Make War No More?
From the Christian Science Monitor:
After a 20th century that was perhaps mankind's most violent, all indicators point to a 21st century that will be as bad or worse. Civil wars and new ideological conflicts will multiply. The effectiveness of international forces for peace will wane. And the security of mankind will be the victim caught in the middle. Right?Wrong, says a report based on a three-year study by a group of international researchers. Contrary to widespread public perception, they find that the world is witnessing fewer wars -- and those wars that do occur are killing fewer people.
At CRN, we often warn about the dangers of a nanotech arms race and the potentially devastating nature of war fought with nano-built weapons. But does this new report offer reassurance?
The report finds that the total number of conflicts declined by 40 percent since the cold war ended. The average number of deaths per conflict has also declined dramatically, from 37,000 in 1950 to 600 in 2002. The study found 25 civil conflicts last year -- the lowest number since 1976.Why the vast improvement? The report credits an "explosion of efforts" in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The number of UN "preventive diplomacy" missions and government-based "contact groups" aimed at resolving conflicts has risen sharply in the last decade.
Other specialists note that the number of democracies in the world is growing. And democracies, recent history suggests, do not go to war against each other.
"Yes there are caveats, but generally the growing number of democracies in the world reduces the number of countries to fight," says Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston.
At the same time, he says that a strengthening sense of an "international community" is changing world thinking on when warfare is acceptable.
Perhaps wars will be less frequent in the coming years. But will they be less severe, in terms of human casualties? We worry that, instead, war could become more deadly rather than less.
As a "watchdog" organization, our role is to monitor developments, anticipate consequences, envision plausible future scenarios, and warn about worst-case outcomes. If we didn't, we would not be doing a responsible job.
But we sincerely hope that humankind can avoid the greatest dangers and enjoy the many benefits offered by advanced nanotechnology.
Mike Treder
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
One of the 'benefits' of advanced technologies like MM, AGI, and molecular biotechnology may be more humane warfare. What is the objective of warfare? Is it ti kill everyone on the other side? No. It is to exert control over the other side. Up to now, one of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is to kill lots of people. In the future with more intelligent weapons and more targeted strategies, combatants should be able to resolve their forceful conflicts without the need of anyone getting hurt. Regardless of who wins the coming advanced technology world war, we will all probably be safer and richer for it. Dystopian post apocalyptic futures are not very realistic with the economics of advanced technologies.
Posted by: Mike Deering | October 21, 2005 at 01:12 PM
Posted by: jbash | October 21, 2005 at 08:20 PM
this is old; democracy needs 'education' to thrive; of course, what kind of education? Pick wisely! What is the correct functional thought processes? Pick wisely!
As Jacob Bronowski would say, 'if we don't raise our kids on evolution, then there will be no future.' This is why you read Jacob Bronowski, because he is a great place to start; as he said a few times, "The Royal Society is the first scientific society, and it has outlasted Napolean, Hitler, and all other wrong thinking societies." In other words, a wrong thinking society is a disfunctional society.
War between states is just a sized up version of two or more people quarelling usually over nothing worth fighing over; why are they fighting? Because they have no idea about what's really good to think about; they don't even no what nice is; their idea of having fun is to tease and cuss each other out. As Jacob Bronowski would show you, humanity is not only the the technologically dependent species, the scientific method is the key to the human mind. The mind works by trying to understand the world scientifically; you can hear even anti-science haters 'generalizing', 'idealizing', and 'deducing.' Of course, if you do not know how to do those things accuraitelly, then like taking data on how far a rocket goes by adjusting certain variables while keeping other variables fixed, if those measurements are done hazardly, then your graph is way off; this is why people fight both one on one and why nations fight - because they made to many over and under generalizations.
It has taken so long for me to be able to say this because this place is nothing but a bunch of incrowders, and these incrowders have a very euclidean and reductionist, and not a dynamical and holistic view of things, but holistic views are where creativity is.
I could have said all this a long time ago, but crn has exerted thought control that doens't allow themselves to expand beyong their artificial boundaries. They are statics who want to take the dynamics out of humanity; they are the end view of humanity. Their social momentum is based on a transhumanist view of humanity where they convert everybody into static data points in a few decades after they've set up their world government where nobody is allowed to leave the surface of the earth; is this what they plan on doing with any extraterrestrial intelligences they might encounter in the future who surelly has their own mnt? Won't that be the ironic laugh and egg on their faces; imagine what those aliens will think of the human race then!
Posted by: flashgordon | October 22, 2005 at 09:06 AM
I guess I should say a little more explicitly that that democracy won't work unless you raise enough people to think correctly; and so, what could possibly be the righteous way of thinking? What is thinking?
Posted by: flashgordon | October 22, 2005 at 09:17 AM
Nobody is allowed to leave the surface of the earth without appropriate sensor surveillence to ensure they don't come back later and kick the crap out of the rest of us earthlings. Moravec's idea in "Robots: Mere Machines to Trascendant Minds" of humans uniting and returning to Earth to defend it against all dangers, is silly. We will eventually need FAI.
I like your constrast, Flash. True, too static and our potentials erode. But too much dynamism and will we cause our own extinction.
Posted by: Phillip Huggan | October 22, 2005 at 02:32 PM