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Ramifications of a true non-lethal stun technology
electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
A very common conceit in modern science fiction is the development of some type of truly non-lethal technology which renders people unconscious. For TV this keeps your rating adequately in check.
But what if we had this in real world? Current real-world stun technology is definitely not non-lethal. It's "less then lethal" and it usually doesn't reliably cause unconsciousness - because if it does, it usually has graduated to "lethal" or at least severely dangerous.
But what if we had this? For arguments sake let's say an electromagnetic device is developed which can be remotely projected at a human being, and immediately and painlessly causes a natural state of unconsciousness, similar to falling asleep.
What would be the ramifications of this on a social level? While such a thing would not be absolutely "non-lethal" (falling and hitting your head could easily kill you), it seems to me that such a development would fairly fundamentally change the nature and perception of police and government actions (not to mention have some pretty important gun control implications).
But what if we had this in real world? Current real-world stun technology is definitely not non-lethal. It's "less then lethal" and it usually doesn't reliably cause unconsciousness - because if it does, it usually has graduated to "lethal" or at least severely dangerous.
But what if we had this? For arguments sake let's say an electromagnetic device is developed which can be remotely projected at a human being, and immediately and painlessly causes a natural state of unconsciousness, similar to falling asleep.
What would be the ramifications of this on a social level? While such a thing would not be absolutely "non-lethal" (falling and hitting your head could easily kill you), it seems to me that such a development would fairly fundamentally change the nature and perception of police and government actions (not to mention have some pretty important gun control implications).
electricitylikesme on
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1) Police would get alot more trigger happy
2) Holy shit crime wave (rapes and robberies become trivially easy)
This.
Police abuse would draw significantly less outrage. Its hard to get mad over a Rodney King or Oscar Grant or Michael Brown when the victim was merely stunned. This would also lead to communities were street protest is pointless. Police would just zap them all, citing 'noise complaints' or something similarly trivial.
I think the combination of that with easier rapes and robberies would lead to a conservative shift in public opinion.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Medical would be positive - painless surgery without the dangers of anesthesia. Military/Police would use it to make pacification of local populaces easier at home and abroad.
Indeed, purely brain-based unconsciousness would be a huge deal for medicine.
Military is more along the lines of the dangers I'm thinking of: you'd basically weaponize the capability into an AWACS-type craft that would put whole towns to sleep I suspect. Even if you needed to target people accurately, we have drones and IR imaging which could do that.
That's along the lines I'm thinking of here: certain classes of stun weaponry we might develop aren't just "tazer plus" - they feel more like they'd be a fairly fundamental reshaping of power relations in the modern world.
Man, you would practically eliminate the need for drone-strike style attacks.
Just fly a drone in, put the whole area to sleep then sneak in an extraction team to grab the people you are after.
I mean part of the current problem with police abuse is that it results in somebody getting killed or seriously injured. Trigger happy police armed with hypothetically-totally-safe-incapacitation-beams would still be a problem, but significantly less of a problem than those same police armed with guns, rubber bullets or even tasers. If rodney king had simply 'stunned' and then arrested there would likely never have been a controversy at all. Do we consider that a bad outcome?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The potential rise in street crime would probably depend on how the tech was regulated and distributed. If it was illegal to own one and extremely expensive to acquire, that would cut down on their use by most of the public. Obviously criminals would still get them - especially organized crime - but muggers and rapists would probably continue to rely on threat of violence and actual violence to get what they want.
I think it would lower the barrier for entry though. When you don't have to resort to physical violence, mugging becomes alot easier to imagine doing.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That was my other thought.
People who spontaneously fall unconscious can really hurt themselves.
Batman has probably killed thousands of people
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This. Ignoring for a moment the bit about falling and injuring yourself, and just imagining a legitimate "phaser" tech that can actually stun safely, you can bet it would be abused. We have already see this with the drive-stun function of the Taser (which merely causes pain, and is about as non-lethal a method as you can get)...we've seen videos where it was used inappropriately to gain compliance from people who were doing nothing wrong. I definitely worry that the moment police can safely stun an entire throng of protesters, collect them up, and throw t hem in jail is the day we enter a dystopia, yes.
I think a society would have to be pretty fucked where towns being put to sleep would tolerate such a thing.
So... what happens when they wake up and are even more pissed?
Either it is cheap and available to the public, in which case zomgcrime, or it is expensive and limited mostly to the government (and high-level organized crime) in which case zomgabuse.
Hit 'em again.
Do so until they are compliant.
See: drive-stun mode on Tasers today.
That's the problem. If you can pacify entire towns from the air, who cares what the residents will put up with? If it gets bad enough, you just send it troops to bundle off the sleeping troublemakers. Do it enough and the residents will get the message.
History is basically the story of rulers bashing the heads of "the people" until they give up. Consent doesn't matter that much when 100 armored knights on horse can put down an entire town with no casualties. There's a reason the human condition didn't improve until firearm-based tech got cheap and ubiquitous enough that rebel armies could go toe-to-toe with the forces of the King.
Cause "lights out" over a town means a shitload of road fatalities, people falling onto their (currently hot) stoves, cracked skulls, dropped infants... All sorts of nightmare scenarios.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Like I understand some of it.
But some of it is a little zonkers.
We're talking about a futuristic technology that could probably be traced via futuristic forensic technology and probably wouldn't enter the wide market up until that point. There is no reason to think that it couldn't, because this device wouldn't function like magic and would have properties intrinsic to its effect that could most certainly be traced back to an individual device.
We also jumped from an effect on a single human to an effect on an entire town. But we have no data on just how long these people would remain unconscious (younger probably recovers faster). Putting an entire town to sleep would require either multiple air craft (which would probably show up on radar) or a wide range shot that you couldn't be sure could get everyone. Would it be able to shoot through stone walls? Would metal interfere? What if someone has had brain surgery and the part of their brain that this device acts on was surgically removed?
Some of these "oh shit" scenarios some of you are postulating are just as silly as the "oh shit" scenarios that people like Stephen Hawking or Bill Gates are putting forth about artificial intelligence.
Yes, somebody getting jailed for no good reason is less outrageous than somebody getting shot for no good reason, and I would rather have the former than the latter.
However, somebody getting jailed for no good reason doesn't make the news, it doesn't drive public debate. People don't seem to care much about injustices until those injustices become horrific, so dialing back the repercussions of police corruption from "horror" to "merely shitty" is a really good thing for corrupt police.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That's a rather narrow set of outcomes for such an invention.
In this case what's the difference between someone holding a gun at you and then mugging you or someone using a phaser set to stun, stunning you, and then mugging you?
In both cases you still get mugged, in both cases the chances are you will never get back what was taken from you.
It's a hell of alot easier with a stun gun, way less likely to get caught or for something to go wrong and it significantly lowers the psychological barriers to committing a violent crime.
I dunno, tranquilizer guns fit that bill and we didn't go too crazy over them
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I suspect there is a non-negligible number of people who are okay with stealing, but not okay with murder, and would happily accept an opportunity to steal something without seriously injuring the victim.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't think they do at all.
why not
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The drugs in them are powerful and have a scary high chance of death. There's a reason why you only see them used on animals.
Chemical anesthesia in general is a very dangerous business. There's a reason anesthesiologists are some of the highest paid professionals in medicine.
Any non-magical stun technology will have a high chance of death
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
And they take several seconds, which is enough time for a human with a gun to shoot you with a real bullet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What if he misses with the stun gun?
Shoot em with a taser first then. Blammo, combo stungun, the future is here
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yes. The technology described is sufficiently advanced as to meet the description of magic.
You can even use it against population centers without killing hundreds of people, but actually working against people in cars and buildings.