Should We Ban Killer Robots?
Experts weigh in on the pros and cons of banning Lethal Autonomous Weapons.
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Experts weigh in on the pros and cons of banning Lethal Autonomous Weapons.
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Should We Ban Killer Robots?
- Thread starter David Rodgers
- Start date
I find these moralistic viewpoints fraught with irony and delusion.
"I don't want to see young men killed in war, but the threat of body bags means there will be some reluctance in going to war. If you have virtually no body bags coming home, when you can just send in cheaper robots, then there's no stopping the number of conflicts you can get into."
This is not a new trend or something limited to robots. This is a thing since the invention of the armored vehicles. No one fights a "fair" war. It's about killing the other guys. The entire point is to eliminate enemies as cheaply as possible with as little risk to your own forces as possible. Your not talking about just eliminating killer robots, if you want to assure wars are fair try to bring back dueling.
A governments ability to launch a thousand wars a day because they have killer robots and their targets don't is not a military problem. It's a political one.
"He warned of the dangers of existing law being undermined by any new prohibition implemented through the UN."
Ha Ha Ha. How about a law that bans war? Resource scarcity, starvation, poverty or feeling sad? Seriously though, if recent events with China, the US and Russia have taught us anything about international law and war, its that no cares at all about international law.
"I don't want to see young men killed in war, but the threat of body bags means there will be some reluctance in going to war. If you have virtually no body bags coming home, when you can just send in cheaper robots, then there's no stopping the number of conflicts you can get into."
This is not a new trend or something limited to robots. This is a thing since the invention of the armored vehicles. No one fights a "fair" war. It's about killing the other guys. The entire point is to eliminate enemies as cheaply as possible with as little risk to your own forces as possible. Your not talking about just eliminating killer robots, if you want to assure wars are fair try to bring back dueling.
A governments ability to launch a thousand wars a day because they have killer robots and their targets don't is not a military problem. It's a political one.
"He warned of the dangers of existing law being undermined by any new prohibition implemented through the UN."
Ha Ha Ha. How about a law that bans war? Resource scarcity, starvation, poverty or feeling sad? Seriously though, if recent events with China, the US and Russia have taught us anything about international law and war, its that no cares at all about international law.
The U.N was created after WW2 precisely for that purpose. Hasn't worked out well thus far.Stupidity said:
The problem is really that there is a good arguement for both sides.
A larger problem is that we have no population control, yet we spout the benefits of saving more lives by robot soldiers, which requires more materials from this finite supply on our planet.
An even larger problem (as stated above nicely by Stupidity (lol)) is that, well, what war are they hoping to benefit with allegedly disposable soldiers? Say all countries then have robot soldiers in the future, we just all sit inside while the robots duke it out with each other in various forms? That's how they'll start conspiring against us, damnit! Get the world leaders to fight their greedy wars with pokemon battles, none of this waste of talent and materials while we grow fat in our cushioned, mega-branded, morally superior havens.
But...i digress.
Take this from a guy from the future; embrace your robot overlords. Do not fight them. Life is much more pleasant that way. No pain. No death (apart from that very human one you have during the "transition") and no ear bleeding british pop music. Emm...braaaace!
A larger problem is that we have no population control, yet we spout the benefits of saving more lives by robot soldiers, which requires more materials from this finite supply on our planet.
An even larger problem (as stated above nicely by Stupidity (lol)) is that, well, what war are they hoping to benefit with allegedly disposable soldiers? Say all countries then have robot soldiers in the future, we just all sit inside while the robots duke it out with each other in various forms? That's how they'll start conspiring against us, damnit! Get the world leaders to fight their greedy wars with pokemon battles, none of this waste of talent and materials while we grow fat in our cushioned, mega-branded, morally superior havens.
But...i digress.
Take this from a guy from the future; embrace your robot overlords. Do not fight them. Life is much more pleasant that way. No pain. No death (apart from that very human one you have during the "transition") and no ear bleeding british pop music. Emm...braaaace!
Yes, we most definitely should ban killer robots. Will we? Not likely.
The killer robots we need to fear are not the humanoids from robocop but quad copters with machine guns attached like the one on page 2. Thousands of those simple kill bots could be deployed for same price as a single F22. Without pilots, they would never tire beyond needing a periodic battery recharge. Just a few people rotating flights of these things could keep an entire city locked down indefinitely.
Even more than price, the reason we should fear such drones is because they can be controlled by a few people and they don't question orders. Even if you controlled every general, conquering the US with the US army would be difficult because the people carrying the weapons wouldn't like the idea of firing on their homes. A robotic army could easily lead to the authoritarian dystopia seen in 1984.
The killer robots we need to fear are not the humanoids from robocop but quad copters with machine guns attached like the one on page 2. Thousands of those simple kill bots could be deployed for same price as a single F22. Without pilots, they would never tire beyond needing a periodic battery recharge. Just a few people rotating flights of these things could keep an entire city locked down indefinitely.
Even more than price, the reason we should fear such drones is because they can be controlled by a few people and they don't question orders. Even if you controlled every general, conquering the US with the US army would be difficult because the people carrying the weapons wouldn't like the idea of firing on their homes. A robotic army could easily lead to the authoritarian dystopia seen in 1984.
A lot of things could lead to authoritarian dystopias. In fact a lot of things have led to authoritarian dystopias, its just one of those things people do. You know what one of the strongest factors in preventing those naturally occurring dystopias from lasting and actually conquering the world? They are non competitive in a number of fields over the long term, including technology.Jadedvet said:
Any tyranny that rules through use of attack drones would eventually find themselves fighting superior drones sent by less controlled societies. Tyrannies cannot afford to have a tech savvy population that more open societies can (Especially when you army is all robots).
By limiting technological development you are not fighting tyranny, your supporting it. Tyranny thrives off of social controls, not technology.
Advanced robotics could very easily give us access to resources not from our planet. Our solar system alone has asteroids floating around that mass hundreds of times greater than the mass of the planet earth. There is no reason at all that in a few decades we cant start dragging them back to earth with robotic ships.Xsjadoblayde said:
850.000 dollars a year for each human soldier in Iraq, was it? Of course this includes pay, training costs - presumably including the cost of the officer/NCO's involved in that training - and room and board on base for certain time periods. I'm guessing a lot of that money is going to a lot of different places and those places would prefer not to see it go anytime soon. It isn't called the Military Industrial COMPLEX for nothing. With that said... I'm in favour of such weapons systems.
We begin callous to the plight of our enemies, and soon after we hate them. We try to stop wars but... parents and children? 'They killed my boy. Don't you stop this and make that death meaningless. Don't you dare make me tell my granddaughter that her daddy got killed fer nothin'!' This is not an unjustifiable position. It is not rational but it is unfortunately to be expected from many in those circumstances and can't really be as arbitrarily dismissed as reason might suggest.
Let us assume an imperialistic stance on things. Massive bureaucracy, which seems likely, and a callous disregard for past orders lost in said bureaucracy. Let us assume these machines are deployed in 2040 against a small country - pick a reason it's irrelevant. It is now 2080, 40 years of a country functioning around killing machines that have been picking off elements of their population for 40 years, with no ability to avenge those deaths and no ability to stop the machines. Finally, the political heat off, to say the least, an envoy reaches this imperial government. It is not demanding terms or anything like that, it is begging, begging a government that doesn't even remember deploying the robots never mind why, to recall them. What cause has the government to not oblige? There is nobody crying out for the loss of robots or for the loss of their sons and in this age daughters. Nobody in the Empire has died as a result of the conflict. Provided the roots of the conflict can be resolved or even forgotten, it would make sense to recall the robots.
Finally that 'character development' so many like to discuss as a result of war, ceases to exist. Citizens of the Empire do not fight wars, do not wage wars. There is no Rambo to look up to. You are not going to become a tin can with a machine gun. People don't fight wars anymore, machines do. I don't have a problem with that really. It also means politicians don't get popular for fighting popular wars. War is suddenly almost as obsolete as it is irrelevant. Works for me frankly.
We begin callous to the plight of our enemies, and soon after we hate them. We try to stop wars but... parents and children? 'They killed my boy. Don't you stop this and make that death meaningless. Don't you dare make me tell my granddaughter that her daddy got killed fer nothin'!' This is not an unjustifiable position. It is not rational but it is unfortunately to be expected from many in those circumstances and can't really be as arbitrarily dismissed as reason might suggest.
Let us assume an imperialistic stance on things. Massive bureaucracy, which seems likely, and a callous disregard for past orders lost in said bureaucracy. Let us assume these machines are deployed in 2040 against a small country - pick a reason it's irrelevant. It is now 2080, 40 years of a country functioning around killing machines that have been picking off elements of their population for 40 years, with no ability to avenge those deaths and no ability to stop the machines. Finally, the political heat off, to say the least, an envoy reaches this imperial government. It is not demanding terms or anything like that, it is begging, begging a government that doesn't even remember deploying the robots never mind why, to recall them. What cause has the government to not oblige? There is nobody crying out for the loss of robots or for the loss of their sons and in this age daughters. Nobody in the Empire has died as a result of the conflict. Provided the roots of the conflict can be resolved or even forgotten, it would make sense to recall the robots.
Finally that 'character development' so many like to discuss as a result of war, ceases to exist. Citizens of the Empire do not fight wars, do not wage wars. There is no Rambo to look up to. You are not going to become a tin can with a machine gun. People don't fight wars anymore, machines do. I don't have a problem with that really. It also means politicians don't get popular for fighting popular wars. War is suddenly almost as obsolete as it is irrelevant. Works for me frankly.
"Another problem is the concept of proportionality. When deciding what is a target, and what amount of force to apply, human commanders must make decisions in complex situations, weighing humanitarian needs with military advantage. You can't make an algorithm for that; it requires a human to make that call."
Um... Any reason for that to be true? I'd trust a computer much more than an emotional, irrational human to make that kind of call, actually. How about this algorithm:
Predicted deaths caused by this action - (Predicted days this will bring us closer to victory * Average deaths caused by this war per day)
If the result is negative go through with the action.
I think that's a pretty decent attempt for about 10 seconds worth of thought, and it's probably better than whatever vague heuristics people are instinctively going with now.
I also think of all the things we should be worried about in this area, "lethal autonomic weapons" are actually one of the least important. The fact that there are already laws about target discrimination means they'll probably be much safer and more discriminate than bombs for example already.
Um... Any reason for that to be true? I'd trust a computer much more than an emotional, irrational human to make that kind of call, actually. How about this algorithm:
Predicted deaths caused by this action - (Predicted days this will bring us closer to victory * Average deaths caused by this war per day)
If the result is negative go through with the action.
I think that's a pretty decent attempt for about 10 seconds worth of thought, and it's probably better than whatever vague heuristics people are instinctively going with now.
I also think of all the things we should be worried about in this area, "lethal autonomic weapons" are actually one of the least important. The fact that there are already laws about target discrimination means they'll probably be much safer and more discriminate than bombs for example already.
Has World War 3 happened and no-one told me? If not, then you could say it's doing pretty well so far. Better than the League of Nations did, anyway.008Zulu said:
Lethal Autonomous Weapon have been around for 30 years. Many nations employ varieties of sea mines that have passive sonar. They use the passive sonar to detect and discriminate targets with no human input.
51 million people have died in war since 1945, roughly the same as died in WW2.Lunncal said:
The direction world conflict is going, I can all too easily imagine a battle waged between a rich nation's autonomous kill-enabled machines and a poor one's child soldiers. A prospect I find horrifying, even before the effects of the recent "militarization" of American police forces comes to mind.
The fact that trained humans still make horrific errors like mistaking a reporter's camera for an anti-air weapon makes me extremely hesitant to credit the idea that the DARPA equivalent of the Kinect is going to be able to do a better job telling an aid worker from an insurgent any time soon.
Is it a good idea to turn war into the equivalent of supermarket butchery? The enjoyable rewards coming to us neatly tied up in plastic wrap, while the bloody process is completely sanitized and curtained, away from our scrutiny?
Doesn't the rest of the world have enough reason to hate us already, before we openly declare that killing their children is a process so mundane and beneath our notice that we delegate it to lines of code?
The fact that trained humans still make horrific errors like mistaking a reporter's camera for an anti-air weapon makes me extremely hesitant to credit the idea that the DARPA equivalent of the Kinect is going to be able to do a better job telling an aid worker from an insurgent any time soon.
Is it a good idea to turn war into the equivalent of supermarket butchery? The enjoyable rewards coming to us neatly tied up in plastic wrap, while the bloody process is completely sanitized and curtained, away from our scrutiny?
Doesn't the rest of the world have enough reason to hate us already, before we openly declare that killing their children is a process so mundane and beneath our notice that we delegate it to lines of code?
We have had Korea, Vietnam, (what are we up to now, 4?) in the Persian Gulf. Why didn't they stop those?Lunncal said:
My thought on the subject is that the last bit of the article sort of shows the intent. As a general rule the US is one of the only nations that seems to give much of a crap about international law especially when we have the left wing in charge. We're also the ones who due to being so powerful get most of the attention when we don't follow it because people expect us to be the good guys so to speak despite all the crap we get.
The end mentions anti-missile systems in the hands of the US and Israel. Setting the way back machine you'd remember Russia and Obama had a bit discussion on that subject years ago, with Russia being upset that the US developed missile interception technology in violation of agreements with the USSR. The big argument here being that the USSR doesn't exist anymore. The US has also set up bases in allied nations like Poland so not only do we have missile interception over the continental US, but also from various places around the world both protecting them and us, not to mention what we've got on boats and subs that are mobile, and of course anything we put into space that we might not be talking about. The bottom line is that Russia was demanding the US share this technology and Obama being smart for once apparently said 'no' and that is part of what iced relations with Russia. The missile interception base in Poland was a big deal during the invasion of Georgia and one of the reasons Russia cut the fuel pipeline to the EU was trying to pressure Poland to stop hosting it so it could more effectively threaten the EU since it was feeling penned in. A lot of people here and there have been pointing out that Russia threatened Poland directly during that fiasco and now it's retaken control of The Black Sea which has caused Poland to go on alert and start making more military preparations than it has for a long time. I don't remember all of the names and if Phalanx is one of the systems they were concerned about or not, but probably. Basically the current situation is probably in response to the fact that despite fears of US citizens the US is no longer really vulnerable to the threat of MAD for the moment, even Russia is unlikely to be able to saturate the current post-cold war anti-missile defenses, the old arguments about the impossibility of shooting down ICBMs, especially those following an orbital arc along with decoys, doesn't apply when you consider how good the US has become with it's automation, computers, guidance systems, etc... to which the rest of the world is light years behind even given the missile guidance stuff China stole during the Clinton administration. The US is also infamous for understating it's capabilities, most wars involve the world calling BS on what the US claims to be capable of, only to find out that we can do far more than that. One reason the USSR collapsed was that the people were giving up almost everything to be the best, during Desert Storm what was current soviet technology want up against what was then current US technology and it wasn't even close, it was a proxy war of sorts given what they gave Saddam at the time, and Russia was really convinced Saddam was going to overpower the US and it's allies and it was shattering when it didn't happen. It wasn't the exclusive cause, but it did contribute.
See, as I point out right now if the US say decided it wanted to force China to follow international IP or Patent laws and actually decided we were going to use everything we have, it wouldn't be anything like our moral wars in the US. We could easily prevent China, even if it brought Russia in as an ally, from getting any kind of nukes or WMD to their targets. The threat of WMDs is still terrifying but in reality despite the costs of potentially missing they represent a minimal threat at the moment against the US. Once we have them pinned all we need to do is start bombing the crap out of our enemies, decimating civilian populations left and right, the idea being not to conquer and rule these areas in a real war, or even break the culture, but simply to do so much damage that they comply to our demands, one way of doing that is to scare the people so much due to the fatalities that they turn on their own governments to force them to surrender. Especially in a nation like China that uses the threat of force to keep it's people in line it's a big deal if all those poor Chinese become more afraid of American bombs and missiles than the guns and tanks of the Chinese military which would itself be getting pounded. Such a *hypothetical* attack would of course also involve using Drones on a large scale, the only thing holding them back is American morality (and we lead in that tech so far), if we say start dropping fuel air bombs, daisy cutters, and all kinds of other cool toys we usually don't employ for moral reasons, we could do this without really even giving our target anyone to shoot back against. It would be brutal and
one sided.
Talking about "killer robots" makes it sound dramatic, but it seems like an offhanded way to try and regulate US military power at a time when there are a lot of people increasingly moving in on the US sphere of influence. Basically Russia and China in particular would love to see us give a lot of this up since they aren't making as much progress in catching us or developing counter measures as they would like to. What's more understand the US is also heavily outnumbered, should those kinds of nations ever develop their own interception and robotic technology and force things back to conventional warfare for all intents and purposes they could handle the US and it's allies relatively easily. Our technology is our power, not the size of our military, and of course once a serious war starts it's a bit too late to then re-build the stuff you need, especially if you lost your edge, your not going to regain it all that quickly.
Speaking for myself I'm not as paranoid about autonomous technology as many people are, including true AI, and face it as part of a country that has seriously downsized it's military substantially because of our potential technological power I'm not big on limiting what we can do with technology. The way I see it is this, if your scared of the weapons that are out there, that's a good excuse to not want to go to war and see that stuff deployed. As soon as we give up our tech edge, for moral reasons or otherwise, we're pretty much ceding global control to more populous nations and those who still maintain an industrial power base as the US moved more to a skills, technology, and trade based power base where we produce little but create a lot (so to speak) which is why I have such a massive bug up my butt about countries like China that violate and knock off patents, copyrights, and IPs.
The end mentions anti-missile systems in the hands of the US and Israel. Setting the way back machine you'd remember Russia and Obama had a bit discussion on that subject years ago, with Russia being upset that the US developed missile interception technology in violation of agreements with the USSR. The big argument here being that the USSR doesn't exist anymore. The US has also set up bases in allied nations like Poland so not only do we have missile interception over the continental US, but also from various places around the world both protecting them and us, not to mention what we've got on boats and subs that are mobile, and of course anything we put into space that we might not be talking about. The bottom line is that Russia was demanding the US share this technology and Obama being smart for once apparently said 'no' and that is part of what iced relations with Russia. The missile interception base in Poland was a big deal during the invasion of Georgia and one of the reasons Russia cut the fuel pipeline to the EU was trying to pressure Poland to stop hosting it so it could more effectively threaten the EU since it was feeling penned in. A lot of people here and there have been pointing out that Russia threatened Poland directly during that fiasco and now it's retaken control of The Black Sea which has caused Poland to go on alert and start making more military preparations than it has for a long time. I don't remember all of the names and if Phalanx is one of the systems they were concerned about or not, but probably. Basically the current situation is probably in response to the fact that despite fears of US citizens the US is no longer really vulnerable to the threat of MAD for the moment, even Russia is unlikely to be able to saturate the current post-cold war anti-missile defenses, the old arguments about the impossibility of shooting down ICBMs, especially those following an orbital arc along with decoys, doesn't apply when you consider how good the US has become with it's automation, computers, guidance systems, etc... to which the rest of the world is light years behind even given the missile guidance stuff China stole during the Clinton administration. The US is also infamous for understating it's capabilities, most wars involve the world calling BS on what the US claims to be capable of, only to find out that we can do far more than that. One reason the USSR collapsed was that the people were giving up almost everything to be the best, during Desert Storm what was current soviet technology want up against what was then current US technology and it wasn't even close, it was a proxy war of sorts given what they gave Saddam at the time, and Russia was really convinced Saddam was going to overpower the US and it's allies and it was shattering when it didn't happen. It wasn't the exclusive cause, but it did contribute.
See, as I point out right now if the US say decided it wanted to force China to follow international IP or Patent laws and actually decided we were going to use everything we have, it wouldn't be anything like our moral wars in the US. We could easily prevent China, even if it brought Russia in as an ally, from getting any kind of nukes or WMD to their targets. The threat of WMDs is still terrifying but in reality despite the costs of potentially missing they represent a minimal threat at the moment against the US. Once we have them pinned all we need to do is start bombing the crap out of our enemies, decimating civilian populations left and right, the idea being not to conquer and rule these areas in a real war, or even break the culture, but simply to do so much damage that they comply to our demands, one way of doing that is to scare the people so much due to the fatalities that they turn on their own governments to force them to surrender. Especially in a nation like China that uses the threat of force to keep it's people in line it's a big deal if all those poor Chinese become more afraid of American bombs and missiles than the guns and tanks of the Chinese military which would itself be getting pounded. Such a *hypothetical* attack would of course also involve using Drones on a large scale, the only thing holding them back is American morality (and we lead in that tech so far), if we say start dropping fuel air bombs, daisy cutters, and all kinds of other cool toys we usually don't employ for moral reasons, we could do this without really even giving our target anyone to shoot back against. It would be brutal and
one sided.
Talking about "killer robots" makes it sound dramatic, but it seems like an offhanded way to try and regulate US military power at a time when there are a lot of people increasingly moving in on the US sphere of influence. Basically Russia and China in particular would love to see us give a lot of this up since they aren't making as much progress in catching us or developing counter measures as they would like to. What's more understand the US is also heavily outnumbered, should those kinds of nations ever develop their own interception and robotic technology and force things back to conventional warfare for all intents and purposes they could handle the US and it's allies relatively easily. Our technology is our power, not the size of our military, and of course once a serious war starts it's a bit too late to then re-build the stuff you need, especially if you lost your edge, your not going to regain it all that quickly.
Speaking for myself I'm not as paranoid about autonomous technology as many people are, including true AI, and face it as part of a country that has seriously downsized it's military substantially because of our potential technological power I'm not big on limiting what we can do with technology. The way I see it is this, if your scared of the weapons that are out there, that's a good excuse to not want to go to war and see that stuff deployed. As soon as we give up our tech edge, for moral reasons or otherwise, we're pretty much ceding global control to more populous nations and those who still maintain an industrial power base as the US moved more to a skills, technology, and trade based power base where we produce little but create a lot (so to speak) which is why I have such a massive bug up my butt about countries like China that violate and knock off patents, copyrights, and IPs.
War is profitable, and so tools of war will never be banned. The only way to stop imperialism, is to stand in open revolt against capitalism. Destroying the socio-political machine that exists only to make money, is the only way to have peace.
This will never happen though, so buck up, and take that imperialism up your arse.
Also, before anyone considers reporting me, I'm not trolling, just stating an opinion, and you can msg me if you want to debate what I've said, don't muddy this thread with awful internet arguments.
This will never happen though, so buck up, and take that imperialism up your arse.
Also, before anyone considers reporting me, I'm not trolling, just stating an opinion, and you can msg me if you want to debate what I've said, don't muddy this thread with awful internet arguments.
Well, not exactly. The UN was intended to be a global peacekeeping force of sorts and to take action against nations that were turning into a threat and/or were involved in serious humanitarian violations. The plan being that if a nation really stepped out of line the entire UN would act. In reality the only nation that really took the UN that seriously was the USA which wound up providing most of the materials and manpower along with a few key allies. Everyone else in the UN largely used it as an excuse to not have to get involved in doing anything. The UN sort of ceased to have any purpose when the very nations it was supposed to be regulating like China and Russia were not only invited to be members but given seats on the security council, which pretty much means that you can give up any chance of it being a humanitarian organization or even protecting trade. All the UN really does is provide a channel for dialogue nowadays, ultimately being both toothless and pointless. As a general rule the UN will talk a good game, but when it actually comes to doing anything, not so much.008Zulu said:
The UN was sort of designed not so much to ban war, but to engage in war, and act as a sort of global punk hammer against developing nations that were trying to grab power and technology without the cultural development to be productive members of the world community. The closest it ever really comes to doing it's job is to try and put sanctions on nations instead of intervening, and as we've seen with nations like Iran and North Korea, all the sanctions in the world don't actually prevent them from building their militaries and developing things like nuclear technology.
That's my perspective at any rate.
That said, we will see a law that bans war after the next big war assuming the people who win it know what they are doing. Simply put warfare, paranoia, and conflict will continue as long as the world remains divided. When we literally have one world government and culture, the "New World Order" so many people are afraid of, it won't end all conflict, but it will end war as we know it. By definition as long as you have separate, entirely differeant nations and cultures allowed to operate autonomously and compete for resources all that is going to change is who is doing what to whom, and who the biggest kid on the block at the moment happens to be. Ideally the UN if it had worked would have pretty much served to promote progressive western civilization to the world and create global standards, allowing for separate nations to exist, but everyone following largely the same policies. At the end of the day though every nation in the UN wound up putting it's own agenda first, except maybe the US and occasionally the UK, and as a result nobody wanted to do anything, ever, since it would involve spending money and sending their people off to war for a global purpose that doesn't provide any direct benefit. That meant the UN didn't act, and of course now with the nations that must represent the kinds of groups the UN was intended to act against being parts of the UN and thus able to hold it's action in check indefinatly, it might as well not even exist.
A good example of what I think of the UN would for example be how they decided to create a "Women's Rights Ambassador" in the form of Emma Watson. All Emma did in her speech was pretty much criticize the most progressive first world countries where it was safe to do so for not going far enough. She pointedly ignored things on an international level where the condition of women is wretched across like 90% of the globe. For example China and India each account for roughly 1/3rd of the human race and both despite their pretensions actually have incredibly sexist societies where it is also going to be dangerous to try and reform things, this is to say nothing of Africa, The Middle East, etc. This pretty much summarizes the UN in a nutshell, it makes a show out of doing something, but then proceeds to entirely ignore where it needs to be done. I was actually kind of shocked to read the reports of China's rep praising Emma Watson for her speech and talking about all the good she was going to be doing, when technically if she was to ever do the job she was theoretically given she'd be leading the UN against China. In making that statement it made it entirely clear that not even the UN takes itself seriously. As a result every time I hear about excesses, like the things going on in India and The Middle East where we get some horror story at least once a month, the first thing I wonder is where the hell Emma Watson is, the supposed UN "Ambassador" on the subject is probably off on a modeling shoot somewhere, only broaching the subject of women's rights from the safety of the first world where she's rich, successful, and most importantly representing a fairly popular position in an already reformed society while under the protection of that society. That right there is the UN, if it was doing it's job whomever was supposed to be in charge of this issue would have access to international resources and be leading global coalitions against nations and cultures known for the worst excesses, even if it comes to warfare on a large scale, but the UN won't do that.
The lead-in into this article is an utter fail already.David Rodgers said:
Anything that does not start with "Military Drones" crosses "death sentance without trial" and ends with "NO!" is a atrocity against humanity and civilzation in general.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Drones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NRJoCNHIs
"drones made us fear the blue sky"
It has staved off World War 3 for about 70 years. It's done a much better job than its predecessor the League of Nations which was supposed to hinder WWII, but could only stave it off for less than 30 year. Stopping every war from occurring is naive idealism. Holding off and mitigating the big wars is the best we can hope for, and it's worked at that.008Zulu said:
Um... Is that supposed to be a point against my comment? 51 million people dying in wars across 70 years, and 51 million people dying in war across 6 years. So... Since World War 2 deaths from war have decreased by a factor of about 10? So there's been no world war 3, and the UN is doing pretty good?albino boo said:
Edit: Actually it's even better than I thought, because the world population has also tripled since then.
I... don't know? I never claimed the UN was perfect, I don't even know if it's actually the reason war and conflict have been decreasing since World War 2, all I was saying is that I disagree with your original comment:008Zulu said:
Its worked out extremely well so far. (Though again, it's very possible these amazing results aren't because of the UN.)008Zulu said:
