151–160 of 237 posts
>the glamour of war is gone
>Peace is indeed in sight if we are wise.
Times have changed. The horrors of war are forgotten or far away.
War is entertainment and many people have their favorite team.
Why should you be wise when warmongering serves your career?
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Did not know: William James was a member of the American Anti-Imperialist League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Anti-Imperialist_Leag...
Interesting thoughts but I feel it is the wrong level of analysis. Maybe we will reach some sci-fi utopia but personally I see war as a kind of law of nature. Think about a petri dish and how bacteria grow on it until they saturate the entire surface area and then the resources run out, unless half of the bacteria destroy the other half, and then they can survive longer. War is the result of humans fighting over the…
Fascinating article...written not that long after it looked like men or anybody else could never live with war again. But, those fretting about the necessity of war need not have worried, as subsequent events proved. War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more, but instead we've had endless proxy wars. Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine....
> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more That might change as more nations acquire nuclear weapons. Or maybe the pathway to world peace is to give every country nukes.
The thing is without force your stuff gets taken. We haven't got a good way around this. Our current peace is heavily based on nuclear weapons and the implied threat of force. Don't like the status quo? Use force to try to change it. Do like the status quo? Use force to try to keep it that way. We don't have a stable equiliubrium where no force exists in the system. Many in this thread effectively say "You can do wha…
Why doesn't Texas wage war on Oklahoma?
It’s funny how most of the discussions below have as a basis that people will always behave rationally. As if the threat of total destruction will always stop a particular cause of action. Putting the fate on mankind in this basic premise is the flaw behind the entire building of such bombs in the first place. Nothing short of idiocy.
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> and land get taken. It's always land. This is because land is scarce. You can keep things that aren't scarce without force. > Is there any convincing argument for getting out of this equilibrium? The total destruction of artificial scarcity?
Why would you think scarcity is artificial? Have you tried growing your own food lately? Do you have an army of robots who are doing it for you?
Interesting thoughts but I feel it is the wrong level of analysis. Maybe we will reach some sci-fi utopia but personally I see war as a kind of law of nature. Think about a petri dish and how bacteria grow on it until they saturate the entire surface area and then the resources run out, unless half of the bacteria destroy the other half, and then they can survive longer. War is the result of humans fighting over the…
This has a lot of pathways, tech efficiency, slower population growth, more resource acquisition (asteroid mining etc). It's definitely possible in the large scope, but I suspect there will be periods of spiking demand that still cause lots of short term conflicts.
Famines and mass migration are very likely with climate change going the way it is. Over the course of 100 years I suspect the resource problem will alleviate but until then there will be a lot of conflict.
The only real long term trick is creating larger and larger gulfs between the resource demand and availability, buffers that can withstand the smaller scale changes. But, unfortunately, our current dominant systems of power view buffers like that as either weakness or opportunity that are antithetical to progress.
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How exactly would we eliminate the scarcity of land?
Artificial scarcity, the proposal is for the elimination of the ability of owning classes to restrict supply of a given good through various means. That said, >100 years in the future it could be possible to make more land with rotating habitats in space, which would functionally eliminate land scarcity.
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All it takes is one madman to get near the button and gain enough power that his button-press is honored. It almost seems inevitable given a long enough time frame.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Your comment made me notice that the motto was recently removed from the ZH Wikipedia page, so I just restored it - thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All it takes is one madman to get near the button and gain enough power that his button-press is honored. It almost seems inevitable given a long enough time frame.
Yeah… but if it hasn’t happened by now (after 70+ years), that tells you something .
70 years is a blip. Compare that to the 6 known close calls where all-out nuclear war was narrowly averted and we’re not looking great. (What is that about once a decade?)
I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll see a nuclear war in my lifetime. And if it gets out of hand billions of people will die.
I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world.