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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Because the first party that cheats and starts killing other side's people wins. Settling wars by game (whether a robot conflict, or a videogame) is an unstable equilibrium, because it requires all participants to obey the rules. "War" is generally what we call when a faction throws out the rulebook.

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...no? Modern warfare very much has rules and laws governing what is permitted in international conflict violence, and what constitues a war crime, and how severe that war crime is. War is absolutely not "one or more parties throwing out the rulebook". As easy as it is to just murder a city in civ 6, in real life any power that wishes to still be sat at any relevant table during future treaties and negotiations will over those rules and laws unless they are truly desperate. I.e. they have already lost the war, and now it's a reign of terror on their way out.

'enemy combatant'

'disposition matrix'

'gitmo'

'enhanced interrogation'

These are all gross violations of both the spirit and letter of international 'law', and was done by the most powerful country in the world.

Who can possibly believe war has rules that aren't completely ignored? Do people just ignore the horrific crimes committed by their own governments?

That works when one side has an overwhelming power advantage, or when two sides are fighting a proxy war with little skin in the game. The dominant side(s) can afford to enforce rules that minimize its losses and the chance for escalation, and enforce those rules on the other party because, well, it's dominant. Basically all wars since WW2 have been fought on this template.

It goes out the window when there is actual uncertainty about who might win. Unrestricted submarine warfare was considered a war crime for most of peacetime, but as soon as it became a crucial strategic advantage that might turn the tide of the war, both sides started using it. The atom bomb would probably have been a war crime if it had been the losing side using it; as it is, it remains controversial.

Once one side wins the war, they become the dominant power again, and can enforce a definition of war crimes favorable to themselves. Such an event actually occurred with unrestricted submarine warfare: Admiral Nimitz testified for Karl Donitz at the latter's war crimes trial, because had unrestricted submarine warfare remained a war crime, the U.S. would have been guilty of it too.

Tell that to the allies after WW2.

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

what do these clear rules and laws say about the following?

- US blows up various hospitals because "may contain insurgents"

- US blew up US citizen + his child without due process because "terrorism"

- US sanctions countries it doesn't like, causing civilians to starve/suffer/lack medicine

seems evident to me that one party doesn't really follow "the rules". how come they have a permanent seat at the UN security council? what punishment is prescribed for rule breakers? because it clearly isn't any loss of influence/prestige/sanctions/etc.

> Modern warfare very much has rules and laws

I have said this before, and this looks like a prime spot to say it again:

The only people who play fair are those who don't know how to cheat well enough.

Or those who care more about the game than about winning. Which, in war, is only the case for the side that's so sure of its victory it doesn't matter whether they cheat or not, so they can play the virtuous party for good internal and external PR.

Funny thing, that.

If you are in a war and are in the lucky a situation that you can prolong the conflict without much negative effects, "keeping the game going" is in fact waging a war of attrition.

there has been no real warfare since WW2.

That's true in theory, but rules of war do have a long history of limited but very real success. The key is to keep a multipolar civilization so that the cost of defecting from the rules (for example, the Geneva Convention) is higher than the benefit of getting an edge in the current conflict.

Even in a bi-polar conflict, the threat of mutually assured destruction helps to enforce official and unofficial rules of engagement. The Cold War demonstrated that quite effectively.

AFAIK this history is less than 100 years old, per what 'nostrademons elaborated on in the thread. From what I remember from my history lessons, most wars - including both World Wars - were free for all, with (what we consider today) war crimes committed left and right. And it's only expected: any party that believes they're fighting for their very survival will not stick to the rulebook unless consequences are greater than benefits, and they usually aren't.

I mean, the proposal here is equivalent to saying "let's solve all our disputes by a deathmatch in Quake 3 Arena" - stated this way, it's more obvious that the only thing stopping a party from cheating is threat of consequences in the real world. And once you have threats and counterthreats, you may as well do away with the Q3A game.

Hell, it seems to me that in a way, we're already doing "conflict resolution through games". Geopolitics is the name of the game, and diplomats and politicians are the player. There's a full fluidity from the purely virtual threats, through sanctions up to trade wars.

the only reason people were killed en masse was because they were in the way of strategic interests, and the strategic interests were in the densely populated areas and accessed by land and crude aerial targeting, and the only way to defend these things was to stem the advance using other people.

many of these things are no longer true.

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