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dumb ass engineers: “we’ll build it because we can, how fucking cool is this shit??” also dumb engineers: “if i dont do it, someone else will” their funders: “this will make me so fucking rich, helllo DOD”
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What’s dumb-ass about the first two statements besides the fact that humanist social determinists who believe they actually have agency over these decisions hate them? It’s only dumb-ass if you add a 4th line by the *same* people, “oh no what have we done?”
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Not really. I worked on drone and autonomous robotics for years and literally nobody I met on the civilian industry, military, or academic side had any illusions an;it what they were building and how it would be used. We literally used specific military and policing use cases.
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The peaceful civilian use cases are always just a nice-to-have plus market on the thinking. There is no agonizing or moral dilemmas. People with those social determinist tendencies tend not to get into such work at all.
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The trope of the clueless engineer who suddenly has a humanist consciousness raising moment of “oh god what have I done” is pure humanist wishful thinking combined with the self-important belief that they’re more morally “evolved” and see things poor dumb tech-fetishists don’t.
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For 10 years with all types 🤣 I’ve just never lived there longer than a few years. You’re overindexing on clueless scenesters who go to meetups and/or public statements of big leaders pandering to humanists. Very few with any real power sincerely acts/talks like that in SV.