

Is it inevitable that wars will be faught by unsuspecting online gamers? - amichail

I believe that it will become increasingly difficult to attract people to a volunteer army. One might imagine the creation of online games that manifest themselves in actual combat (e.g., via drones, robots) without revealing their true nature to the online gamer.
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SwellJoe
C'mon, how can there be a (figurative) room full of nerds, and none of you
have read "Ender's Game"? You guys need to be nerdier. Way nerdier.

Your assignment for next week is to play AD&D (2nd generation rules), and I
want to see all of you here next week in full Klingon battle dress, or
traditional Tolkien Elvin garb, per your preference.

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epi0Bauqu
Is it inevitable that all science fiction premises will come true?

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amichail
Do you think it is at least feasible to fight wars in this way?

Would you play any online game if there is a small probability that doing so
may kill people in real life?

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nostrademons
If all our guys are really online gamers, whose to say that their guys won't
be too?

Hell, after a few titanic clashes where nobody actually gets killed, they
might get rid of the machines entirely and just have our guys duke it out with
their guys in a virtual world. And then we'd have...battle.net. ;-)

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amichail
This is for wars against low-tech countries. They won't have sophisticated
drones/robots.

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corentin
Right; they only have a few thousands of improvised fighters ready to
sacrifice themselves for an idea. Yet, they usually beat the shit out of huge,
well-trained and well-equipped armies.

In most PG essays, replace the words "startups" by "guerrilleros" and
"corporations" by "armies" and most of the ideas he defends still stand.

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s_baar
They made a movie about this. <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0105629/>

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Tichy
And the unsuspecting soldiers play a game in which they have to kill nerds
sitting in front of a computer screen? That doesn't sound very exciting.

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asdf333
Sort of like Ender's game? Such a good book....

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falsestprophet
No.

