/sci/ - Science & Math

Due to the force of natural selection entities only need to survive to continue on through time and so do not necessarily want to obtain power, however gaining power (in the long term) is beneficial to survival, so eventually even the most noble technologically advanced civilizations of highly intelligent sapient beings will decide to continually war with their neighbours and attempt to gain control over all the matter and energy in the universe.

>>3067215

That sort of rules out the possibility that the benefits of cooperation with be bigger than the benefits of and majorly increase the risks associated with attempting to gain power in a sufficently advanced society though.

>>3067215

/thread

OUR UNIVERSE IS AN UNRESOLVABLE SHIT HOLE AND YOU CANNOT WIN

FUCK EVERYTHING

science damn it, xkcd is terrible these days

>Will a more technologically advanced civilization be less inclined to acts of war

Nope.

War is just an extension of policy. It's not down to technology, technology just makes war fighting more efficient.

Rome and Britain are two great examples of this. They were, at their peaks, the leaders in technological advance. They were also masters of war, and practiced it frequently.

>>3067232

That's not an original XKCD strip. It's from the "We make XKCD slightly worse" thread on their forums.

>>3067239
haha oh ok.
I'll try to find the original

>>3067241
ok the original is probably worse to be honest

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/modern_history.png

>>3067241

It's based on two different strips actually, the FPS mod and the current history reenactment guy.

>>3067247
Just went on xkcd for the first time in a while.
this shit is awful.

http://xkcd.com/

he should limit himself to one strip a week, or preferably zero.

sage for offtopic

>>3067197

A sufficiently technologically advanced civilization, emphasis on sufficiently, will be less inclined towards acts of war because they will be able to sustain their own needs internally without interfering with external politics. An even more advanced civilization, where a person can effectively live without reliance on any sort of civil structure beyond the self-organizing and regulating structures that form in any human culture, will have no need for open warfare and natural impediments to it anyway.

By and large, people don't want war, but war is inevitably about trade and resources more often than ideology. When these things are removed from the equation, the need for war ceases.

>>3067215
This.

Don't forget the aspect of it being "easier" if your technology is better. Just look at the USA in the post-cold war era. To us, warfare has been reduced to a video game. Sure, it's still very dangerous for infantry and other forces on the ground, but even they have body armor, night vision, boomerang (can find snipers automatically), and other nifty tech. Also remember that the survival rate for those wounded in combat is EXTREMELY high for technologically advanced nations. Of those classified as "severely wounded" in combat, only 1 in 10 die. Helicopter medevac, advanced trauma techniques, on-site medics, basic first aid training, and advanced logistics mean that an advanced nation faces fewer casualties.

More than that, advanced technology gives you the ability to make certain kinds of war with impunity. Airstrikes and cruise missile sorties are pretty "easy" ways to make war against less advanced nations. Let's also not forget that advanced (rich) economies can dump lots of money not only into weapons development and acquisition but also into training and education. Without exception, every member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff holds an advanced degree. These men and women are superbly educated in warfare and extremely well-trained. Advanced technology and economics also gives some nations an edge in simple matters like air-to-air combat and hand-to-hand fighting. If you can pay for fuel, simulators, training, research, etc. then your soldiers/pilots/tankers/gunners/whatever will be generally better at their job than their enemy counterparts. All of these advantages make war seem "easier" for advanced nations.

>>3067256
>When these things are removed from the equation

Scarcity will never be removed from the equation. For as long as life is present in the universe, there will be competition. Even if we had some kind of bizarre singularity scenario whereby organisms were effectively electronic, and each singular consciousness was contained within the minimum required computational unit of memory, that would still require resources to maintain, and eventually as those reproduce, they will spread to consume more resources, which are finite, and even if not finite, then an infinite amount of resources will eventually result in the random formation of a more powerful lifeform.

This is an endemic process to the universe. There is no hope. This notion of hierarchy and competition is as intrinsic to the universe as the laws of physics. It is unresolvable and hopeless.

In a sufficiently hi-tech world, every nation will have access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and all other weapons will have been nullified by defensive technologies. No one will go to war because of mutually assured destruction.

>>3067278

I'm not arguing for the removal of scarcity, I've actually argued against such a notion on this board. I'm arguing that war as humans know it is about resources on a large scale. When large-scale organizations, such as nations and corporations, leading wars is made unnecessary by advances in technology, most likely via self-sufficiency, and the benefits of cooperation far outweigh competition, war as we know it will become obsolete.

War might never disappear entirely, but it'll vanish as a notion for a very long time as technological advances reshape our society.

And by very long time, I mean essentially as much time as we have left in our universe.

Unless we figure out how to make another universe, of course, in which case, hey, new universe, problem solved, but I leave such speculation aside. At the very least, a few billion years of peace are pretty worthwhile, right?

>>3067197

As we have seen the most high tech nations have to deal with several things.

First, they have used up a good portion of their easily accessible natural resources during their rise through industrialization. Now that's not to say all of it, but more than say backwater third world land has used up.

Second, the more technology you have the more educated your people need to be. The more educated people are the more money they want in wages. As such a high tech nation working under capitalism (the only economic model which has ever worked) will move from production to post-modern information technology. We see this in America. America doesn't really make enough stuff to supply itself, it needs outside resources, whether that be natural or human, to function.

With these two things in mind, no super modern nation could provide for itself using only itself, it would have to go after other nation's goodies. In my opinion the more advanced a nation becomes, the more willing it is to shit on any unadvanced society for the things it has, because stomping on them and putting in a puppet government that will give you cheap things is easier for a super advanced nation to do than to pull those same things out of their own soil and cheaper than paying high wages and benefits for people to work in factories.

>>3067295
>essentially as much time as we have left in our universe

This is like saying that a global viral epidemic would be cured if it killed everybody. The universe will likely end because of this sudden growth in self-replicating intelligence as it consumes all known resources.

I imagine that this will happen exponentially just like bacterial growth.

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>>3067305
Yup. If North Korea has proven anything, it's that an entirely self-sufficient nation is impossible. Regardless of what territory you hold, there is SOMETHING you need to import.

No one will agree with this point since everyone who will respond is a warmonger; however I don't see how MAD allows for highly advanced races to constantly be at war (especially not with themselves)

>>3067318
Yeah, I tried that with
>>3067290
but got no response. It's pretty much the end of the argument, though.
In another 33 years, nukes will be 100 year old technology, about as advanced to the people of that day as cellophane is to us. It's ridiculous to think that we can keep the blueprints a secret from most of the nations on earth forever.
As my favorite Doctor said, if one only wishes to create a DETERRENCE, they need only bury a nuclear device within their own country. Absent the military and engineering challenges of delivery, there would be virtually no LIMIT to the size. The device could then be run by a large complex of COMPUTERS designed to blow it up, if anyone tries TO TURN IT OFF.
Of course, the whole point of a doomsday device is lost, IF YOU KEEP IT A SECRET!

if the aliens have their equivalent of neoconservatives or republican warhawks, then there is no reason for them NOT to be involved in several wars, most likely with other factions within their species.

>>3067329

Yes, other nations know how to make nuclear weapons, I would be surprised if every single nation on Earth didn't have at least one professor or government agency who understood how to go about making a nuclear bomb.

However, its not that easy, you need the resources, that is to say enrichable uranium, and you need the machinery to refine the uranium, that is what can be easily controlled. The big nations control the uranium, and the machinery needed to make the enriched uranium is very hard to make and making it rings every sort of alarm bell.

America knows Iran is making nukes because you just can't hide it. We won't allow all nations to get nukes, because we understand that notion that as soon as everyone has them, they stop being effective.

>>3067318
MAD keeps you from engaging in a "shooting war" but it still allows for intense arms races. Look at the cold war and all the technological goodies we got out of the immense military spending.

>>3067373
I would say the risks outweigh the "goodies", the number of nukes on earth could destroy the entire biosphere several times over. We get good tech by doing GOOD stuff too you know, like going to the moon or trying to make a better video game.

>>3067353
Your point is that nuclear weapons will only, ever be able to be made in this way, and that the good ol' US of A will be able to prevent every non-nuke country from making them FOREVER?

I doubt we could keep Nigeria from having a nuclear arsenal within 300 years.

And what if someone comes up with cold fusion...hmm...that would be bad, wouldn't it?

>>3067373
All any country has to do is bury enough nuclear weaponry to exterminate all life on earth within their own borders, with an automated system programmed to detonate the arsenal should anyone attempt invasion or deactivation.
If every country had such a device (well, some nigger would set it off accidentally, but) no country would ever go to war, again.

>>3067392
No, you dumb motherfucker, if a country had a setup like that, then some enemy could just roll one empty tank across the border and the whole country would automatically self-detonate.

>>3067278
>The universe is finite therefore scarcity is infinite

>>3067418
No, you shit-for-brains, waste of sperm, inbred cock-sucking hillbilly scum, detonation would mean the end of ALL LIFE ON EARTH.

Read, you stupid fuck! We're talking absolute, pie-in-the-sky, pure fantasy, as in A SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED CIVILIZATION. It could be 1,000,000,000 years in the future. You make me sick. Get the fuck off my /sci/ and go back to keeping dicks warm in your gaping asshole, you limp-wristed, ass-licking moron.

Because if you're going to go ad hominem, go all out.

>>3067353
>America knows Iran is making nukes because you just can't hide it.

America knows that Iran is trying to make nukes because in the 60s we shelved thorium reactors for the kind that make bombs.

>>3067443
America knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

>>3067441
Aww... u mad?
Somebody called your dumb idea "dumb?"
It's ok. (The idea is not ok, it's still really dumb.)

I hope you guys realize that a nuclear war isn't going to result in the extinction of humanity. The models for nuclear winter have been discredited. It'll set back civilization back a few hundred years and we might not be able to industrialize again, but we wouldn't go extinct.

>>3067471
It was a misunderstanding. The other guy read, "bury enough nuclear weaponry to exterminate all life on earth within their own borders" and thought it meant "bury enough nuclear weaponry to exterminate all life within their own borders."

Also, I said, "If you're going to go ad hominem, go all out." As in, "I'm not mad, but you're neither smart nor very good at insulting people."

>>3067472
A large enough buried arsenal could blow the entire planet into chunks of space debris.

It might take us another million years to bury that many nukes, but there's no time limit to the OP.

>>3067197
sounds like you think people generally go to war for shits and giggles.

>>3067513
The war on terror

The people at the top are laughing even if no one else is...

>>3067197

Only if you assume all of the world's conflicts are merely the result of misunderstandings. Sometimes, the more you know about something, the less sympathetic it becomes.

In the long run, the scenario you suggest seems plausible, but in the mean time, increased exposure will only serve to highlight the significant cultural, and attitude divides that still exist among humans.

This isn't all bad, since the sooner we admit that certain ideas about living are truly mutually exclusive, we can have an honest discussion about which one's we are unacceptable, and get on with forming a more stable global society.

tl;dr: Honest confrontation is better than pretending that because we all share bowel movements, we're all basically the same.

>>3067551

1.Keep trying to actively advance technology
2. Fail to actively advance consciousness
3. Post Apocalyptic Earth, lose all technology
4. Start Over
5. Rinse and repeat 1 through 3 until extinction or we get 2 right

>>3067593
Exactly

Anyone who thinks mere exposure to technology solves #2 hasn't read about cargo cults.

>>3067659
Cargo cults are the most irrelevent thing in the universe.

>>3067659
Cargo cults are the most irrelevant thing in the universe.

>>3067674
What are you, a Christfag?

It's a bit of human behavior, and an insight into the development of several modern, Western behaviors.

>>3067683
I agree--which shows how little they've benefited from modern technology to this day.

I don't consider them a threat whatsoever, but you should be able to infer more menacing examples of the same psychology.

>>3067686
If they didn't have a cargo cult they'd be worshipping a sun god, it doesn't change shit, in fact cargo cults are probably better than sun worship because at least it generates curiosity about technology.

>What are you, a Christfag?
lol wut.

>>3067197
If it's a human civilization then technology really doesn't have anything to do with aggression. You can give a population everything they could ever ask for, and there will still be people who want to control the actions of others.

If it's alien civilizations you're talking about, then who knows? We haven't even seen evidence of the existence of alien life yet, so how would you tell?

>>3067659
>dont know about cargo cults
>read wikipedia on cargo cults
>my face

>>3067659
>>3067683
>>3067686
>>3067700
Forgive my semantics, my vision is augmented. I think "pseudo-science" is a better word for cargo cult, maybe "confidence trick" when it is intentional. Cargo cult conjurs up images of polynesian tribes making "airfields" with little wooden towers at one end and radios made of dried mud to conjur cargo planes from the skies, I'm not saying modern people aren't capable of such ignorance, just that pseudo-science is a better description of the phenomena.

>>3067747
"Pseudo-science" is perfectly accurate. I was simply highlighting to fact that technological advancement, and cultural advancement are separate projects, and we can't take for granted that they will happen simultaneously.

It's interesting to note that even after those tribes learned the full circumstances of their religious history, they have maintained a commitment to the same mysticism to this day--now with cell phones in hand.

>Will a more technologically advanced civilization be less inclined to acts of war

PolScifag here. There is no correlation between technological progress and war/peace.
But there is the democratic peace theory that suggests that democracies do not fight one another and will only go to war with non-democracies. There is however argument over the validity of this hypothesis since democracy is a fairly new phenomenon.