[ExI] war and technological progress

[Lee Corbin]

Samantha writes

> I am very opposed to war, except to avert something worse.

I suppose that you are equally opposed to sickness, bankruptcy,
and crime?  Never heard you say so.  I have never understood
remarks like this, ever since I heard the immortal and supercilious
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

Well---looking again at the subject line, perhaps some people
do make good cases for technological advances from war,
and then (sigh) I guess someone else might calculate that the
wars actually prevent death and destruction because they
advance the singularity---surely the greatest "ends justifying
the means" argument of all time.

I think that economically the case is far from clear anyway.  To
give  one example, Europe's economy did not recover from World
War I until 1939, when---guess what?

> Now considering the sowing of resentment as being unextropic, how far 
> does that go?  Through envy, for instance, quite a bit of envy can 
> result.   Are all things that might occasion envy to be considered 
> unextropic?

Seems a stretch, but, yes envy has always been a severe problem
for human societies. One of the great strengths of the modern world
is that envy seems to be a less potent force.  Perhaps this is because
so many people can just go home, close their doors, and turn on
cable TV that is every bit as good as anyone else's. 

To be fair to religion, it too has played a pivotal role in reducing
envy, and the reason that envy reduction is so important is that
it severely retards economic progress.  What individual will strive
to get ahead if all it's really going to do is cause great resentment
from everyone else in the village?

Lee