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by srj 2 days ago
The bombing of the school was horrible, but it was a mistake. I could see essentially the opposite argument: Anthropic should be more involved as to prevent mistakes in the future with better technology. Imagine Claude asking the decision makers at CENTCOM "this looks like a school, are you sure you want this added as a target?"
4 comments

You’re absolutely right to push back. It was indeed a school. I’ll save <schoo_name> in my memory for the future.
> The bombing of the school was horrible, but it was a mistake

Please don't say this. It wasn't a mistake.

The very FIRST strike packages of the war are very clearly vetted. If you are involved in military planning, you know this.

They doubled tapped it after seeing people flee inside the save the children.

The goal here was to teach IRGC a lesson and demoralize Iranians, which clearly backfired.

Furthermore, US has been contentiously bombing civilian buildings, bridges, hospitals throughout the war. They have also bombed water desalination plants and other key infrastructure.

You have the US president threatening to use nuclear weapons and end the Persian civilization.

Let's not pretend.

> The goal here was to teach IRGC a lesson and demoralize Iranians, which clearly backfired.

I'm not so sure. A school in the US being bombed would hardly be expected to demoralize us. Quite the opposite.

What if the goal was to goad them into taking action that could justify boots on the ground? But they didn't fall for it and here we are.

Ignoring the obvious joke about "random incidents" in schools regularly in America, is it not the case that the country with the most capacity to retaliate anywhere in the world would not be "demoralized"? I see the possibility that the effect of such terrorism might be different from place to place.
I find it totally implausible that the president or any subordinates intentionally targeted a school. As I recall it was located next to a military base. A mistake seems more likely.
If these last few years have taught us anything is that what was once considered "implausible" has certainly changed. I'll leave it at that.
You don't get to start a completely unprovoked and illegal war of aggression, bomb tons of targets with little care, kill 100 schoolchildren, and then say, "But it was a mistake."
However terrible it is, it is still a mistake unless you're accusing them of doing it deliberately.

And however much you can say about the current US Administration, I don't think they're prioritizing bombing civilians over military targets.

The DoW head sees half of his own country’s population as enemies, Islam as an evil religion of hate, and the work he does as striking down the enemies of God. I heavily doubt that this man gives a single thought to children of muslims.
This is what I voted for.
It's a mistake in the sense that if you go and rob a bank while shooting wildly, you only hit the customers "by mistake." That's not an excuse.

The US is bombing both military and civilian targets, by the way. Trump has been very open about this with his talk about "power-plant day." He considers attacking civilian targets to be a legitimate way of pressuring Iran to surrender.

Hegseth deliberately closed the unit that used to ensure it wont happen. The efforts to avoid civilian causaulities were deemed woke, weak and literally unmanly.

And administration repeatedly threatened to destroy civilian targets.

a mistake that might be caused by the fact no one cares. an avoidable mistake.