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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24920 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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I loved and agreed with this comment so much I had to think of something to say.

The best part of democracy is that it’s the sublimation of a battle. Count heads, go home alive, prosper. Of course it relies on using sheer number of people as proxy for fighting prowess, but it’s a decent one, and it has paid off handsomely.

So why not sublimate even more battles? Richest side was very likely going to win anyway. Count your money, go home alive, prosper. I completely agree with caplan, it’s a magnificient, tremendously assymetric, super-ethical weapon: even if they had the money, and they don’t, militaristic dictatorships do not have the credibility, or the quality of life to spend the money in.

What do the virtue ethicists here think? Is it dishonorable to make soldiers betray their country, or is it good to save lives and ordnance?

This is why I'm afraid of AI. Once most humans are economically and militarily obsolete, and can't go on strike, we will leak power one way or another, and it will eventually end up in the hands of whoever controls the value-producing robots and chip factories.

At least since WW2 leaflets and other propaganda aimed to convince enemy soldiers to turn themselves in, along with their vehicles if possible, has been commonplace, was it not?

Weird, I only received notification of this comment now. I am almost certain this comment did not appear earlier in the thread, I could not see it.

This is a relatively new measure enforced on new accounts, I think their comments are being manually approved by the mods, or if that's not done, showing up after 24 hours.

I had this same thing happen to me just now with a reply to a comment of mine in a different thread. It also appeared to have just turned 24h old when I got the notification for it, and I'm also almost certain I could not see it before that.

Sure, but this is about offering considerable sums of money – paying for desertion, paying for proof of sabotage, paying at least market price for any equipment they bring with them. I think a russian soldier trusts, and can trust, EU states far more than a japanese soldier in WWII can trust the US government. So the leaflets of the time were far less credible.

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