[extropy-chat] Bluff and the Darwin award

[BillK]

On 5/16/06, The Avantguardian wrote:
<snip>
> Or pummeled by an asteroid we saw coming for 30 years
> because we wasted so much money defending against
> bogey-men like Iraqi WMD, the "war on terror", and
> grey-goo.
>

Please don't turn my response into a political for- against- Iraq war argument.
That is not the point.

But hasn't war always been a major driver of technological progress?
Going right back to the wheel and the war chariot.

In peacetime, humans fall back into comfortable bureaucratic
structures, lots of meetings, much discussion and arguments, pay
rises, conferences, etc. but precious little actual progress.

In wartime the economy funds industrialisation to expand weapons
research and production to support the war. Satellites and GPS were
military developments.

World War II produced: (plus many smaller inventions)
radar, electronics (which led to computers), jet aircraft, aircraft
carriers, rockets (ballistic missiles) and atomic research (the Bomb).

The Iraq war is driving:
remote-control aircraft, self-guided vehicles, language translation
technology, medical treatment advances, bionic limbs,  see-through
buildings radar, computer networking for command-and-control, database
technology and data mining (for the war against terrorism), fuel cell
tech (to remove dependency on batteries and oil), non-lethal weapons
(where terrorists mix with civilians), advanced detectors, sensors and
scanners, advanced materials for armour and monitoring, and probably
everything DARPA is working on.


So it may take a war effort to develop AI.
That seems to be happening already with DARPA's self guided vehicles.


BillK