When Muddlehead, the ship's computer, bombards a Dathynan castle, David Falkayn protests against any harm to non-combatants. Muddlehead replies:
"'In conformity with your general directive, I am taking the precaution of demolishing installations whose radio resonances suggest that they are heavy guns and missile racks.'" (p. 240)
I need hardly point out the current relevance of this passage. We are not on an extra-solar planet but we are on Earth where we have issues about non-combatants, guns and missiles. Muddlehead, consciousness-level, is able to understand and apply directives and to discuss their application. The computer is not programmed with Asimov's Three Laws which, in any case, refer specifically to human beings, not to any other kind of intelligent beings.
Falkayn tells Thea Beldaniel that the Shenna have planned to wage war and have now experienced it but will not be exterminated but will be de-technologized and reduced to desert herders if they continue to resist. Lessons are learned the hard way.
27 comments:
The general rule is that noncombatants may not be -targeted- (that is, deliberately killed as an objective) but that if they get in the way in an attack on a target of military significance... well, too bad, so sad, c'est la guerre.
Eg., in the month before D-Day in 1944, we switched a lot of bombers to attacking the French railway network so the Germans couldn't use it to shift their reserves around.
It was a quite successful operation; the Germans had to use road transport, and they were short of both motor transport and fuel. Plus our fighter-bombers had a fine old time shooting up their convoys.
We also killed 30,000 French civilians in the process -- about 1,000 a day. De Gaulle didn't complain -- and he wasn't shy about objecting to anything we did. It was necessary, and if civilians were in the way when the B-25 came calling... too bad.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, but I would put some stress on how Muddlehead strove to destroy only those parts of the Dathynan castle that his analysis indicated were used for military purposes and hence were legitimate targets.
Muddlehead was vastly better than Putin, who does deliberately and maliciously attack wholly civilian targets in the Ukraine war.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Women and children in tents in "safe areas" in Gaza?
Paul.
Paul: there are no 'safe areas' during intensive combat in a populated zone.
If there's a sniper on top of an apartment building, you fire tank rounds into the first story until it all falls down.
If there's a bunker under a school, you drop a dibbler bomb and it all blows up.
If arms production is decentralized throughout a residential area, you firebomb it -- as we did in Tokyo in May of 1945.
100,000 Japanese, overwhelmingly civilians, died in a single night.
Rivers of boiling melted human fat ran in the gutters -- that's literally true, by the way. That's more people than died in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Conventional bombing is just more labor-intensive.
As I mentioned, our attacks on the French railways killed 1,000 civilians a day for a month before D-Day... and we didn't stop after D-Day. Women and children included.
In fact, we killed -at least- 200,000 French civilians in the process of driving the Germans out.
And lots of Belgians and Dutch, too.
We weren't targeting them, they just got in the way. C'est la guerre.
There's a -reason- war is not generally thought of as a Good Thing in itself. It's just preferrable to the alternatives sometimes.
Kaor, Paul!
Please, pay attention to what Stirling wrote above! It is impossible in wars to always avoid killing civilians. All that any reasonably decent military can do is try to minimize harm to non-combatants. And, whether you like it not Israel's IDF is reasonably decent military, not scum like the Hamas terrorists.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not just dislike it. I disagree with that statement about the IDF.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And you are wrong.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You are.
Paul.
(I hope you know that I do not like to conduct disagreements on this basis!)
Kaor, Paul!
Apologies, I get frustrated with people who can't or won't see what is so obvious to me.
Ad astra! Seam
Sean,
But we all see different things as obvious and we all get frustrated. I hope that, out of the present conflicts, something better will be built.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I am skeptical, humans will keep right on bollixing things up.
Ad astra! Sean
But we must keep trying to improve things and not by top-down bureaucracy.
Kaor, Paul!
Perfection is impossible. Reasonably tolerable is the most we can hope for.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Perfection is impossible" is a self-limitation. We must aspire as high as we can. I argue that advanced tech controlled by and in the interests of the whole of society can transform natural and social environments and make a qualitatively different starting point for future generations.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, it is realism. While I agree about making use of advances in technology in beneficial ways, we should also have no illusions about human beings.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But it is not an illusion to see that our "nature" is to change our environment cooperatively with hands and brains and to change ourselves in the process so I cannot see that there is anything innately unchangeable in us.
Back to an earlier point: of course weapons are made for wars, not the other way round, but we can imagine and work towards a culture in which wars have become as unthinkable as vendettas are now so that every new administration does not inherit stockpiles of bullets. All that production can go into something life-enhancing. "It's easy if you try."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It is also part of our nature as imperfect humans to be cooperatively aggressive, competitive, and warlike. And that is why I disbelieve in the plausibility of your second paragraph.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we can eliminate all the causes of conflict. People who are living peaceful and satisfying lives do not suddenly attack each other for no reason. That does not happen.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, because no one can eliminate the ultimate cause of conflicts, the internal flaws all mankind has. Chapter 6 of GENESIS gives us Anderson's speculations about a society, Tahalla, reminding me of late Heian Japan, which seems to meet all that you dream of, peaceful, prosperous, happy. But we see Arkezhan, for no obvious reason, taking a dislike to Wei, chief of Clan Belov. Arkezhan's goadings and intrigues so enraged Mikal, Wei's son, that after his father committed suicide, he planned an attack on Arkezhan and his clan.
The internal propensities and flaws that makes all humans imperfect, Fallen, are not going to be removed merely by peace and wealth. In fact, I strongly sheer boredom lay behind Arkezhan's malicious behavior, spiteful intrigues was something exciting to do after luxury, arts, culture, sports palled. Plainly, Anderson disagreed with people who think as you do.
Your hopes are dangerously unrealistic.
Ad astra! Sean
Drat, I meant to say "...I strongly suspect sheer boredom lay behind Arkezhan's..."
Sean
Sean,
My views are not dangerously unrealistic. Every time I summarize how I believe human beings evolved from their animal ancestors, I show that I do not agree that we have "Fallen."
People act violently in some circumstances and non-violently in other circumstances. They do not act violently in all circumstances. We can change the circumstances.
"...merely by peace and wealth..." You have a low opinion of peace and wealth! Peace, wealth, knowledge, understanding, individual and social maturity, better social organisation, qualitatively new levels of AI tech... None of that will have a beneficial effect on human life and consciousness?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
You can deny mankind is Fallen, but you cannot convincingly deny all human beings are innately imperfect. Not when I know such imperfections exist in me and all other humans I have seen. Merely changing the "circumstances" will not remove those imperfections.
Exactly, I do not believe mere peace and wealth and all the other things you listed (but "social maturity," whatever that is, I consider impossible) will remove the innate flaws and propensities which makes humans what we see them to be in the real world.
Human beings can only be managed, not made perfect in this life. I believe Anderson's views, as expressed in different ways in GENESIS, far more realistic than your hopes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do deny that all human beings are innately imperfect.
Merely changing circumstances will not eliminate imperfections in individuals who have grown up in the world as it is now but it will create a completely different basis for the upbringing and early lives of members of future generations. Nothing and no being exists in isolation. Big enough changes in some parts of a system affect every part.
Whatever "social maturity" is! I think that many current knee jerk reactions demonstrate a collective immaturity here and now.
Human beings can manage themselves collectively and work towards perfection instead of denying its possibility. Anderson showed people merely passing the time with elaborate games and rituals. People are capable of finding meaningful activities that engage all of their attention. Education and training can be focused on helping each individual to learn what is meaningful for them.
Paul.
By now, when either of us makes a point, he ought to be able to anticipate the counterpoint. We have been around this so many times before. I expect to be reminded that everyone cannot be a philosopher, artist etc. We do not have to be. When freed from drudgery and helped to do what they most want to do, some people will find a lot of fulfilment in physical sports. But they will be helped to improve - even perfect - their football skills as opposed to just kicking a ball around a field as an occasional leisure activity between periods of enforced drudgery.
But I think that future societies will reach a higher intellectual and cultural level than you might think. I read that, during the revolutionary period in Russia, large open air mass meetings listened to talks on Greek tragedy because many people wanted to learn about the culture from which they had been excluded.
Look up. Do not hold humanity back.
Kaor, Paul!
No, I believe your unrealistic and dangerously Utopian views are far more likely to hold back mankind than conservative skepticism. Because I believe people who think as you do may be tempted, from frustration at how humans refuse to conform to their dreams, to try ruthlessly forcing square pegs into round holes. That can and will lead only to tyranny.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I feel that you try to pre-empt the outcome of a disagreement by the way you present it. Thus, my views are described as "unrealistic and dangerously Utopian" almost as if this were an undisputable fact. It is not. What is unrealistic in present conditions can be realistic in very different conditions. You do not appreciate the significance of changing conditions. I read that explorers in South America found a baby left behind by a tribe that had fled into the jungle. The baby was adopted and brought up in France where she became a practising Catholic, a University graduate and an anthropologist. All that potential was present in that baby but would not have been realised if she had stayed in the jungle. Think of the untapped potential of the whole human race. Everyone is capable of more than the present economic system requires of them because the system is focused only on competitive accumulation of profit, not on the development of the fullest human potential. Economic competition has produced the means for us to go beyond it.
Paul.
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