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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

#61

Post by jgrowl »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #55
jgrowl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a chaos theory documentary recently that touched on this same thing. It compared the Three-body problem in physics with Franz Ferdinand getting shot. It's truly terrifying to think that a single man making the decision to pull a trigger would send the world to the brink of destruction. Granted the conditions had to be just right to have such a spiraling effect, but it just shows you that the system is so comple…

Historically that's been held up as an interesting pivotal moment. But I don't think it bears scrutiny. Germany was itching to go to war (as a natural outgrowth of their manifest destiny). That shot was an excuse. They would have found another - the world was in turmoil.

I think that's exactly the point though. That event was the catalyst, but it just as easily could have been any number of other things and it is unpredictable when it will boil over.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#62

Post by nickik »

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…

> I don’t really understand how and why war happens.

The error you are making is that you are thinking in terms of groups or states.

Think of these people as individuals. Quite simply, some individual people wanted war to fulfill their political/personal ambitions and think war can make them happen. They really don't care much about the people who die. Its quite as simple as that.

So the army marches because from their perspective a legit government said, because it is in the interest of the country, plus they get payed.

The defenders are just defending their home country because they don't want to see it destroyed.

WW1 is really that simple.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#63

Post by oblio »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #44
oblio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" I absolutely despise these statements, that are perpetuated to the present day. I'm from near the Balkans, from Romania. They depict the Balkan region as being some sort of backwards warmongers, which is not the case (yes, the region is not very developed but it's far from the poorest regions on this planet; also, yes, I know…

You say this but just as soon as the yoke of Tito (and the follow on) was removed from the region everyone starting killing each other again. Historically it has been a very violent region filled with ethnic strife. The great powers just exploted that to help control, but it's existence is on the population.

Ethnic strife? Just like the one between Denmark and Sweden for centuries? Or between France and Germany (kind providers of WW1 and WW2)?

In my eyes the main difference between those and the Balkans was that the former were mostly allowed to blow themselves up. Peace only came when they got tired of it. In the Balkans they got tired of it in 1999. They couldn't do it earlier because of... empires :)

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#64

Post by gnode »

shaki-dora wrote: post #21
anvandare wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is the essence of life. Limited resources means any growing system inevitably hits this (carrying) limit. Sooner or later, there are no more unclaimed resources available and you have to start competing with others for access to the resources. Mutation and evolution follows. The only alternative is to open up more resources (like the Haber–Bosch process did) but that's just postponing the inevitable. The amount o…

Population growth has seized in industrialized countries, and is plateauing in others. Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots, and any view of the world based on supposedly unchangeable evolutionary mechanisms is deeply flawed.

> Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots

I think we're very far from that. I would say our biological roots are responsible for our individualism, which often doesn't manifest as boundless reproduction, but rather as greed.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#65

Post by moh_maya »

arca_vorago wrote: post #45
js8 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don’t really understand how and why war happens." I think we don't really know. We know that greed plays a role, but it is not always the case of someone stronger attacking someone weaker. In Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, this is shortly discussed. IIRC he says that no reason put forward as an explanation for war can be conclusively proven from the available data (he mentions some war databases cont…

Some of us know but would be shunned if we told you. As a combat vet I have spent years since I got out trying to understand the big picture... and all I can tell you is the truth is nastier, and stranger, than fiction. I started out with just Iraq, but by the end of it had learned the GWOT was only the latest iteration of a long game that has been played over centuries.

What is your conclusion? Can you share? (At the risk of being shunned..,?)

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#66

Post by dschuetz »

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 solution. He was as tragic and as fanatic as everybody else in Europe at that time. Nazi Germany also have invented A LOT of world changing things. They solved a lot of problems. Yet, they managed to do such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades.

In my humble opinion, it's not difficult to judge a person who commits unspeakable crimes by his good or bad deeds. Good deeds are optional, always. Bad deeds are never an option, regardless of eventual outcomes or consequences.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#67

Post by jgrowl »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #60
jgrowl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a chaos theory documentary recently that touched on this same thing. It compared the Three-body problem in physics with Franz Ferdinand getting shot. It's truly terrifying to think that a single man making the decision to pull a trigger would send the world to the brink of destruction. Granted the conditions had to be just right to have such a spiraling effect, but it just shows you that the system is so comple…

The concept might frighten you, but as the chaos theory also predicts: you probably do know the direction where it is going, and the only thing you can't predict is the sole high-frequency feature of _the_ event that will cause the sudden change. So it has nothing to do with a "single event", but rather the "pre-conditions" which allow for that single event to evolve into such consequences. Don't blame an idiot who b…

I agree that a single event that causes the tipping point doesn't really matter and knowing the general direction things are going is helpful. This does not mean necessarily though that you'll have any ability to change it. Even if you had the power to change anything, it assumes you actually know the correct actions to take.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#68

Post by abainbridge »

nabla9 wrote: post #12
abainbridge wrote: post #9

> Fritz Haber set that future by on a different course by solving one of the greatest problems humanity ever faced: How to feed the world. He didn't solve it. He just delayed the problem for a while. Solving it requires stopping the exponential growth of the human population.

Human population is not growing exponentially anymore. Human population growth rate peaked 1962 at 2.1%, and it has been slowing down since. Even remaining population growth is a big problem, but using he word 'exponentially' to describe growth that is slowing down and is most likely sublinear is not accurate.

Yes, sorry, you are right. I still think we might have a nicer planet if Fritz had invented a (humane) way to prevent the exponential population growth we had in the 20th century, instead of a way to support it.

Re: Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

#70

Post by 0ld »

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…

> such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades

Well, in 50-100 years noone would really care about atrocities of ww2, just like almost noone cares about ww1 now, and literary noone about the atrocities of the wars before ww1.

But "the world-changing things" will stay, and the people who created these things will be remembered

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