From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 10:11:14 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> On Friday, April 12, 2002, at 09:44 am, Brian D Williams wrote:
> >
> > You cannot approach a closed military zone without permission, if
> > you do you can be shot.
>
> You keep repeating this mantra without answering the question. That
> doesn't answer my question of "why?" I thought we stood for no
> initiation of force, especially not death, unless absolutely necessary.
> Is it really so vital that reporters not cover the middle-east that we
> shoot them?
>
> Even in a war, there has to be a pretty clear and present danger before
> the military is allowed to fire upon unarmed civilians. I really can't
> believe I am the only one who believes this.
I'm not a soldier, Harvey, but from what I know about war, if you
deliberately wander into a combat zone, anything that happens to you is your
own damn fault - it is not reasonable to ask soldiers to wait five seconds
before pulling the trigger.
As far as I can tell, the situation boils down to: Reporters are playing
"heroic investigator" in order to milk the story for all the drama it will
bear, and as part of this they are deliberately wandering into combat
zones. The Israeli military can adopt a policy wherein the reporters pay
for this with their lives, or Israeli soldiers pay for it with their lives.
They have chosen to make the reporters bear the cost. I think this is the
correct decision.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:27 MST