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by nonrandomstring 1520 days ago
The obvious quote apropos here is Max Frisch "Technology is a way of organising the world so that we don't have to experience it.", which I probably cite a bit too often. But I'll offer a quote from Digital Vegan which I think is not out of place here, and I hope conveys a deeper message;

"" An immanent problem with enabling technologies, is that they enable all connected parties and carry their values. Stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back at you. When picking up a technological tool you had better know what it is for. What is connected to the other side of it? And you should do so with the intent of mastering it, and using it kindly. As Andre Loesekrug-Pietri, a founder of European JEDI ('The European DARPA') project put it, unless the people of Liberal democracies take control of technology "other people or other political systems will impose their values on us". ""

The rationale for remote weapons is risk reduction. Despite the apparent diffusion of responsibility and decoupling of action and consequences, the operator remains connected to the target. Blurry pixels turning red on a screen are still lives being extinguished. Unless you have a generally low IQ and very poor emotional intelligence that fact is still inescapably bound to your actions and will haunt you as if you had seen the whites of their eyes and body parts. Indeed the trauma may be worse, because you now have to fill in the gaps with your imagination, somewhere between dispassionate official EKIA reports and gruesome media accounts. You'll never know, and so you'll never get closure. Each technological action has an equal and opposite reaction.