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"Right now Mankind's main priorities are in inventing weapons and finding most ingenious ways to kill each other." This comment is absurd. There are, what, ma
by carleverett 14y ago
"Right now Mankind's main priorities are in inventing weapons and finding most ingenious ways to kill each other."
This comment is absurd. There are, what, maybe 100,000 people in the entire world right now actively working on creating new weapons. Certainly less than 1/1000 of the population. This has hardly been a priority of mankind since the atom bomb - far more people are directly involved with preventing climate change. Most people are pretty forward thinking.
As far as preparing for a meteor/comet collision with Earth, we would definitely need to see an imminent threat before we really started making progress. If we got a first-hand look at a significant collision with Mars and were able to document just how catastrophic it is to the planet, I definitely think more attention would be paid to preparing for a similar situation on Earth.
- firefoxman1 14y agoExactly. I wouldn't go so far as to say "Most people are pretty forward thinking" but I'm pretty sure curing diseases and global warming are higher up on mankind's priorities list. And obsessing over the latest iPhone or clothing trend are even higher on the list.
- jlgreco 14y agoTotal percentage of manpower is only one way of measuring effort.
- carleverett 14y agoTrue, but can you show me any fair measurement of effort that would support weapons innovation being the world's main priority right now?
- jlgreco 14y agoI don't have any data to point to, but I would be interested to see a breakdown of how many graduates of different fields go into defense. Among my peers from college, a fairly broad spectrum of engineers, that number seems to be around 50%. I expect that is rather elevated due to particulars of that region, but I wonder what else can compare? In other words, not "people working in weapons : the world" but rather "STEM workers in defense : STEM workers qualified to work in defense." Where are we allocating the brains of society?
- madaxe 14y agoWhere do you think your tax dollars go, silly rabbit?
- eru 14y agoYou can look it up in most countries.