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Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

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Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#151

Post by T2_t2 »

dschuetz wrote: post #66

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a sol…

> Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat

That is simply untrue. Not even close to to true. The world has grown from ~1 billion to ~7.5 billion, and we have reduced - in raw numbers - those in extreme poverty. A large part of that is down to Haber.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#152

Post by hutzlibu »

loorinm wrote: post #145
loorinm wrote: post #2

What an insane and fascinating read. Two things occured to me: I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. The other thing is : The “inherent harm of technology”. Every single advancement will 100% hurt som…

OP here. Wow thanks for all the replies and views on why war happens. I guess you could always explain any war by listing all the events that came righ before, but I don’t think that answers another question, which is this: Why is it “ok” for governments to hire huge groups of people to murder other people, when murder is not ok in other settings? This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?

"This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?"

No it is not. Legally it is only for members of the own society.

But in war this society acts as a group against another group. Legally totally different. (morally different story) But still complicated especially today with asymmetrical warfare. (france for example has no death penalty, but don't want their (IS) djihadists to come back and create legal problems (proving guilt is hard and putting them in jail creates also problems) ... so apparently it is easier for the French government to (secretly) order their special troops to make sure that not much of the french jihadists ended up as prisoners in syria or elsewhere and then demanded being brought back to french .. because killing in war is legal .. but since they have doubts on their own, it is of course not officially practiced)

Oh and in theory of course, nobody is starting a war anymore, since this is somewhat outlawed. Everyone is only "defending".

Which does make sense, also morally - so yeah I believe in general it is OK to have a group of people trained to kill in case bad killers invade. Having a army to defend. Simple isolationist?

But what if there are friends of yours under attack somewhere else in the planet? You go and help them, morally right, I believe.

But then things get complicated ... as "friends", people, cultures and states are not homogeneous things. So those friends of yours might be part of a legally justified dictatorship.

So you invade that dictatorship? And teach them democracy?

Well, that failed quite spectacular all the last times, but maybe that was also because of different reasons, as there were usually not so much "friends" who needed help, but rather a lot of hypocrisy to disguise plain old power politic where war is just a tool for politics in the bigger cultural struggle.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#153

Post by [deleted] »

groby_b wrote: post #75
loorinm wrote: post #2

What an insane and fascinating read. Two things occured to me: I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. The other thing is : The “inherent harm of technology”. Every single advancement will 100% hurt som…

Well, good thing is we're all getting an object lesson right now. Watch North Korea and the U.S. interact. That is how war happens. Leaders who for various reasons taunt and provoke each other, implementing what to either populace seems a reasonable policy. (NK would like to be able to defend against the US, so they get nukes. The US would like to not be nuked, so they agitate strongly against them). Alas, these poli…

[deleted]

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#154

Post by dschuetz »

JackFr wrote: post #105
dschuetz wrote: post #66

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a sol…

> Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. That's simply not true. Global levels of hunger are at their lowest point in human history.

Yes, that's right, hence 'barely enough'. They do not hunger, yet they don't live as lavishly as the richest 10% of the world either. It's just/barely enough to satisfy hunger, but does it solve the problem? No.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#155

Post by dschuetz »

workthrowaway27 wrote: post #81
dschuetz wrote: post #66

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a sol…

I think you underestimate your capacity to commit a bad deed if you're in a situation to do so.

But you got it figured out to share with everyone?

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#156

Post by __bjoernd »

dschuetz wrote: post #66

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a sol…

I think from his perspective he was just trying his best to help his country win the war. As did many of the US scientists involved in the Manhattan project. For both cases one can argue that their deeds brought great suffering to people. And in both cases you can make the point that a faster way to end a war might have saved thousands of others from the same fate.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#157

Post by sampo »

> The amount of crops one can grow is directly tied to how much nitrogen can be provided.

This is only half true. You also needed to breed new crop varieties that were able to put all that abundance of nitrogen to good use. Older crops varieties, adapted to grow well in the less nitrogen-rich soils, would not simply double their output even when given double nitrogen.

So there is another man, plant breeder Norman Borlaug, who is equally responsible for feeding most of our 8 billion people today.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-sav...

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#158

Post by dschuetz »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #141
dschuetz wrote: post #66

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a sol…

As of 2016 ~10% of the world's population is undernourished. https://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-fa... If you believe that "most of today's populus have barely enough to eat" there is a good chance you have a much more dismal view of the world than actually exists. I'd recommend checking out http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018

Yes, I do believe that in raw numbers most people have just enough food and water available so that they don't hunger. So the lowest 10% go even below that and face starvation now and then. I doubt that they enjoy the quality of the food they have as much as you enjoy yours.

Thanks for the link to worldhunger.org though. It's nice to see that per definition we solved the hunger and poverty problem! I had no idea! Yet I wonder what people think of the accessibility and variety of food. They pretty much don't give a flying fart about raw numbers and definitions we set up for arguments.

The problem how to generate enough for everybody shifted to how to provide that overwhelming amount of food to those who have the least? Clearly, discussing about how many actually starve and how many barely not hunger misses the whole point. Haber didn't solve the problem, he generated a ton of different other problems.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#159

Post by jessaustin »

logfromblammo wrote: post #127
jessaustin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the pointers. Haha "Hanlon's Fallacy" I love it! I'll definitely be repeating that one. I agree that the first step is taking stock of all the lies. There are some obvious untruths that most Americans physically can't even consider, let alone disagree with, because they've been lied to from childhood. My current favorite is, "USA military is powerful and effective". Historians to come will puzzle over how…

The US military is powerful and effective, just not in the way you might think. First, discard any notions you may have regarding "winning" wars or "mission accomplished". The military hasn't been at war in a de jure legal sense since 1945. But it has been involved nearly continuously in de facto wars ever since then. Is the world really such a dangerous place? Or is there another hypothesis that might explain it? He…

...you might think.

In future I would suggest a less personal idiom such as, "...one might think". My HN posting history makes obvious that I completely agree with everything you've written here.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#160

Post by cfmcdonald »

felipemnoa wrote: post #144
zouhair wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did it though. Assuming that anyone else could have done it or would have done is a bit presumptuous. Look at the history of sound recording[0] for example. You can see that the technology that made it possible existed for years and years before anyone attempted such a feat. Now imagine if the first one who decided to record audio never done it would you think that we will be where we are now because "For sure som…

>>Now imagine if the first one who decided to record audio never done it would you think that we will be where we are now because "For sure someone would have done it" argument? I highly doubt that. Reminds me of Hero's engine [1]. Had a single person decided to build a working industrial steam engine back then, then it is possible that the industrial revolution could've happened two thousand years ago. I believe the…

Considering how fragmented the pre-modern historical record is and how little attention is paid to technology in most of the sources we do have, it's quite possible that someone did build a Newcomen style engine 2000 years ago, it could even have happened many times.

However, it was probably only worth using one once labor costs reached a certain threshold. e.g. if you were an ancient roman landlord with abundant slave labor, why would you go to the trouble and expense of building steam engines to remove water from your mines rather than just having some workers work the pumps?

Moreover a Newcomen engine was so inefficient that it was really only usable when sited right at a coal mine, and in ancient times there were plenty of surface coal sites that didn't require deep mines (and thus pumps).

It's hard to imagine someone leaping straight to a Watt engine, especially given the metallurgy required.

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