/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11607938
Black btfo.

>>11607938
It booted out Bill Gates and his vaccines. So conceivably yes, if they cease to brain damage and cripple their children they could become a superpower quite shortly. The rest of us will of course continue to live in miserable apathy, the wings of our minds clipped, not unlike Brave New World.

>>11608012
Are you fucking retarted or just fucking with me

>>11608039
100% serious.

>>11607938
No. But India is industrializing very quickly and could be quite powerful. Though it is still very much a developing country.

>>11607938
>Scientifically speaking

What is the objective methodological formula that determines if a nation is a superpower or not?

>>11608044
To elaborate here, I'll quote Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1970 book "Between Two Ages". The logic applies beyond just the US and USSR.

Page 55:
"The "new" nationalism has many elements of the old national ism, especially in some of the new nations. There nationalism is still a radical, changing force creatively mobilizing community feelings but also prompting ethnic exclusiveness and conflicts. Yet it is generally true, as the author of a suggestive paper notes, that "the vision and objectives of society [have] changed. Today a new concept of man and his world is challenging the concepts of the Renaissance which have guided man's behavior for the past five hundred years." The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: "International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." But as the nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty, the psychological importance of the national community is rising, and the attempt to establish an equilibrium between the imperatives of the new internationalism and the need for a more intimate national community is the source of frictions and conflicts.

The achievement of that equilibrium is being made more difficult by the scientific and technological innovations in weaponry. It is ironic to recall that in 1878 Friedrich Engels, commenting on the Franco-Prussian War, proclaimed that "weapons used have reached such a stage of perfection that further progress which would have any revolutionizing influence is no longer possible." Not only have new weapons been developed but some of the basic concepts of geography and strategy have been fundamentally altered; space and weather control have replaced Suez or Gibraltar as key elements of strategy.

>>11607938
India has achieved it's goal of becoming a superpooer.

>>11608095
In addition to improved rocketry, multi-missiles, and more powerful and more accurate bombs, future developments may well include automated or manned space warships, deep-sea installations, chemical and biological weapons, death rays, and still other forms of warfare---even the weather may be tampered with. * These new weapons could either encourage expectations of one-sided, relatively "inexpensive" victory; permit proxy contests that will be decisive in their strategic political outcome but will be fought by only a few human beings (as in the Battle of Britain) or even by robots in outer space;46 or simply create such mutual instability that the breakdown of peace will become inevitable, in spite of man's rational recognition of the futility of war.

"In addition, it may be possible — and tempting — to exploit for strategic-political purposes the fruits of research on the brain and on human behavior. Gordon J. F. MacDonald, a geophysicist specializing in problems of warfare, has written that accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes "could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth. ... In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period. ... No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades."

Such technology will be available primarily, and to begin with exclusively, to the most advanced countries. But it is likely that in the coming decades some states in the Third World will have taken major steps toward acquiring-or will have acquired highly destructive weaponry. Even if they are not capable of using it against the major powers without bringing about

>>11608098
their own extinction, they may be able and tempted to use it in "underworld" wars among themselves. The question then arises whether such wars would be interpreted by the major powers as posing a direct threat to the fabric of peace, and whether a joint response by them would be effectively mounted and imposed. The absence of accepted global institutions could temporarily be overcome by ad hoc arrangements and agreements designed to meet specific threats, but it is conceivable that in some cases there will not be sufficient unanimity to permit joint reactions. The mutual annihilation of some lesser states thus remains at least a possibility."

* As one specialist noted, "By the year 2018, technology will make available to the leaders of the major nations a variety of techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised. One nation may attack a competitor covertly by bacteriological means, thoroughly weakening the population ( though with a minimum of fatalities) before taking over with its own overt armed forces. Alternatively, techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm, thereby weakening a nation's capacity and forcing it to accept the demands of the competitor" ( Gordon J. F. MacDonald, "Space," in Toward the Year 2018, p. 34).

* This has led one concerned scholar to comment, "Whether it is used to kill, hurt, nauseate, paralyze, cause hallucination, or to terrify military personnel and civilians, the systematic use of biological and chemical warfare will require the resolution of major moral and ethical problems" ( Donald N. Michael, "Some Speculations on the Social Impact of Technology," mimeographed text of address to the Columbia University Seminar on Technology and Social Change, p. 6).

>>11608096

>>11608012

> "Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible." — Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1953)

> "Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton." — Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1953)

> "There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods." – Aldous Huxley (1962)

>>11608105
Appreciated.

>>11608065
Toilets per capita + nukes per capita

Bump because.

So whoever's turn it is has a winning endgame here right?

>>11607938
Keep them locked away
Reduce them to strays
Clean their cuts and scrapes

Mercy we abstain
Hope you’re entertained
Snow covers the stain

Foray forever

Taught them with solace
They know a soft caress
To lower your defense

Hide all that you could
Done for the greater good
It’s later understood

Foray forever