> Acts like firebombing of Tokyo or bombing of Dresden or atomic bombing don't happen now
We still raze cities and drop incendiaries. America hasn’t gone to war with a near-peer nonnuclear power like Japan since WWII. To the extent we were faced with the prospect in the Cold War, both we and the Soviets were committed to MAD, i.e. using nukes. (Do you think unilateral disarmament in the Cold War would have lead to peace?)
There has been no militarily useful technology that was voluntarily abandoned. Just constrained. You can’t constrain a technology you don’t bother understanding.
> during the firebombing of Tokyo the US murdered 100,000 civilians
Are you arguing there was a war in which firebombing would have been useful but someone decided it was too mean?
Since WWII we invented better high explosives and stand-off precision weapons. If there were a strategic case for firebombing in a future war, have no delusions: it will happen. (Last year, incendiary weapons were used in “ in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Ukraine, and Syria” [1].)
What? Who argued war hasn’t changed with technology?
> civilians weren't murdered on the same scale
War wasn’t conducted on the same scale.
> why you are conflating the use of certain types of weapons and willingly allowing enormous collateral damage
I’m not. Nobody in this thread is. The point is the weapons are still stockpiled and used. We have never agreed to ban a useful military technology. Just contained or surpassed it.
AI will be used by militaries as long as it’s useful, even if it causes collateral damage. We will obviously try to reduce collateral damage. But in part because that makes the weapon more useful.
I know what you mean, but I don't have an answer myself.
Really the collateral damage in Ukraine is still ongoing, not in Tokyo for quite some time.
So it's tragically possible that Ukraine could end up worse than Tokyo by the time hostilities finally cease.
Maybe with Tokyo a closer equivalent might be if Ukraine attacked Moscow using a comparable approach, with a degree of disregard for collateral damage figured in. Although Russian strategy already seems to target any part of Kiev that can be hit, civilian or not.
Plus no two things like this are really on the same scale and it's never a direct comparison, but there's some common undercurrent that is either predatory or vengeful which sometimes can grow until it can't get much worse.
So what about prehistoric tribes, even pre-humans, who surely had occasionally completely massacred victim tribes from time to time, not much differently than pack animals have always been known to do.
Total extermination like that could be rapidly completed with no weapons of mass destruction or even gunpowder.
Isn't there some possibility that this tendency has been retained evolutionarily or culturally to some extent today, even though most people would say that's just the opposite of "humanity".
Passed down in an unbroken chain in some way?
Disclaimer: when I was a teenager I worked one summer with a German machinist who had survived the bombing of Dresden. Ironically the project we were on was components for the the most advanced projectile of its caliber, yet to come. Both of us would have liked to build something else, but most opportunities across-the-board affecting all ages had already evaporated due to inflation of the 1970's, and the runaway years hadn't even gotten there yet.
See the big picture at the top? Clearly it's some kind of mall damaged by senseless and cruel Russian strike that cannot have any other purpose but to terrorize population of Kharkiv into submission.
The place should look familiar, only now you can see destroyed MLRS vehicle (there were two, but the second one got evaporated: https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/3150)
>Isn't there some possibility that this tendency has been retained evolutionarily or culturally to some extent today
Sure, but there is an opposite tendency too and it's not going anywhere barring catastrophic changes like famine due to global warming.
One thing that changed is that everything is instantly reported through numerous channels, and globally: traditional broadcast media as well as independent reporters using Internet channels.
We still raze cities and drop incendiaries. America hasn’t gone to war with a near-peer nonnuclear power like Japan since WWII. To the extent we were faced with the prospect in the Cold War, both we and the Soviets were committed to MAD, i.e. using nukes. (Do you think unilateral disarmament in the Cold War would have lead to peace?)
There has been no militarily useful technology that was voluntarily abandoned. Just constrained. You can’t constrain a technology you don’t bother understanding.