Comparing a run-of-the-mill defense contractor to a serial rapist and murderer is certainly up there in the most unhinged justifications that I've seen on HN.
Comparing a run-of-the-mill defense contractor to a serial rapist and murderer is certainly up there in the most unhinged justifications that I've seen on HN.
I don’t think the parent comment was trying to equate the two, but rather pushing the argument to its logical extreme to test show that the reasoning doesn’t hold consistently across cases. Whether they made a convincing argument is separate.
I literally was trying to equate the two.
Taking it to a logical extreme is good practice for thinking from first principles, but always pair it up with going to the logical extreme in the other direction. That might look something like: "would you really eat at a restaurant owned by a habitual jaywalker?".
Except pushing it to the logical extreme is what makes it wrong.
Nevermind that he literally was equating the two and explicitly says so.
Wait, Ted Bundy was a defense contractor? I didn't know that.
He meant Anduril as the defense contractor.
Yeah, one of them kills school kids for money. The other does it for the love of the game.
Run-of-the-mill. Ya know, a normal perpetuator of war profiteering. I mean he's your standard enabler of civilian bombing. Simply an average propagandist. Just a regular guy!
I'm getting very tired of the redditification of HN. This place used to not be like this.
There is explicitly a rule against complaining about the redditification of HN.
It's funny how retail versus wholesale death is seen so differently.
Kill a few dozen people with your own hands and people are (rightfully) horrified.
Run a business that enables the killing of orders of magnitude more people, and you can be a respected pillar of society.
Killing instantly becomes respectable if it's done legally and for profit.
I suggest you look into the perception of self defense. Saving yourself and others via killing compared to killing to commit a crime are perceived very differently.
That’s not it. There are plenty of industrialists who have killed far more than any serial killer just for profit and they don’t get anything like the opprobrium given to serial killers.
Do not assume Hacker News is safe from foreign influence campaigns.
Sadly, this is just an average online take.
Are domestic influence campaigns fair game?
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> So you know, either go all in and live like you mean it or stop pointing fingers at only very select individuals.
Careful. You're one step away from playing out the "Yet you participate in society. Curious!" meme. Besides, many people who are not in the Anduril fan club already boycott Microsoft for their ethical transgressions.
You can't use that meme argument at the beginning and mention that it is perfectly possible to boycott the other company at the end. The whole point of the meme is that participating in society is unavoidable, right?
And I don't think you can use "one step away from" a meme arguments at all. Pattern matching to a cartoon is not a great tool for this in the first place, and once you've acknowledged that the pattern doesn't even match, what's the point?
> If we’re gonna go for a witch hunt then we better hack off Microsoft’s head as well, for instance, since even their Xbox controllers are used in military subs.
Sounds like a great idea! I'm all for it
exactly. who in their right mind would ever hate Microsoft?
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Countries have militaries.
As well as military industrial complexes!