Invisibility from retaliation confers power to act with impunity.
Evidence
On the naked body of a giant discovered in a crevice in the ground, Gyges, a Lydian shepherd, by chance found a gold ring that made him invisible. Confident in his new power and sure that he would escape the watchful eyes of men, he multiplied his misdeeds, killed the king, and seized the throne with impunity. His enemies could neither avoid his attacks nor defend themselves against him. Invisibility conferred upon him a kind of invulnerability. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 342
Categorization
- XREF: The Gyges ring thought experiment maps directly onto the drone-operative asymmetry central to this reader’s interest in impunity for imperial combatants. — connects to: Dominant powers codified their own practical invulnerability as the overriding war norm; War’s immunity from murder prosecutions rests on mutual reciprocity; Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem (+12 more)
Related
- Dominant powers codified their own practical invulnerability as the overriding war norm (similarity 0.87)
- Physical invisibility of another person enables far harsher punishment of them (similarity 0.86)
- Uncredible power invites dangerous testing that triggers force (similarity 0.82)
- Remote killing removes reciprocal constraints that traditionally shaped warrior morality. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem
#expands(0.75) - Fighting for a cause rather than oneself can intensify rather than soften conflict
#complicates(0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 306 - Distributed lethal systems fabricate irresponsibility by diluting causal attribution.
#exemplifies(0.70)