
Google’s Anti-Pentagon Decision Will Kill More People - propman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-anti-pentagon-decision-will-kill-more-people-1532889656
======
DubiousPusher
I don't want to paint the decision to work on military and weapons projects as
black and white. The ethics are difficult. This is however one of the oldest
and at this point least interesting arguments in favor of doing so. It is the
height of human hubris to engage in this kind of speculation. Anyone with a
mediocre grasp of both science and history can tell you it is almost
impossible to understand how the course of any invention, project, company or
even government will shape the future, for better or worse.

EDIT: To put this more succinctly. Reason has serious limits when applied to
macro human behavior. I feel this author's attempt to apply reason to macro
human behavior has exceeded those limits grossly.

~~~
AstralStorm
I would dispute the argument about reason at length but disputing with self
described unreasonable people is a waste of time. (despite the species of
logic they utilize)

I'll say only this: the only problem with reason is lack of perfect
information. At some point all is an estimate.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Ok. Isn't that like saying the only problem with perpetual motion is entropy?

My point is that there is so much imperfect information in geopolitics that
trying to draw large scale conclusions about it from minor events is silly.

Basically, this is an argument from final consequences in which the final
consequences are virtually impossible for this one person to discern with any
real certainty.

~~~
candiodari
These people are looking for improvement at the top of Maslow's pyramid ...
[1]

In other words: they want, above anything else, to be able to say "that wasn't
me".

From that perspective, this decision makes a lot of sense. That is destroys
other people's lives through inaction ... well they buy clothes made in
Bangladesh too.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

~~~
DubiousPusher
The leadership's motivations are neither here nor there to my argument. My
point is that you shouldn't waste time making arguments from final
consequences without any empirical methods. There are many tasks which are
beyond reason. Predicting the future is among them. I feel like this should be
obvious but I'll give an example because I feel like my point isn't coming
across.

During the time between WWI and WWII, governments around the world were
contemplating the use of the aircraft in warfare. Particularly the
consequences of aerial bombing. Some people opposed it because it was
dishonorable to kill from the air. Some people doubted its effectiveness,
especially after the way WWI entrenchments withstood massive artillery
bombardments. And some people made exactly the argument in this article. That
the bomber would save lives because it would shorten wars.

By 1945, dozens of cities had been flattened by aerial bombing and hundreds of
thousands of civilians had perished from it. What people got wrong was that
they reasoned about aerial bombing in the context of past conflict. The notion
of "justifiable" ubiquitous total war mostly was not anticipated. Essentially,
they were reasoning in a world of past conflict and had not anticipated a
conflict that would shift the window of what is moral or even logical.

Now, who was right? Clearly those insisting on bombing as a humane measure
were wrong. But at the same time, if England, France and the US had divested
themselves of aerial bombing on moral grounds, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
would've had a major advantage that might've tipped the war in their favor. I
personally think I'm probably happier in the world we have rather than living
"The Man in the High Castle". So who was right?

It's my contention that no one was right. There's no reason to believe that a
sizable portion of any group considering the issue could anticipate what
happened in WWII. It's my contention, that reason alone is not enough to
predict the specific future consequences of our daily actions. I'm not just
rebuking this writing but nearly any writing of its kind.

~~~
candiodari
I love how you use WW2 as an argument. Let me ask you, in your example.

Suppose on the British side those people would have won, and Britain would not
have had air power. We could ask the same question on the other side, and
while it's not so easy to see without a good knowledge of history and the
animosity and threats Germany faced between WW1 and WW2, but if Germany had
refused to create air power it would have been bombed into the ground, it's
people destroyed.

So if one side had refused to create air power ... what would have happened ?
Because we both know the answer here.

What's more difficult to see is what would have happened if everyone
(magically) refused to create it. But that would have enabled random other
parties to quickly become a major threat, which would have had equally
devastating consequences.

The problem you have is that the logic is strongly on the side of creating
more powerful weapons. A fair study of the cold war will reveal: the main
reason we did not have WW3 is ... nuclear weapons. Einstein prevented it.

------
lukev
This is a defense of violence as old as war itself. “Sure, violence is bad,
but if we do it MY way there will be less in the long run!”

Meanwhile people keep dying and somehow it’s _never_ only the bad guys who
suffer.

~~~
dsr_
With unremarkable frequency, bomb damage assessments recharacterize deaths to
fit a narrative.

Civilians become collateral damage.

A house becomes a base.

A wedding party becomes a meeting of terrorists.

Children become collaborators.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airstrike)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruzgan_helicopter_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruzgan_helicopter_attack)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_crimes#2003%E2%80%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_crimes#2003%E2%80%932011:_Iraq_War)

I'm going to stop there. When war starts, it's rarely the politicians who
started it who suffer.

~~~
berbec
There should be a forced ammendment every time we institute the draft:
deferments are not allowed for descendents of politicians who voted to
institute said conscription.

------
jotto
When you have precision weapons, you have options.

But options might not be a good thing (overall) if it means more violence.

Less precise weapons mean more decision friction before a "shot is fired", and
that friction before firing a shot might be a net positive overall.

~~~
austincheney
There is decision friction either way. Either you are free to engage without
permission as dictated by the rules of engagement on the ground (people are
shooting at you) or there is a matrix of agreement that must be met in
accordance with law.

The only real economic result attributed to precision is the degree of
collateral damage. Is the life of a third world civilian worth the extra
expense of more precise technology. As a war fighter I absolutely believe so.
Civilian life is simply more valuable than the lives of the belligerents.

~~~
jotto
I think your perspective assumes that nation states should neutralize most
threats.

I don't think that's the case, because it ignores blowback.

For example, if a military uses a drone to precision kill enemies in foreign
territory 10 times over a 6-month period, what effects does that have on the
local population?

It's kind of a philosophical difference.

------
patient_zero
Anyone got a transcript of the whole piece? I am in the mood to read a poorly
argued position on a topic I have strong feelings about and this person's
viewpoint will fit the bill nicely.

EDIT: Thank you both

~~~
lwhsiao
You can get past the paywall:

[https://outline.com/93dVWm](https://outline.com/93dVWm)

------
punchingpeople
Back in the day, around 10 years ago, I was working a lot with clean energy.
One of the big projects was modifying human behaviour through social networks,
focusing on using targeted messaging and peer pressure via Twitter, when it
was still kind of big. Send messages to a big enough network of organically
influential people, and all of sudden you have a full city saving some MW per
day; put on a sweater if you are cold, turn off the lights when not in use,
drink more water if you are hot, close your blinds to keep your house cool,
etc...

I was happy, doing something good for humanity and the environment... then
DARPA took our research, I was disheartened... and now I have no idea where or
how it is being used, but doesn't seem to be helping humanity... I notice the
grandchildren of this research coming up in the news, the whole Cambridge
Analytica scandal seemed quite familiar, if anything I was wondering why it
took so long for people to notice...

Anyway, moral of the story: no matter what we build, and how good our
intentions, somebody will figure out how to do evil with it.

------
Alex3917
As long as the technology is open sourced and given to our enemies for free I
think it's a decent argument.

I mean anyone who doesn't support giving this away for free presumably wants
our enemies to kill more Americans than otherwise necessary, unless of course
they're lying about their reasons for supporting this in the first place.

~~~
lukev
This is an excellent point and I’m sorry it’s being flagged.

If you think that as humans we all have moral value that transcends our
citizenship, and you ALSO believe that violence is a legitimate way to settle
grievances, than ensuring that all violence is precise makes a lot of sense.

Of course those two axioms are inconsistent so this argument exposes the
parent post for the jingoistic bullshit that it is.

------
bmcusick
You know what would kill fewer people? Not bombing Yemen.

