Same with Ender's Game. They are playing war games but they're actually real. He sacrifices his units and commits genocide (xenocide) at the same time. Something he probably wouldn't have done had he known.

  > Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...

My undergrad wasn't in CS but my grad was. I was incredibly surprised to find that ethics isn't a requirement in most CS programs. That's a sharp contrast to traditional engineering and the hard sciences. CS people seem to love philosophy, yet I'm surprised not so much about this subset. We'll spend all day talking about if we live in a simulation (without learning physics) and what intelligence is (without studying neuroscience or psychology) but when it comes to what's acceptable to do at work the answer is always "if I don't do it somebody else will, at least I'll have a job". A phrase that surely everyone hears in an ethics 101 class...

Edit:

Oops, missed pazimzadeh's comment. I'll leave mine because I say more

▲ 7952 18 hours ago | parent [-]

And the world seen through media is heavily abstracted. And I think that makes people psychologically treat war like a game rather than something actually happening. We trick ourselves into believing it isn't real.

	▲	duskdozer 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder how much this changes based on country. The closest thing to a war happening within US borders was the attack on Pearl Harbor (I think). The US hasn't had conscription for 50 years. So there isn't much of a clearly visible and direct cost to war for many many Americans. I'm not arguing there isn't a cost, by the way, just that most can basically just not watch the news and have no idea war is happening.