I think you ask the question wrong. There can be endless debates about whether woman should fight or not. The _real_ question is why only German men are restricted by the law. Even if women do not fight they should be subjected to the same restrictions as they'd have country-bound functions in a war scenario as well - be it fighting or not. And I'd even go a step further and argue that the rule should apply to each and everybody in Germany. It's kind of ridiculous that German men have their movement restricted because of a hypothetical defense situation while Ukrainian men are not just invited by Germany to avoid being drafted and they can come and go as they like.
Having said that. The real problem with that law is not even the law itself but how it came to being, which unveils a completely messed up and incompetent legislative procedure in the German government and parliament.
Wouldn't it maybe be a great idea to just ban anything that's not actually about science and technology from this board? This will have the indirect effect of people leaving it who are here for political trench fights? Plus the good old flame wars about technology x versus y are pretty harmless in comparison.
(And no, just because Sam Altman is CEO of tech company doesn't make this news tech news.)
Politics is indeed toxic to pure curiosity about pure things. I feel that too, viscerally.
However. Culture war tropes get posted in even the most abstract discussion, so banning top-level posts won't keep it out.
Furthermore, technology is inherently political to the degree that it is transformative. The Facebook algorithm was always political, it just took time for that to become apparent. I'm trying to illustrate another kind of toxicity, that of engineering archetypes refusing to consider the political impact of their engineering decisions. Technologists in transformative fields should not be putting their heads in the sand. I don't want HN to devolve to red/green political rage, but there are political discussions that belong here.
Lastly, social sciences may well be dismal, but they can still illuminate, and politics is a valid subject of study. This site is predicated on curiosity, and areas of politics are on topic for that. Humanity is a system that bears analysis and can even be engineered.
No, ignoring the political consequences of science and technology is what is extremely toxic and psychopathic.
The very American trend to avoid anything political is self-defeating anyway, as it contributes to the social rot and the worsening of politics even further. Do you think the garden will become cleaner if you stop tending it? That your child will become nicer if you stop taking care of it? That your projects will sort themselves out if you don't track them?
You are well on your way to becoming like Russians: more and more detached from political matters because it is not safe or pleasant... until they are sent to the frontlines.
I think a proper OpenAI vs Anthropic flame war might actually do this community some good. Let's just have it out. Avoiding violation of the x vs y technology rule seems to have resulted in a lot of pent up energy. I don't see the harm at this point if dang is saying it's over.
forgot that there is even such a policy. the differentiating feature of hn always was that comments and discussions are relatively thoughtful and civil. that's quickly getting lost.
Respectably my opinion is different. As I am reading through these comments the differences seem to be like neighboring Canadian farmers that each think next door is getting more rain than they are.
I'm a huge fan of those kinds of "laws"¹. My favorite one is Conway's law². Having said that Betteridge's Law never really convinced me. As far as my gut is concerned it's just always true for one in two cases.
2: "[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
Betteridge’s law needs allowances for cases where the issue at hand is opinion or speculation. In this case, the non-clickbait headline would be “Germany’s Gold isn’t Safe in New York”, but the facts aren’t there to go to press with that.
Kurds* yes and Sweden as well. I agree, it's not like people are running around swinging broadswords, maces and war axes anymore. Anyone without a disability can run and pull a trigger or do all those technical jobs.
> Anyone without a disability can run and pull a trigger
This is very much untrue in terms of being a soldier in a high-functioning military.
Technically, you’re not wrong (at least for lighter weapons). That said, there are many more physically demanding things that are involved in doing infantry things (which is what you’re describing) other than running and pulling a trigger (and ideally hitting the target).
> or do all those technical jobs.
Depends on the job, but much more likely.
The vast majority of the jobs in the military are not infantry or infantry-type jobs, so I can see a lot more scope for drafted women who aren’t cut out for infantry doing these things.
Technical jobs yes. Infantry still requires a lot of physical strength. I'd welcome anyone who has that strength to be in the infantry, but anyone who can't, male or female, should not be in the infantry, or any job that might require dragging heavy people or heavy equipment.
I'm surprised this news is stalling at 24 points. Everybody has to understand that even if this law isn't impacting you; this is a signal in the noise. Germany is a major part of the industrial military complex together with the US and still the 3rd largest economy in the world after US and China. This is meaningful as it sets course for war in Europe. And for Germans it means soon to be enforced limitations of civil rights. That fits right in with the surveillance crap that is being attempted to roll out in EU (which is effectively headed and controlled by Germany).
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