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IntronExon

IntronExon on Hacker News

Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @11:05PM (#16534177)
I’m asking a question you seem unwilling to answer. You invoked national security as a motivation to stay on the cutting edge of military science. I’m asking just what your definition encompasses, and pointing out that it’s clearly not just the sanctity of our borders. Traditionally national security is about the security of a nation, not securing its dominance; the latter goes by a different name. Our vast nuclear arsenal secures the former, but not the latter.
Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:55PM (#16534142)
There's also an argument to be made that remaining on the cutting edge of military science is a form of national security.

Your words, I’m asking who’s security? Our security while we pretend to own the world? Our security against invasion? How secure do we need to be, when we can already end all human life in 45 minutes?

Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “out... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:53PM (#16534138)
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil...

That’s tens of millions, and I’m being generous in ignoring how you’ve moved the goalposts. Your thesis is simply unsupportable, sorry.

Besides, we don’t know what the future holds, but in terms of raw possibilities we can now end all human life on Earth thanks to technology. That’s also new in the last 70 years. Hopefully we’ll never do it, but we could. Thst also flies in the face of the “technology reduces casualties” business. Of course, so does all of human history for thousands of years, but hey, let’s keep it simple.

Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:40PM (#16534089)
How many thermonuclear weapons do we need to be secure? Secure from what? Invasion? No one is invading a nuclear power.
Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “out... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:38PM (#16534084)
Oh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX!

Get it?

Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:21PM (#16534029)
The word used is “outraged” and not “surprised” though. I think that’s more than just a semantic point. In fact there is no mention of surprise in the article. I think that’s a reasonable reaction, whereas surprise is a straw man, largely implying a naïveté which is notably absent in the article.
Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “out... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @10:18PM (#16534015)
While those camps were morally reprehensible and constitutionally indefensible, the goal was not to kill people. Can we at least agree that the whole , “A secret court has ordered your death from the sky,” thing is a lot more purposefully murderous? Not capture, not detain, just kill.
Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “out... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @08:44PM (#16533717)
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone...

Whatever you think of civilian deaths, don’t forget that we assasinated 6 US citizens without a trial. Freedoms my ass. What about the freedom of people attending a wedding or receiving medical treatment not to be killed? If this was another country doing the same to the US, would your non-argument hold water?

Re:The dirty industry of fast fashion is causing an environmental “eme... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @07:16PM (#16533352)
Absolutely, but my point is that the cost is reasonable, the wages are not, and that implies a fix. Moreover, the fix doesn’t lie with Patagonia. Even more, if the true cost of things like clothing weren’t extermslized brutally, Americans would be far more aware of the pressing need for said fix.
Re:Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @07:15PM (#16533347)
Maybe the real difference is that some of us lack the empathy and imagination to consider the plight of some poor bastardized having their wedding, school, or hospital drone-striked, and some of us do. For those who can’t, this is never an emotional issue, just a sterile cost/benefit analysis. Formthe rest of us, worlds die in those blasts, and were partially responsible, and that matters.
Re:The dirty industry of fast fashion is causing an environmental “eme... on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @07:10PM (#16533314)
That sounds like a problem with depressed wages, not the price of the coat.
Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @06:46PM (#16533196)
For values or “us” which are nuclear powers and their close allies. Of course if “thanks to technology” we end up destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons, climate change, or something as yet unforeseen then really what has come of it? Fixing nitrogen for fertilizer also led to the democratization of high explosives. Nuclear power and weapons are linked.

Look away from your personal circumstances for a minute and consider the trajectory overall, for everyone, and not just you. This Panglossian “optimism” is downright destructive. It feels a lot like being in an airplane which has entered an unpowered, uncontrolled descent, and the guy next to tells you to be happy, it’s a miracle that we’re flying, humans never flew in all of history until recently.

Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @06:42PM (#16533172)
Not a problem, I was wrong and appreciate the feedback.
Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @05:17PM (#16532601)
I appreciate the feedback and agree, I did a poor job. Hopefully my edit has added some much-needed substance.
Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @05:17PM (#16532597)
To add to what Kitsune has said, the violence has simply changed into a series of proxy wars between nuclear powers, at the expense of non-nuclear powers. The other part is that for the first time in over a thousand years, Western Europe isn’t almost constantly killing itself in endless wars.
Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @05:15PM (#16532582)
Time will tell. Bangladesh is grossly overpopulated, and struggling with hydrological and agricultural issues which may yet lead to systems collapse. India may thrive, or die in nuclear fire along with Pakistan. Until pretty recently tech was great for Syria too, but again, chicken, eggs, hatch.

There are the big twin baddies of climate change and mass migration to contend with, and nobody seems to be contending. We’re in a decent place, but I would argue, a profoundly negative trajectory. In the same way that the Late Bronze Age was both a time of wonders, and utterly doomed.

Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @05:11PM (#16532550)
Understood, I edited it to include more details about what I was trying to get across.
Re:Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @04:58PM (#16532444)
Ok, let’s look at the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Edit: Or better yet, stick with my original example of the DRC, which is not a happy tale.

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