Why all the fighting, and not technology.

[Zolar V]

There is a technological plight that is rarely seen, it lurks around every corner and in every technological niche.

It is government secrecy, one government hiding potential technologies from other governments. It is our clearance for physics for nuclear reactors, it is our classified projects on radar.

 

The technological plight is simply a government influenced curb in the funding and sharing of technological advances because we are bickering and fighting over one piece of land or that we are better than another. How far would our technology be if we would just work together? Instead of fighting over a piece of land here on earth, why not go fight over minirals on mars, why not start harvesting the methane from neptune? We are all one species, territorial and agressive, use that agressiveness to advance technology and shoot for the stars.

 

What would happen if we all just shared our information with one another? Dropped the secrecy and just worked together?

 

Imagine, if we were able to have supercomputers analyze the data recieved by telescopes all the time.

Like have a whole system of alaytic equipment attached to every observatory. We could take the data recieved by observatories and analyze every aspect of the light, X-ray, Infra-red, ultra-violet, and compute this with large databases of known compounds. Have the supercomputers match the data with spectroscopy of the databases. We would know a hell of a lot more about our solarsystem than we do now.

Edited July 23, 2010 by Zolar V

[Leader Bee]

I voted that our technology would be worse without war - Think about the stuff we have due to it; The internet, satellites, more effective medicine/operating procedures and related tech.

 

Without the need to develop a technology then there is no motivation to do so. If there was never a need to instantly transmit the fact that the USSR had launched 50 ICBMs at the USA then we would probably not have developed the internet as soon.

 

If we didnt have people shooting each other and blowing each other up I would imagine it would be more difficult to develop the kind of surgeries that can repair that kind of damage - of course you'll still have subjects from say, industrial accidents and a few other unlikely events but with war you have a steady stream of casualties with which to perfect your procedures.

 

Furthermore, like I mentioned in another thread of mine, though not directly linked to war is the experiments conducted on PoWs at Auschwitz: The majority of medical knowledge we have today on hypothermia comes from the experimentation of these subjects.

 

Without war then the V2 missile might never have been developed so where is your space program then?

Edited July 29, 2010 by Leader Bee

[ajb]

This is tragic, but true. I voted for the war option. Of course, just the threat of war can be enough. This seems to be largely true and well supported by evidence.

[Zolar V]

All of what you say is very true. War has been our primary motivation to increase and expand upon our technologies. All of our empirical data to support the data is based upon the threat or possiblity of war, However we have no data to support that we would not advance without a threat or possibility of war. Actually now that i think about it, we don't have much data to support anything but a few types of governmental systems, a few types of economies, and no data for no threat of war.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, for there to be no war humanity would have to be different. If funding and interest in science were to be the same either way, I think without war we would advance more. On the other hand, I don't think we can change human nature enough to eliminate war, so it is rather a moot question anyways.

[rigney]

I voted that our technology would be worse without war - Think about the stuff we have due to it; The internet, satellites, more effective medicine/operating procedures and related tech.

 

Without the need to develop a technology then there is no motivation to do so. If there was never a need to instantly transmit the fact that the USSR had launched 50 ICBMs at the USA then we would probably not have developed the internet as soon.

 

If we didnt have people shooting each other and blowing each other up I would imagine it would be more difficult to develop the kind of surgeries that can repair that kind of damage - of course you'll still have subjects from say, industrial accidents and a few other unlikely events but with war you have a steady stream of casualties with which to perfect your procedures.

 

Furthermore, like I mentioned in another thread of mine, though not directly linked to war is the experiments conducted on PoWs at Auschwitz: The majority of medical knowledge we have today on hypothermia comes from the experimentation of these subjects.

 

Without war then the V2 missile might never have been developed so where is your space program then?

 

 

Leader Bee, ain't no way you should be so ?, way before your time. Other than Mengeles experiments, your argument is one of the best for this age. Touche!