Summary
Ukraine’s 13th National Guard Brigade conducted its first all-robot assault, using ground and aerial drones to clear Russian positions in Kharkiv Oblast.
The operation involved surveillance, explosive, and gun-armed robots, demonstrating Ukraine’s advanced military robotics.
While robots excel in surveillance and attack, their limitations in holding ground, particularly against jamming and maintenance challenges, underscore the continued importance of human infantry.
I very much like Ukraine and hope they win. I cheer them on for every victory I hear about.
But this robot soldier bullshit is something I really fucking hate.
Once you remove the human cost of war, you remove any motivation to stop war. I learned this as a kid from Star Trek S01E23 - A Taste of Armageddon
Firstly, Ukraine is fighting an invading force by a ruthless dictator and they’re outgunned. Taking the moral high ground and refusing to use the latest technology is the worst possible idea.
Secondly, there was still a human cost. Just not on the Ukrainian side.
Thirdly, they absolutely have a motivation to stop: when Russia leaves.
Fourthly, you need to re-watch that episode because it was about the Cold War. The idea was two equal powers were fighting a war that wouldn’t end and no one was the invading party because there was no invasion.
Economic cost is still a reason to end a war. Sure, it may go on longer, but are we talking about a situation where less people get killed?
It’s hard to talk about an economic cost when the war is being paid for by Europe in the United States.
It is not fundamentally difficult to add and subtract numbers, regardless of where those numbers originate from. It may take longer and look more complicated with bigger numbers, but it’s just as easy.
Well, then, why don’t you produce the numbers that you used to reach your conclusion. Speaking authoritatively as you are, you obviously must have them at hand.
I’d like to see those data and come to my own conclusion.
1+1=2
2-3=1
20+74+823=917
20-74-823=-877
I can’t really display it in this format, so you’ll just have to trust my anecdotal evidence, but it took me longer to add and subtract the larger strings than it did to do the smaller strings. However, the process I used to add and subtract the numbers was not any more or less difficult to do, it just took longer.
So this introduces the concept of time efficiency and calculability. As we can see, no matter how big or small the number gets the act of adding them and subtracting them does not become more or less difficult, it just takes more or less time. So really, we shouldn’t talk about how difficult it is to calculate but rather how long it takes.
When we compare two numbers that are very small, there is often a large difference between them. Take for example 2 and 1. 2 is twice as large as 1; it’s 100% larger. But when we compare 12 and 11, we see that 12 is only about 9% larger. Think of this as “total increase” for the next section.
Economies on a national scale are very complex and have millions of moving parts. Therefore, the time it will take to calculate them is extremely large. However, if we add a second economy to the calculation this “total increase” doesn’t actually make it significantly more difficult to calculate since we’re already high on the calculation complexity curve.
You’ll be glad to hear tens of thousands of people have already died in this war then, including innocent men, women and children. Many were tortured and/or raped first. So the human cost is absolutely massive already. No amount of robots can undo it. Hope to have eased your fears a bit.
I think you’re mistaking me for yourself. I do not celebrate when people die.
And you clearly missed the point of what I just said.
I’d rather see a robot blown up than a Ukranian defending his homeland. If you hate robots being used by Ukrainians then the only other option is people dying.
That’s a strawman – – this was never a conversation of robots versus humans. If you’re actually literate, you’ll see my comment spoke of the human cost of war demotivating those from stopping it. Not about robots versus humans.
But if you need to be dishonest in order to make your point, that shows everyone how bullshit your position is.
My assumption was that because you hate robot usage in warfare that you disagree with Ukraine using them in this instance, while I agree. Maybe I got it wrong, it’s a bit hard to see your point through all the ad hominems for illiterate people like me. Either way hope you have a nice day.
If you’re so tied up on personal criticism that you can’t see the logic of my argument, that’s your own problem. Stop blaming me for it.
Also, stop making assumptions about strangers. You’re more often to be wrong than right.
I can’t see the logic of your argument either since it seems to go from robot warfare against an invading party to a cold war between two planets that are nowhere near each other, where they force people into suicide booths.
Im not really sure how you think this is going to work. Do you think people like Putin care how many provincial kids he sends to their death? Maybe his oligarch buddies lay awake at night pondering the terrible human cost of their actions, considering all the compromises they might be willing to make in order alleviate this terrible suffering? Maybe the people of Moscow are just a few hundred thousand more pointless deaths away from saying enough is enough, and dragging their leaders into the streets?
Thank you for displaying how much you missed the point I made.
The way you think is very small. Limited.
Did you ever even watch A Taste of Armageddon? The whole point was that both sides were totally fine paying an unlimited number of lives for their eternal war. There is no magical number of human deaths that will bring peace.
That’s definitely not what the episode was about. If you’re still confused, watch the last few minutes when Captain Kirk actually explains at all.
Clearly, I’m not the one who never watched that episode.
You are coming to a Star Trek fight with a squirt phaser here. This is what Kirk says:
Based on what Kirk says, since that is what you think should happen, we have to assume you want an immediate ceasefire where Russia gets to keep all the land they took.
Also, you seem to think that Russians are as upset about invading Ukraine as Ukrainians are at being invaded based on that dialogue. I don’t think that’s the case.
I hear your point loud and clear, even if some people don’t. Using anonymous killing machines also removes the danger to whomever controls the robots.
Veterans come home and talk about the horrors of war. Robots don’t.