Hacker News Reader

Comment by smhost | Hacker News Reader

the u.s. and chinese militaries are spending an absurd amount of resources to create cyborgs. see figure 1 on page 17: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2996.html

it lists "modulating emotional state" as a long-term capability. if positive psychology is falling out of favor, it's because it's been superceded, not because they realized it doesn't work for preventing PTSD or whatever. they don't give a shit about that. just ask any veterans' advocate group trying to get the government even to acknowledge that there is a problem.

View on HN

> just ask any veterans' advocate group trying to get the government even to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Ask any advocacy group whether the government and/or industry is doing "enough" and you'll always get the same answer.

But clearly some people at the VA care. Just go ask the researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. PTSD is one of their main areas of research, which would be an odd way to spend their time if the government didn't recognize PTSD as a serious condition.

I think this was true 2000 years ago as well.

What soldiers dont realize is they join a group that pays them quickly and discard them as fast as they're useless, like say a blind bus driver would be. And that's fine and normal.

Now the trick is soldiers might have misunderstood patriotic propaganda, ideals of national defense etc that are marketing tool for the clients who pay taxes for the various program the military sells them.

A good soldier should choose his army wisely, understand when the contract will end and that it will be it, and prepare a post-army plan from the beginning.

Otherwise they just look like whiny morons who believed an ad for children, joined a group paid at steep price by clients and then turn back after the contract was duly completed "but, but, I gave my life for you": you gave nothing, you signed and you got paid.

What a callous way to look at the world. Advertising works, thats why people do it. The people influenced by advertising aren't children for having been influenced. I am 100% certain you yourself have been influenced by advertising in just this last week. People just aren't "rational consumers" the way some folks want to believe.

Yes, people are "tricked" by propaganda, and yes, morally we do owe something to those people we successfully "tricked". If we had to pay a market rate for an army, things would go very poorly for us.

america is an empire, and empire combines the power of huge numbers of people with an organizing mechinism that is the human intellect stripped of everything else it means to be human. the human intellect assesses what is in its interests and how it can utilize the things around it toward those ends. so america grinds up soldiers.

i recently learned special ops dogs are put down after they're too old, but soldiers get the chance to adopt them. the soldiers adopt them because a soldier, even a special ops guy who has been turned into a killing machine, is a whole human. they can't utilize the dog, but they adopt it anyway.

Don't you think it's possible that the sense of duty and honor that some soldiers have is actually justified? Lots of people act like this country is hopeless nowadays, but there really are some that believe it's the greatest country on earth and its worth defending and fighting for. You may think it's all propaganda and bs, but the fact is that there is conflict in this world, almost all people across the world believe they are on the correct and just side, and we have wars. It's an ugly tough world and there will be no peace any time soon. The proud to be American sentiment has been on the downhill for a while now, but saying that everyone that joined up to fight on 9/12/01 and after pearl harbor were gullible, naive people that fell for propaganda seems like bs to me. I would bet that even you felt better on 9/12 knowing that we had armed forces that were going to fight back. There are some Americans whose sense of duty and honor has not waned or wavered and I'm glad they are still out there allowing us to sit on our assess making tons of tech money doing "jobs" and argue on hn.

"And that's fine and normal"

This is the bit I take exception to. I agree it is commonplace, hence "normal". But fine?!?

But there used to be such a thing where longstanding association brought loyalty. Where a partnership could evolve to realise an imbalance of outcomes and react to correct it.

"Take what you can" should NOT be the overriding narrative.

I don't want high levels of cynicism to be required - to be normal - for any basic interaction in the world.

I want honesty, compassion and loyalty to be a thing. Especially from a government to it's citizens.

So I don't think it is "fine".

>I want honesty, compassion and loyalty to be a thing. Especially from a government to it's citizens.

A government is too abstract to be compassionate or loyal, and will only remain honest as long as some cynicism remains.

This comment illustrates exactly why I joined the military years ago. After college I turned down great salary opportunities and became an officer because somebody has to fight for our country and most people are too committed to other responsibilities -- or preoccupied, self-absorbed, or downright cowardly -- to do it. So I served. Then I got out. I took nothing, wanted nothing, don't like pre-game "salute our heros" parade ground BS and I don't ask for military discounts.

If you hung out with more former military dudes you'd be surprised how many of them like me there are.

Fight who?

Oh man you've missed a lot. These articles will probably be helpful in catching you up. Wherever you've been -- welcome back!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

When the US, after decades of engagement, leaves the Middle East (if they are foolish enough to do so) they'll be leaving a political power vacuum of Shai-majority citizens for Iran to control by proxy - which doesn't support the US ally of Israel. That, and the Taliban, the Sunni wahabists schools that enabled 9/11, are protected by the Saudis, which the US has been getting cosy with for a while. It could be argued that being friendly with Saudi Arabia by diplomatic means has been more useful in quashing the fundamentalist wahabi jahadist threat, than has been any fighting in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

that may well be the case. But it isn't a compelling reason not to leave. Our presence isn't exactly wanted by the locals, and there are plenty of other places in the world with bad things happening and proxy conflicts

> But it isn't a compelling reason not to leave

I'm not of that opinion, my point is that the US military hasn't reached their 'fighting terrorism' objective, and they might have made things worse for one of their allies (this being a motivation to stay).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com