alt.hn

3/5/2026 at 2:58:10 AM

Maybe there's a pattern here?

 https://dynomight.net/pattern/

by surprisetalk

3/7/2026 at 10:09:47 AM

Tangential, but one thing that really irks me is when people advocate for nuclear proliferation as a safety feature.

Aside from just the potential for accidents, one has to consider the potential for irrational actors or those who choose to employ game theory more recklessly. And when I think of Metcalfe's law, I feel this sort of horror about the idea of proliferation and the loss of control in communication (which was of course vital in preventing Armageddon during the Cold War.)

I think ultimately, future security will come from defensive technology and I believe that's the most noble pursuit for engineers wishing to leave an indelible mark on humanity.

There is of course no defensive solution against those who wish to build Sundial [0] or Poseidon [1]. Humanity appears to be unequipped to carry the mantle of life.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_(unmanned_underwater_...

by lwansbrough

3/7/2026 at 6:47:39 PM

Although I agree with the general sentiment, but I'll slightly push back on the "nobility" of any engineering pursuit. Such things are highly amoral (not immoral) and context specific

Assume an "Evil" state worked on defensive technology that can foil any nuclear attacks against it. Now, this allows this "Evil" state to use it's own nuclear weapons without fear of retaliation. So in this example the innovation made in defensive technologies allowed for war and destruction

by amdivia

3/7/2026 at 10:29:17 PM

Well of course, which is why we prohibited the development of defence tech in the ABM treaty. But that doesn't stop non-nuclear states from developing anti-nuke defence technology. Perhaps the only reason why they don't is because it's harder than building a nuke.

by lwansbrough

3/8/2026 at 4:16:27 PM

It is incredible naïveté to associate technology as good and bad.

Which one is the Internet

by paulddraper

3/9/2026 at 3:25:18 AM

Exactly, that's why I objected to the "noble" aspect of working on defensive technologies

by amdivia

3/8/2026 at 10:13:45 AM

Your mistake is you think your point of view can be universal. It can't because "the game" you're talking about is already playing and if you were iranian being killed because you don't have the nuclear bomb, the only thing that would make sense for you is to have your own nuclear bomb. The same goes for any non white majority state which sees the return of colonialism and thinks the only way to stay safe from aggression is having the nuclear bomb.

by slim

3/7/2026 at 11:39:28 PM

Too much defensive technology makes an attacker bolder and surer there will be no retaliation, though

by nextaccountic

3/7/2026 at 4:34:21 PM

The truble is, that with current new world order, not having nuclear power means you are helpless sitting duck for active insatiable bullies.

Like, there is no other option - not having them means you will be turned into rubble or will have to pay a lot for not being tuned into rubble.

The most aggressive states have nuclear power. The countries they attacked dont.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 5:57:50 PM

You are arguing in favour of a nuclear apocalypse.

by lwansbrough

3/7/2026 at 6:10:34 PM

They're arguing in favor of MAD, which kept the US and Soviets from bathing the entire world in radioactive fire for approximately 45 years, and is the only thing keeping American and Chinese imperialism even slightly constrained.

If you have a better idea, we're all ears. Disarmament isn't an option, the destroyer is here so choose its form.

by krapp

3/7/2026 at 6:20:33 PM

MAD assumes rational actors and perfect game play. Ultimately what stopped armageddon wasn’t MAD but the blind faith of Stanislav Petrov.

States seeking nuclear defence should join the nuclear umbrella of a greater power.

by lwansbrough

3/7/2026 at 6:29:57 PM

>States seeking nuclear defence should join the nuclear umbrella of a greater power.

"Joining the nuclear umbrella of a greater power" implies MAD as a doctrine, unless there is only one nuclear power.

And that's just imperialism. Ask former Soviet states or Europe or Canada currently how things work out as a vassal of their liege lord.

by krapp

3/7/2026 at 6:59:13 PM

I'm not saying MAD is a bad doctrine, I'm saying it breaks down as the complexity of diplomacy increases quadratically with the number of nuclear equipped actors.

I'm Canadian. Things are good here. Obtaining a bomb wouldn't make life materially better for anyone in Canada, nor would it defend us against the US. Not to mention anybody could drive a nuke into the middle of Manhattan and detonate it and you'd maybe never know who was responsible.

The importance of non-proliferation cannot be understated.

by lwansbrough

3/7/2026 at 8:51:42 PM

Non-proliferation is a dead end. No one trusts the US to act in good faith. Any nation that doesn't get a nuclear warhead and point it at Washngton DC knows they're just one American Presidential scandal away from getting their teeth kicked in.

by krapp

3/7/2026 at 10:35:47 PM

Yes I believe this was the line of thinking that has lead us to the invasion of Iran. So it doesn't appear to be a viable strategy. The US can dispatch a strike group faster than any country can build a nuke, let alone enough nukes to actually make a difference. North Korea only succeeded because of its close ties with China and Russia, and perhaps because previous administrations weren't so brazen as to invade them.

An alternative, as always, is to work towards our strengths as middle-powers. Remain steadfast in our pursuit of diplomatic and economic ties. Make the world too complex and intertwined to make invasions practical.

And of course, while Russia is the leader in this area, it's not the only country that could balkanize the US through "peaceful" means.

by lwansbrough

3/8/2026 at 3:30:24 AM

North Korea isn’t the only country that got a nuke by not playing the rules…

by hammock

3/8/2026 at 7:09:02 AM

USA attacked Iran for no reason, because it was weak and Israel + probably saudi wanted so. It wont stop there either, it will go on to Cuba, Greenland and Canada. Meanwhile, Europe will become unstable due to new waves of refugees and expanding Russia.

USA dispatching strikes at will based on incoherent reasons, is just another reason why everyone needs nukes now. And they need them before they are an active target, because yes, it takes years.

And no, it is not about Iran being evil. Trump does not care about that at all. He even wanted to keep the regime as is (to the extend there was a vague concept of a maybe plan).

> Remain steadfast in our pursuit of diplomatic and economic ties. Make the world too complex and intertwined to make invasions practical.

That made everyone vulnerable to Trump.

by watwut

3/8/2026 at 7:05:31 AM

> States seeking nuclear defence should join the nuclear umbrella of a greater power

Who? Trump, literally nazi Miller and Vance to destroy them and steal their resources? Putin, lets see how their satelite states do. Oh, China?

by watwut

3/8/2026 at 4:12:08 PM

Americans WANT the imperialism and genuinely believe that becoming an American second tier citizen is something everyone wants.

by PearlRiver

3/8/2026 at 7:00:46 AM

I am saying giving up nukes allowed Ukraine to be attacked. Russia stopped there only because they are stuck. They would more westward until they would reach nuclear power.

Quickly growing war that USA started for no reason while threatening Cuba, Greenland and Canada is also a point here.

I am saying that USA wont stop attacking weaker coutries, unless they get similarly stuck. Likewise Israel, they will go on displacine hundreds thousands of people through the region - which they do literally now.

You are saying that all tge other countries should accept being sitting ducks for Russia and USA as they do what they do.

by watwut

3/8/2026 at 3:24:51 AM

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. There is not a country on earth without a nuke that has not been either attacked or pays a lot (whether it’s taking IMF loans, or assenting to coordinated central banking policy etc)

I disagree with the other comments that you are necessarily advocating that everyone gets a nuke. Not every state has to be fully free and sovereign. The world has never worked that way (now of course the striving and tension will always be there, the world is dynamic and people forget that)

by hammock

3/7/2026 at 5:58:47 AM

Gatling died in 1903 and he never saw his gun used in a trench and the engineers at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google they're watching it happen on X in real time..that's the difference nobody's talking about So Does seeing it change anything? I genuinely don't know.

by redhanuman

3/8/2026 at 4:41:01 PM

Kalashnikov worked for decades to build better rifles. Regret is an old man's game.

Even if these AI engineers do regret what they've built, I fear it's too late. A couple years ago, when news broke about Project Lavender, the Google engineers who worked on it protested and got fired. Google's still building weaponized AI systems.

by Starman_Jones

3/7/2026 at 5:45:52 AM

Yeah the pattern is , "with great power comes great irresponsibility" , which is only confained when the power is matched by rivals

by seydor

3/7/2026 at 10:23:42 AM

Yet the Cold War taught us that competition between rivals doesn't contain power at all.

by notarobot123

3/7/2026 at 11:26:11 AM

Should power be contained? Humans always rise up against their oppressors and I find that a comforting thought.

Tyranny, slavery, colonialism- it never lasts.

by expedition32

3/7/2026 at 1:30:47 PM

The number of people trapped in modern slavery today is an all-time high across the whole history.

by rschiavone

3/7/2026 at 10:49:31 PM

Indeed one of the reasons to advocate for the Nuclear Holocaust is because it will eliminate slavery once and for all. Under sufficient nuclear bombardment, we could guarantee zero slaves.

by renewiltord

3/7/2026 at 11:38:12 AM

> Humans always rise up against their oppressors

Successfully?

by Chris2048

3/7/2026 at 2:38:15 AM

We need to break this pattern of kinetic weapons.

How about some modern, safe bio-weapons.

by morninglight

3/7/2026 at 3:14:53 AM

It has bio in the name - it must be good!

That means they're made from renewable resources, right?

by rationalist

3/7/2026 at 4:59:49 AM

As long as they’re USDA Organic

by coffeebeqn

3/7/2026 at 5:09:58 AM

I just watched an episode of Babylon 5 in which an entire race gets wiped by a virus in that way In a matter of days.

by jiehong

3/7/2026 at 5:37:37 AM

Clincally proven bio-weapons

by ares623

3/7/2026 at 8:31:22 AM

Side effects may include victory.

by InsideOutSanta

3/7/2026 at 7:24:07 AM

How do you test "safe bio-weapons"?

by zabzonk

3/8/2026 at 3:33:36 AM

Same way you test regular weapons

by hammock

3/7/2026 at 3:57:00 AM

The Gatling quote is hilarious. Did the inventor of the machine gun really think that each company of 100 men was going to be reduced to one guy with a Gatling gun, and 99 of them send him to the battlefield by himself, saying "good luck buddy, let us know how it works out?"

The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape paintings? Really?

by chihuahua

3/7/2026 at 4:58:14 AM

But… it did do that.

> that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.

Our force structure shifted towards logistics and infrastructure from combatants as we moved up the weapon complexity hierarchy. First automatic guns, then tanks, then airplanes.

To a large extent, a tank or air crew is 50 guys waving off 1-5, while they sit back at base and do hobbies between bouts of mechanic labor. They’re not literally at home, but we do fight with small mechanized armies while most soldiers watch on from the base.

by zmgsabst

3/7/2026 at 9:34:48 AM

Yes, even for infantry, the tooth to tail ratio for deployed expeditionary armies is now 10-20:1. Even that's down from cold war ratios due to mechanisation and automation on the logistics side.

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 1:35:16 PM

Huh isn't the tail bigger?

by knollimar

3/7/2026 at 6:25:13 AM

Right

It wasn’t over night but it did exactly what it intended and sped up a battle significantly as though you had multiples of troops compared to a musket firing line

Then miniaturized it becomes the SAW

by AndrewKemendo

3/7/2026 at 6:07:31 AM

A little "How many people were soldiers in ancient Rome" type searches gave me these numbers...

16% of adult males in the Roman mid-republic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic...), call that 8% of adults of all genders.

Wikipedia says that there's about 1.34 million people in active duty in the US military, out of about 342 million people, 21.5% of which are under 18. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)

I think that's 0.5%? Down from 8% in ancient Rome?

by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF

3/7/2026 at 7:54:06 AM

That has little to do with technological advances, just the fact that the US is at an imperial peace; ie. it is under zero threat of invasion and is currently only engaged in small-scale imperial adventurism across the globe which does not require a large standing army. ~16% of adult Americans served in WW2, or ~33% of adult men.

by applfanboysbgon

3/7/2026 at 9:42:34 AM

Is Iran enjoying an imperial peace, too?

Even including Aative + reserves + paramilitaries, less than 2% of Iranian adults are in the military.

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 11:34:32 AM

Iran hasn't fought a ground war since the (America backed) Saddam invasion.

by expedition32

3/7/2026 at 12:23:07 PM

And what kind of advancement has allowed Iran to engage in numerous direct conflicts (ignoring the proxy wars) without engaging in invasion?

At this point, I'm actually not sure if you're trolling or unironically don't get it?

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 5:35:43 AM

Yet everyone is saying this about LLMs and coders

by jdndbdjsj

3/7/2026 at 9:39:27 AM

US/Israel and Iran each have millions of military and military-industrial personnel, and yet the actual combat is being performed by a few thousand at most. There might a thousand people in uniform for each one directly engaging the enemy (flying a sortie, launching a missile, firing a torpedo) on any given day.

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 10:01:53 AM

That's because there's no ground invasion (yet).

by orbital-decay

3/7/2026 at 12:24:42 PM

So these nations are at war, but the ground troops aren't invading in foot? Instead, they're in barracks or never raised to begin with? What relevance could this have to the quote from Gattling?

Probably none at all.

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 1:15:12 PM

Probably the same relevance as the type of war you're referring to (asymmetrical strike exchange). The war of conquest between countries of comparable population and military power Gatling referred to still needs a lot more people on the ground doing the actual takeover part.

by orbital-decay

3/7/2026 at 1:27:23 PM

Nearly there!

So how might a global and region powers engage in a war without engaging in territorial invasion? What kind of advancement might allow such a conflict to take place with only a tiny number of combatants?

by closewith

3/7/2026 at 9:56:58 AM

> and 99 of them send him to the battlefield by himself, saying "good luck buddy, let us know how it works out?"

>The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape paintings? Really?

Well, for a time greek city states did fight pretty much like this. Small armies of hoplites were raised outside harvest season, went out, fought almost show-battles with very few casualties, and tribute changed hands based on the results. Everyone went home for the harvest.

I believe there's even instances where a battle wasn't fought at all in favour of two appointed champions dueling (origin of the popular fiction trope)

It didn't last, but for a time the greek city states had a kind of equilibrium with relatively few resources (or people) spent on war.

by Aerolfos

3/8/2026 at 8:15:58 AM

> Well, for a time greek city states did fight pretty much like this. Small armies of hoplites were raised outside harvest season, went out, fought almost show-battles with very few casualties, and tribute changed hands based on the results. Everyone went home for the harvest.

This is a view held by a small group, but is in no way the accepted view of it for historians. See the link for a blogpost of a military historian talking about the orthodox and heterodox schools of thought on this.

https://acoup.blog/2025/11/14/collections-hoplite-wars-part-...

by AllegedAlec

3/7/2026 at 4:56:17 AM

I don't know if this is your point, but we're hearing the same stores with AI. Do these people really mean what they say or are they just lying to paint themselves as honorable

by mmcromp

3/7/2026 at 6:56:20 AM

“Maybe there’s a pattern here”

Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it?

Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.

by ineedasername

3/7/2026 at 7:52:16 AM

Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.

That's true if your definition of 'die in armed conflicts' is limited to 'the soldiers on the battlefield.' If you extend that definition a little to 'people who would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict' then you need to scale it up to about a million people a year today. That's just from 5 countries where it's been studied. Globally it's likely to be much more. There's some good information about it, from a credible source, here: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human

by onion2k

3/7/2026 at 2:13:18 PM

No, you are mistaken, inconsistent.

Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed".

Do you think "would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict" wasn't a thing in 1900? I know such things to have been high then, though not with precision, but starvation followed conflict whether because crops went unharvested or were burned or scavenged by the armies. Logistic to rapidly transport food from other regions easily, humanitarian aid, not very good compared to today. That's just one area things may have been worse at those times.

by ineedasername

3/7/2026 at 4:40:13 PM

A deliberate bombing of hospitals and whole cities were not a feature in 1900. Deliberate attempts to create refugee crisis or just kill then all are feature now.

By all means, count in all the civilians killed in 1900 too. But it is completely ridiculous to count only soldiers.

Civilians are more likely to die due to wars. And soldiers kill civilians intentionally.

> proportion of people that die in armed conflicts

That must include the majority of victims of it all.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 5:57:46 PM

I’m not counting only soldiers. I didn’t pull these estimates out of thin air they’re not hard to find so I’m not going to take my time.

I’ll say this: the difference isn’t small around this general question, hospitals don’t get bombed every day, and if you’re going to disagree with something that would be commonly known among knowledge among people familiar with a topic if you pause for a moment to reflect then the habit of checking to see if your instinct or sense of a thing is actually correct is a useful habit. Analysis is both a profession for me as well as a habit so I’ll stipulate I could be wrong and would welcome discussion of anything I’ve missed.

That said: things like bombing a hospital is now possible yes but destroying them has ever been so, or simply slaughtering their residents as you march through, and there were far fewer norms against that sort of thing. Much worse things done more often. Deliberate slaughter of non combatants isn’t new. Prohibitions against it arose for a good reason and strong precedent of the practice from times where marching armies were more common and therefore systematic slaughter of this sort more convenient to those inclined. Accidentally or on purpose, giving smallpox via infected blankets to people forcibly removed from their land and marked across thousands of miles is just one variety. Cholera and other disease outbreaks are another.

These too are not unobvious things to if you consider possible modes of death by or adjacent to military campaigns and they too are also not hard to find estimates for.

by ineedasername

3/7/2026 at 6:00:07 PM

Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed".

Very true. I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the tens of millions killed in wars and as the indirect result of wars decades ago. I'm only saying that there's still a really large number of people killed. If you take a war like World War 2 that resulted in an estimated 10 million deaths per year (60 million dead over 6 years) we've only reduced that by a factor of 10 (at most, because the study I linked to is not all conflicts) which isn't very much, and that's still a catastrophic and tragic number of deaths.

by onion2k

3/8/2026 at 7:00:07 AM

Isn't very much? The difference between 20% of worldwide deaths and 2% sounds like very much to me.

by Dylan16807

3/7/2026 at 8:08:18 AM

you also need to compare people injured so badly that they are significantly worse off for life after the war is over, as most of those people would probably have been killed in previous wars but thanks to modern medicine can be kept alive to suffer for years afterwards.

not a knock on modern medicine, and probably the people who survive are happy that they did for the most part, however if you compare the results in the way you did, you should compare those as well.

by bryanrasmussen

3/7/2026 at 2:28:20 PM

No, incorrect. You're conflating "People injured died much more often" with other outcomes. Survivors in past times were often more commonly crippled in more severed ways, even when the initiating injury was minor.

At those times the only redress for any injury was amputation. These days a very large numbers of injuries can be addressed with less life changing impact.

>"should compare"

I'm not going to include "better dead than crippled" in my considerations here. It seems both absurd and also not something that was encompassed in the orignal point I was adressing.

by ineedasername

3/7/2026 at 4:11:18 PM

OK I thought the comparison was the cost to human beings of war. But call it what rhetorically suits you best.

by bryanrasmussen

3/8/2026 at 7:08:34 AM

They're not ignoring anything, they're disagreeing with [what they perceive as] your implications. Because while some injuries that would have caused deaths cause lifetime damage now, injuries that would have caused lifetime damage cause a lot less of it now.

by Dylan16807

3/9/2026 at 12:40:44 AM

this might be the case, obviously advanced arthroscopic procedures can improve results that in the recent past would have been lifelong problems, but not sure if the benefits of modern medicine across all sorts of battlefield problems are so evenly distributed, I think not given generally the articles I read seem to be echoing my point and not saying that but it all evens out because of this additional benefit, but maybe.

Given that I believe my point is pretty commonly argued and his rebuttal does not seem to me to be as commonly given I would have liked a link to "army study showing the percentage decrease of what were serious injuries match pretty evenly the percentage decrease of what fatalities, showing an even distribution of medical improvements across the range of possible trauma", something like that.

Obviously depending on what was meant by "survivors in past times" applies here, because that is a pretty long range of time.

on edit: my googling shows lots of discussions of improving should injuries that used mean disability are now trivial and so forth, but not overall stats showing the decrease in overall battlefield injury significance matches the decrease in overall battlefield fatality to a reasonable degree.

by bryanrasmussen

3/7/2026 at 9:58:25 AM

For any readers who liked this essay, check out Benjamin Labatut’s fantastic novel “When We Cease to Understand the World,” about scientists and mathematicians who were more or less driven mad by their discoveries. The history of modern warfare and dual use technologies is a big part of the book.

by lilytweed

3/7/2026 at 10:10:57 AM

Sorry, this is fiction about real-life scientists being driven mad, when in fact the real-life scientists in question were not driven mad?

by trevyn

3/7/2026 at 5:44:46 AM

I see the pattern the author wants to show me, but what about it?

Civilization is a complex, evolving system. How much predictability and control do we really have?

by nilirl

3/7/2026 at 10:25:53 AM

This is a great reminder that the line drawn by Anthropic is already too far and that if you’ve been driven to cancel your OpenAI account by their behavior you should also cancel your Anthropic account.

The other pattern that’s a bit less explicit here is that these technologies try to win over the public by theorizing on their incredible peace time use. While many genuinely have great use in peacetime we should not allow that to blind ourselves to their wartime potential. Many of us have little power to direct the future but for those who care doing what you can do is always more than nothing and when done in concert with others does have an impact.

by roxolotl

3/7/2026 at 2:28:37 PM

I didn’t cancel my ChatGPT subscription because OpenAI were willing to accept different terms of use for their AI tools than Anthropic. I canceled my subscription because they were willing to negotiate with a government that was engaged in an unlawful attempt to coerce and extort a competitor.

by derektank

3/7/2026 at 9:11:26 PM

This essay reminded me of War Before Civilization, which argues that modern technologies like the airplane and the submarine brought back pre-civilizational genocidal war, without clearly defined frontlines, without distinction between civilians and soldiers.

I didn't know that Alfred Nobel thought that removing this distinction would bring peace though.

I guess he didn't read the book, which was published long after his death. It's main thesis is just that war before civilization was a thing at all, that the archeological evidence for it can be taken at face value, that weapons were not means of exchange and walls were not symbols of unity. It could have been written before the invention of dynamite.

by amadeuspagel

3/7/2026 at 3:12:20 AM

tldr: many great scientific advancement were created by well-intentioned researchers who were subsequently shocked to find their work applied to military, often to the great detriment of mankind.

The unwritten implication is that this applies to AI, as well. I find it hard to disagree. I don't know what to do about it.

The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side projects, while the ruling class is already using AI to subvert democracy, spread misinformation, and develop weapons. "If we don't build these weapons, someone else will." If we can learn nothing else from history, we should learn that you can't turn back the clock.

by hackyhacky

3/7/2026 at 4:41:17 AM

No, this does not apply to AI because they're not well intentioned and very open about it.

by 3836293648

3/7/2026 at 3:47:32 AM

I think both things can simultaneously be true. There is a certain inevitability to technological progress. Once you reach a critical mass of collective knowledge, the resulting "thing" will get developed. If not by you, then by someone else.

But also, inevitability is not an argument for complicity. If you personally decide to work on bioweapons, I don't think you can shrug and say "eh, it was going to happen either way". As tech workers, we've really mastered the art of coming up with justifications for what essentially just boils down to "all my friends have gotten rich and now it's my turn".

I've met hundreds of sharp engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. None of them could look me straight in the eye and say "yeah, you know, what we're doing with ad tech is actually good". They just always had an explanation along the lines of "it's not that bad, and besides, if we don't do it, someone else will, and we're the good guys here".

by lich_king

3/7/2026 at 5:30:56 AM 

  > besides, if we don't do it, someone else will, and we're the good guys here".
It's funny that people justify themselves that way considering it's the literal phrase is discussed in every ethics 101 course... and not because a bunch of good people were saying it...

by godelski

3/7/2026 at 6:42:38 AM

If the comments on this website are any indication I'd wager a great many people in tech haven't spent even a single minute of their lives seriously thinking about ethics, nevermind studying ethics in a classroom

by bluefirebrand

3/7/2026 at 7:00:23 AM

- first 10 years of my career, ethics was last thing on my mind

- second 10 years of my career, started seriously thinking about ethics

- last 10 years of my career (including now) - would not work for Big Tech etc if they gave me 9-digit / year compensation package

by bdangubic

3/7/2026 at 9:50:51 AM

I guess that's why I'm always angry when I'm reading comments here

I know I don't have all the answers, but I minored in philosophy in school. I studied ethics quite a lot and being ethical has always been very important to me

I never had 20 years of "let's burn down everything in my way as long as it pays well"

by bluefirebrand

3/7/2026 at 9:52:00 AM

Do you have privatized healthcare in your country?

by user2722

3/7/2026 at 9:54:17 AM

No, I live in a first world country

by bluefirebrand

3/7/2026 at 9:51:16 AM

That has probably more to do with you bank account digits.

I'm on the inverse moral ladder currently, specially as more and more services are privatized (public health here is on fast-track to be americanized).

by user2722

3/7/2026 at 11:01:32 AM

I see so many rich people act in awfull manner just to get mote money ... so no.

People who make ethical decisions end up with less money on average. But that is it, poor people and low paid people and average paid techies make ethical decisions all the time.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 9:55:57 PM

It really did not have anything to do with money. Obviously I make more money now than in my “junior” days. I just did not give a F.

I worked for Monsanto, I mean as evil of a company as you’d find (during that time, nothing compared to today’s Big Tech evil). I just honestly did not give a F at all.

by bdangubic

3/8/2026 at 4:11:56 AM

I'm glad you got better (I don't think this is said often enough. People change, and I'm glad you changed in this direction rather than the other). If you write about your path I'd read it.

by godelski

3/7/2026 at 7:21:13 AM

Yep. From Putin to Kim Yong Un, everyone is convinced to be the good guy doing bad things for the right reasons.

by 9dev

3/8/2026 at 4:24:24 AM

I really believe the biggest lie everyone believes is that evil is only created by those that are evil. That evil is easy to identify. It's that love for simplicity that makes it persist.

Were it so easy to identify, as so many claim, then it seems only one of two situations seems likely: most people are evil or most people are unwilling to let evil persist (which may not make them evil, but surely does not make them good).

Were evil easy to identify and most people not evil (good or neutral), then surely evil would be easy to eliminate and we wouldn't have a cliché about the road to hell bring paved with good intentions.

Evil persists because we believe we'd be evil were we to let it to. The same mechanism for self defense is used even by the worst. For the greater good, right?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269344

by godelski

3/7/2026 at 3:21:34 AM

Reminds me a quote from Gibson's Spook Country: "That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: the most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield, or in a gallery."

by 6177c40f

3/7/2026 at 4:42:50 AM

That’s a weird tldr and not my takeaway. More like “scientists convinced their new ultra destructive weapon is sure to bring about peace this time around”. Spoiler: it does not. Arguably maybe nuclear weapons but even then I’d say the use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict hasn’t really been tested yet and people are generally hesitant to do so, preferring instead illegal chemical and biological warfare.

by vlovich123

3/7/2026 at 5:11:52 AM

If you wanted the core of all of this... Check this book "Irrational Man" by William Barrett.

by nwhnwh

3/7/2026 at 1:18:58 PM

It's definitely a dread-inducing state of time. I'm not sure that there is a way to get through to the "move fast and break things" crowd.

by duskdozer

3/7/2026 at 5:21:57 AM 

  > The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side projects, while the ruling class is
happy that they can finish their side projects too.

by godelski

3/7/2026 at 8:19:31 AM

> were created by well-intentioned researchers who were subsequently shocked to find their work applied to military

oh please.

Most scientific development especially root-node stuff has been funded and kick-started by the military for centuries. You can't take funds from DARPA and then be shocked to see the air force using it. You can't work at ecole polytechnique and be shocked to see your work being used in libya.

Humans would have never gone to space [as quick and as at much scale as they did] if they didn't want spy satellites and ICBMs.

Shannon invented a whole new field while working with money earmarked for cryptography work in WW2.

Machine translation was first posed and funded by anyone for russian-english translation - 1949 Warren Weaver memo at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Do see my other comment for more examples.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45364917

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45365211 [Context: the creator of waymo was the winner of that challenge]

And need I mention the internet itself...

As the first comment I linked mentions, even many medicines were developed only cos soldiers were dying in theater, not because normal people were dying at home. So it's not just limited to tech.

> the ruling class

No, we don't get to deflect blame like that. If we take money from DARPA/similar to invent something, we are part of the system and are responsible. Everyone involved in the space race in the 50s, Transit (sat nav) in the 60s knew it was to make ICBMs. The creator of waymo surely read that DARPA document I linked in my second comment. And need I mention that oppenheimer knew why nuclear energy was being harnessed :) You can't "oh the evil few tricking the innocent majority, what ever will they do" it away.

A logically defensible position might be that you agree that war is a timeless motivation and that you are fine with stuff being used for military purposes and continue to develop the technology with government money, OR not taking any money from the government. There are not that many others that aren't hypocritical.

by porridgeraisin

3/7/2026 at 5:04:52 AM

Nukes gave us peace and freedom.

We've had no WW3 (so far) and no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war. Gatling might have thought his gun would reduce the number of war fatalities, but but Oppenheimer thought he would end the world. Both were wrong.

Alternative take: Inventors are bad at predicting the downstream societal effects of their inventions.

by MediaSquirrel

3/7/2026 at 5:13:58 AM

Let's assume a nuclear exchange happens at some point during a war. There is a very high chance that this will cause an escalation leading to a nuclear apocalypse.

Since this result is presumably inevitable at increasing frequency, it's more like nukes prevented another major world war and stole a form of peace from the future, temporarily. That peace debt might be repaid with the end of everything.

by treebeard901

3/7/2026 at 6:34:40 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls

by KronisLV

3/7/2026 at 8:12:31 AM

Funny how the unintentional close calls become more sparse with time. I wonder if that’s because humanity got better at dealing with the responsibility or because the oopsies haven’t been declassified yet.

by nehal3m

3/7/2026 at 5:54:32 AM

let's assume the trees rise up and set fire to the ionosphere.

by testaccount28

3/7/2026 at 5:38:46 AM

well whatever society is left will definitely be "peaceful" for at least a couple of decades.

by ares623

3/7/2026 at 6:15:43 AM

Nuclear weapons traded a high probability of a major war for a low probability of an apocalyptic war.

My question is, how low is that probability, exactly? Because the tradeoff looks very different if it’s one in a million per year, versus one in a hundred per year.

My assessment, looking at the history and the close calls, is that it’s more like one in a hundred.

by wat10000

3/7/2026 at 7:17:30 AM

It certainly rises if the USA votes for an irresponsible crook.

by 9dev

3/7/2026 at 5:07:16 AM

It very much depends on where "here" is.

At least, it gives impunity to attack others with less fear of retaliation…

by jiehong

3/7/2026 at 7:45:02 AM

> no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war.

here meaning the US or HN?

by imjonse

3/7/2026 at 5:26:54 AM

> no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war

Lots of talk in the UK recently about conscription.

by zabzonk

3/7/2026 at 7:09:10 AM

I haven’t heard a peep about conscription, can you provide a source? There was some vague national service proposal for school leavers a couple of years ago, but that was it.

by awjlogan

3/7/2026 at 10:58:19 AM

Germany is already working on it. Austria made it longer.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 11:40:16 AM

Nuclear PROLIFERATION gave us peace and freedom.

The Americans wanted to keep it all to themselves you know...

by expedition32

3/7/2026 at 7:01:55 AM

nobody here noticed?

None of them were women.

by throwaway290

3/7/2026 at 8:39:30 AM

I'm puzzled to what point is tried to be made.

Is the parent statement supposed to be an argument that women are not capable, or even less likely, of providing means for, or inflicting massive destruction?

How would that follow from what is said here or in the article?

Certainly women can be destructive too. What would make it a sex issue?

by synecdoche

3/7/2026 at 1:58:03 PM

> argument that women are not capable

I know this is called techbro crowd for a reason, but you know that plenty of women invented things and did scientific discoveries right? especially after they were unbanned from it

> Certainly women can be destructive too

Sure if you say so.

It's just that 0% of these destructive weapons and tech in the article was developed by women.

Maybe there's a pattern here

by throwaway290

3/7/2026 at 3:24:32 AM

This is such a tiresome take. Anything is a weapon if you work hard enough at it, but do you really think the main thing that will stop us killing each other is access or lack thereof to weapons?

Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of traumatic injury inflicted by tools.

by XorNot

3/7/2026 at 3:27:00 AM

> Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of traumatic injury inflicted by tools.

No one is arguing that modern technology is the sole or even principal cause of military deaths. The argument is simply that technology has greatly facilitated the ease and scale.

Imagine a world without nuclear weapons, automatic weapons, rockets, and explosives (other than gunpowder). There would still be wars, certainly, but they would be a lot less destructive.

by hackyhacky

3/7/2026 at 3:41:15 AM

The number of casualties from the American civil war was estimated at 700,000 soldiers from both sides.

The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at about 200,000.

Nuclear weapons have killed far fewer people then any other type in history, whereas the musket did some work.

And you know, a bunch of Romans with the pinnacle of technology - the sharp thing on a long stick - in the Battle of Carthage collectively had about 100,000 casualties and also demolished a city. And that was one of many battles in many wars.

The masses of man and ground into the masses of man in conflict, at scale, at every turn that we've had organized society. We live in a time where casualty scales are actually shockingly low in conflict.

by XorNot

3/7/2026 at 3:45:43 AM

Interesting perspective. One could argue that nuclear weapons are among the less harmful things invented, since they killed fewer people than knives, clubs, spears, guns, cars, cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos, coal power plants, and probably a lot of other things. Plus they probably prevent a 3rd world war with killing on the same scale as WW1 and WW2, tens of millions each.

by chihuahua

3/7/2026 at 1:25:28 PM

>Plus they probably prevent a 3rd world war with killing on the same scale as WW1 and WW2, tens of millions each.

Or, they've had no effect, and there hasn't been a "WW3" due to other factors. Or, they've made one more likely, it just hasn't happened yet.

by duskdozer

3/7/2026 at 7:24:15 AM

They prevent the third world war, until they don’t. Then they will bring mayhem and misery. And with the current lunatics in charge I am not really at ease just because nobody pushed the big red button yet.

by 9dev

3/7/2026 at 7:24:12 AM

Yeah that's part of Nuclear Peace Theory. It's interesting and compelling - but also prone to some major tail risk.

by AdamN

3/7/2026 at 3:46:09 AM

> The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at about 200,000.

Nice of you to omit the 50 million other civilian casualties in WW2, plus around 20 million military casualties a 5 million prisoners. Nothing in the classical world comes close to that left of destruction.

by hackyhacky

3/7/2026 at 5:57:54 AM

famously, the bombs were what _ended_ the war.

by testaccount28

3/7/2026 at 4:48:45 AM

You’re comparing a 4 year bloodbath to 10 minutes and being underimpressed? Also those weapons are several orders of magnitude less powerful than what they’re capable of today…

Battle of Carthage was also 3 years and was a siege of a city, so you know… not a lot of places for the people inside to escape. Also took about 20-50k expertly trained Roman soldiers vs a few trained guys in a plane pressing a button.

And sibling comment is right. The application of industrialization to the death process in WW2 and similar application of the idea (eg Pol Pot and Stalin) also led to death on an unprecedented scale.

by vlovich123

3/7/2026 at 5:25:42 AM

> 4 year bloodbath

That caused endless tragedy and trauma. Perhaps the 10 mins terror was the less worse outcome of the two, mode decisive, that ended the war quicker. Who can decide? Wars aren't statistic.

by jryle70

3/7/2026 at 11:07:30 AM

WWII was not 10min of terror. Those 10min was small part of 5 year long warfare. Which caused endless trage and trauma.

So, if you want to make apples to apples comparison, compare it to how many people a small unit killed on 10min.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 5:15:07 AM

> You’re comparing a 4 year bloodbath to 10 minutes...

Poor me having hard time trying to understand how he didn't notice that by himself.

by nwhnwh

3/7/2026 at 11:04:48 AM

You literally refenced WWII. Which features a peek of people killed in military conflict. And yes, holocaust counts, civilian deaths by soldiers count.

by watwut

3/7/2026 at 7:02:17 AM

This business about Alberto Santos-Dumont does put most of the thing into question:

> North Americans think the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Much of the world believes that credit belongs to Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian inventor working in Paris.

Much of the world? It's a minority viewpoint both among scholars and lay people. Some people in the insight porn "actually, the thing they won't tell you" genre of blogs and so on also do it. Certainly it's standard in China and India, so at the least you have to put Asia on that list as well. And Wright is the standard teaching in Australia, and the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Egypt and Botswana and I'd be surprised if other places in Africa are different.

In general, when I look in my rice at a restaurant and I see a cockroach, I assume there are more cockroaches in the restaurant. So, too, I assume there are other cockroaches in this article. I don't have the time to verify the other things, but this is wrong enough that I'd rather eat elsewhere.

by arjie

3/7/2026 at 9:22:53 PM

I grew up outside of the US and learnt that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, but I don't really care for the cockroach speech. Unless you're a defense lawyer trying to get a guilty client off by casting doubt on one of many pieces of evidence, just point out the mistake and let other people judge for themselves whether it's bad enough to ignore the rest of the article.

by amadeuspagel

3/7/2026 at 10:28:18 PM

Haha, certainly, if you're willing to go take a Flat Earther at his word on everything but the Earth, you're welcome to. For me, a sufficiently nonsensical claim casts doubt on all relaying of source material. And I arrogate to myself the right to judge all other men. All Rights Reserved as the news media say.

The rice made by Flat Earthers is full of cockroaches. Though you do present a compelling proposition which I will entertain. For the right sum, I am willing to point out mistakes and withhold opinion - leaving that to the rest of you to have. I'll go with my rate on the usual experts platforms: for $1200/hour I will tell you when people are claiming the Earth is Flat and I will make no other judgment of their epistemics.

by arjie

3/8/2026 at 6:14:34 AM

Gustave Whitehead was likely the first person to achieve powered flight.

AND the Wrights spent time and money to cover up that fact.

http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/

by r-mitage

3/7/2026 at 7:26:56 AM

Nah, before the Internet if you asked a random German on the street, who'd they think invented the airplane I'm pretty sure you'd had gotten Otto Lilienthal as an answer. I guess the reality is that before the world got hyper connected every country had its own set of inventors for almost everything. There are numerous examples but they are hard to find now.

In the early days of Wikipedia I thought about writing a crawler that makes a table with inventor per country. It would have been an interesting experiment. Maybe it could be done with an archive even now.

by weinzierl

3/7/2026 at 7:53:21 AM

I'll happily grant that claim but today it is after the Internet was invented and therefore this "much of the world believes" claim from OP is nonsense since it uses the present tense.

by arjie

3/7/2026 at 8:06:51 AM

And in France you'd have gotten Clément Ader as reply.

by astrolx

3/7/2026 at 1:24:35 PM

Interesting that you’re getting downvoted. This passage also stuck out like a sore thumb to me – it’s like seeing some antivax stuff thrown into an otherwise serious discussion.

by alexwebb2

3/7/2026 at 7:48:35 AM

Dozens of credible witnesses, including several who authored sworn affidavits, claim they saw Richard Pearse achieve powered flight before the Wright brothers. Pearse is a much better option if someone wants to claim the Wright brothers were not the first.

by reshlo

3/7/2026 at 1:27:46 PM

Those claims were way, way after the fact. Like, 50+ years later. Zero documentation or contemporary evidence of ANY kind. The claim isn’t taken particularly seriously by historians.

by alexwebb2