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It is a difficult place to operate from. One of the things that depressed me about robotics for a long time was all the investment in robots that could kill other people.

The logical conclusion though, is you can either own that problem and spend your efforts on developing and making available countermeasures to code that can kill, or you can let go of the problem. In a similar way when you have kids you want the best for them, but at some point you have to let them be the individuals they will be, for good or ill.

Letting go of that which you don't have influence over is, for me, the hardest part of being an adult.

> 8.1

> A novice asked the Master: "I perceive that one computer company is much larger than all others. It towers above its competition like a giant among dwarfs. Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business. Why is this so?"

> The Master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions? That company is large because it is large. If it only made hardware, nobody would buy it. If it only made software, nobody would use it. If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a servant. But because it combines all of these things, people think it one of the gods! By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort."

http://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

Mark Pauline of Survival Research Labs gave a talk at SIGGRAPH some time during the 90's, about a project he was working on that involved enabling letting people operate lethal weapons over the Internet in an environment that somebody might actually get killed.

His goal was actually to provoke Congress to explicitly pass a law against tele-operating lethal robots.

I guess that didn't work out so well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pauline

I've heard opinions along the lines of "thinking too much" countless of times, at first it was kind of depressing but later I've concluded that if you just like to think and analyze things in your mind (which is not so popular thing to do when you consider general population, sadly), people who voice such (negative, I'd say) comments didn't really think about this deeply. Over-analying can be a serious problem (consider some forms of OCD), but when you can somehow control it (but not constrain) it's ok to think as much as one like ;).

Yea, the repetitive analysis usually stems from using the same model of which to analyze the data by. It's insufficient. That helps me turn it off, listen to other people, go about my life, learn new ways of thinking, connecting, interacting, helping, participating, and then I continue to re-evaluate myself, existence, and my place in it. I still can't shake the depression, though. Unless the entire world existed in a state of neutrality or bliss, I don't think I could. It's just an echo of sadness, something I have to distance myself from internally and examine scientifically, which allows me to remove it's control over me, and instead direct myself in ways I can improve the world, but, /shrug. I'm not perfect and I'm never going to exist perfectly and life is never going to be perfect, if perfect even could exist.

If it helps, I find that analysis helps stave off depression. Having a focus for something to intellectually chew on helps me a lot. So while I've been accused of over-analysis, sometimes it's simply me printing what I had been mulling over while idling; if I ever stopped doing that, I'd drown in my own mind.

I sometimes find it hard to differentiate between analysis and drowning in my own mind. I seem to purposefully pick problems that have no answers, and if I feel myself getting close to an answer, I make a mess of it. It's either fear of learning that I have lost the ability to succeed, or fear of actually succeeding. I never thought anything in the world could break me that much. I thought I would die before that happened. But it's all useless to think about, on the other hand. I feel like I'm searching for an 'it', without knowing what 'it' is - without using the world's point of views, perspectives, or ideas to define the value of 'it'. I do not know what will happen when I find it, or whether I will ever find it. Maybe I already have it, and I just don't know it.

I don't think that the scenario you're sketching here is far fetched at all. Code re-use and recycling inside technical companies is very common. If any code you wrote there turned out to be great/good at something you'd never know where it might end up. Perhaps in the processor of some killer robot in the future.

I wonder where the code that is running inside the drones today comes from. Some one who never meant to be involved in those things must have written either the compiler, specs or actual code that these things use to do their killing, I can't imagine any company (no matter how secure they might want to be) designing a completely new processor architecture and tools and compilers and all that from scratch.

I've had job offers for programming drones. I was involved with computer security for a while, and I still have a strong interest in every computational and mathematical aspect of it. I have friends that work on those things. I like those friends. I write code. I write math. We all think. We all share abstract models, different ways of thinking. It's not just code that gets turned into code. It's thought, and everything else too. I hate feeling like my thoughts can be used to hurt people. I hate feeling like the act of choosing to exist can cause harm, but looking at it that way is like saying a tapestry is no longer a tapestry when one thread is pulled from it.

I still love math, and I still love computer science. I just don't want to use it the way the a lot of the world uses it, and I don't know how much thinking I have to do before I can create code that I am satisfied over being both intelligent and humane. It's absolutely ridiculous, sometimes. Sometimes I can just stare at a cursor blinking on an IDE and feel like I'm falling into a void of 'what ifs'. Other times it is like there is no difference between myself and the machine. And then I wonder whether I'm thinking enough, again, or am I letting calculation and logic get the best of me. Have I abstracted this problem too much, too far away from reality? Does anything I think matter at all? My life continues to improve, but suffering still exists, and I feel like it is almost taboo to talk about in this way. But what is the point of existing if you can't actually make real improvements?

I'd draw the line at actually making the code, or sharing real theory with someone else.

I don't think that it's fair to condemn oneself because his/her ideas could potentially end-up sparking an idea about killer drones in someone-elses mind. In the end we're all very much alike, and it doesn't take much to transfer a few missing links if you know and they don't.

In the end the same laws of nature rule in all our heads, and while it seems like each and every one of us are our own compartmentalized observers, it's not until you think a good long while about the principle of locality(and most of the other fundamental laws) that you understand that it's the other way around.

Thinking this way for me is peaceful. I can't believe in god or another entity but to follow this chain of thought always leads me to consider that I'm part of something greater and more important than one single life can ever hope to be. I guess these days I see humanity more as some sort of super organism . Just as I emerge from individual cells so does humanity emerge from all the humans inside of it. I just try to do my part inside the greater of humanity, and I leave it at that.

Have I abstracted this problem too much, too far away from reality?

I'll say. You could throw it in and go work as a coal-miner, but then you'd have to worry about the coal you mined being used to smelt steel that goes on to be manufactured as bomb casings. And so on. Certainly you shouldn't work on anything that offends you conscience, but the mere fact that something can be repurposed for warfare doesn't create moral responsibility.

This isn't to say that worrying about war or your personal purpose is misplaced GH Hardy opined that ballistics was 'repulsive' both because of the moral purpose and the triviality of the mathematics involved, and there are more musings on the ethics of that sub-branch of math here: http://www.augustana.ualberta.ca/~hackw/mp480/exhibit/ballis...

But as long as you're knowingly working on some sort of combat system, it's folly to beat yourself up over the limitations of foreseeability and the vague possibility that something you craft might turn out to have military utility which you din't intend at the time you conceived it. Instead, look for ways to provide utility in other areas.

I know. I might as well blame myself for breathing out air that is used by a tree that is used to build a house that houses the person who pushes the red button of destruction. It's like tunnel vision, following one path of articulation that follows the model of a logically sound abstraction. Things may be connected, but, causality with regards to the relations between mind to mind is very difficult to understand.

But you are right. I look to provide utility in areas where the net effect seems most likely to be positive. When I can't evaluate that entirely I just assume neutral or no effect, it sort of just dissipates over time, like a wave collapse function, assuming entropy, or some manner of mental equality among peers.

Of course then your country could lose a war because it had insufficient technology, and you'd get to wonder if you contributed to that (you would have, though so would everyone else).

Or because you didn't work on guidance systems, you could wonder if that was the reason the near miss which causes a lot of civilian deaths happened.

Or you could note that the use of military power is not really constrained by technical limitations and never has been, but the effect most certainly is, and start voting and advocating politically which would be more effective at stopping wars in every way.

But then you would have some much more direct responsibility for how the various conflicts turned out.

That's always the problem, is how much and in what way can you dedicate yourself? And is it more a waste to spend idle time analyzing this than actually doing something? But is it the doing that creates the problems?

I don't have the energy for that. These situations are so complicated and they never seem to get resolved. As soon as peace comes someone sees that as opportunity to manipulate (or is the perception of that what causes it to happen?)

I'd rather just stare at math and code, seriously, even if it doesn't talk back like a person. At least it's not crazy.

> I wonder where the code that is running inside the drones today comes from.

I interviewed a candidate for a job once who wrote code for military drones. He didn't think it was bad that they were used to kill innocent people. In fact, he thought it was awesome. There are a lot of coders who have a low moral bar and will code anything for money. These are the people who write this kind of software.

They must have a very warped perspective of people.

Jim: Dr. Rawlin, do you remember how we had helped build the runway? If we died like the others, our bones would be IN the runway. In a way, it's OUR runway...

Dr. Rawlins: No it's THEIR runway, Jim! Try not to think so much! Try not to THINK so much!

One of my favorite quotes of all time when I dealt with similar issues myself, from Empire of the Sun.

I just sort of picture humanity as ants, building a little colony made of silicon and symbols. It's just nature, a natural outgrowth of our existence. It can manifest in any direction, and the direction it is supposed to go in is the one it does. It's more zen than happiness.