Google’s Anti-Pentagon Decision Will Kill More People

I don&#x27;t want to paint the decision to work on military and weapons projects as black and white. The ethics are difficult. This is however one of the oldest and at this point least interesting arguments in favor of doing so. It is the height of human hubris to engage in this kind of speculation. Anyone with a mediocre grasp of both science and history can tell you it is almost impossible to understand how the course of any invention, project, company or even government will shape the future, for better or worse.<p>EDIT: To put this more succinctly. Reason has serious limits when applied to macro human behavior. I feel this author&#x27;s attempt to apply reason to macro human behavior has exceeded those limits grossly.

This is a defense of violence as old as war itself. “Sure, violence is bad, but if we do it MY way there will be less in the long run!”<p>Meanwhile people keep dying and somehow it’s <i>never</i> only the bad guys who suffer.

When you have precision weapons, you have options.<p>But options might not be a good thing (overall) if it means more violence.<p>Less precise weapons mean more decision friction before a &quot;shot is fired&quot;, and that friction before firing a shot might be a net positive overall.

Anyone got a transcript of the whole piece? I am in the mood to read a poorly argued position on a topic I have strong feelings about and this person&#x27;s viewpoint will fit the bill nicely.<p>EDIT: Thank you both

Back in the day, around 10 years ago, I was working a lot with clean energy. One of the big projects was modifying human behaviour through social networks, focusing on using targeted messaging and peer pressure via Twitter, when it was still kind of big. Send messages to a big enough network of organically influential people, and all of sudden you have a full city saving some MW per day; put on a sweater if you are cold, turn off the lights when not in use, drink more water if you are hot, close your blinds to keep your house cool, etc...<p>I was happy, doing something good for humanity and the environment... then DARPA took our research, I was disheartened... and now I have no idea where or how it is being used, but doesn&#x27;t seem to be helping humanity... I notice the grandchildren of this research coming up in the news, the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal seemed quite familiar, if anything I was wondering why it took so long for people to notice...<p>Anyway, moral of the story: no matter what we build, and how good our intentions, somebody will figure out how to do evil with it.

As long as the technology is open sourced and given to our enemies for free I think it&#x27;s a decent argument.<p>I mean anyone who doesn&#x27;t support giving this away for free presumably wants our enemies to kill more Americans than otherwise necessary, unless of course they&#x27;re lying about their reasons for supporting this in the first place.

You know what would kill fewer people? Not bombing Yemen.