3 ms·

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

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"...

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"...