DentArthurDent wrote:
Fine have no morals go ahead use your skills to create weapons that do nothing more than, maim and kill, destroy peoples lives, rip families apart and destroy nature. Live your life in a bubble and convince yourself that all you are doing is basic engineering no different from Ford.
Again with the morals... Weapons don't cause wars, and it's simplistic and naive to say that they do. Look at Africa, they manage to kill millions of each other just fine mostly using farming implements, with the occasional Soviet firearm thrown in for good measure. You'd blame the guy who sold them the machetes? When you design a product, you can factor for many things, but the end user isn't always one of them. Car manufacturers have their products misused by drunks and criminals, arms design is the same. You'd hope your weapons would be used by righteous armies fighting just wars, but that doesn't always happen. You live with it.
DentArthurDent wrote:
Of course I have issues with people profiteering from war IMO this is one of the most vile and despicable of human behaviours, and you are choosing to have a part in it. You claim that you would be foolish not to have a part in it, you claim to have a gift, many people have gifts its how they choose to use them that is important, you could maybe use your skills to manufacture parts for Ford instead of pretending that what you do is no different.
First, the loaded word "profiteering", generally refers to making excessive profits due to the demands of a wartime economy, not what I'm about. I would like to see some of my designs accepted for military contract, but not at any sort of exploitative payment. If anything, I would like to serve my country by attempting to improve it's armament, since I'm disqualified from military service due to my AS. I alluded to this on another thread, I had wanted to join the service for some time in my younger days, but my mental health disqualifies me from active duties. Since it's where my talents and interests lay, if I can't fight for my country myself, I can at least do it by proxy.
DentArthurDent wrote:
If you really think what you do is so ok go and visit a war zone and talk, not to the idiotic combatants, but to the human beings caught up in the madness.Get a real perspective on what weapons really do, as opposed to mechanical specifications.
I've studied terminal ballistics, I know exactly what weapons do to people. I've also had a lot of friends who've served in places like the Balkans and the Middle East, I've heard the horror stories. You choose to blame the weapons, I blame the people wielding them.
DentArthurDent wrote:
This is the last I am going to speak on this subject. I think I have made my views very clear. Just realise that more than your interest in weaponry, it is your attitude that a weapons race is a good thing that I despise, wars if they have to happen (something of which I am not convinced) should be greeted with great sadness not the rubbing of hands in glee because of the money to be made.
Just to come back to what started all of this, I merely pointed out to someone who said that an arms race was bad that it depended on your perspective. No one said anything about
using the arms, the whole cold war was pretty much a big stick shaking contest, to give but one example. I don't personally take this position, but one could even argue that making ever more fearsome weaponry might even dissuade some people from making war for fear of the consequences, peace through superior firepower. Even if we somehow "solve" strife on earth, weapons will still be around as a contingency plan, it would really suck if ET showed up with darker plans than phoning home, and all we had where some sticks and rocks. Anyway, I have no ethical problem with my field, so I guess that's all that really matters.
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Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
26 Aug 2008, 1:21 pm
