.
|
| I'm Canadian. Things are good here. Obtaining a bomb
| wouldn't make life materially better for anyone in
| Canada, nor would it defend us against the US. Not to
| mention anybody could drive a nuke into the middle of
| Manhattan and detonate it and you'd maybe never know who
| was responsible.
|
| The importance of non-proliferation cannot be
| understated.
| krapp wrote:
| Non-proliferation is a dead end. No one trusts the US to
| act in good faith. Any nation that doesn't get a nuclear
| warhead and point it at Washngton DC knows they're just
| one American Presidential scandal away from getting their
| teeth kicked in.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Yes I believe this was the line of thinking that has lead
| us to the invasion of Iran. So it doesn't appear to be a
| viable strategy. The US can dispatch a strike group
| faster than any country can build a nuke, let alone
| enough nukes to actually make a difference. North Korea
| only succeeded because of its close ties with China and
| Russia, and perhaps because previous administrations
| weren't so brazen as to invade them.
|
| An alternative, as always, is to work towards our
| strengths as middle-powers. Remain steadfast in our
| pursuit of diplomatic and economic ties. Make the world
| too complex and intertwined to make invasions practical.
|
| And of course, while Russia is the leader in this area,
| it's not the only country that could balkanize the US
| through "peaceful" means.
| amdivia wrote:
| Although I agree with the general sentiment, but I'll slightly
| push back on the "nobility" of any engineering pursuit. Such
| things are highly amoral (not immoral) and context specific
|
| Assume an "Evil" state worked on defensive technology that can
| foil any nuclear attacks against it. Now, this allows this
| "Evil" state to use it's own nuclear weapons without fear of
| retaliation. So in this example the innovation made in
| defensive technologies allowed for war and destruction
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Well of course, which is why we prohibited the development of
| defence tech in the ABM treaty. But that doesn't stop non-
| nuclear states from developing anti-nuke defence technology.
| Perhaps the only reason why they don't is because it's harder
| than building a nuke.
| roxolotl wrote:
| This is a great reminder that the line drawn by Anthropic is
| already too far and that if you've been driven to cancel your
| OpenAI account by their behavior you should also cancel your
| Anthropic account.
|
| The other pattern that's a bit less explicit here is that these
| technologies try to win over the public by theorizing on their
| incredible peace time use. While many genuinely have great use in
| peacetime we should not allow that to blind ourselves to their
| wartime potential. Many of us have little power to direct the
| future but for those who care doing what you can do is always
| more than nothing and when done in concert with others does have
| an impact.
| derektank wrote:
| I didn't cancel my ChatGPT subscription because OpenAI were
| willing to accept different terms of use for their AI tools
| than Anthropic. I canceled my subscription because they were
| willing to negotiate with a government that was engaged in an
| unlawful attempt to coerce and extort a competitor.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| This essay reminded me of _War Before Civilization_ , which
| argues that modern technologies like the airplane and the
| submarine brought back pre-civilizational genocidal war, without
| clearly defined frontlines, without distinction between civilians
| and soldiers.
|
| I didn't know that Alfred Nobel thought that removing this
| distinction would bring peace though.
|
| I guess he didn't read the book, which was published long after
| his death. It's main thesis is just that war before civilization
| was a thing at all, that the archeological evidence for it can be
| taken at face value, that weapons were not means of exchange and
| walls were not symbols of unity. It could have been written
| before the invention of dynamite.
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