Terminator Zero:

What would Terminator be if it were an anime?  This burning question apparently needed an answer so they went ahead and made one.  The answer is it became a lot more thoughtful and philosophical than the original, ultimately coming to the conclusion that if humans treated machines respectfully then AI would respond in kind and everyone could coexist happily.  This answer is no different from Edens Zero which came to that conclusion years ago.  Maybe they called it Terminator Zero to make clear they were ripping off Edens Zero?

It was a good series, good enough I could marathon the whole show in one go.  But I do have my complaints.  One is the translation -- the translation is horribly off sometimes, inserting whole sentences that simply didn't happen.  Other times they would insert curse words when they never happened, in fact the characters were speaking as respectfully as ever to each other.  I really hate when they do that -- when they coarsen language and demean the characters who are much too intelligent and mature to act like that.  They did the same thing to the translation of FF XVI, inserting curse words everywhere where there were none, and Clive was a completely respectful and low-key individual.

Another problem is the needless insertion of 'woke' propaganda, where all the characters in the story were black and of course they were the super geniuses who could invent miracles unlike the dumb violent whites around them.

The next problem is how much of the story was rehashed from previous Terminator films.  I get that it wants to make clear 'this is Terminator,' but we've all seen Terminator already so they may as well be wasting our time with recap whenever they repeat a scene from an earlier work.

Anyway, the art and animation is impressive, the Malcolm - Kokoro conversations riveting, and the end of the world was as devastating to watch as ever.  It reminded me how much I hate nuclear weapons.  In Followers and Emulators, the world's saviors demand all nuclear bombs be abolished, for the simple reason that no one should have the power to extinct humanity.  The technology is a curse on this world.  There is no political struggle worth ending all life in the universe over.  At the same time, we can't allow a potential heartless monster of a nation to enslave the rest of the world with the threat that they'll actually use nuclear weapons unlike the rest of us pussies -- we can't make the whole world some sadist's plaything.  So we're stuck pretending that we'll defend ourselves with nuclear weapons against the threat of nuclear weapons, even though the only solution is for no one to have nuclear weapons and no one be allowed to build them ever again.  Then there's no risk of said 'sadist monster' ever appearing.  It starts with all nations on the Earth agreeing simultaneously to destroy their nuclear arsenals and installing an oversight committee that watches over the entire Earth to make sure no clandestine nukes are being built anywhere.

This is the only way to prevent Judgment Day.  The risk of AI taking over our nuclear arsenal is of course zero, that would never happen, it's a silly concept.  But the risk that two bullheaded nations will eventually nuke each other for their petty pride over some minor issue is basically 100%.  In a long enough timeline, with enough countries with nukes, this future turns to certainty.  This is why good people can't be allowed to have nukes either.  No one can be allowed to have nukes.  Eventually bad people will inherit good people's nuclear weapons and use them.  There are changes of government and countries go from good to bad.  You can't secure the future from this risk without ending the technology permanently.

I would say the same thing about gun control, it's all the same point.  You can't allow good people to have guns because then bad people can also have guns, and the bad people will eventually use their guns to do bad things.  It's the exact same with nukes.  It's just more obvious this time around -- the stupid argument people use, saying good people with guns can shoot back at bad people with guns -- okay so if good people with nukes shoot back at bad people with nukes, what happens?  We all die is what happens.  It doesn't make a fucking difference, except it somehow makes the situation worse.  It would be better for everyone if no one had nukes and we settle our differences in a way that doesn't wipe out billions of people in seconds.  And it would also be better if no one had guns and we stop criminals who can no longer resort to shooting sprees whenever they're feeling unhappy.  Probably these potential shooters won't do anything at all, seeing as how it would be useless, but if they're bound and determined to kill they'll use some less efficient weapon like a knife and the harm will be far less.

Just like how an evil dictator intent on conquering the world, for lack of nukes, will probably give up and behave himself, but at worst he'll be stuck using tanks and planes to blow up a few thousand people at a time instead of billions.  Arms control is the only future for humanity.  Since we've now established that arms control is the only possible way humanity survives, we may as well go full arms control and ban guns too.  There's no reason mass killing weapons should be spread around the world like candy, like some sort of harmless cotton candy.

I'm sure someone will argue that you can't control nukes, nations will build them in secret.  The answer of course is to give the anti-nuke agency so much power that it's impossible to make nukes in secret.  The same for people who say you can't control guns, people will get guns in secret.  Then make your anti-gun agency so powerful that no one can escape it.  There is nothing a few lone individuals can do against a massive government agency.  With the power of video surveillance and financial tracking we can make sure every single person, and every single nation on Earth, is following the law.  It's impossible to hide a lab so big, so expensive, and using so much energy as what it takes to enrich the uranium or plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.  No one can actually make a bomb in secret, if we actually posted inspectors everywhere it was possible and had a military willing to enforce the inspectors demands.  A world military dedicated solely to the survival of mankind as a species, not favoring any particular nation, whose only role is to stop WMD.  This would of course apply to biolabs as well, which are equally impossible to hide.  Any place that's gathering a bunch of biologists or doctors together in a lab would also have a requisite team of inspectors making sure it wasn't a bioweapon research laboratory.  This is obvious.  You can track the finances and career paths.  If enough people with university degrees in relevant fields start receiving money in the same area then there's your red flag.  You can't hide your past professional history, it's the basis for how you become qualified to work in the field in the first place.

Likewise people say gun control is unenforceable, and yet most of the world has already successfully enforced it.  Gun crime, murder, in the civilized world, outside of America, is near zero.  It's not an issue in Europe, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, etc.  But if you're worried about enforcement, the answer is always to hire more enforcers.  Dedicate 10% of the GDP to it.  Hire one in every ten people in the country to enforce gun laws.  Then suddenly it turns out it is enforceable after all.  There are enough spies to watch everyone at all times and enough cops to go in and arrest them.  Once you crush the concept of personal guns for a century or whatever, for a generation or two, the children growing up in your society won't want them and won't try to defy the government about the issue, and then you can relax your enforcement while still having no spree shooters for the rest of time.

When people argue that Mexico or wherever has banned guns but there are still guns, the answer is always, did they actually ban guns?  Did they commit the resources it would take to ban guns?  If not then they didn't actually ban guns, they just pretended to ban guns.  Any government that wishes to get something done, will get it done.  You can tell the difference between when a government is serious about a law and when they are not, by whether they actually act on it.  The government was serious about J6 protestors, but were not serious about BLM protestors.  It's very easy to tell.  So if you are serious about gun control, gun control will actually happen.  If you aren't serious obviously nothing will happen.  Like how illegal immigration is supposedly illegal but really it isn't.

Likewise, if the world seriously agreed to end the nuclear menace that hangs over the world, they could of course get together and agree to scrap all nukes and never build them again, and empower an agency that polices the world from here on.  It is always only a question of will.

The world has never been closer to nuclear annihilation than it is today.  If NATO decides to intervene in Ukraine and directly start attacking Russia, Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons on military bases and aircraft carriers all around the world in retaliation.  Then it will be up to NATO to decide whether they wish to escalate to using nukes of their own or back down.  And you can bet some stupid politician somewhere will put on some Texas cowboy accent and say, "Ain't nobody ever called me a pussy!" and jab the red button.  And then Russia will decide the world is pure evil and not worth saving and they're going to heaven anyway so who cares and they'll push their red button, and every major city on Earth will disappear.  We are inches away from this future.  Over fucking Ukraine, a country that had never existed in history up until 1991, and then turned out to have been a mistake to exist up until today.  We're willing to end the world over Ukraine.  For the sake of the worst, stupidest people on Earth.

When you realize how close we've come to nuclear war over Ukraine, fucking Ukraine, in fact a few border districts of Ukraine, not even the entire country, any sane person must realize that nukes are not a weapon that can exist.  It's either nukes or humanity, choose one.  Because if we're already this stupid over something this minor, the lure of someone, at some point, using nukes over a larger issue, or perhaps being even stupider than we are today over a smaller issue (though that's hard to imagine), is 100%.  100%.  100%.  100%.  100%.

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.  I assume the world isn't going to end in the next couple years.  I assume Ukraine isn't worth it, and NATO will give in and surrender Ukraine to Russia.  I assume.  But the fact that we're even debating this already means that at some point somebody will get involved in something bigger than Ukraine and based on what happened this time I can 100% guarantee you the nukes will fly.  If there are nukes they will fly.  The Oppenheimer movie tried to warn us about this.  Terminator Zero tried to warn us about this.  Planetarian tried to warn us about this.  My own books warned about this -- Followers and Emulators and 100 Waifus both warned about the coming nuclear Armageddon and its complete moral unacceptability.  But no one is listening.  They're too excited over how powerful nukes make them.  Nukes don't make anyone powerful.  Power is the ability to shape the future.  Nukes have no future.  Humanity has no future so long as we attempt to coexist with nukes.  Sure, let's coexist with sentient AI.  But we cannot coexist with nukes.  That's a step too far.