Is It Time for Science to Wage War Again?

[selfAdjoint]

The post that created the thread brought up the A-bomb against the Japanese. I addressed that issue as an example of science waging war against humanity (not just other humans, the essence of humaneness itself). I feel race was a pertinent issue when the target was being chosen. What did you expect, that only high minded noble ideals decide which country another wages war against ? War is a shameful and disgusting act, why should anyone be surprised that base motivations are often behind it ?

I agree that race played a part in the war between Japan and the US. If the Japanese high command had not been racially contemptuous of the Americans they would never have ordered Yamamoto to attack Pearl harbor!

 

[loseyourname]

No, it's fairly obvious that there were other unspoken and far uglier motives at play in deciding that Japan was going to have the dubious honor of being the first nuke target.

You think it might possibly have had something to do with the fact that the US would have been invading the Japanese islands alone had they gone that route? They had a large international coalition assembled for d-day and look at the losses they took there. The losses from a Japanese invasion would have been many times worse. It would have taken four or five d-days even just to get to Japan through all of the other Pacific islands they controlled.

In hindsight, the Japanese were very close to being brought to their knees even before the atomic bombs were deployed.

What exactly makes you think that? It took them over a week after the second a-bomb was dropped to finally surrender. Even then, Hirohito had to personally intervene, as the generals were ready to honor the Japanese code of death before surrender.

This seems to have been the same sort of thinking that went into the current invasion of Iraq - even though Saddam was actually cooperating with UN inspections.

Saddam was cooperating? Are there any additional historical inaccuracies you'd like to throw out there just for the fun of it?

 

[Francis M]

I think we wandered a little off topic when we started specifically consentrating on AI, and now the A-bomb. THe first was brought up as an example of technology used as a weapon, to support the AI as a weapon idea and pose the question So the question is should a nation who values human rights above individual or state rights, developer a technology again which could totally destroy all human life?

It would be interesting to know your opinions.

I got caught up in the how AI could be developed/works portion of the thread myself.
But to answer Rader's question I'd say in my opinion scientific research shouldn't be avoided just because "somebody" might use it improperly. History is repleat with examples of a scientific discovery diverging both towards a benificial and a destructive technological path. Just because a new discovery is made doesn't necessarily mean it'll develope into the next WMD.

 

[Philocrat]

It was known in 1939 that German physicists were close to discover the secrets to maintain a nuclear chain reaction. The consequence of this was understood by a German physicist that previously defected to the USA. His cooperation with Einstein to send a letter to President Roosevelt changed the course of human history. If the Nazis had developed an H bomb before the USA, history books would have been written very differently. It turned out that the USA did not need the H bomb to defeat Germany in WW II, as the first detonation was in Hiroshima some two months later. As of today, developing that H bomb, dropping it and showing the world the terrible mass destruction that it could cause, has deterred all nations, of many distinct ideologies from detonating one again, from fear of the devastation it could cause. Or was it only because one nation had more H bombs?

We are faced with a similar threat to human annihilation even more menacing. AI technology will supercede in a matter of decades human intelligence. This technology put in the hands of whatever controls them, humans or themselves, sets back the clock to 1939 again.

So the question is should a nation who values human rights above individual or state rights, developer a technology again which could totally destroy all human life?

It would be interesting to know your opinions.

Science has never waged any war. It's only human beings that wage war. Scientists who voluntarily offer their scientific knowledge for war making are those you need to ask why they do it. Why do they get involved? Scientists that are forced into war making by the illitrate populations, well, some people would argue that they should play bravery and refuse to offer their knowledge for war mongering even at consequence of being killed, and there are those who would argue that they have the right not to take risk, therefore they should offer their knowledge under force.

If you ask people 'why do people fight wars?', they will pour out as many flimpsy reasons as one is prepared to wait and listen. Now the problem of war fighting has graduated to a point where the Army, espeically the western Armies, is one single institution in our world societies that has privilledged access to every new technologies, and in 99.99% of the times they gain access to a particular technology many years before it reaches other mainstream institutions of the same society. So, scientifically and technologically, the Army is always ahead of the rest of the society.

At the moment everyone the world over is naively thinking and believing that 'MAN IS HIS OWN WORST ENEMY'. I had a debate elsewhere on this forum about this, when someone actually claimed that this is really the case. Wrong! As I have argued elsewhere, MAN'S WORST ENENEMY IS THE UNKNOWN. Hence, the reasons why all the armies in the world need to be retrained and be wholly re-focused on using all the available science and technologies to INTELLECTUALLY AND MATERIALLY FIGHT MAN'S GREATEST ENEMY.......> THE UNKNOWN.

For it is fundamentally stupid for us to be fighing and murdering each other at the naive human level, while beneath the surface of things Nature is concucting and brewing mayhems and catastrophies of amagedonic scale.

 

[GeD]

Although I would agree that the FEAR of the unknown is a major ailment of the human race, your "call to war" against the unknown is flawed. There's a reason it's called the unknown - you can't specifically be prepared for it. You can only adapt to the whatever happens.

The important thing right now, is for people to stop destroying themselves in useless conflicts (although I don't mean to say that all conflicts are useless, just some), and to adapt to the unknown future.

 

[Problem+Solve=Reason]

If the Nazis had developed an H bomb before the USA, history books would have been written very differently.

I doubt books would be published at all if that where to have happened...