<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>t-3</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt;&amp;gt; For that first part, though, what does that even mean? The military isn&amp;#x27;t gamifying things and giving folks freaking XBox achievements for racking up killstreaks or anything. It&amp;#x27;s just the same game people have been playing since putting an atlatl on a spear, a scope on a rifle, or a black powder cannon on a battlefield. How to attack the enemy without being at risk. Is it unethical for a general officer to be sitting in an operations center directing the fight by looking at real-time displays? Is that a &amp;quot;video game?&amp;quot;

  &amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s not the same thing. Not even close. Killing people is horrible enough. Sitting in a trailer, clicking a button and killing someone from behind a screen without any of the risk involved is cowardly and shitty. There is no justification you can provide that will change my mind. Before you disregard my ability to understand the situation, I say this as a combat veteran.
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Respectfully, whether or not an action is cowardly is not a factor that should ever be considered when making military decisions (or any other serious decision). With that being said, my uncle was a military drone pilot in the 80s-90s and he said it&amp;#x27;s pretty much exactly like a video game, and doing well does give achievements in the form of commendations and promotions.</text><parent_chain><item><author>batch12</author><text>&amp;gt;For that first part, though, what does that even mean? The military isn&amp;#x27;t gamifying things and giving folks freaking XBox achievements for racking up killstreaks or anything. It&amp;#x27;s just the same game people have been playing since putting an atlatl on a spear, a scope on a rifle, or a black powder cannon on a battlefield. How to attack the enemy without being at risk. Is it unethical for a general officer to be sitting in an operations center directing the fight by looking at real-time displays? Is that a &amp;quot;video game?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not the same thing. Not even close. Killing people is horrible enough.  Sitting in a trailer, clicking a button and killing someone from behind a screen without any of the risk involved is cowardly and shitty. There is no justification you can provide that will change my mind. Before you disregard my ability to understand the situation, I say this as a combat veteran.</text></item><item><author>psunavy03</author><text>&amp;gt; Granted, the idea of someone playing video games to kill real people makes me angry and decision making around drone strikes is already questionable.&lt;p&gt;For that first part, though, what does that even mean?  The military isn&amp;#x27;t gamifying things and giving folks freaking XBox achievements for racking up killstreaks or anything.  It&amp;#x27;s just the same game people have been playing since putting an atlatl on a spear, a scope on a rifle, or a black powder cannon on a battlefield.  How to attack the enemy without being at risk.  Is it unethical for a general officer to be sitting in an operations center directing the fight by looking at real-time displays?  Is that a &amp;quot;video game?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The drone strikes in the Global War on Terror were a direct product of political pressure to &amp;quot;do something, anything&amp;quot; to stop another September 11th attack while simultaneously freaking out about a so-called &amp;quot;quagmire&amp;quot; any time someone mentioned &amp;quot;boots on ground.&amp;quot;  Well, guess what?  If you don&amp;#x27;t want SOF assaulters doing raids to capture people, if you don&amp;#x27;t want traditional military formations holding ground, and you don&amp;#x27;t want people trying to collect intelligence by actually going to these places, about the only option you have left is to fly a drone around and try to identify the terrorist and then go whack him when he goes out to take a leak.  Or do nothing and hope you don&amp;#x27;t get hit again.</text></item><item><author>batch12</author><text>So the study[0] involved people making simulated drone strike decisions. These people were not qualified to make these decisions for real and also knew the associated outcomes were also not real. This sounds like a flawed study to me.&lt;p&gt;Granted, the idea of someone playing video games to kill real people makes me angry and decision making around drone strikes is already questionable.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Our pre-registered target sample size was 100 undergraduates recruited in exchange for course credit. However, due to software development delays in preparation for a separate study, we had the opportunity to collect a raw sample of 145 participants. Data were prescreened for technical problems occurring in ten of the study sessions (e.g., the robot or video projection failing), yielding a final sample of 135 participants (78.5% female, Mage = 21.33 years, SD = 4.08).&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41598-024-69771-z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41598-024-69771-z&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Study shows &apos;alarming&apos; level of trust in AI for life and death decisions</title><url>https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/study-shows-alarming-level-of-trust-in-ai-for-life-and-death-decisions/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jdietrich</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure how this is different to conventional air support or artillery in an asymmetric conflict. A-10 and F-16 pilots weren&amp;#x27;t seriously worried about being shot down in Afghanistan, but I know plenty of infantrymen who have nothing but gratitude for the pilot who got them out of a tight spot. Do those pilots become more moral if your enemy has decent anti-air capability?</text><parent_chain><item><author>batch12</author><text>&amp;gt;For that first part, though, what does that even mean? The military isn&amp;#x27;t gamifying things and giving folks freaking XBox achievements for racking up killstreaks or anything. It&amp;#x27;s just the same game people have been playing since putting an atlatl on a spear, a scope on a rifle, or a black powder cannon on a battlefield. How to attack the enemy without being at risk. Is it unethical for a general officer to be sitting in an operations center directing the fight by looking at real-time displays? Is that a &amp;quot;video game?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not the same thing. Not even close. Killing people is horrible enough.  Sitting in a trailer, clicking a button and killing someone from behind a screen without any of the risk involved is cowardly and shitty. There is no justification you can provide that will change my mind. Before you disregard my ability to understand the situation, I say this as a combat veteran.</text></item><item><author>psunavy03</author><text>&amp;gt; Granted, the idea of someone playing video games to kill real people makes me angry and decision making around drone strikes is already questionable.&lt;p&gt;For that first part, though, what does that even mean?  The military isn&amp;#x27;t gamifying things and giving folks freaking XBox achievements for racking up killstreaks or anything.  It&amp;#x27;s just the same game people have been playing since putting an atlatl on a spear, a scope on a rifle, or a black powder cannon on a battlefield.  How to attack the enemy without being at risk.  Is it unethical for a general officer to be sitting in an operations center directing the fight by looking at real-time displays?  Is that a &amp;quot;video game?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The drone strikes in the Global War on Terror were a direct product of political pressure to &amp;quot;do something, anything&amp;quot; to stop another September 11th attack while simultaneously freaking out about a so-called &amp;quot;quagmire&amp;quot; any time someone mentioned &amp;quot;boots on ground.&amp;quot;  Well, guess what?  If you don&amp;#x27;t want SOF assaulters doing raids to capture people, if you don&amp;#x27;t want traditional military formations holding ground, and you don&amp;#x27;t want people trying to collect intelligence by actually going to these places, about the only option you have left is to fly a drone around and try to identify the terrorist and then go whack him when he goes out to take a leak.  Or do nothing and hope you don&amp;#x27;t get hit again.</text></item><item><author>batch12</author><text>So the study[0] involved people making simulated drone strike decisions. These people were not qualified to make these decisions for real and also knew the associated outcomes were also not real. This sounds like a flawed study to me.&lt;p&gt;Granted, the idea of someone playing video games to kill real people makes me angry and decision making around drone strikes is already questionable.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Our pre-registered target sample size was 100 undergraduates recruited in exchange for course credit. However, due to software development delays in preparation for a separate study, we had the opportunity to collect a raw sample of 145 participants. Data were prescreened for technical problems occurring in ten of the study sessions (e.g., the robot or video projection failing), yielding a final sample of 135 participants (78.5% female, Mage = 21.33 years, SD = 4.08).&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41598-024-69771-z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41598-024-69771-z&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Study shows &apos;alarming&apos; level of trust in AI for life and death decisions</title><url>https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/study-shows-alarming-level-of-trust-in-ai-for-life-and-death-decisions/</url></story>