Head of West Coast Business Development at Republic. Ever-curious product designer and technologist. Hashtag inventor. Previously: Molly.com (YC W18), Uber, Google.
View all posts by Chris Messina
3 thoughts on “Ethical Quandry”
How do you think your liberty is secured, moron?
Hmm. Gee, that’s a tough one, Ghengis, I’m glad you brought it up.
Of course, it depends on what your definition of liberty is. For example, what do you do when you disagree with your government (supposing that, on occassion, you do)? Do you petition congress? Do you run for office? Do you take up arms?
Seems to me that liberty has something to do with freedom — and if those freedoms are ever in jeopardy, that we have an obligation to defend them. After all, what gives the government power but its citizens’ willingness to abide by its rules, no?
So anyway, if one were to take up arms against the government, as the Second Amendment was designed to support, I’d rather not go up against robots. It just seems… unprinicipled.
And ok, so an alternative to “securing our liberty” that doesn’t involve killer robots? Well, how about economic integration? Why did we attack Iraq? Well, if we’d had any kind of liberalized traed agreements with the country, I highly doubt that we’d have done it. Look at China — the Cold War is long over — they’ve got nukes — and yet we wouldn’t dream of attacking them for fear of the economic consequences it would have on us domestically.
Look, I mean, if you want to “secure our freedom”, you’ve got to start with economics — pure might is no longer the determinant of domination in the modern world. He who runs the banks, well, that’s a difference story.
I don’t think economics has anything to do with it. Yes, economics will come to a stand-still or worse dissappear, and GOD only knows how much people will bitch when they can’t fill those SUVS. However, brinkmanship is what kept the cold war at bay. I mean who gives a damn about economics if people are not around in the aftermath? Yet in lieu of other arguments, we won’t know for sure until it gets to that point.
I’m surprised? CMU has developed technologies for the military before and continues to do so. The SEI and Robotics Institute are continually funded by DARPA and the Military to produce such organizations as CERT, etc… Without military funding to produce such things like ARPANET which ofcourse brings you and me in this space called the Internet, well, where would we be? Yale produced George W Bush but Yale is still an excellent institution. Why did you go CMU if it conflicted with your standards? You had to know that CMU conducted military research and development.
From the look of the picture it is a remote launching platform for the T.O.W. missile (maybe something else?), it seems to me that vehicle would save lives instead of putting them in danger. At least the lives of our own soldiers.
Quite frankly, we can’t ostracize the people that try to solve problems when given to them( our scientist, our coders, our intellects). Millions of dollars of research and development add to the innovation in the long run whether from the military or the private sector. It’s the good in the bad??
The people do need to wake up to our government’s inefficiencies. It’s the government that needs to be restructured. The gov needs to focus less on themselves, their connections, their special interest groups, and more on the people. I sometimes wonder how the government gets anything done at the end of the day. – Thanks Chris
Factory Joe 
How do you think your liberty is secured, moron?
Hmm. Gee, that’s a tough one, Ghengis, I’m glad you brought it up.
Of course, it depends on what your definition of liberty is. For example, what do you do when you disagree with your government (supposing that, on occassion, you do)? Do you petition congress? Do you run for office? Do you take up arms?
Seems to me that liberty has something to do with freedom — and if those freedoms are ever in jeopardy, that we have an obligation to defend them. After all, what gives the government power but its citizens’ willingness to abide by its rules, no?
So anyway, if one were to take up arms against the government, as the Second Amendment was designed to support, I’d rather not go up against robots. It just seems… unprinicipled.
And ok, so an alternative to “securing our liberty” that doesn’t involve killer robots? Well, how about economic integration? Why did we attack Iraq? Well, if we’d had any kind of liberalized traed agreements with the country, I highly doubt that we’d have done it. Look at China — the Cold War is long over — they’ve got nukes — and yet we wouldn’t dream of attacking them for fear of the economic consequences it would have on us domestically.
Look, I mean, if you want to “secure our freedom”, you’ve got to start with economics — pure might is no longer the determinant of domination in the modern world. He who runs the banks, well, that’s a difference story.
I don’t think economics has anything to do with it. Yes, economics will come to a stand-still or worse dissappear, and GOD only knows how much people will bitch when they can’t fill those SUVS. However, brinkmanship is what kept the cold war at bay. I mean who gives a damn about economics if people are not around in the aftermath? Yet in lieu of other arguments, we won’t know for sure until it gets to that point.
I’m surprised? CMU has developed technologies for the military before and continues to do so. The SEI and Robotics Institute are continually funded by DARPA and the Military to produce such organizations as CERT, etc… Without military funding to produce such things like ARPANET which ofcourse brings you and me in this space called the Internet, well, where would we be? Yale produced George W Bush but Yale is still an excellent institution. Why did you go CMU if it conflicted with your standards? You had to know that CMU conducted military research and development.
From the look of the picture it is a remote launching platform for the T.O.W. missile (maybe something else?), it seems to me that vehicle would save lives instead of putting them in danger. At least the lives of our own soldiers.
Quite frankly, we can’t ostracize the people that try to solve problems when given to them( our scientist, our coders, our intellects). Millions of dollars of research and development add to the innovation in the long run whether from the military or the private sector. It’s the good in the bad??
The people do need to wake up to our government’s inefficiencies. It’s the government that needs to be restructured. The gov needs to focus less on themselves, their connections, their special interest groups, and more on the people. I sometimes wonder how the government gets anything done at the end of the day. – Thanks Chris