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Comment by DesaiAshu | Hacker News Reader

The Department of Defense was named as such after the detonations of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back

Discussing “AI alignment” in the same breadth as aligning with a “Department of War” (in any country) is simply not an intellectually sound position

None of the countries we’ve attacked this year pose an existential threat to humanity. In contrast, striking first and pulling Europe, Russia, and China into a hot war beginning in the Middle East surely poses a greater collective threat than bioweapons, sentient AI, or the other typical “AI alignment” concerns

Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?

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Among those who would resist, half would've done so outwardly by now and been fired, the other half would be hiding their activity. In both cases we wouldn't be hearing about them now.

Technology and national defense are 100% part of the same conversation.

I'm not saying the government can't overreach or over control, but if I or you or any of us were in charge of the defense of a country then we'd want to make sure technology from our country at the very least wasn't used to hurt us and if possible used to help us.

That's what alignment means and it's totally reasonable.

>We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back

We ran out of bombs actually. If there had been more bombs there would have been more bombings.

It wasn't that the US ran out, a 3rd bomb could have been dropped within two weeks of the first 2 had Japan not surrendered after the initial round https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...

It needed to be built first. The us had no bombs left.

The bomb was built with decision to delay shipment until the 13th to see if Japan surrendered. On the 13th no word had come, but the shipment was further delayed to wait for word anyways. On the 14th word of Japan's decision to surrender was announced. https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/gen...

Had the bomb already been shipped, nothing about these delays suggests it would have instead been dropped before surrender instead of just delayed there. In reality, the pause sources from when Truman intervened immediately after Nagasaki (which was bombed on the 9th, Hiroshima previously on the 6th) by the 10th in hopes of unconditional surrender instead.

Had Japan not surrendered for some reason (they had more going south at the time than just the nukes) the US may well have dropped a 3rd bomb over another approach. That said, I'll give due credit to Truman that the activity was paused on hopes of surrender first rather than waiting for the next one to arrive.

> Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?

Because they’ve likely all lost faith in humanity watching Trump get reelected and now just want to get rich and hope to insulate their families from the reality we’re all living in.

Not disagreeing with you but “I lost all faith in humanity so I might as well run the gas chambers” is the delusion of a psychopath and completely inexcusable.

Nazi Germany and Hitler didn't pose an existential threat to Europe until they did pose a threat.

And even then you had politicians like Chamberlain in the UK who wanted to make peace because the UK wasn't directly threatened (this is after much of Europe was under siege).

Which of the countries that the US has recently attacked are you comparing to Nazi Germany?

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