[darkpuma]

You've avoided my question, probably because you know I'm right. The line between 'car' and 'gun' is fuzzy when you consider a car that's specifically been designed to carry guns.

A military with guns but no transportation is like a clock with an escapement but no gears. Gears are used by lots of things, not just clocks, and clocks need an escapement, but without gears that clock doesn't function. The gears don't define the clock in quite the same way as an escapement, but they're nevertheless necessary.

My point here is that making cars for the military but refusing to make guns for them is quite silly. If you really want to opt-out of the military industrial complex, you'll need to make more sacrifices.

[memory_grep]

It was a bad question, but I'll answer it now for you to clear up your confusion. A Humvee is neither a car nor a gun. Not sure why you think it must be one of those things. It's a Humvee. There are all kinds of consistent policies a person could have for ethical work: refusing to manufacture weapons, refusing to manufacture anything designed primarily for war, etc. I don't see any contradiction or inconsistencies there. If you were trying to point one out, maybe try again.

[darkpuma]

Ah I see, you're pedantry to avoid the meat of the discussion.

"Car" in this case is shorthand for

> "generally useful tool that can be used in the commission of violence (eg. cars)"

A humvee is just that. However it's also specifically designed to be one component of various weapon systems; e.g. humvees with TOW anti-tank guided missiles mounted on top. When configured in that way, a humvee is no less a weapon than a tank. So a humvee is also "a gun" (shorthand for "something that kills".) That's not hypothetical either, such humvees were used in the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein.

So let me reiterate. Just about anything the military uses is used to facilitate killing in one way or the other. The degree to which any particular widget contributes to the lethality of the military is a smooth gradient. This was my point with the humvee, it exists somewhere in the middle. Since we're dealing with a gradient, where you decide to draw your line in the sand arbitrary.

[memory_grep]

Nearly everything is "arbitrary" in the sense that you are using it. Wherever a machine learning classifier draws the line between categories is going to be arbitrary, but that doesn't mean it's not useful. Having some policy for ethical behavior is better than nothing.