ethics

[rus20376 at infolaunch.com (Adam Russell)]

> Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 10:52:13 -0400
> From: TheBlueSage <tbs at bsvn.net>
> Subject: Re: ethics;
> To: L-blu <discuss at blu.org>
> Message-ID: <1178117533.11648.66.camel at localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain
[snip]
> A friend of mine worked in the AI development field (attached to a UC
> campus) and their entire operation was funded by the Military. When I
> asked him how he can sleep at night he said, 'Well if I dont do it,
> someone else will'. A classic excuse that has funded slaughter the world
> over, but he is partly right. If you could develop, for example, cold
> fusion, and give free power to the world, but the Military funded the
> project so as to create small and terrifyingly nasty 'nukes', would you
> do it....
[snip]
These and other comments from other posters to this thread have been amusing.
As someone who actually does have a security clearance and has
served in the military let me give you a realistic perspective.
The viewpoints I have seen so far seem to have been based by reading 
comic books
and Roger Corman films(or even worse, Tom Clancy novels). Here is 
reality: The military has a good and reasonable purpose. While you may 
object to the Iraq
occupation do you object to, say, the humanitarian response to the Horn 
of Africa? What about
the assistance given after the tsunami in thailand? What about simply 
maintaining a sound defense of the country? You cannot seperate these 
actions from those which you might object without dismantling the DoD. 
This is not realistic, although I suppose the thought has been 
entertained by the Asperberger victims on this list.
There is no easy way to collectively assess "the military". The DoD is 
so large as to defy easy classification. Probably 99.99% of what goes 
on is, I can assure you, boring beyond belief. Would you turn down DoD 
money if it was to buy, say, a web application for managing food 
purchases or something similarly banal? Well, that is where a lot of 
money goes. For the bigger scientific stuff I honestly think that the 
government really wants to fund basic research but it is easier to sell 
the idea of funding scientists to Joe Sixpack in Alabama if it is
under the guise of defense spending. Of the insane amounts spent on 
research just how much do you think turns into something that is 
actually ever used by anybody? I would bet about 1/100 of 1 percent. I 
am happy that the DoD so generously funds basic research. Even for the 
stuff that is objectionable to most anybody such as nuclear weapons I 
think has a real value to being studied. Much like the Shaolin monks 
that studied fighting techniques so as to better understand the 
dynamics of human aggression and violence I think that understanding 
modern weapons makes sense. Violence is part of being an animal. Us 
human animals should use our higher brain functions to study and 
understand violence and weaponry, not simply dismiss it or treat it as 
a distasteful affect of the lower class or uneducated.



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