On: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

[UncleMeat]

It isn't about testing if the president can do surgery. It is about forcing the president to look somebody in the eye before they kill them.

[chrisseaton → UncleMeat]

> It is about forcing the president to look somebody in the eye before they kill them.

Right, but can you understand that 'the President being able to look somebody in the eye before they killing them' is not a requisite for 'the employment of nuclear weapons being justified'?

We require the president to be able to do B before they can do A. But what if A is the right thing to do but the President is not able to do B? Being not able to do B does not mean A is wrong.

See the logical disconnect?

[jai_ → chrisseaton]

I think that is the exact point though. The point of the interlock to force this logical dependency when there may not have been one before.

[Aeolun → chrisseaton]

Doing A cannot be the right thing to do if you think doing B is still impossible.

If you cannot kill your friend to kill a few hundreds of thousands more, how can it possibly be justified? I just struggle to come up with a scenario where that is the case.

Of course I’m of the school that thinks firing nuclear weapons is never a good idea.

[chrisseaton → Aeolun]

But ‘know you should’ is not the same as ‘can physically bring yourself to do it’.

[jai_ → chrisseaton]

But that is the exact point. Having a human interlock explicitly shifts the dependency. Knowing that you should launch nukes is no longer enough and being able to bring yourself to physically kill someone is the additional requirement that we are _deliberately_ adding to this process despite there not being an obvious logical link between the two actions before.

[Aeolun → chrisseaton]

If you cannot bring yourself to cut one person open (for the good of all) you have zero business launching nuclear weapons (for the good of all).

I kind of feel like we’re going in circles though, so maybe better to just stop here :)

[UncleMeat → chrisseaton]

I believe it is a requirement. I believe that the natural bias would be towards using nuclear weapons when we shouldn't. I believe there there is no possible world where the use of nuclear weapons is justified and the president couldn't also kill one additional person. I do believe there are cases where a president may use nuclear weapons when it isn't truly justified and that having additional checks will help prevent that.