#aggression

Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren't the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn't it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place? Does the universe contain a mysterious force pulling entities toward malevolence, so that a positronic brain must be programmed to withstand it? Do intelligent beings inevitably develop an attitude problem? (…) Now that computers really have become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned. Today's ubiquitous, networked computers have an unprecedented ability to do mischief should they ever go to the bad. But the only mayhem comes from unpredictable chaos or from human malice in the form of viruses. We no longer worry about electronic serial killers or subversive silicon cabals because we are beginning to appreciate that malevolence—like vision, motor coordination, and common sense—does not come free with computation but has to be programmed in. (…) Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem! ↗

— Steven Pinker

#artificial-intelligence #ethics #malevolence #robots #attitude

Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!' He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasn't! And here he'd been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it! Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. ("Dusk To Dawn") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#crime #death #murder #violence #death

Our object must be to bring our territory into harmony with the numbers of our population. ↗

— Adolf Hitler

#overpopulation #population #harmony

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression. ↗

— John Foster Dulles

#capacity #deter #forms #massive #must

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#also #capacity #contain #crucial #damage

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. ↗

— George W. Bush

#choose #dictators #differences #free #free nations

It was known in the mid 90s already that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous tyrant that he had already launched aggressions against Iran, he had invaded Kuwait. ↗

— Douglas Feith

#aggressions #already #dangerous #had #hussein

The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#constitutes #culture #disposition #independent #innate

We must have our say, not through violence, aggression or fear. We must speak out calmly and forcefully. We shall only be able to enter the new world era if we agree to engage in dialogue with the other side. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#aggression #agree #calmly #dialogue #engage

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person. ↗

— Paul Weller

#aggressive #everyone #frustrated #gets #guitar