May 28, 2016

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Counter argument : ww2 was completely irrelevant to all post war progresses, war against communism, which was a mortal threat to capitalism, was the key factor.

During the cold war, capitalism had to provide comfort and progress to people, or people would have turn communist. And so it did. Until it basically won in the 70s.

The idea that society needs war or competition incentive to do anything is the dumbest liberal mind fuck of today. It's completely wrong, but it goes with the ideology that dominates.

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Hitler still was crucial for the nazis to take power. His political wits was much higher than any other nazi. He did turn the nazi party from an irrelevant extremist group to a force that could seize power. He didn't do it alone. But pretending that nothing would change without him is like pretending Caesar or Napoléon weren't mandatory to their deeds.

Hitler definitely couldn't do what he did alone. But he was definitely a pivotal factor to make History what it was.

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You could reinvent computers while you are there

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It is, but that particular war certainly accelerated the advancement of computers and nuclear energy. Turing and his team were so motivated because what they did helped save lives. I'm a software engineer and what I do... helps mostly small and medium sized manufacturing companies be more efficient. Yeah I'm not gonna be pulling 20 hour days here.

Oppenheimer was Jewish. Hitler was exterminating Jews. I think you can see why he and many of the other people with Jewish backgrounds were so eager to work on the Manhattan project.

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This is the premise for the Red Alert series in Command and Conquer - Stalin becomes the aggressor when Hitler was wiped

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And Newton and Einstein had none of these motivations. Galileo neither.

You compare with your situation, but it has nothing to do with befote. Not because we're not at war, but because we live in a capitalist distopia. Because capitalism won the war.

All the discoveries you're talking about could be motivated by the thirst of knowledge or making the world a better place. But the only single motivation we have left today is making money for our overlords, that is the key change.

It is not that war fuels discoveries, it is that greed does not, and greed is the only allowed motivation in our society. The only one that will receive money anyway.

Take Internet as an example : it was funded because of war and fear, but those who made it only had hope and naivity to make it, which is why it is so insecure, and why so much is done since 20 years to lock and dominate it.

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All the discoveries you’re talking about could be motivated by the thirst of knowledge or making the world a better place. But the only single motivation we have left today is making money for our overlords, that is the key change.

Huh? Plenty of people still doing R&D for free (open source software folks for one; scientists without grants are also nearly working for free sometimes). Capitalism hasn't killed innovation, only biased it towards things that generate money, but there's still plenty of innovation just because they have a thirst for knowledge.

But say you're already working on something you find interesting. Now you're told that if you keep going at it, you could save millions of lives. Are you not going to put in 10x effort? I know I would. I reckon most people would.

You act like I said that war is the only motivation for research besides capitalism. I did not. I said it accelerates scientific advancement. The direness of the situation is what fuels people to go beyond their usual limits. A lot of people just work better under pressure. You can do things that are not in any way healthy for you long term if you're under enough pressure.

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We didn't deserve such

𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍

You're being downvoted, yet evidence is outer clear that a great many technology advancements have directly derived from conflict pressures. We'd get the same effect if it weren't for fucking small-government, low tax shit-for-brains, but we don't. When vast, collective resources are poured into a field, it generates a lot of waste but also a lot of progress. Progress isn't impossible without war, but historically we see far more advancement during times of war than during times of peace.

If we ever cure cancer, it'll be because we had a war and, during the development of some weapon, the huge concentration of resources resulted in discoveries that someone noticed - as a side effect - happened to cure cancer. It'll never happen without a war because there's no private sector motivation to cure cancer: there's too much money and industry invested in treating cancer.

You're essentially right.

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Cell phones will never come about because I went back in time and killed a mass murder.

-written from your cellphone

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Ahh, just like the old Reddit. Thanks!

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I'm pretty sure there's no evidence of war accelerating research beyond the effect of funding research more.

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We were almost done with the Harambe timeline. But some dumbasses in NY had to kidnap and kill an internet famous squirrel named P'Nut.....Now we're an openly fascist country.

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Hey! That's the combo to my luggage!

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Screw Harambe, I want to see the alternate timeline where Hannibal and Carthage won.

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War itself doesn't, pressure and motivation does. War causes pressure and motivation. Humans thrive under pressure. It puts you in hyperfocus mode, which makes you way faster at getting anything done.

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No. Humans don't thrive under pressure. This is merely a totalitarian idea.

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Do you know how many election there were in the year 2000? Gotta be more precise than that

JaggedRobotPubes

Strange use of "win" to describe a situation where everyone loses.

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Where'd totalitarianism come in now?

I like how you're downvoting each of my comments as if that makes your arguments more valid. I'll go ahead and do the same to you now.

Look, a relatively massive chunk of research is done by people who aren't neurotypicals. In particular, nearly every good software engineer has ADHD and so do a LOT of scientists, etc.

Without deadlines, nothing would ever get done because we'd all be working on 50 other projects instead of what needs to be done