There's also an argument to be made that remaining on the cutting edge of military science is a form of national security. Being one of the first, or only, nations to develop and test a new kind of weapon means that you'll also be among the first nations to be able to fully assess its practical viability and evaluate its countermeasures.
I'm not sure I see the relevance of your question since what you're asking for is a necessary quantity not a necessary level of innovation. There could be lots of reasons to develop a better thermonuclear weapon even if it's never put into use. Innovation in that area would help us to gauge the difficulty of miniaturizing such a device and, if it turns out to be difficult but possible, whether or not modern technology makes such a feat possible for a hostile non-nation group such as a terrorist organization. In the situation being discussed in the article, the argument would be that remaining on the cutting edge of drone technology allows us to evaluate the threat that drones could pose to our navy if a situation like the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ever happened again.
There's also an argument to be made that remaining on the cutting edge of military science is a form of national security.
Your words, I’m asking who’s security? Our security while we pretend to own the world? Our security against invasion? How secure do we need to be, when we can already end all human life in 45 minutes?
If you don't agree with a part of what I've said then you're more than welcome to articulate your objections instead of asking a series of rhetorical questions. It's clear that you have strong feelings on the topic but at this point you're not trying to have a discussion you're just being belligerent.
You've posted so many low-quality comments and skirted the site guidelines consistently enough that I've banned this account.
Accounts that post prodigious low-quality comments, especially ones that specialize on all the grandiose themes, are particularly damaging to signal/noise ratio, and that is what we care about here.
I’m asking a question you seem unwilling to answer. You invoked national security as a motivation to stay on the cutting edge of military science. I’m asking just what your definition encompasses, and pointing out that it’s clearly not just the sanctity of our borders. Traditionally national security is about the security of a nation, not securing its dominance; the latter goes by a different name. Our vast nuclear arsenal secures the former, but not the latter.
You've posted such a huge number of low-quality comments to Hacker News that I've banned this account.
You also broke the site guidelines repeatedly after we asked you not to, and went into ideological flamewar repeatedly after we asked you not to. I have to conclude that this is not an account that wants to use HN as intended.
And if you read my replies you'll notice that I gave two examples. In response to your fixation on nuclear weapons I pointed out that developing better designs could be helpful with regard to maintaining an awareness of if modern technology has made some producing some version of the weapon, in my example it was a miniaturized version of the weapon, possible for a terrorist organization. I don't feel like it's asking too much to expect you to realize why that might be a useful thing to know for protecting the nation. In my other example I highlighted that having a cutting edge understanding of drone technology could be useful for defending our navy in the event that we another crisis similar to the time we sent ships to guard Taiwan. Given that the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis happened well within recent history I don't think it's unrealistic to suggest preparing for an analogous situation could be beneficial in the event that it should happen again but escalate this time.
This could still be a grey area. Obviously pornography of young children could be identified by most people 99% of the time, the 1% being bizarre situations like mistaking a collection of cherub images for child pornography. But what about when the 'child' looks like a junior or senior teenager and so it's ambiguous as to weather they're of legal age or not? Is someone morally obligated to report potential child pornography in such a situation? A false report, even an accidental one, could cost an innocent person their freedom or a lot of money to preserve their freedom.
I always imagine an unspoken "at a certain price" when people say they believe in buying locally. I live a short distance from a grocery store in my neighborhood, but I rarely go there because I like to cook and their prices for meat and produce are always higher than the big chains. In the case of their meat the difference has sometimes been as much as $1.50/lb. which is huge if you're someone who prefers a frugal lifestyle.
Edit: As for condoms, I think the situation is a little different. They ruin sex compared to going without a condom, marketing from Trojan be damned. I'm not trying to endorse the mindset, but there are many people who are primarily just trying to avoid getting someone/themselves pregnant so if someone's on the pill that's good enough for them.
I'm not sure why you're so dismissive of moral relativism in this context when it's incredibly relevant. Someone who believes that developing and exploring this technology will enable us to save the lives of soldiers and better prepare to encounter the technology in the wild is going to have very different opinions than someone who views it as yet another tool to oppress the third world with. Both people hold ethical beliefs that consider and value humanitarian consequences.
Edit: I was slowed down for posting too fast so I'm adding my reply to IntronExon here:
It's an interesting hypothetical but I'd argue its appeal is mostly in its simplicity with little evidence to support the claim. The instances you've cited happened either due to a failure of accurate intelligence or because intelligence indicated the structure was being used by enemy combatants. It's very possible to arrive at the conclusion that any unnecessary casualties which occurred happened as a result of poor military intelligence which better reconnaissance drones could help with. It's equally possible that someone working on this kind of technology could see its field use against groups like ISIS as evidence that weaponized drones are a useful tool in fighting terrorist organizations. Obviously neither of these will be true in every instance, but without strong evidence it's hard to believe that the matter is as simple as "some people are just unemphatic".
Maybe the real difference is that some of us lack the empathy and imagination to consider the plight of some poor bastardized having their wedding, school, or hospital drone-striked, and some of us do. For those who can’t, this is never an emotional issue, just a sterile cost/benefit analysis. Formthe rest of us, worlds die in those blasts, and were partially responsible, and that matters.
From what I've gathered of the context I think the original presentation is correct. I read it as a joke criticizing an implied absurdity of tech groups being concerned specifically with what we use to kill people rather than whether we should be killing those people to begin with.
>I must have missed the democratic discussion about private businesses assisting in killing people at all, a duty traditionally exercised by states.
I'm not sure if you're criticizing that this happens at all or if you're criticizing it as a new development. Either way, it's generally been actual killing that's reserved for the state (or its mercenaries). Private organizations building and refining weapons for the state has been a thing in America since the old west.
I think both discussions are worth having. The involvement of private contractors in military affairs seems to have amplified over the last few decades especially as war has become more and more focused on technology.
Then there's I think a unique angle to this specific case. If you're going to work for Lockheed Martin or Blackwater you at least know what you're getting into. Google does not present itself as a military contractor. Did everybody who works at Google really know that their code is used for this? Have they been informed, consulted?
There's something especially weird and shady about the fact that someone writes some tensorflow code for image recognition, goes and gets a smoothy from the office bar while the DoD just hooks itself into the API and bombs the hell out of people at the other end of the world.
That's a lot more opaque and blurs the line between civil and defense work in entirely new ways.
google's cloud couldn't host this customer's production application because (afaik) google can't host classified data.
so then you're talking about the fact that your tech is inherently "dual-use." but that's almost anything in computing, absent a license that prevents it. in the early days of postgres, we were a little weirded out by some of the support requests we got [0], given the university prototype nature of the system.
I agree that there's definately a need for more dialogue.
>Then there's I think a unique angle to this specific case. If you're going to work for Lockheed Martin or Blackwater you at least know what you're getting into. Google does not present itself as a military contractor. Did everybody who works at Google really know that their code is used for this? Have they been informed, consulted?
When I was reading the article this part jumped out at me too. It's interesting because it's a debate that ultimately focuses on workers rights vs. the rights of the employer. A callous argument could be made that the political views of the employees shouldn't matter because they're not being paid to be policy experts they're paid to make a product. The counter argument of course would be that, even if the first argument is true, an employee who isn't informed about the nature of their work lacks adequate understanding to decide if they feel strongly enough to quit or if they want to take the job in the first place.
The upside of crypto currency is the amount of agency it currently gives to the holder. The downside of crypto currency is that as personal agency increases the protections from making bad decisions usually decreases. Ulterior motives aside, of which there are a few, the historical reasons that Joe Average is blocked from certain types of investment is because he was making enough bad decisions to warrant aid. Whether or not it's right to impose restrictions on Jack Everybody to protect Joe Average depends largely on your political outlook.
Slight tangent, how's the Tesla semi-truck been doing? When I was looking over the specs the range seemed low compared to a regular semi but I wasn't clear on if that was acceptable because they're targeting a particular subset of the semi-truck market.
The range is fine for single-driver operations, as the driver still has to stop and take rest breaks equal to or longer than the stated time to recharge on a 'megacharger'.
I suspect that there will be deals done (if not already in progress) between Tesla and/or Fleet companies with truck stops across the country to install (paid) megacharger stalls at appropriate distances.
Even if charging time is slightly longer, it might still work out equal if the power of the truck lives up to expectations, and the truck no longer needs to slow down when going up hills.
It seems like a strange time to buy a nationwide chain of truck stops[0] with the oncoming electrification of vehicles. Unless... there's an opportunity to provide Supercharger access every few hundred miles.
Was the food log from Supersize Me ever released? It's been a few years so maybe things have changed, but the last time I checked there was a severe lack of real information in Supersize Me to support the claims the guy was making.
Those numbers make sense at a glance. A truck driver, despite the popular image, more closely resembles specialized work than un-specialized. There are specific skill and documentation requirements to become a Truck driver. The healthcare work you linked to just requires a high-school diploma and no certs, if it's a job like caring for the elderly then the main factor driving up the wage is a shortage of people willing to deal with the challenges of working with an elderly person which can include rude or mentally ill families/customers, excrement, and being comfortable cleaning and/or bathing another human being.
You start by saying how a personal care assistant is rather unspecialized work and then go on to ruminate on the peculiarities of the job that most people wouldn't want to deal with.
Why isn't trucking an unskilled job just with negative features (long hours alone, danger to health given the erratic hours) too?
>You start by saying how a personal care assistant is rather unspecialized work and then go on to ruminate on the peculiarities of the job that most people wouldn't want to deal with.
Correct. Being willing to endure undesirable work isn't usually included in the definition of skilled labor unless that tenacity is accompanied by another requisite skill or certification. I'm not trying to argue that it isn't a socially valuable skill, just that given the bar for entry it isn't surprising the wage is that low.
>Why isn't trucking an unskilled job just with negative features (long hours alone, danger to health given the erratic hours) too?
Because you've skipped over the training and licensing required to legally operate as a truck driver. You need a Commercial Drivers License if nothing else and many states require the completion of specialized courses before awarding an applicant their CDL. That CDL represents a specialized skill-set without which a person simply won't be permitted to operate as a trucker. Physical endurance and mental tenacity are critical traits in this instance too but they're far from being enough to get you hired.
Edit: Something else I glossed over, but which seems relevant because this is predominantly a tech oriented forum is that the average Cost of Living in America is in line with the wage being paid to the Home Health Aide. It might not be enough for San Francisco or a coastal area, but it's enough in general to pay rent and save some money on the side for additional schooling or whatever purpose appeals.
