9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?
(I don't know anything about the company we're discussing here, but this is a weird premise.)
The problem is that anything made for defense is almost inherently useful for offense, and the US is not the most trustworthy government right now. It's, sadly, not inconceivable that an automatic turret mounted shotgun could be put to use against human people across the globe, or even human people who are citizens of the US.
How do you suggest we stop the lessons from the first major drone war from spreading? With hope? Prayers? The terrifying thing about it is - the US is actually already behind on this technology, China can build 1000x more drones than the whole West.
It's a borderline certainty that 9 Mothers employees will eventually contribute to the death of an innocent protestor or journalist that opposed the state.
"My drones are only for killing terrorists" is always the rose-tinted glasses used to frame murder. The pushback is 100% expected.
The comment you're replying to is pointing out the oddity of being anti-good-thing because somebody might one day invert their company's mission entirely.
Terminal society this is.
Not dystopian at all.
I'm not really following.
Yes!!! What do you think a dystopia is? The entire world of 1984 is a dystopia. Just cause there’s a company making money to “combat” that dystopia doesn’t make the thing any less dystopian.
That some element of the world is dystopian means the world is therefore dystopian.
And if the world is dystopian, then every element of it is dystopian: no element of the world is not dystopian.
It's an interesting "poison the well" type of argument, but it also means that if one accepts that all of human history has had dystopian elements (chemical weapons, slavery, feudalism, etc etc), that therefore the world has always been dystopian, and that then therefore everything in the world has also always been dystopian. And you've created a label that includes everything that has ever existed and excludes none of it, which is meaningless.
There is tons of offensive capability companies YC has invested in they seem like a more appropriate target. I feel like most people want there to be protection from drone swarms.
But anyway - the parent comment is upset about YC investing in a defense company that isn’t doing offensive systems because they find the idea that dystopian weapon exist at all uncomfortable. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.