[ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress

[Samantha Atkins]

BillK wrote:
> On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote:
>   
>> That's a good point, but I didn't say all the war funding diminished
>> medical and technological progress.  Still, these increased developments
>> cannot be vast enough to justify the deaths and the enormous
>> disproportion of the allocations.  I doubt this war will prove as
>> proportionally fruitful for progress as WWII.  We had much better
>> leadership then.
>>
>>     
> <snip>
>   
>> Does your general "Not true!" mean you think Bush a good leader for us?
>>  Does it mean you think war the best choice for achieving progress?
>>  Does it mean you think me seriously wrong or deceitful?  Or do you
>> perhaps think Bush impeachable for mixing politics and religion on the
>> stem cell issue?  -- Thomas
>>
>>     
>
>
> I don't do political discussion.  So Bush is irrelevant to my comments.
>
> And my comments are not intended to justify any war.
>
> Just the facts. Many people are so overpowered by the horror of war
> that they refuse to recognise that many technical advances come out of
> the pressure cooker of wartime.
>   
And many do not.  Also wars are notoriously disruptive economically.  We 
won't even get into the lives lost and all of those potentials gone.    
So why is this such an important point to you?   If it is going nowhere 
and is not balance with other factors and costs then I don't really see 
much point.

Driverless cars were being worked on quite separately from this war and 
I think your bit of googling can show you as much.  What Darpa projects 
include and what would be and in many cases was being done otherwise 
could be explored if this was an objective discussion.    I do not agree 
that new tech arrives quicker generally through war.   And we most 
certainly are not in a fight for survival.

- samantha

> WWII was remarkable in this respect.
>
> A bit of googling will bring out a list of stuff that the current war
> is producing. Some pretty unbelievable stuff is in there. Driverless
> cars, for dog's sake!
>
> See:  <http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/military.html>
>
> Darpa projects include robot vehicles, computer language translation,
> unmanned air
> vehicles for observation and combat, swarms of bot devices, laser
> weapons, remote surgery, many battlefield medical improvements, etc.
>
> Agreed, wars concentrate on weapons technology. But radar was weapons
> tech, so was jet planes, so was O&M for controlling factory
> production. When the war stops, all the tech gets reused for
> civilians.
>
> It doesn't justify the war or the many deaths. But new tech arrives
> quicker when a nation is perceived as being in a fight for survival.
>
>
> BillK
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