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I wouldn’t design weapons for the US government today, but if we were facing another Hitler and another WWII-era Germany, along with Japan? Remember that we wou

I wouldn’t design weapons for the US government today, but if we were facing another Hitler and another WWII-era Germany, along with Japan? Remember that we wouldn’t have the benefit of hindsight and know that Hitler would shoot himself in the foot with the Russian front and wasting resources on his insane genocide. The Manhattan project might be one of the most prominent exceptions to the sweeping generalization you’re making. It’s also unhelpful and unwise to frame people you don’t like or understand as sociopaths, or crazy.

cam_l 8y ago
I think it is both helpful and wise with the benefit of hindsight to understand the banality of mass murder. It was not just the Germans who were doing it. Sociopathy describes very well (outwardly at least, it is a cultural term not a psychological term) the necessities of lack of empathy, and use of cruelty for personal gain, required for such pursuits. I never said crazy. I do not say such a thing lightly, i don't say it merely because i don't like them (although seriously, how could you like someone responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children?) nor do i say it because i do not understand them. I say this because i do understand. What i don't know is if they were never faced with the visceral effects of their life's work. Or if they were, and they simply don't care. What i do know is mostly they never publicly denounce it or try to atone for their bastardry.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  It might be helpful to study the history of the Manhattan project then, as well as its aftermath for those involved. You’d find your monsters (Edward Teller), the man who despite believing in the necessity and inevitability of it all, took his own life (Oppenheimer), as well as those who initiated it, and regretted it only with the value of hindsight (Einstein). You’d learn about the range of justifications, reasons, and personalities involved instead of painting them as monsters. Most of all it can help to contextualize these actions in the history of those who did similar things, and those who refused. If your choices are not “murder children” or “have a lovely glass of dry sherry,” but rather “murder children or “have your children murdered” it can make the choice more difficult, and less likely to attract sociopaths.
  - cam_l 8y ago
    Oh, thanks, had momentarily forgotten Oppenheimer(!?) ..that is about as strong an act of atonement one could make. I have actually read a lot about it (though it may not seem that way), along with the justifications and reasons etc. I believe people have a tendency to act in their day to day without ever confronting their own complicit cruelty. Division of labour and all. The difficult choice would have been to face the reality and opt out in that situation, as Rotblat did. The truth of the matter though was more of "murder children" or "someday the possibility of somehow your children getting murdered and also have a glass of dry sherry". I also never said they were monsters, that mischaracterises everything i said about the banality of it. What i said was i find it easy to believe the kind of person capable of working on cluster bombs or toy land mines would not have an issue with killing children. Whatever fucked up justification they used to live with the rest of their work would function just fine to also include future children. Despite all the years between Vietnam and Laos and Afghanistan and now, mines are still being designed made and planted. Yes. They definitely know now. Also, despite the facts that you mentioned, despite the hindsight of doubt in the necessity of the dropping of the bombs, a lot of people still defend it to the hilt. Still need for it to have been justifiable beyond any evidence to the contrary.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      As to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I take the view that the former was justified, and the latter was probably not. There is every reason to believe that Japan was preparing to fight on the home islands the way they had everywhere else; to the hilt, with little quarter given. Hiroshima while horrendous, was not terribly different from the firebombings of cities like Dresden and Tokyo. There’s no question that in the absence of an atomic bomb, conventional weapons would still have been deployed, and I suspect far more widely and with death tolls near or in excess of seven digit figures. So Hiroshima made sense. Then we really didn’t give them enough time to process the enormity of what had happened and surrender. They might not have, in which case Nagasaki was an option, but there are enough questions as to their full understanding of the events in Hiroshima that Nagasaki was premature, and possibly unnecessary. At the end of the day the world has been subjected to the second global conflict started by Germany’s desire to conquer Europe in a handful of decades. The appetite for a long slog to inevitable victory over a mountain of allied and Japanese corpses wasn’t there, and I don’t blame them,
cf498 8y ago
Since the Hitler period came up, there are great parallels to the topic of land mines for that time period. During Harris bombardment of the civilian population they did not just use regular and incendiary bombs, but also delay-action bombs which exploded hours or days after the impact with the goal to hit rescue workers who dug out the dead or wounded. Like with most aerial bombs at the time, there where quite a few who didnt detonate. Its one thing to dispose of a regular bomb, but the time delayed ones are mostly just stuck. They detonated since then once some unlucky bloke moved or just touched them. Just in 2012 for example such a bomb killed 3 bomb disposal experts. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-kills-G-ttingen-experts-attempt-defuse-it.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-ki... With them getting older and older, they get more likely to detonate without even any interaction as the trigger guard rots through. The situation of some south eastern Asian countries with unexploded ordnance and actual land mines is a better example though. Using a weapon like this will continue to indiscriminately kill people for well over a century. edit: To be a bit more positive, there is also people doing the opposite, like Aki Ra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  Yes, land mines are horrible, the incalculable environmental damage and subsequent human (and other) suffering of any war can’t be overstated. War however, at least wars of the “necessary” type are the kind of the thing that don’t allow for those considerations. It is a very strong argument, not for trying to change how war is fought (minimally effective), but to accept that war is truly an atrocity to be avoided at nearly all costs. Instead we spent the years after WWII trying to make war on anything vaguely “red” and after Vietnam, just sought to make a constant stream of wars and armed conflicts more palatable to the public. The problem is the sheer amount of war, constant war, completely unjustified war. Vietnam is a great example (credit to darkpuma for knowing their stuff) of just such a waste, which makes the lengthy fallout all the more unforgivable. WWII by contrast, a subject I didn’t raise incidentally and so had no Godwin moment (I responded to a post explicitly mentioning the Manhattan project), was nothing chosen by anyone other than the Axis. Developing and deploying nuclear weapons existed in the context of a fight for survival, against powers that systematically murdered millions of non-combatants. Japan, putting aside Pearl Harbor, was monstrous in China, Korea, and the Philippines. They dropped plague fleas on Manchuria, slaughtered a small tortured prisoners, and Germany... well, we all know about that. There was no reason to believe that victory over them was certain, or even likely until the war had rages for years. There was every reason to believe that life under the Nazis would be hell, and fatal for swathes of humanity. The Japanese were not particular better, and China and Korea still bear the scars. All of which is to say, I objected to mixing up people who designed mines for Vietnam, with people fighting WWII on the front, or in the lab.

cam_l 8y ago

I think it is both helpful and wise with the benefit of hindsight to understand the banality of mass murder. It was not just the Germans who were doing it. Sociopathy describes very well (outwardly at least, it is a cultural term not a psychological term) the necessities of lack of empathy, and use of cruelty for personal gain, required for such pursuits. I never said crazy. I do not say such a thing lightly, i don't say it merely because i don't like them (although seriously, how could you like someone responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children?) nor do i say it because i do not understand them. I say this because i do understand. What i don't know is if they were never faced with the visceral effects of their life's work. Or if they were, and they simply don't care. What i do know is mostly they never publicly denounce it or try to atone for their bastardry.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
It might be helpful to study the history of the Manhattan project then, as well as its aftermath for those involved. You’d find your monsters (Edward Teller), the man who despite believing in the necessity and inevitability of it all, took his own life (Oppenheimer), as well as those who initiated it, and regretted it only with the value of hindsight (Einstein). You’d learn about the range of justifications, reasons, and personalities involved instead of painting them as monsters. Most of all it can help to contextualize these actions in the history of those who did similar things, and those who refused. If your choices are not “murder children” or “have a lovely glass of dry sherry,” but rather “murder children or “have your children murdered” it can make the choice more difficult, and less likely to attract sociopaths.
- cam_l 8y ago
  Oh, thanks, had momentarily forgotten Oppenheimer(!?) ..that is about as strong an act of atonement one could make. I have actually read a lot about it (though it may not seem that way), along with the justifications and reasons etc. I believe people have a tendency to act in their day to day without ever confronting their own complicit cruelty. Division of labour and all. The difficult choice would have been to face the reality and opt out in that situation, as Rotblat did. The truth of the matter though was more of "murder children" or "someday the possibility of somehow your children getting murdered and also have a glass of dry sherry". I also never said they were monsters, that mischaracterises everything i said about the banality of it. What i said was i find it easy to believe the kind of person capable of working on cluster bombs or toy land mines would not have an issue with killing children. Whatever fucked up justification they used to live with the rest of their work would function just fine to also include future children. Despite all the years between Vietnam and Laos and Afghanistan and now, mines are still being designed made and planted. Yes. They definitely know now. Also, despite the facts that you mentioned, despite the hindsight of doubt in the necessity of the dropping of the bombs, a lot of people still defend it to the hilt. Still need for it to have been justifiable beyond any evidence to the contrary.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    As to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I take the view that the former was justified, and the latter was probably not. There is every reason to believe that Japan was preparing to fight on the home islands the way they had everywhere else; to the hilt, with little quarter given. Hiroshima while horrendous, was not terribly different from the firebombings of cities like Dresden and Tokyo. There’s no question that in the absence of an atomic bomb, conventional weapons would still have been deployed, and I suspect far more widely and with death tolls near or in excess of seven digit figures. So Hiroshima made sense. Then we really didn’t give them enough time to process the enormity of what had happened and surrender. They might not have, in which case Nagasaki was an option, but there are enough questions as to their full understanding of the events in Hiroshima that Nagasaki was premature, and possibly unnecessary. At the end of the day the world has been subjected to the second global conflict started by Germany’s desire to conquer Europe in a handful of decades. The appetite for a long slog to inevitable victory over a mountain of allied and Japanese corpses wasn’t there, and I don’t blame them,

cf498 8y ago

Since the Hitler period came up, there are great parallels to the topic of land mines for that time period. During Harris bombardment of the civilian population they did not just use regular and incendiary bombs, but also delay-action bombs which exploded hours or days after the impact with the goal to hit rescue workers who dug out the dead or wounded. Like with most aerial bombs at the time, there where quite a few who didnt detonate. Its one thing to dispose of a regular bomb, but the time delayed ones are mostly just stuck. They detonated since then once some unlucky bloke moved or just touched them. Just in 2012 for example such a bomb killed 3 bomb disposal experts. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-kills-G-ttingen-experts-attempt-defuse-it.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-ki... With them getting older and older, they get more likely to detonate without even any interaction as the trigger guard rots through. The situation of some south eastern Asian countries with unexploded ordnance and actual land mines is a better example though. Using a weapon like this will continue to indiscriminately kill people for well over a century. edit: To be a bit more positive, there is also people doing the opposite, like Aki Ra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
Yes, land mines are horrible, the incalculable environmental damage and subsequent human (and other) suffering of any war can’t be overstated. War however, at least wars of the “necessary” type are the kind of the thing that don’t allow for those considerations. It is a very strong argument, not for trying to change how war is fought (minimally effective), but to accept that war is truly an atrocity to be avoided at nearly all costs. Instead we spent the years after WWII trying to make war on anything vaguely “red” and after Vietnam, just sought to make a constant stream of wars and armed conflicts more palatable to the public. The problem is the sheer amount of war, constant war, completely unjustified war. Vietnam is a great example (credit to darkpuma for knowing their stuff) of just such a waste, which makes the lengthy fallout all the more unforgivable. WWII by contrast, a subject I didn’t raise incidentally and so had no Godwin moment (I responded to a post explicitly mentioning the Manhattan project), was nothing chosen by anyone other than the Axis. Developing and deploying nuclear weapons existed in the context of a fight for survival, against powers that systematically murdered millions of non-combatants. Japan, putting aside Pearl Harbor, was monstrous in China, Korea, and the Philippines. They dropped plague fleas on Manchuria, slaughtered a small tortured prisoners, and Germany... well, we all know about that. There was no reason to believe that victory over them was certain, or even likely until the war had rages for years. There was every reason to believe that life under the Nazis would be hell, and fatal for swathes of humanity. The Japanese were not particular better, and China and Korea still bear the scars. All of which is to say, I objected to mixing up people who designed mines for Vietnam, with people fighting WWII on the front, or in the lab.