Palmer Luckey: Every country needs a 'warrior class' to enact violence on others
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
This was the basis for the draft, which was not restricted to a specific warrior class; any man of eligible age had to fight if called up and medically cleared.
Today, anyone can volunteer for military service and (again, if medically cleared) they will get trained up and added to the military.
If members of the military see themselves as somehow special within society, it is because of the choices, commitments, and service they have each made as individuals. Not because they are part of some separate class of violence.
There are many American soldiers who see their service as a silent personal humble sacrifice. I know a handful.
There are also others that view their service as a right to violence and only seek that. I know of one
Its a venn diagram bit I think the overlap is small.
military service-men are special because of their sacrifices they all make, whether it be health, freedom, separation, adversity, injury (mental or physical), or ultimately even death. they do this out of respect and service and to protect their families, loved ones and communities.
every society does, in fact, need those who sacrifice for the good of others.
very, very, few military people get off on killing - these are also called psychopaths. the rest of the servicemen that have been put in that position to kill, even in war, will always carry scars.
clearly Palmer does not speak from experience - he's a naive autistic, imagining that simply being part of Anduril makes him a party to the "violence" while in reality he's a healthy billion dollars away from it - of course he can sleep at night!
If you're a citizen with land to till and raise food then you have a responsibility for defence that can be drawn upon by the state.
( ie. the yeoman longbow archers during the Hundred Years' War )
This is something that distinguishes the US in history?
I'm still not seeing the American Exceptionalism here.
It's not the only country in which "anyone can volunteer for military service and (again, if medically cleared) they will get trained up and added to the military" (there are many), it's not the only country that has had a draft, etc.
How do these commonplace traits distinguish the U.S. in history, particulalry in light of two major world wars in which citizens of many countries took on the common responsibility of defending their own countries and partnered together in a common defense.
That's not true: the US military for example won't take you if your IQ is under some threshold (85 IIRC) or if you've been convicted of any but the most innocuous of crimes.
If the US finds itself in a major war, those requirements would probably go away, but they've been in place continuously for decades.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostly_Other_People_Do_the_Kil...
Yeah, repeat that when you’re on the frontline there, buddy. What a tool.
We do need to stop stigmatizing people for trying to defend their loved ones or defend their country.
I shouldn’t have to preface my comment with this, but too many people try to pigeonhole others into extreme camps. So, for the record: I am not a moderate, nor am I trying to balance my opinion to appease anyone, nor am I compromising my ethics because I do not choose one idiotic camp over the other.
I despise how this issue has been framed. This isn’t some false dichotomy where we either give obnoxious billionaires a free pass to build whatever they want in the name of “necessary evil,” or throw up our hands with vague hardline positions like “a robot should never decide who lives or dies.”
Also, I want to call out Luckey's nonsense argument where he compares the ethics of AI to the ethics of land mines. Just to be clear, 164 countries have made their ethics on land mines clear when they signed the Ottawa Convention. Even the US, who isn't on that list, goes out of its way not to use land mines since 1991, though I understand there were some rare exceptions made in Afghanistan.
The reality is, we’re moving into an era where AI is going to radically widen the asymmetry of power between those who control precision weapons and everyone else.
And let me be even clearer: as we move deeper into this era, our failure to assert our ethical standards—and our tolerance of those who openly dismiss them—will only make it a little easier for the lesser states, warlords, insurgents, terrorists, and criminal organizations who will eventually get their hands on it and use it to terrorize people who challenge their power.
This is not a problem that’s going away and having unimpeachable and uncompromising ethics isn't going to magically solve the problem. It’s an intractably complex, accelerating trend. But anyone who suggests ethics have no place in the development of these weapons should be censured by a civically intelligent society. We need to struggle, debate and deliberate the ethics of AI in warfare, not ignore the issue.
This issue isn't about picking a camp and making their shitty ethics your shitty ethics. This issue requires all of us to think for ourselves and to try to do the right thing.
As for China - no one can push China into anything.
The only way to avoid conflict is diplomacy
This is unfortunately false. As indicated by all of known human history.
Right - violent invasions of Ukrainian territory by Russia.
Russia was pushed into war by Obama and Biden
This just is a repeat of what you said earlier. But in short -- in no way was Russia's regime "pushed" into doing what it did in 2014. The move was entirely optional for Putin. He did what he did because he thought he could obtain a certain advantage on the playing field, and because he thought he could get away with it.
Russia has no right whatsoever to invade Ukraine. It doesn't matter that there was a "coup" in Ukraine.
If there's a coup in Mexico, the US isn't justified in annexing Mexico. That's just absurd.
Please, leave this place and never come back. You don't belong in civilized society.
I guess that's what you thought you saw. But since you've made a point of fabricating other plainly untenable information (e.g. "Over a million dead") and attempting to present it as fact -- it's a foregone conclusion that your narrative of the events of 2014 will be equally Swiss-cheesed with falsehoods and fabrications as well.
I watch footage from both Ukraine and Russia on Telegram, so yeah, it's pretty much like Swiss cheese!