This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The business end of the CIWS turret contains a radar, a 20mm gatling cannon, and the cannon's magazine. That's at least a ton of hardware all-up for the actuators to throw around. Compare to, for example, amateur DIY paintball turrets. Also note that this amateur, DIY example is from 13 years ago. I would expect full-360 traverse in less than a second to be a reasonable milestone, and you could probably do even better, especially if you can get the magazine off the turret proper.
Seems like it would be a good balance of weight and effectiveness. The smaller the weapon is, the easier and faster the turret can slew it around. The chaingun part is because electrically-actuated firearms are immune to duds and far more resistant to jams and stoppages. Intermediate rifles would mean higher pressures, a heavier barrel, heavier bolt, heavier ammo, and it's not obvious that the increased weight would be worth it; modern armor doesn't cover your face, arms or legs, which are all targets I'd expect a SOTA AI to be able to hit reliably at speed and range. Even if it's just aiming for center-of-mass, I'm not aware of any tactics that count you as winning if you receive, say, ten rounds of duty handgun ammo in the space of a second or two into a 20-inch circle centered on your torso, armor or no; the chance of catching a round somewhere the armor doesn't cover gets pretty high at that point. My guess would be that you could get the weapon itself down under, say, two pounds, plus maybe another pound for the water jacket, and then use the rest of the weight for a large ammo magazine and feed mechanism. Crank up the fire-rate to something like 1000 rpm, and program it to deliver quick bursts of several rounds per target and then cycle to the next.
Almost certainly not. A chaingun is just a regular automatic action, with bolt reciprocation being driven by a cam attached to a looped chain which in turn is driven by an electric motor. This setup is more reliable than gas or recoil, since the force applied is steady and relatively slow, and unrelated to the rest of the firing mechanism. I'm not sure if it's legal to build a civilian chain-gun, since it would be very, very easy to convert it to full-auto and it's hard to imagine a way to prevent that mechanically. Obviously there hasn't been any military or police need for such a weapon; I think they've made 7.62mm NATO chainguns, but below that, what's the point? There is a commercial gatling gun chambered in 9mm and feeding from (of course) glock mags; you can convert that to a poor-man's 9mm minigun by attacking an electric motor to the crank, though the magazine probably won't handle high rates of fire, and it would be vast overkill for a robo-dog in any case.
More options
Context Copy link