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by DagAgren 2311 days ago
What a cute story about writing software to kill people by shredding them with shrapnel.
3 comments

There's a difference between delighting in war vs. accepting it as sometimes the lesser of two evils. I'm okay with discussing the software-engineering considerations needed to support the latter.
Missiles are also used for defense to intercept threats.
Those threats are sometimes an attempt at retaliation by whoever was attacked earlier by those now defending against the counter-attack, who are now free to attack without fear of the consequences thanks to the missile defense system.
Thank you. I hadn't thought of that possibility. Now I can join the others in discussing the optimal memory management strategy for missile controllers.
What if the bomb is landing on someone who intends to kill you?
Have you watched Minority Report? What could go wrong with preemptively punishing crimes!
This is a strawman. Nobody uses missiles for law enforcement, the very idea is ridiculous. Presumably the

> person who intends to kill you

in this context is a terrorist hiding a cave somewhere, or a certain Iranian general. Now, it's definitely debatable if those striking those targets is morally correct (and I usually don't believe that it is), but it's silly to equate a military strike with the type of law enforcement seen in Minority Report.

A "terrorist hiding in a cave" is the actual strawman here.
Uhh who do you think missiles are usually launched at?
People going about their lives just like you and me, surrounded by other people, mostly.

They may be terrorists, but that does not make their daily lives much different to ours.