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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#221

Post by atomashpolskiy »

swarnie_ wrote: post #218
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

Maybe because silos are an important target for the attacking side? So you want to have many in order to reduce the risk of being left without arms in case your enemy attacks first?

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#222

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

simonh wrote: post #214
fabianhjr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Latin America though and have a 0.025 USD / year tuition on my current math undergrad education, public healthcare, and a more robust social security net overall.

Sure. I'm a capitalist and free marketeer, but support social security systems and even public health care. I think the US goes too far, particularly it's health care system is appalling, but I have to admit it's thin employment protections do make it a lot more flexible and responsive to economic conditions. Just look at how rapidly it recovered from the 2008 crisis compared to Europe, it was a whole year ahead of u…

Yes and we need to avoid the nirvana fallacy. I live in a country with public health care and every so ofter people are sent home to die from scheduled surgery because there aren't doctors or other staff available. My dad had 99% clogged heart arteries before he got treatment. My brother works in the US and prefer their system, but then he's got a good job - still a data point for the discussion.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#223

Post by simonh »

swarnie_ wrote: post #218
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

The best way to destroy an enemy nuclear weapon is by hitting it with one of your nuclear weapons. Add on top of that your other strategic targets and a reserve, and the fact that their calculation is the same as yours, and you can see where this is going.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#224

Post by lwhi »

swarnie_ wrote: post #218
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

The doctrine was M.A.D. .. or mutually assured distruction[1].

I believe the (arguably crazy) idea was that the weapons wouldn't ever be used. The fact that each nuclear superpower has a similar amount of weapons assured that the equalibrium would stop the worst from happening.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#225

Post by swarnie_ »

simonh wrote: post #223
swarnie_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

The best way to destroy an enemy nuclear weapon is by hitting it with one of your nuclear weapons. Add on top of that your other strategic targets and a reserve, and the fact that their calculation is the same as yours, and you can see where this is going.

With weapons distributed amongst all USSR holdings this implies the US was willing to nuke everything from Poland to north Vietnam.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#226

Post by Tuna-Fish »

swarnie_ wrote: post #218
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

For both sides, the most important job for the nukes was counter-force, that is, blowing up the enemy nukes. Both sides understood this, so they deployed their own nukes so sparsely that you generally need one to take out one, and since they still expected to lose a lot of them, they built spares.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#227

Post by hummusman »

simonh wrote: post #214
fabianhjr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Latin America though and have a 0.025 USD / year tuition on my current math undergrad education, public healthcare, and a more robust social security net overall.

Sure. I'm a capitalist and free marketeer, but support social security systems and even public health care. I think the US goes too far, particularly it's health care system is appalling, but I have to admit it's thin employment protections do make it a lot more flexible and responsive to economic conditions. Just look at how rapidly it recovered from the 2008 crisis compared to Europe, it was a whole year ahead of u…

Not sure this is particularly true, it took the US 6 years from 2008 to recover all the jobs lost in the recession [0]. I would assume the bulk of those were low-skilled, manufacturing roles, the ones ever more at risk of being rendered obsolete by automation.

[0] https://www.cbpp.org/great-recessions-jobs-deficit-much-deep...

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#228

Post by simonh »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #202
glenstein wrote: post #37

A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty,…

Would I rather prefer the society of 1995 or of 2020 ? That is a very simple question for me. I do not find it very close. If I your were in India which was a deep socialist state in 1980s and 1995 just when the seeds of 1992 reforms were sowed, it was a complete shithole compared to the India of 2020 even with COVID.

Likewise China, I first went in 2001 and it's a different country in terms of most people's every day lives. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty into comfortable livelihoods and I personally know some of them. There's still a long way to go, but it's incredible how far it's already come.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#229

Post by imtringued »

stavros_ wrote: post #188
jb_gericke wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the global poverty line has been on a steady decline over the last three decades ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty ). We have made untold advances in the medical sciences (hello MRNA vaccines), we are rapidly divorcing ourselves from our reliance on fossil fuels, and we are living in a time when there is an unprecedented level of awareness for basal human rights (well, primarily in the West a…

Back breaking labour, very long working hours, poor health care and for the most part, endentured servitude to those who own the land/mills/factories you toil away in? All of these things are more true now than they were in the average subsistence based society. Amazon warehouse workers have a worse deal than serfs, and a much much worse deal than hunter gatherers. Oh and this we are rapidly divorcing ourselves from…

>Isn't just wrong, it's laughable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

Conventional oil reserves are declining so this article merely proves that renewables are superior.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#230

Post by vagrantJin »

simonh wrote: post #214
fabianhjr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Latin America though and have a 0.025 USD / year tuition on my current math undergrad education, public healthcare, and a more robust social security net overall.

Sure. I'm a capitalist and free marketeer, but support social security systems and even public health care. I think the US goes too far, particularly it's health care system is appalling, but I have to admit it's thin employment protections do make it a lot more flexible and responsive to economic conditions. Just look at how rapidly it recovered from the 2008 crisis compared to Europe, it was a whole year ahead of u…

> Just look at how rapidly it recovered from the 2008 crisis compared to Europe

I'm not EU or US, but the US printed a heck of a lot of magic monopoly money. And yet the dollar remained as strong as it ever was. Yes, some smartie pants will no doubt explain this away as "quantitative easing" which is the magnum opus of magic monopoly money.

EU central bank doesn't seem to like that very much being so risk averse. So we can say the EU is keeping financial wizardry in check because if left to the US, no one would know what is going on.

The EU might just save us all.

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