TsviBT's Shortform

TsviBT

This is a special post for quick takes by TsviBT. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Things that have been successfully-so-far banned before being done (very shallow research, not sure; found w/ gippities and cursorily (ha) sanity-checked):

human cloning (may not hold)
seabed nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabed_Arms_Control_Treaty)
national claims on Antarctica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System)
mining in Antarctica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Protection_to_the_Antarctic_Treaty)
military moon bases, space nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty)
low earth orbit missiles ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Arms_Limitation_Talks#SALT_II_Treaty)
(questionable success, maybe some deployment before the ban) blinding laser weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Weapons)

There are probably several more examples of successful huge bans after warning shots / initial uses, e.g. military environmental modification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Convention ), and examples of questionable / mostly successful bans, e.g. exploding bullets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Declaration_of_1868)

For the banning of these weapons, how much does effectiveness weigh against moral concerns? If usefulness weighs a lot, then these examples won't generalize to TAI.

Unless there are very clear, convincing evidence that TAI isn't controllable with current paradigm, then it will still be perceived as a highly useful tech. (Even if such evidence exists, IMO there's high possibility that they'll just cope harder.)

Biochemical weapons: These are only useful against civilians and pre-modern armies. Modern armies can easily afford equipments to protect against the... (read more)

3weberr138mo

I have read that "mirror protein" research may quickly be added to the list https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on-earth-scientists-call-for-halt-on-mirror-life-microbe-research because it may create pathogens that are uniquely "invisible" to the immune systems of all known life. There are surely topics that can be understood via simulation that should never be made an experimental reality.

3RHollerith8mo

The objections River made apply to the thing you linked, too: namely to stay in a low-earth trajectory for any significant fraction of one orbit requires a speed of 28,000 km/h and more importantly all of that speed must be tangential ("horizontal"). It is expensive in energy to get rid of that tangential component of momentum, and most of it must be gotten rid of in order for the warhead to intersect the Earth's surface with any accuracy. (Yes, ICBM's reach that speed, too, or close to it, but only when the direction of travel is close to straight down. I.e., the tangential component of velocity never gets above a few 1000 km/h.) Yes, it gets a lot cheaper to get rid of speed when the vehicle is designed to interact with the atmosphere like the Space Shuttle was, as opposed to just shooting through it like a bullet or an ICBM warhead is, but that does not support your point (Tsvi) because such vehicles are the subject of intense study by all the advanced militaries (under the name "hypersonic glide vehicle") and I have seen no signs that any nation is willing to forswear investment in or deployment of this new class of weapons. In the decades during which hypersonic glide vehicles were infeasible, River is probably correct in asserting that there was no military advantage to be got from either nukes on satellites or fractional orbital bombardment systems.

TsviBT's Shortform

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TsviBT's Shortform

7

Ω 4