7 ms·
That's got to be one of the greatest legacies in all human history. No politician or other empire-builder comes close.
by andrewflnr 9mo ago
That's got to be one of the greatest legacies in all human history. No politician or other empire-builder comes close.
- deadbabe 9mo agoGenghis Khan??
- iwontberude 9mo agoGreatest, not most fucked
- andrewflnr 9mo agoI thought it was clear from my statement about politicians and empire builders that I was talking about people who did good, useful things.
- adastra22 9mo agoNo? That’s not at all obvious.
- lmz 9mo agoGenghis Khan also not too bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica Whose peace are we now living under and what atrocities did they commit to establish it?
- deadbabe 9mo agoSometimes you have to do a lot of things that look very bad in order to do some greater good that overshadows all the bad you did.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoI think this is a rationalization. Humans are always tempted to look up to power, and what's more powerful than an empire? It goes unquestioned that we should respect the Roman empire, for instance, and you pretty often see an argument for the Mongolian empire. But these days, we know that violence is bad so we have to find other reasons to justify our feelings. So we talk about the "peace" they established after all the war. But is the cost really worth it? How many people not attacked by bandits do you need to justify an innocent murdered by raiding soldiers? Never mind that even the "peace" is often sustained through oppression. The Romans didn't invent crucifixion for Jesus, it's something they did. Never mind that the empire never lasts, and plants seeds of the next dozen wars as it falls, watered with yet more blood. Ask yourself: if you honestly intended to create peace, would a century or more (in the case of Rome) of bloody conquest actually be the optimal plan? I would say no. An actual plan for peace through strength looks more like NATO than Rome. Any good an empire builder does is accidental. Whatever they tell you or even themselves, they do it for glory and power, and their actions are optimized for that over any actual benefits. They were not nobler than the conquerors and colonizers were rightfully decry today.
- jfengel 9mo agoAnd it comes at a time when a disease we were working on eliminating, measles, has come back and the US is about to lose its measles-free status. It sounds as if his legacy is to be unique, a feat never to be accomplished again.
- quesera 9mo agoWe still have another chance for eradication in humans with Polio.
- 3eb7988a1663 9mo agoNot if the CIA has anything to say about it: CIA fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan[0] ...The program was ultimately unsuccessful in locating Osama bin Laden. It led to the arrest of a participating physician, Shakil Afridi, and was widely ridiculed as undermining public health.[2][3] The program is credited with increasing vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan[4][5][6][7] and a rise in violence against healthcare workers for being perceived as spies.[8] The rise in vaccine hesitancy following the program led to the re-emergence of polio in Pakistan, with Pakistan having by far the largest number of polio cases in the world by 2014.[8] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_...
- ccppurcell 9mo agoThis should be a war crime...
- s5300 9mo ago[dead]
- s0rce 9mo agoNorman Borlaug probably comes close. H. Trendley Dean was also impactful on a large scale, while its seemingly less important it helps a lot of people.
- davidgay 9mo agoI think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur wins this one, though.
- wesleywt 9mo agoPoliticians and empire-builders (Elon) is currently standing in the way of human progress and history.
- WalterBright 9mo agoSo creating cheap, reusable giant rockets is standing in the way of human progress? Being able to use neural links to restore sight to the blind is standing in the way?
- Mordisquitos 9mo agoI'm pretty sure that GP commenter was referring to the other stuff.
- WalterBright 9mo agoHe shouldn't leave people guessing what he was referring to.
- Mordisquitos 9mo agoMaybe not, but one can always converse curiously and ask them what they meant. It's nicer to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
- WalterBright 9mo agoMy replies ended in question marks.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoYou're really going to play the "just asking questions" card? You're smarter than this. Or should be.
- vkou 9mo agoIs there any way that people can work to re-introduce it into society? I know some folks are making a lot of progress with MMR.
- WalterBright 9mo agoFood produced by Fritz Haber's Haber-Bosch process (making fertilizer) supports about half of the world's population.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoHe has quite a bit of chemical warfare weighing down his record.
- adastra22 9mo agoHe killed millions. He fed billions.
- Y-bar 9mo agoEpstein was friendly with, and made more people smile, than he raped. Phil Spector produced music which meant a lot to a lot of people. Still a murderer. Harold Shipman Saved the lives of thousands, yet should always be labelled a mass murderer because he knowingly positioned hundreds.
- Metacelsus 9mo ago>Harold Shipman Saved the lives of thousands Probably not though, I don't think a typical GP saves thousands of lives
- Y-bar 9mo agoNot alone, but as a team I bet he did. Just as Fritz Haber did not personally save countless millions with his discovery, thousands of other people had to be involved there as well.
- adastra22 9mo agoBillions. The total carrying capacity of the Earth maxes out at 4bn people, even with maximally optimized agriculture and a vegetarian diet. The extra half of the Earth's population today owe their existence to Haber-Bosch. It really was a two-man team that discovered nitrogen fixation - the other being not Carl Bosch, but Robert Le Rossignol who assisted Haber in developing his bench-scale nitrogen fixing reactor. Carl Bosch led the team that scaled it up, and that was a large effort of hundreds of people.
- strivefortruth 9mo ago[flagged]
- bmicraft 9mo agoYou created an account to shill for a product?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- gucci-on-fleek 9mo agoI completely agree, but to be fair, there are some people who are politicians and helped to eradicate a disease [0] [1]. [0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/guinea-worm-disease-nearly-eradicated-jimmy-carter-says/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/guinea-worm-disease-nearly-erad... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_dracunculiasis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_dracunculiasis