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The moon landing was a product of the "space race" between US and URSS. The Internet has its roots on a network developed by the US department of defense. The

by Kurtz79 10y ago

The moon landing was a product of the "space race" between US and URSS. The Internet has its roots on a network developed by the US department of defense. The first nuclear reactors were a byproduct of the development of the atom bomb. The first computers were developed during WWII to perform cryptanalysis and solve military problems. I'm sure opposite examples can be found (mapping the human genome ?) but I doubt they would make a vast majority.

yolesaber 10y ago
Your point is interesting because all of those examples were indeed conceived of due to competition and conflict, yet most had their potential realized because of the need to cooperate between people. Computers were the blinking bean counters of corporations and governments before people started getting together and sharing their ideas and schematics about them (Even before the homebrew club - Stanford AI lab, Engelbart's work etc). The Internet was developed as a means for the military to communicate, sure, but it didn't become anything truly useful or empowering to humanity until we adopted commonly-held standards and protocols which were developed by a peaceful international research lab. Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized.
- drabiega 10y ago
  > Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized. I think it's just a product of the societies we've had. In all those cases it was the cooperative aspect that made the breakthrough. The competition was only needed to allocate the resources for it, though, given the nature of our society.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I think you nailed it. What competition did in this case is allowed enough resources to be allocated for those projects - there are a lot of worthy endeavours today that are mostly competition-free and end up resource-starved because of that. Competition adds urgency to an issue, which reprioritizes things.
    - aleh 10y ago
      Aren't these worthy endeavours resource-starved because most of resources are being spent on less worthy endeavours which involve competition?
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Yup.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  Of course, said achievements too big to be achieved fully by a single person or group. Far from me from not giving collaboration its due, but it is undeniable that the prime mover of many a human achievement was due to competition. The real challenge for constant progress, I think, is to make this competition "healthy", as in "not depending on a world war or the threat of nuclear annihilation"...
pjmorris 10y ago
And the atomic bomb itself was perhaps the ultimate competition, as many felt that a German atomic bomb would be an existential threat to the US [1]. I suspect much of our current technological age has its roots in the aftermath of the Manhattan project. Bombs led to use, led to other countries developing bombs, drove surveillance, drove space travel, drove the miniaturization of electronics in cycles that eventually gave us Hacker News on a smartphone [2]. [1] Richard Rhodes, 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' [2] Steve Blank, 'The Secret History of Silicon Valley', https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
- arethuza 10y ago
  "I suspect much of our current technological age has its roots in the aftermath of the Manhattan project." More like the aftermath of WW2 - radar, jet engines, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, computers, nuclear power...
  - pjmorris 10y ago
    Granted all of those things... but the nuclear energy aspect raised the stakes to city and national survival, boosting the budget of anything used to deliver (* missiles, jet ) or monitor ( electronics) nuclear energy.
    - arethuza 10y ago
      I guess we could agree that WW2 and the Cold War kept up the rate of war-based innovation started in WW1 (tanks, WMD...)
collyw 10y ago
They were also the results of lots of collaboration.
nickthemagicman 10y ago
The problem is not so much one of competition. The problem is where that competition is directed. Einstein, Salk, Tesla, Marconi, etc. These people were't competing with other humans. They were competing with and seeking some dominance over NATURE. Competing with other humans is a very tribalistic primitive behavior. Like gangs of chimps in a forest. We need some outer force to compete against instead of turning on each other.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  That's a rather romantic view of scientific progress but the actual history is not as nice. I think you're forgetting about the rivalry Edison had with Tesla, at the very least. In academia, fighting over who published/made a discovery first (and therefore gets the credit) are depressingly common. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_di..., which includes Einstein, Marconi, and Tesla). Today, most STEM researchers won't talk about their research results before publication for fear of getting scooped. Competition is very much alive and well (not to mention quite vicious) even in the pursuit of knowledge.
  - uremog 10y ago
    I have a researcher friend whose paper was rejected from publication because another paper had similar research. The thing is, that other paper cited a draft of his own paper (the one that was denied). Fights over "who came first" are definitely still alive and may not even involve the primary stakeholders.
tnecniv 10y ago
Orson Welles has a famous line about this in the Third Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuJQ_UO7OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuJQ_UO7OE
alanwatts 10y ago
Don't miss the forest for the trees. The desire to survive against a perceived threat may have been the impetus for all of these but immediately beyond that, all of these could not have been possible without the collaboration between scientists. If we could but discover a new motivation for technological innovation besides murder, such innovations could occur at a fraction of the time and cost and not run the risk of being used to suicide the entire species (i.e. nuclear weapons). Additionally, when taking into consideration the existential threat of climate change, the survival of the species may now depend on a status quo of mutual aid rather than mutual sabotage.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Humans are able to make temporary alliances to defeat a mutual threat. After the threat is over, they go back to infighting.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
You're missing something critical - in a post-scarcity cooperative society resources are distributed more evenly, which makes it much easier to create breakthroughs. In a militarised competitive culture there's a huge "tax" on innovation, because maintaining a competitive posture is so incredibly draining and expensive that it starves all but a handful of possible projects of oxygen. So instead of a tiny collection of stand-out military-sponsored projects you'd get a broad spectrum collection of equivalently powerful breakthroughs in many more areas.

by Kurtz79 10y ago

yolesaber 10y ago

Your point is interesting because all of those examples were indeed conceived of due to competition and conflict, yet most had their potential realized because of the need to cooperate between people. Computers were the blinking bean counters of corporations and governments before people started getting together and sharing their ideas and schematics about them (Even before the homebrew club - Stanford AI lab, Engelbart's work etc). The Internet was developed as a means for the military to communicate, sure, but it didn't become anything truly useful or empowering to humanity until we adopted commonly-held standards and protocols which were developed by a peaceful international research lab. Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized.

drabiega 10y ago
> Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized. I think it's just a product of the societies we've had. In all those cases it was the cooperative aspect that made the breakthrough. The competition was only needed to allocate the resources for it, though, given the nature of our society.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I think you nailed it. What competition did in this case is allowed enough resources to be allocated for those projects - there are a lot of worthy endeavours today that are mostly competition-free and end up resource-starved because of that. Competition adds urgency to an issue, which reprioritizes things.
  - aleh 10y ago
    Aren't these worthy endeavours resource-starved because most of resources are being spent on less worthy endeavours which involve competition?
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Yup.
Kurtz79 10y ago
Of course, said achievements too big to be achieved fully by a single person or group. Far from me from not giving collaboration its due, but it is undeniable that the prime mover of many a human achievement was due to competition. The real challenge for constant progress, I think, is to make this competition "healthy", as in "not depending on a world war or the threat of nuclear annihilation"...

pjmorris 10y ago

And the atomic bomb itself was perhaps the ultimate competition, as many felt that a German atomic bomb would be an existential threat to the US [1]. I suspect much of our current technological age has its roots in the aftermath of the Manhattan project. Bombs led to use, led to other countries developing bombs, drove surveillance, drove space travel, drove the miniaturization of electronics in cycles that eventually gave us Hacker News on a smartphone [2]. [1] Richard Rhodes, 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' [2] Steve Blank, 'The Secret History of Silicon Valley', https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

arethuza 10y ago
"I suspect much of our current technological age has its roots in the aftermath of the Manhattan project." More like the aftermath of WW2 - radar, jet engines, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, computers, nuclear power...
- pjmorris 10y ago
  Granted all of those things... but the nuclear energy aspect raised the stakes to city and national survival, boosting the budget of anything used to deliver (* missiles, jet ) or monitor ( electronics) nuclear energy.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I guess we could agree that WW2 and the Cold War kept up the rate of war-based innovation started in WW1 (tanks, WMD...)

collyw 10y ago

They were also the results of lots of collaboration.

nickthemagicman 10y ago

The problem is not so much one of competition. The problem is where that competition is directed. Einstein, Salk, Tesla, Marconi, etc. These people were't competing with other humans. They were competing with and seeking some dominance over NATURE. Competing with other humans is a very tribalistic primitive behavior. Like gangs of chimps in a forest. We need some outer force to compete against instead of turning on each other.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
That's a rather romantic view of scientific progress but the actual history is not as nice. I think you're forgetting about the rivalry Edison had with Tesla, at the very least. In academia, fighting over who published/made a discovery first (and therefore gets the credit) are depressingly common. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_di..., which includes Einstein, Marconi, and Tesla). Today, most STEM researchers won't talk about their research results before publication for fear of getting scooped. Competition is very much alive and well (not to mention quite vicious) even in the pursuit of knowledge.
- uremog 10y ago
  I have a researcher friend whose paper was rejected from publication because another paper had similar research. The thing is, that other paper cited a draft of his own paper (the one that was denied). Fights over "who came first" are definitely still alive and may not even involve the primary stakeholders.

tnecniv 10y ago

Orson Welles has a famous line about this in the Third Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuJQ_UO7OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuJQ_UO7OE

alanwatts 10y ago

Don't miss the forest for the trees. The desire to survive against a perceived threat may have been the impetus for all of these but immediately beyond that, all of these could not have been possible without the collaboration between scientists. If we could but discover a new motivation for technological innovation besides murder, such innovations could occur at a fraction of the time and cost and not run the risk of being used to suicide the entire species (i.e. nuclear weapons). Additionally, when taking into consideration the existential threat of climate change, the survival of the species may now depend on a status quo of mutual aid rather than mutual sabotage.

Grishnakh 10y ago
Humans are able to make temporary alliances to defeat a mutual threat. After the threat is over, they go back to infighting.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

You're missing something critical - in a post-scarcity cooperative society resources are distributed more evenly, which makes it much easier to create breakthroughs. In a militarised competitive culture there's a huge "tax" on innovation, because maintaining a competitive posture is so incredibly draining and expensive that it starves all but a handful of possible projects of oxygen. So instead of a tiny collection of stand-out military-sponsored projects you'd get a broad spectrum collection of equivalently powerful breakthroughs in many more areas.