Maybe science isn’t the answer

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Maybe science isn’t the answer.

The sheer scale of deaths in World War I and World War II would not have been possible with the
technology and science of the mid-19th century. Several key advancements in technology,
industrialization, and warfare made the mass casualties of the World Wars unique in history.
If the battles had been fought using the technology and science of the mid-19th century,
the numbers would likely have been much lower for the following reasons:

Advancements Between 1860 and WWI/WWII:

1. Weapons Technology:
- Firearms: By the time of the World Wars, automatic weapons like machine guns, semi-automatic rifles,
and submachine guns had been developed, vastly increasing the rate of fire compared to
the single-shot rifles and muskets used 50 years earlier. In the mid-19th century, repeating rifles
were only starting to gain prominence, but they lacked the killing power of the weapons
in WWI and WWII.
- Artillery: The early 20th century saw the development of much more powerful and accurate
artillery. In contrast, 19th-century artillery was relatively limited in range, accuracy, and
explosive power. The heavy artillery barrages of WWI and WWII caused massive casualties,
especially in trench warfare and large-scale battles.
- Chemical Weapons: Chemical warfare, which was used extensively in WWI, did not exist as
a battlefield weapon 50 years earlier. The introduction of poison gases like chlorine, phosgene,
and mustard gas contributed to the large number of deaths and injuries in WWI.
- Tanks and Armored Vehicles: Tanks and mechanized warfare were introduced in WWI and
became widespread in WWII. Fifty years earlier, there were no armored vehicles, and cavalry
and infantry would have been more vulnerable to conventional defenses.

2. Aviation:
- In the mid-19th century, aviation did not exist. By WWI, planes were used for reconnaissance,
bombing, and dogfighting. By WWII, strategic bombing campaigns by aircraft played a major role
in the destruction of cities and infrastructure, resulting in massive civilian casualties. Bombing
raids like those on Dresden, London, Tokyo, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki would have been impossible
50 years earlier.

3. Industrialization and Mass Production:
- Mass Production of Weapons: The industrial revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
allowed for the mass production of weapons, ammunition, and military supplies. In the mid-19th
century, arms production was far slower and less efficient. The ability to rapidly produce millions
of rifles, artillery shells, and other war materiel enabled the prolonged, large-scale conflicts of the
World Wars.
- Railways and Logistics: By the time of WWI, railroads and motor vehicles enabled the rapid
movement of troops and supplies over long distances. This allowed armies to sustain large
offensives and move massive amounts of resources to the front lines. In the 1860s, although
railroads existed, they were less developed and not as efficiently integrated into military logistics.
- Factories and Labor Mobilization: Both World Wars saw the total mobilization of economies,
with factories converted to produce war materiel on a vast scale. In the mid-19th century,
economies were not as capable of sustaining such all-encompassing war efforts.

4. Medical Advances:
- Triage and Surgery: While medical knowledge improved dramatically by WWI, the mid-19th century
had fewer effective treatments for battlefield injuries, diseases, and infections. This likely would
have increased deaths from wounds, but overall, the casualties from the wars were so high
primarily due to the lethality of 20th-century weapons and not from lack of medical care.

5. Naval Warfare:
- Battleships and Submarines: By the time of WWI, battleships were vastly more powerful than
their mid-19th century counterparts, with greater range and firepower. Submarines, especially
German U-boats in both world wars, became a significant factor in sinking ships, including
civilian vessels. Naval combat in the mid-19th century, by comparison, was primarily fought
by surface ships that lacked the same level of destructive power.
- Aircraft Carriers: By WWII, aircraft carriers had become a dominant force in naval battles.
Fifty years earlier, naval combat relied on line-of-sight engagements between ships, and
there was no equivalent to the aerial bombardments that carriers enabled in WWII.

6. Nuclear Weapons (WWII):
- The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were possible due to advancements in nuclear
physics. In the mid-19th century, the understanding of atomic energy was nonexistent. Without
nuclear weapons, the rapid and devastating end to WWII in the Pacific theater would not have
occurred.

Comparing Casualties:

1. WWI Casualties: Much of the devastation of WWI was due to new technologies like machine guns,
heavy artillery, and chemical weapons, which were capable of killing soldiers in vast numbers.
Trench warfare, enabled by these technologies, led to long periods of stalemate where both sides
inflicted massive casualties on each other.

2. WWII Casualties: The mass civilian casualties in WWII were largely due to the widespread aerial
bombing of cities, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombings. In the mid-19th century, large-scale
civilian targeting would have been much more difficult with the available technology.

3. 19th Century Wars: Major 19th-century conflicts like the American Civil War (1861-1865) and
the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, but these wars
were fought with less destructive weapons and tactics. The overall scale and lethality of battles
were much lower than in the World Wars.

Conclusion:
If World War I and World War II had been fought with the technology and science of 50 years earlier,
it is unlikely that the death tolls would have been anywhere near as high. The rapid advances in
metallurgy, industrialization, weapons technology, aviation, and nuclear science in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries were key factors in the unprecedented scale of destruction and loss of
life during the World Wars. Without these advancements, battles would have been less lethal,
and the logistics of sustaining prolonged global conflicts would have been much more difficult.

a) Thanx for telling us what we all already know about recent military history.

b)Your long winded post is pure bs mixed with bad reasoning.

c) You never state what your point is.

Prior to 1900 more soldiers died in war between battles of infectious diseases than died in battle fighting enemy soldiers. That was true of America's bloodiest war...the Civil War. Of the 360 thousand Union troops who died only 140 thousand died in combat...the rest were killed by microbes. The first world war was the first American war in which about the same number of men were killed by microbes as by men. The second world war 290 thousand died in combat and only 110 thousand died of diseases. Of the 55 K who died in Vietnam...ten thousand were killed in "vehicle accidents", a couple thousand died of malaria, and the rest were killed by enemy soldiers(directly or not by punji sticks). Science saves lives and takes lives in war. But in low tech times humans still found ways to kill huge numbers of other humans.

Improved weapons does not actually make warfare as such more bloody. Your just as dead when you're hacked to pieces by a Roman soldier face to face- as you are by an artillery shell fired 20 miles away in the 20th century. More soldiers and civilians died relative to the smaller population sizes of nations in ancient, Medieaval, and early modern times, than died in 20th century wars. Wars were accompanied by famine and pestilence which reduced civilian populations. The Thirty Years War of the 1600s made a longer lasting dent in Europe's population size than did both world wars combined. Same with the conquests of Genghis Khan. More Chinese died in the Taiping Rebellion of the 19th century than died in Europe in the First World War and about the same as in the second world war. Neither side in that Chinese civil war had advanced weaponry. And even the European armies sent in help crush the rebellion only had 19th century weapons.

One could argue that the first world war caused the spread of the Spanish Flu epidemic (because of the massive movement of troops around the globe)...the most lethal epidemic since the Black Death of the middle ages...pushing the first world war up (even beyond the second world war) in lethality. But even that has nothing to do with science being applied to weapons.

Atomic bombs are a potntial threat to the species of course.

Who said that science was "the answer" to the question of world peace?

And if it isnt then what is? Religion? Religion is certainly doing wonders keeping the peace in the Middle East as we speak!

I think it was Alan Watts who said something like "technology in the hands of people who don't realise that they are one and the same is destructive." And most of us are maniacs who don't realise that.

I'd say science is a powerful tool that can be used to do good or harm. If a hateful person gets the tool, they'll do harm with it. A loving person may do good with it.

I've thought for a long time that the objectivity of the scientific method is some kind of a guard against bigotry and judgementalism, but not a perfect guard. It's a shame it's not perfect, because without bigotry and judgementalism, without jumping to conclusions when the evidence is weak, I think there'd be more peace in the world.

I'm not sure that there is any way to get world peace, apart from killing everybody. Then it would be very peaceful.

What exactly is your point Fenn? I re-read your post 2 x and I can't decipher it.

Well we also already f****d up the climate so now science may be the only thing that will save us. If they can find ways to survive the climate catastrophe we have contributed to.

Fenn,

Your post reads like it was 'written' by ChatGPT or some other AI -- Long, rambling, full of facts, but no summary conclusion.

Please re-write it yourself and get to the point.

Many Thanks,

Fnord, the Metasyntactic Variable

Without science, it is likely fewer people would have died in WWII, because they'd have died of smallpox or malnutrition instead.

I haven't read the opening post in the thread. I find it hard to read long texts on a screen, especially in a foreign language like english. Anyway, he's my 2 cents. Hopefully, it's somewhat relevant to the subject. I read a theory that the problem with science and the advancement of technology is that autistic people is the driving force behind most technological innovations while neurotypical people rule society. If left on their own neurotypical people would have a society on a lower technological level that they probably would be able to handle better. That theory makes a lot of sense to me.

Last edited by BillyTree on 05 Oct 2024, 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think Fenn's point is that science isn't the answer to getting world peace. I think he's correct, but I don't know of anybody who thinks it is, so it's something of a straw man argument.

I may be wasting my time saying this, but I don't see the point of being rude to him about it, and some of the posts here look pretty rude to me.

It's ironic how many people were the victims of bullying, recognize that it was wrong when they were being bullied but never really think about when they're the ones doing the bullying.

Note that I'm not claiming to be immune to this phenomenon, only that it's a very common behaviour.

I think that what you meant was..."without science more people would have died of disease and fewer would have died of deliberate use of weapons in WWII, the way folks DID die in the Thirty Years War of the 1600s, but the sum total of deaths woulda been about the same huge amount."

Who is being "rude" to him so far? His post was vague and dishonest and deserves the mild criticism he has gotten.

I hate to say it, for what biological life is I don't think there are any answers - or more aptly I'd go back to Thomas Sowell's 'There are no solutions only tradeoffs'.

We're a Darwinian species and we're here to covertly wreck each other over genes while gaslighting our prey. No matter which problem you fix you're stepping on someone else's grift or how they rent-seek their meals and it will only be a matter of time before they 'fix' your 'fix'. Any given technology we'll use it the way we'd use it - ie. someone will use it for good and in short order they'll be made largely irrelevant by the vigor by which people use that technology for evil.

The safest bet as a human being is to regard yourself as a simple animal with hypertrophied social processing that'll suck you dry if you use it as society recommends and, knowing that, do as well as you can financially in the least social manner you can afford.

I feel like I'm getting the point where I actually wouldn't have a problem with our extinction because the alternative is to go on forever like this, a bit like Paul Atreides grand panoramic visions of horror in Dune where he figured out that the only way people tend to bond is by smashing some outgroup in the name of a great leader and that war is all we are and that he had no say over whether they'd have jihads in his name if he liberated Arrakis. Its obviously a fictional story (ie. spice, voluntary working prohibition of computing and ranged weapons) but I think he got the human condition right - ie. there's violent and grabby people, and then there's people who don't matter because nature can't see them.

Someone who can speak at length and depth about human political and social game theory along with x-risk technology (ie. nuclear fission and fusion, synthetic biology, AI, etc.) is Daniel Schmachtenberger. I believe he's trying his level best, in good faith, to figure out how we solve for things like multipolar traps and prisoners dilemmas, or at least he was a few years ago - I haven't heard him speak of it in that exact manner lately so I don't know that he's still as hopeful about that endeavor.

Yes I see.
Science increases likelihood of surviving disease/famine
War increases likelihood of getting deleted.
I agree with Schmachtenberger that globally we operate using social/behavioural game theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_game_theory

interactive decision-making, where the outcome for each participant or "player" depends on the actions of all. If you are a player in such a game, when choosing your course of action or "strategy" you must take into account the choices of others. All countries/nations/States abide by a "social game" created by players with resources who engage in action that is shaped by goals, rules, and treaties, that involves types of government, economies, technology, weapons, power that leads to game outcomes where each player is jostling for the most favourable position.

So Sowell is correct, playing the game (we are all participants) involves compromise and trade-offs.

I don't think that's meant in the human-to-human or group-to-group collaborative sense - it means that we can have things maybe a little better or worse than we have right now depending on which trade offs we choose but we can't make our situation much better because almost every problem you could think to try to solve with manual intervention will just create a different imbalance, different exploits for defectors to create survival / race conditions with their competitors which cause any competitors who want to stay in business to follow up on the same exploit, and in and of itself the patch will maybe only work at best a few decades before people figure out how to completely violate the spirit of that patch without violating the letter in such a way that they could be sued. To avoid that dynamic of any interventions erasing their own value or making things worse you really need to have those interventions be extremely low-level and general (to where they qualitatively change the whole map rather than just pinching a specific section).

The only things I could really see making the world reliably better:
- Relatively limitless energy
- Relatively limitless food and water.

Obviously I'm sure those by themselves could also find ways to go off the rails and cause problems but considering how many wars start over energy, food, and water we're better off having those bases covered.