7 ms·

Don't Get Distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

by mcpar-land 9mo ago

endtime 9mo ago
This is designed to save people.
- cogman10 9mo ago
  Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane. That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
- jmyeet 9mo ago
  There is no such thing as a defensive weapon. You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > There is no such thing as a defensive weapon I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier. That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it. > the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
  - oytis 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - computerthings 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - kubb 9mo ago
      Settlements in West Bank are Israel’s great crime.
      - oytis 9mo ago
        I didn't mean that Israel doesn't do any crimes, but still the main things that triggers all the rockets, terror attacks etc. is Israel existing. Better defence for Israel will make the region safer, including even for Palestinians
  - jstummbillig 9mo ago
    > You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. I would still say "what about a missile shield?". If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors. If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
    - kennywinker 9mo ago
      > If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
      - FunnyUsername 9mo ago
        Gaza's "air defense" is hundreds of miles of tunnels, civilians just aren't allowed to shelter in them. Hamas having better technology wouldn't change the fact that they're not interested in protecting civilians.
        kennywinker 9mo ago
        I’m not going to defend hamas’ choices, but i think it’s disingenuous to say that they have the ability to protect the people of gaza. A few thousand fighters in tunnels is possible, but millions of civilians? And wouldn’t that be more of this “using human shields” stuff people like to point out so often?
        FunnyUsername 9mo ago
  - belorn 9mo ago
    If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?
      - wat10000 9mo ago
        I think they mean communicable diseases, not combat injuries. For example, around 2/3rds of the military deaths in the American civil war were from disease, not combat. I don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine.
        JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine Triage and ambulances come from battle medicine [1]. (Not sure about communicable-disease prevention.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey
        wat10000 9mo ago
        Right, those are relatively minor improvements compared to soldiers no longer dying en masse from typhoid, smallpox, measles, etc. Good improvements to be sure, but not quite as significant.
    - _DeadFred_ 9mo ago
      America's school lunch program was created so that it would have healthier soldiers. We better stop feeding children. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Program https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...
  - drnick1 9mo ago
    > As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish. Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
  - wat10000 9mo ago
    That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong.
- bastawhiz 9mo ago
  Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"
  - Alive-in-2025 9mo ago
    Which will happen because it always happens
    - breppp 9mo ago
      Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun. While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.
      - slfreference 9mo ago
        In Batman Begins, the villian just makes the drinking water toxic. With todays AI and Biotech, one can create a new bacteria or virus and cripple water supply of cities. I am sure a suitable trained AI can get more creative with such low cost attack vectors.
        nradov 9mo ago
        Nah. You can't just engineer some sort of pathogen which will survive water purification treatments, or grow and reproduce in pure water without any nutrients. Real life isn't like the movies.
        slfreference 9mo ago
        This just means, the addition of the pathogen has to happen after purification treatments. Viruses can stay dormant and activate only within human body, no need for food.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
halJordan 9mo ago
This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.
- wat10000 9mo ago
  How is cell phone tracking going to prevent another 9/11? And looking at the historical track record, the DoD has done a lot of killing and very little 9/11 prevention in the past 24 years.
  - boredatoms 9mo ago
    Do they have a public log of preventions we can look at? Seems fascinating to look at the numbers
    - shigawire 9mo ago
      The heuristic is that it would be in their interest to trumpet their successes.
      - conception 9mo ago
        Not if revealing success also reveals methodology and “trade” secrets.
        michaelmrose 9mo ago
        Its perfectly reasonable to suppose undisclosed successes are imaginary as that is the overwhelming likelihood
        colordrops 9mo ago
breppp 9mo ago
it's almost as if it is unrelated to the article discussed
wslh 9mo ago
I think the historical relationship between war and human societies is deeper than many like to admit. We often act as if advancing technology, and some societies well-being, have fundamentally changed human behavior, but in reality conflict and the use of force have been central to how groups have interacted for millennia. The peace utopia doesn't click. This isn’t an endorsement of corruption or violence; it’s just a recognition that human social organization has long involved the use of force alongside diplomacy, negotiations, trade, and other political instruments. The modern/post-modern/meta-modern isms may change how we fight, but it doesn’t by itself make the underlying dynamics disappear.
- unfitted2545 9mo ago
  The blood meridian quote that stuck with me for this: "War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."

Don't Get Distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

endtime 9mo ago

This is designed to save people.

cogman10 9mo ago
Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane. That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
jmyeet 9mo ago
There is no such thing as a defensive weapon. You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > There is no such thing as a defensive weapon I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier. That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it. > the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
- oytis 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - computerthings 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - kubb 9mo ago
    Settlements in West Bank are Israel’s great crime.
    - oytis 9mo ago
      I didn't mean that Israel doesn't do any crimes, but still the main things that triggers all the rockets, terror attacks etc. is Israel existing. Better defence for Israel will make the region safer, including even for Palestinians
- jstummbillig 9mo ago
  > You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. I would still say "what about a missile shield?". If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors. If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
  - kennywinker 9mo ago
    > If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
    - FunnyUsername 9mo ago
      Gaza's "air defense" is hundreds of miles of tunnels, civilians just aren't allowed to shelter in them. Hamas having better technology wouldn't change the fact that they're not interested in protecting civilians.
      - kennywinker 9mo ago
        I’m not going to defend hamas’ choices, but i think it’s disingenuous to say that they have the ability to protect the people of gaza. A few thousand fighters in tunnels is possible, but millions of civilians? And wouldn’t that be more of this “using human shields” stuff people like to point out so often?
        FunnyUsername 9mo ago
- belorn 9mo ago
  If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?
    - wat10000 9mo ago
      I think they mean communicable diseases, not combat injuries. For example, around 2/3rds of the military deaths in the American civil war were from disease, not combat. I don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine.
      - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine Triage and ambulances come from battle medicine [1]. (Not sure about communicable-disease prevention.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey
        wat10000 9mo ago
        Right, those are relatively minor improvements compared to soldiers no longer dying en masse from typhoid, smallpox, measles, etc. Good improvements to be sure, but not quite as significant.
  - _DeadFred_ 9mo ago
    America's school lunch program was created so that it would have healthier soldiers. We better stop feeding children. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Program https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...
- drnick1 9mo ago
  > As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish. Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
- wat10000 9mo ago
  That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong.
bastawhiz 9mo ago
Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"
- Alive-in-2025 9mo ago
  Which will happen because it always happens
  - breppp 9mo ago
    Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun. While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.
    - slfreference 9mo ago
      In Batman Begins, the villian just makes the drinking water toxic. With todays AI and Biotech, one can create a new bacteria or virus and cripple water supply of cities. I am sure a suitable trained AI can get more creative with such low cost attack vectors.
      - nradov 9mo ago
        Nah. You can't just engineer some sort of pathogen which will survive water purification treatments, or grow and reproduce in pure water without any nutrients. Real life isn't like the movies.
        slfreference 9mo ago
        This just means, the addition of the pathogen has to happen after purification treatments. Viruses can stay dormant and activate only within human body, no need for food.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

halJordan 9mo ago

This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.

wat10000 9mo ago
How is cell phone tracking going to prevent another 9/11? And looking at the historical track record, the DoD has done a lot of killing and very little 9/11 prevention in the past 24 years.
- boredatoms 9mo ago
  Do they have a public log of preventions we can look at? Seems fascinating to look at the numbers
  - shigawire 9mo ago
    The heuristic is that it would be in their interest to trumpet their successes.
    - conception 9mo ago
      Not if revealing success also reveals methodology and “trade” secrets.
      - michaelmrose 9mo ago
        Its perfectly reasonable to suppose undisclosed successes are imaginary as that is the overwhelming likelihood
      - colordrops 9mo ago

breppp 9mo ago

it's almost as if it is unrelated to the article discussed

wslh 9mo ago

I think the historical relationship between war and human societies is deeper than many like to admit. We often act as if advancing technology, and some societies well-being, have fundamentally changed human behavior, but in reality conflict and the use of force have been central to how groups have interacted for millennia. The peace utopia doesn't click. This isn’t an endorsement of corruption or violence; it’s just a recognition that human social organization has long involved the use of force alongside diplomacy, negotiations, trade, and other political instruments. The modern/post-modern/meta-modern isms may change how we fight, but it doesn’t by itself make the underlying dynamics disappear.

unfitted2545 9mo ago
The blood meridian quote that stuck with me for this: "War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."