He was stating that they could be dropped of in a remote jungle and given an abstract command such as "turn this bundle of sticks into something habitable" and rely on ingrained problem-solving and teamwork skills to complete the goal.
Not that they could be told to napalm a small village and would carry out the order no-questions-asked.
How do you know that? He just says "do anything" without any qualifiers. I gather that you think it's implicit, but how? Is it just an assumption that if someone says "do anything" in that context, they actually mean "do anything good and worthwhile and not evil"?
What I really meant though was that as a group of people there was enough respect, tolerance, humour and self discipline in the group that we could put up with any circumstances that we were asked to.
If you took an office full of the average hackers on here and put them in a mildly uncomfortable situation, they'd be bitching and stabbing each other in the back in days.
I don't see the "of course". There are plenty of people in the world who value blind obedience and from what you wrote it seemed you were one. If you're not, fair, but... be more clear about it. :P
Are you allowed to decide what good and worthwhile and not evil when you are in the militar? Do you have much training about when you should not follow orders?
Yes you absolutely do have training on this. In fact it's required that this specific training is refreshed every year.
Every soldier knows that if they are told to do something and they think it isn't right, there is a whole chain of people they can raise this with. If the first person doesn't listen, you can raise it with the next and so on. There are also parallel chains of people (padres for example) if for some reason you can't speak to your commanders. Finally there is a group of people entirely independent from the military who are only a phone call away, if something has seriously gone wrong.
But to honest, I can't even imagine being asked to do anything wrong by anyone I ever worked with. And if I was I'd just clarify with them what they meant. Nobody in the military shouts 'sir yes sir!' like in the movies. You just normally ask people to do something and if they have a question they just normally ask you it.
