Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

Depriving the world's militaries of research brains isn't going to prevent or lessen violence. Those who reach for violence as a commonly used tool will continue to do so, with or without advanced researchers at their side, albeit with cruder tools of warfare in case researchers do decide to walk away en masse.

Perhaps a more impactful approach would be to resist the use of violence per se, not the tools of war. I can see room for research into non-lethal weaponry that can be sold to militaries and police forces as a turn-key, easy to use solution which, on one hand, leaves room for violent yet non-lethal action, and on the other hand doesn't exact a cost in human lives during conflict resolution. Tasers are a crude prototype preview of what might be possible. I'm thinking more along the lines of perfecting a non-lethal weapon that doesn't electrocute a person while running the risk of stopping their heart entirely. That doesn't count as non-lethal!

In short, the author's stance is commendable if short sighted. IMHO there are better ways to resist violence than simply making a one-man stand.

He is not a consequentialist (nor should anyone be); he is not doing a calculation to try and take actions to minimize the total violence in the world (presumably because he understands this view is a misguided fool's errand, though I won't speak for him). He is just refusing to participate. Unfortunately scientists and engineers don't have a group identity and oaths which tell them to do what is right with the skills they have; our standards are lower than those of lawyers or physicians. Does a physician decide whether or not to use his medical knowledge to murder bad people? No; he took an oath. If he did, he would no longer be a physician. A lawyer still defends Saddam Hussein to the best of his ability. Because he stands on principle. If he succeeds, it will make the world a worse place, but he tries his best anyway. He stands on principle because he has some. But here we see fellow engineers attacking someone for taking a very simple, clean, and respectable moral stand: I will not use my skills as an engineer/scientist to create tools designed to do things I find morally abhorrent. We should all be so principled.

I'm not going to try to speak for Kuipers, but

1. He is demonstrating that it is possible to have a career in academic computer science research without military funding.

2. He does not need to feel personally responsible for the military use of his work.

His one-man stand is more about him, and how he wants to direct his energy. There may be better ways to resist violence, there certainly are other ways. Certainly do some of those things, but I think "act locally," as he is doing, is an excellent place to start.

Depriving the world's militaries of research brains isn't going to prevent or lessen violence.

It's not going to increase violence either though, and if nothing else, when it comes to war and violence, maintaining the status quo is definitely better than making things worse.

No one would disagree with: "maintaining the status quo is definitely better than making things worse".

But more debatable is: "Depriving the world's militaries of research brains isn't going to prevent or lessen violence".

Examples:

- smarter bombs that pinpoint their targets more accurately, thus reducing collateral damage.

- Better, lighter armor that increases survivability against roadside bombs, allowing vehicles to safely patrol and keep an area peaceful.

- Better battlefield medical tools like high tech "skin" to wrap over wounds and save soldiers as well as civilians.

- Take down a group's command and control electronics, forcing them to retreat without a shot fired.

We can be clever and surgical in taking out insurgencies which are the vast majority of the conflicts in the world, or just use massive, generalized brute force as has been done for thousands of years with the obvious ramifications.

There's plenty of great reasons to support military research, don't you think?

All four of those examples have the side effect of making military action more appealing. I notice you did not include "monitoring communications to successfully identify target insurgents (Really, insurgencies?)", which might actually reduce "unnecessary" violence.

But there are times when you have to take military action. Someone who is a total pacifist may disagree; that is their right. But the majority does still support the idea. Do you not agree that if we have to take out some baddies, at least we should strive for minimum collateral damage?

The use of the word ’baddies’ infantilises your comment to the point of uselessness.

>collateral damage

You keep using that euphemism. Why is it so hard to say "killed civilians"? (or "murdered civilians" if you subscribe to Tucholsky's quote)

To be fair, collateral damage also refers to property damage as well.

"murdered buildings and infrastructure"

Development of drone technology certainly made military action more appealing, one could even take the stance that it wouldn't be possible without in quite some operating theaters (think Pakistan). I don't subscribe to the belief that making drone strikes possible reduced the number of civilian casualties.

It's certainly much more nuanced than black and white, but making it easier to perform certain types of military operations has proven to have unintended side effects.

I am not a pacifist. In fact, I am an American and I am a misanthrope, so I have many positions that make it difficult to be anti-people-death. Plus, of course, I have too many friends and family members who have been in the military, so 'better them than us' is a good argument.

On the one hand, a drone with a Hellfire is arguably better than carpet bombing a village. On the other, though, if our options were limited to carpet bombing, there's probably quite a few people who wouldn't be dead over the last decade. But on the third, if we can avoid friendly deaths and convincingly call anyone who is killed a 'baddie', I'm not sure there is a downside either way.

There's a collective-action issue, though - the status quo is always changing, because other researchers in other countries are changing their countries' militaries. In which case military research that maintains the balance of power can be less disruptive to the status quo than allowing your own country to fall behind. It depends on the international environment.

I have a somewhat similar stance as the author, though not remotely as strong. Its a combination of not wanting to add to the military machine but also not wanting my work to be _tainted_.

Is non-lethal weaponry actually any safer overall?

Say you had some hypothetical situation where you did decide it was morally and legally justified to use force to stop something happening, like a genocide in a civil war or something like that.

How much longer would it take to end the genocide, and how many more people would be hurt and have their means of supporting themselves destroyed if everyone's running around with a non-lethal weapon like a taser or something, compared to rifles?

To a certain extent, when you decide that you unfortunately must use violence, I think it can be better to use a lot of violence very quickly and very well targeted, rather than messing around for ages using other means.

Agreed. You're right, there are cases when immediate and overwhelming intervention is justified no matter the human cost. I think, however, that such cases have become more rare as our civilization has matured (as little as it has!) beyond total war and unfettered genocide. On the other hand, one wonders why the interventionist US government doesn't intervene in what obviously are genocides in Africa, which still seem to happen with sickening regularity.

I suppose my original point was mostly about the glaring lack of effective and side effect free non lethal weapons, while a plethora of traditional person killers remain widely available for a low price.

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