Re:MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-base...
by darawk on Friday April 06, 2018 @12:11PM
(#16774360)
> If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our world is not gradually becoming more cruel and inhuman?
Because not everyone makes the same naive choice to bury their head in the sand and say "moral people don't build weapons". There is a long tradition of great scientists making the only moral choice and choosing to develop weapons for the powers they trusted the most. Those people made the extremely hard, but ultimately correct choice to build weapons of war for imperfect powers. They did so because they knew that if they didn't, someone else would. And that someone else might be building them for an even less ethical power.
You're skipping the important part of the argument here, and going directly from the premise to your desired outcome without arguing why that will happen.
If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our world is not gradually becoming more cruel and inhuman? I mean, there certainly are cruel and inhuman aspects to it, but for the most part, we live in a world that's vastly more prosperous and sophisticated than any other epoch before that, and also less violent. You included the link to Our World In Data yourself to prove that point.
Obviously, there are other aspects that contribute to the success of a society besides its military engagement. This can arguably be seen in how the influence of the US is slowly diminishing even though they have the largest military expenses by a wide margin.