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Can't kill lawyers. Half of any government is made up of lawyers, who control the military, and look after their own. Why do you think so many legal loopholes exist which give lawyers a chance to make lots of $$$$?

Quote: Originally Posted by Chinook I'm sorry for this, but all I have is another joke. If you want to find out how human an android is, try giving him a few "test tickles". (groan) You deserve to be robotamized for that comment.

Quote: Originally Posted by Sparrow What? They've yet to create a self-sustaining (under glass) environment here on Earth much less the Moon. Biosphere2 broke down within a few months, and even that was after some cheating by the participants. And Alpha Centauri is over four light years away and is not believed to be a good candidate for supporting life. It's thought that with binary star systems it may be much trickier for a planet...

That's just it thought-a consciousness WE gave them. Humans are far from perfect angels and we will never reach that stage, so why are you so assuming that we would ever be able to create perfect angels when human error is taken into account with every single invention on Earth? We can create things extremely accurately, but there will always be a margin of error, and a life form we would "create" with our intelligence...

I know what the 10% was supposed to represent. My point was that if only those with psychopathic tendencies could be persuaded to kill the enemy, those troops required to kill the enemy would, all other things being equal, be chosen from amongst that supposed 10% of the general population. But I don't believe the 10% figure; and I do not believe that a soldier who has killed an enemy combatant is likely to be of a psychopathic tendency....

Quote: skeptical ~Could such a vessel find sustenance at Alpha Centauri. If it was pre-prepared, yes. We cannot expect an Earth like planet. However, as long as Alpha Centauri has moons, asteroids, planetary rings, comets etc., there will be water and minerals. Water will be the most important item, but that is abundant in our own solar system, and there is no reason to believe it will be less so at Alpha Centauri. No matter how advanced the...

Nah, this is Murphy's Law: If anything can be allowed to go wrong, it will. ( I'm reminded of NASA's chagrin when a colony of ants took up residence benath the Lunar Receiving Laboratory clean-rooms. Not the vacuum sections, but the ambient, glove-boxed zone. Scientists were not amused to see tiny ants pop out of one wall-seam, march across their work-area and vanish down another implausibly small crack... ;-))

I'm not convinced about these arguments; for a start I think there is a huge difference between running through someone with a bayonet and seeing their blood and guts spill out, to manning a machine gun above the first world war trenches, to pressing a button that launches a nuclear attack. Somehow the first of those seems the hardest to do, and yet the latter causes the greatest death toll. I would say that the more automated war...

Quote: Originally Posted by skeptical The 85% of soldiers who did not shoot to kill were 85% of those at the battlefront, with loaded rifles in their hands, and staring at the enemy. Not those who never got to face the enemy. Any more info on the circumstances in which this observation was made, or how it varies with the conditions? I can believe the 85% figure when shooting at enemy soldiers crossing an open field several hundred yards away,...

I'm sorry for this, but all I have is another joke. If you want to find out how human an android is, try giving him a few "test tickles". (groan)