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Comment by SecretDreams | Hacker News Reader

> Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place. Tesla probably wouldn't be worth 1.2T. And we certainly wouldn't see AI buildouts happening at their current rates.

Economics and costs only matter for normal humans, small countries, and efforts that might actually help humanity. They're not seemingly considerations in nefarious applications.

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It matters quite a bit. If your drone costs $1000, you can build a thousand times more of them than if a drone costs $1M. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own.

This is a lesson the US has yet to learn, and its military drones are really expensive. Ukraine learned it by necessity, and now it's building millions of drones annually.

On the other hand, if Musk really flips his lid, he's one OTA away from a network of ground-delivered lithium bombs. The fear of humanoid bots is their banality: if a government or private company has a reason to build them, then the world is full of hardware with terrifying capability and questionable security.

I think what your parent commenter means is that, if the application is warlike or nefarious, them the money will be found. If, on the other hand, it is humanitarian, then every penny will be counted.

Yes, I get that, but for whatever amount of money is found, you're better off using it more effectively. The cost of things still matters, if you want to win wars against serious adversaries.

One problem the US has had in its Iran adventure is that they're shooting down $30K drones with million dollar missiles, often several of them. Now the missile stockpiles have been depleted by 30% to 50%, depending on missile type, and they're not all that quick to replace.

I disagree. If your charitable application is profitable, it will get funded.

Now, people will hate you for doing a "good" thing for money (exhibit A : name any pharma company selling the drugs that keep people alive ; that company is going to get called a "cynical shill" given enough profit.)

It just happens that the bad things are often highly profitable, so the investors will pour the pensioners money in (because the pension money must flow.)

That being said, the best way to get funded is not for your app to be good or bad, but to be massively fun. Sell tulips, video games and Céline Dion tickets. Find a way to divert 10% of the benefits to a charity.

> If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Aren't wars fought over natural resources or the political power over natural resources.

Obviously people sometimes miscalculate but in principle I mean.

> Aren't wars fought over natural resources or the political power over natural resources.

Not really. They’re fought over fear of the future, desire for control and power over other people. “It’s us or them” captures one of the core calculi of war. It’s not rational, it’s just an expression of evolutionary imperatives.

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