Talk-Polywell.org

On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

We have an Army. It is made of people. Were it ordered to slaughter an American city it would refuse. Were it ordered to slaughter an Enemy city it would do so.

ladajo wrote:On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

You are right. I'm afraid the U.S. armed forces will carry out immoral orders. Parallel-but-not-exactly-so evidence: U.S. servicemen and women carrying out unlawful orders by attacking Libya.

I've yet to hear a peep out of any U.S. service man or woman refusing orders to attack Libya despite its Constitutional illegality. But I am not well connected there...

BTW, I'm not trying for a thread-jack.

I dunno, you tossed a couple of grenades there...

Never mind. I was going to thread jack my own thread, but i'll just let that one go.

Eventually one robot army will be fighting another robot army like in Jules Verne.

Never mind American soldiers following illegal orders attacking Libya when you have Libian soldiers following illegal orders attacking Libians.

That nutjob Gaddafi would destroy every city in his country just to maintain his own personal fiefdom, Dr. Evil couldn't hold a candle to him.

Yeah, but Dr. Evil has Sharks with Freakin' Lazer Beams. Let's see Ghaddafi top that!

ladajo wrote:Yeah, but Dr. Evil has Sharks with Freakin' Lazer Beams. Let's see Ghaddafi top that!

Angry Sea Bass ... they were out of Sharks when we placed the order ...

Can't we just get some Sharks with Freakin Lazer Beams around here?

I don't understand, all I want is some Freakin Lazer Beams...

ladajo wrote:On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

We have an Army. It is made of people. Were it ordered to slaughter an American city it would refuse. Were it ordered to slaughter an Enemy city it would do so.

Yup, I also doubt that. It's enough to look back even to our recent history to find plenty of situations when soldiers slaughtered their own citizen on request of the local power.

ladajo wrote:Can't we just get some Sharks with Freakin Lazer Beams around here?

I don't understand, all I want is some Freakin Lazer Beams...

The new Lego technic seems pretty cool, maybe with few boxes of it we can make a couple of doomsday style Lazers

Giorgio wrote:

ladajo wrote:On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

We have an Army. It is made of people. Were it ordered to slaughter an American city it would refuse. Were it ordered to slaughter an Enemy city it would do so.

Yup, I also doubt that. It's enough to look back even to our recent history to find plenty of situations when soldiers slaughtered their own citizen on request of the local power.

I included the entire statement in my observation as I feel that both ideas are at issue.

But that said, I will also say, it IMHO is a very situational thing. We spend great effort training all levels of our forces (repetatively) on the Laws of War, Just War, Standing ROE, Supplemental ROE, theory, planning, etc, etc, etc. And given all that, I think it would be hard to predict outcome of an ambiguous situation, but I would like to think that our forces will fail safe as the situation warrants. Understand also, that I am a proponent of serving the constitution.
Unlawful is unlawful, where the rubber hits the road is who and when decides it. Johnny on The Spot may have a different interpretation from JAG on the Bench 6 months later (pro or con).

Giorgio wrote:

ladajo wrote:On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

We have an Army. It is made of people. Were it ordered to slaughter an American city it would refuse. Were it ordered to slaughter an Enemy city it would do so.

Yup, I also doubt that. It's enough to look back even to our recent history to find plenty of situations when soldiers slaughtered their own citizen on request of the local power.

But for our species that is still preferable to robotics super soldiers doing the same thing. With a human soldier, they are at least controlled by their loyalty to something, even if that may be a government or dictator that is truly horrific. With robotic super soldiers, an army of 1 million can change loyalties completely and absolutely overnight.

It would be possible to win WW3 against a Hitler clone, having destroyed his entire army and seized everything but his bunker with our 10 million strong army of super robots, and without a single casualty on our side. Which sounds alright. The problem is that while trying to push into his bunker he finally manages to crack our encrypted command system and within seconds HE is the one at command of a 10 million strong army and we are left completely defenseless to face it.

bcglorf wrote:But for our species that is still preferable to robotics super soldiers doing the same thing. With a human soldier, they are at least controlled by their loyalty to something, even if that may be a government or dictator that is truly horrific. With robotic super soldiers, an army of 1 million can change loyalties completely and absolutely overnight.

Well, that might be true (even if extremely improbable with current crypt technology), but my point was actually that if governments/dictators will have a robot army than it will probably be a tech available also to the rest of the population (even if on different quality level) meaning that we can defend our self also with our Robot. We do not need to face them by person.

bcglorf wrote:I'm actually rather surprised that with all the automated drones about there isn't a greater usage of similar equipment just mounted on wheels instead.

As for Diogenes concerns, I share them. The only solution for it seems to be make sure that we are the ones that get the best ones first, just like every other game changing weapon out there.

As for change, they will represent a significant one to combat. If they can be fully automated and don't require a human at the controls of each bot, there is nothing stopping a single human with a large factory from having 100k bots at their sole command. That is a very big deal if you ask me.

Well stopping it would be a single human with a factory capable of making 200K better ones in the same time frame.

Giorgio wrote:

ladajo wrote:On a more real note: You have a LOT of faith...

We have an Army. It is made of people. Were it ordered to slaughter an American city it would refuse. Were it ordered to slaughter an Enemy city it would do so.

Yup, I also doubt that. It's enough to look back even to our recent history to find plenty of situations when soldiers slaughtered their own citizen on request of the local power.

Or faced the consequences of refusing.

Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ap ... ot-protest