• Stephen Hawking: Space could prevent the disappearance of humanity by the colonisation of other plan
    65 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Fort83;47187030]While it does seem harsh, the reality is that some people will be more valuable than others when it comes to this. Like someone else stated, would you take someone who is a benefit to the survival of the species like a doctor or would you take a Mcdonalds manager to the colony? It sucks to think about, but if we were to colonize another planet, the best and brightest are the ones that need to go and would have to leave everyone else behind.[/QUOTE] Then the best and the brightest die off from a disease spread on the handles of public telephones because there was no one to clean them.
I wonder where we would be if the entire planet fought wars with space races, and not guns. 100% of that money towards space and medical science. obviously this is naive to actually believe that's currently possible, but if it was happening right now, imagine where we would have already been. the mar's by the 70's? a space colony by 2007? again, extremely not going to happen. But still.
[QUOTE=Code3Response;47186571]I dunno man. I'd like to see the numbers. History is quite violent[/QUOTE] Well, here's one piece of information. [img_thumb]http://edge.org/images/sp-Slide011.jpg[/img_thumb] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature[/url] One of the best books on the subject in my humble opinion. At the very least, we live in a world that is more peaceful than every pre-industrial society.
[QUOTE=antianan;47186508]I'm not saying it's bad to believe in god. But I bet there is a lot of people who would just say like "nah, what space threat? Just believe, pray and he will save us if necessary, and everything will be fine".[/QUOTE] Well yeah and there's also people who believe in the opposite and who are persuaded pouring all the funds in the world toward space will solve all issues in the world, both are fucking weird imho
No shit sherlock
[QUOTE=Impact1986;47186085]I got a plan: Legalize weed so people chill the fuck out with their aggressions, and then concentrate on rubbing our spaceport launch systems until we shoot our spermships onto other worlds to fertilize them with our next generation[/QUOTE] That sounds a lot like my two step plan to cure cancer
We could be the bad guys in some aliens space thriller movie. Space locust. [editline]22nd February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Deng;47187266]Well, here's one piece of information. [img_thumb]http://edge.org/images/sp-Slide011.jpg[/img_thumb] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature[/url] One of the best books on the subject in my humble opinion. At the very least, we live in a world that is more peaceful than every pre-industrial society.[/QUOTE] You posted this a few months ago and at the time it seemed fine. Recently though I think it neglects something pretty major. One of the major aspects of a state is specialization, specifically that some of the people will fight on behalf of the state while the rest do the farming/other stuff. So while a small tribe/nomads/herders/hunter gathers/semi or none sedentary people might have a higher percent of people dying from warfare it is only because the whole tribe is fighting. They also had a lower population though, so the total number of people fighting was less. When they did fight higher percent was at risk because they all fought. Then a state with its established armies or militias go to war the only people who are at high risk from dying in a war are those fighters so only a smaller percent are likely to die. The population is also higher so that smaller percent can still mean armies of 1000s dying. Once the fighting is over it would also mean more people being enslaved or the entire losing state being forced into vassalage, usually enforced with violence. The establishment of states also helped widen the gap between rich and poor, increase the poor treatment of slaves (in some nomadic cultures slaves were treated like family members and marrying one would make her an equal to you) and create more situations where violence would take place on a large scale (between entire states or confederations rather than between people, families or tribes)
[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;47190417]We could be the bad guys in some aliens space thriller movie. Space locust.[/QUOTE] "It came from Earth". Or "My favorite earthman". Or just "Alien" with some crazy ass, scary naked dude killing everyone around him with his huge jaws that have...teeth! I'm afraid to imagine how that mother alien thing would look like in this movie.
[QUOTE=doommarine23;47186294]Nature nor evolution are something that feel anything though. Evolution is just a self-regulating system based on simple logic, random mutations of genetics either hinder or help you live. We're not nature nor are we evolution, we're humanity and to justify ethically questionable actions or theories on the basis of them, is inane.[/QUOTE] And what do you base your ethical principles on, if not an aim to make society healthy, ie more likely to thrive? Feelings, mind you, are the result of psychological conditioning that is the result of evolution; tribes of empathy-driven humans who back each other up are more likely to survive than those with selfish persons in them, willing to betray anyone. Feelings are the result of some sort of evolutionary logic, like it or not, but our society evolves faster than evolution can, and a consequence is that sometimes logic is preferable to listening to your guts. Ethics are not some sort of absolute commandments which mustn't be violated in any circumstance. They depend on context, and to argue that they should supersede logical thinking defeats their very purpose; they are supposed to further civilization, not hinder it.
[QUOTE=Deng;47187266]Well, here's one piece of information. [img_thumb]http://edge.org/images/sp-Slide011.jpg[/img_thumb] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature[/url] One of the best books on the subject in my humble opinion. At the very least, we live in a world that is more peaceful than every pre-industrial society.[/QUOTE] But those rates are based on percentages, and well: [t]http://blog.dssresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/world_population_1050_to_2050.jpg[/t] It also is important to remember wars have become a lot more strategic, i.e. not people charging at each other (early war) or standing across from each other and firing (before the civil war.) I'll be honest I haven't really gone into the research of all this but I feel like this graph is falsified or at least very dishonest to use if based around percentages comparing to one of the largest growths in human history.
I rather live in the asteroid belt. And live in some massive station instead of a planet.
[QUOTE=Gamerman12;47191098]But those rates are based on percentages, and well: [t]http://blog.dssresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/world_population_1050_to_2050.jpg[/t] It also is important to remember wars have become a lot more strategic, i.e. not people charging at each other (early war) or standing across from each other and firing (before the civil war.) I'll be honest I haven't really gone into the research of all this but I feel like this graph is falsified or at least very dishonest to use if based around percentages comparing to one of the largest growths in human history.[/QUOTE] It's actually dishonest what you are doing. The actual rate per 100,000 (or something independent of absolute numbers) is the method used when looking at things like this over time. While New York city has a murder every few days, that's still out of a population of millions. New York is a very safe place, where you are unlikely to get murdered. Warfare nowadays also tends to be less brutal. Compare the wars in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria to the WW2, and then compare WW2 to the Thirty Years War. The damage caused by the thirty years war was so great that Germany did not fully recover for a century.
[QUOTE=Zatar963;47186257]That's more of a liberal internet forum response than it is just a Facepunch response.[/QUOTE] You're right. A Facepunch response would involve more guns and gasmasks.
[QUOTE=Deng;47191165]Warfare nowadays also tends to be less brutal. Compare the wars in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria to the WW2, and then compare WW2 to the Thirty Years War. The damage caused by the thirty years war was so great that Germany did not fully recover for a century.[/QUOTE] war tends to be less brutal because we haven't really had two major states in total war with each other since ww2, but i am pretty sure if there was, say, total war between nato states and russia it would be the most violent and deadly war this planet has known
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47191944]war tends to be less brutal because we haven't really had two major states in total war with each other since ww2, but i am pretty sure if there was, say, total war between nato states and russia it would be the most violent and deadly war this planet has known[/QUOTE] Then you're going to have to explain why we both have less wars, and why they aren't escalating. Look at ISIS, Ukraine, or Syria. I can assure you that if it was a hundred or even fifty years ago, those three places would have had the shit bombed out of them.
[QUOTE=Deng;47192048]Then you're going to have to explain why we both have less wars, and why they aren't escalating. Look at ISIS, Ukraine, or Syria. I can assure you that if it was a hundred or even fifty years ago, those three places would have had the shit bombed out of them.[/QUOTE] not necessarily. a hundred years ago the US was actually far less interventionist than it is now, the only reason we even went into WW1 is because we were being actively harmed by Germany and even then it was a bit of an uphill battle. if the shit happening with ISIS and Syria was going on 50 years ago i don't think we'd have done shit about it unless the soviet union was fucking around in it, and yeah if somehow the ukraine wasn't a part of the USSR and russia was doing what it is doing you'd bet your ass we'd get involved but only because of the soviet meddling. it isn't that we're less violent, its that war is a far heavier decision than it was up until WW1. ww1 pretty much made it so that any state fighting against a state of equal or greater power will be forced to fight it as a total war. we've had less wars and less escalation, yeah, but that is because war is a larger affair than it used to be as well as an increase in globalization (which is a major factor but don't forget that before WW1 people thought that the world was too globalized to even have a war). however, that does not mean that war can never happen again, and that does not mean it won't be that bad. really, if we were to have another [i]major[/i] war, like as i said between nato states and russia, it would end up with far more deaths than WW2, both from the increase in population and the increase in killing power.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47192243]not necessarily. a hundred years ago the US was actually far less interventionist than it is now[/QUOTE] As long as we ignore Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Colombia, etc. [quote]if the shit happening with ISIS and Syria was going on 50 years ago i don't think we'd have done shit about it unless the soviet union was fucking around in it, and yeah if somehow the ukraine wasn't a part of the USSR and russia was doing what it is doing you'd bet your ass we'd get involved but only because of the soviet meddling.[/quote] Well, do remember that about fifty years ago there was a massive war in Korea and then in Vietnam in which both American and Soviet forces fought. [quote]it isn't that we're less violent, its that war is a far heavier decision than it was up until WW1. ww1 pretty much made it so that any state fighting against a state of equal or greater power will be forced to fight it as a total war.[/quote] But total wars are hardly a new concept. Whole towns and cities were ransacked in the Middle Ages and millions slaughtered on a fairly industrial scale. The Mongol Empire conducted war with such efficiency they managed to burn most of Persia to the ground. These wars were much more destructive simply because more people as a proportion of the population were subject to violent deaths. [quote]we've had less wars and less escalation, yeah, but that is because war is a larger affair than it used to be as well as an increase in globalization (which is a major factor but don't forget that before WW1 people thought that the world was too globalized to even have a war). however, that does not mean that war can never happen again, and that does not mean it won't be that bad. really, if we were to have another [I]major[/I] war, like as i said between nato states and russia, it would end up with far more deaths than WW2, both from the increase in population and the increase in killing power.[/quote] I don't think another war on the scale of WW2 is likely to happen between NATO and Russia at all. Look at Africa or Latin America too. The wars there have almost effectively died down, and military coups aren't as commonplace as they were in say the 1960s. This time in history is very peaceful. If you could choose to live at another point in time, when? When is the most peaceful time?
[QUOTE=Deng;47192355]As long as we ignore Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Colombia, etc. [/quote] none of those were on the same scale as any interventions we have had in recent history, and some of them were less interventions and more securing territory [quote] Well, do remember that about fifty years ago there was a massive war in Korea and then in Vietnam in which both American and Soviet forces fought. [/quote] as i said, those were to combat the spread of communism and thus we took it as a danger to ourselves, if those countries had faced a civil war over something else i doubt we'd have done anything. take something like the zanzibar revolution, the US stayed completely uninvolved sans bringing some americans trapped inside. britian had plans to intervene, even when there were civilians getting massacred by the thousand. [quote] But total wars are hardly a new concept. Whole towns and cities were ransacked in the Middle Ages and millions slaughtered on a fairly industrial scale. The Mongol Empire conducted war with such efficiency they managed to burn most of Persia to the ground. These wars were much more destructive simply because more people as a proportion of the population were subject to violent deaths. [/quote] can't argue that total war hasn't been around since ancient times, but the idea of using your entire civilian population to help in the war effort only really came back in europe during the napoleonic wars, and deliberately attacking and killing civilian populations as a tactic on a state level scale in WW1, perfected in WW2. [quote] I don't think another war on the scale of WW2 is likely to happen between NATO and Russia at all. Look at Africa or Latin America too. The wars there have almost effectively died down, and military coups aren't as commonplace as they were in say the 1960s. [/quote] personally, i think that any war between nato and russia will be either quick, nuclear, or worse than ww2, because it would be a war for survival on both sides, and those are always the bloodiest. [quote] This time in history is very peaceful. If you could choose to live at another point in time, when? When is the most peaceful time?[/QUOTE] i'm not saying that this isn't a peaceful time, it is probably the most peaceful time we've ever experienced. what i am trying to say is that wars today between closely powered states have become far more violent and destructive than anything in the past besides a few, and because of this we have seen no war between major states, as it is far more of an existential danger to the belligerents. however, the potential for the worst wars to happen is still there and it is important to not lose sight of this fact, if only to try and prevent them from happening.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47192861]can't argue that total war hasn't been around since ancient times, but the idea of using your entire civilian population to help in the war effort only really came back in europe during the napoleonic wars, and deliberately attacking and killing civilian populations as a tactic on a state level scale in WW1, perfected in WW2.[/QUOTE] [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War[/URL] [quote]Devastation of many German states, 33% - 66% population decline in Germany[/quote] The Second World War was peanuts compared to the 30 years war. Whole cities were burned to the ground and their entire populations butchered. Then there's the Mongol invasions, which were arguably much more destructive than the World Wars: [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire[/URL] [quote]About half the population of Russia may have died during the Mongol invasion of Rus. [/quote] To compare, about 13.5% of the population of the USSR died in WW2: [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union#Studies_by_E.M._Andreev.2C_L.E._Darski_and_T._L._Kharkova_.28ADK.29[/URL] [quote]i'm not saying that this isn't a peaceful time, it is probably the most peaceful time we've ever experienced. what i am trying to say is that wars today between closely powered states have become far more violent and destructive than anything in the past besides a few, and because of this we have seen no war between major states, as it is far more of an existential danger to the belligerents. however, the potential for the worst wars to happen is still there and it is important to not lose sight of this fact, if only to try and prevent them from happening.[/quote] I think wars haven't become more destructive. If anything, wars have become less bloody as time went on. The geneva conventions were generally stuck to during both World Wars, while organisations like the Red Cross existed. Nowadays, conflicts in Ukraine for instance are limited, despite the possibility for it being able to escalate. Go back 400 years, and being raped or having your house burned down was a typical part of daily warfare. Go back 4000 years, and entire societies would be eradicated in wars.
[QUOTE=Deng;47186463]It's quite extraordinary that he does not realise (based on solid empirical evidence) that we live in probably the least violent time in human history.[/QUOTE] Yes, this is true. Now, add on the massively accelerated advance in technology, military applications therein. Humanity has been a warring, asshole of a species for thousands upon thousands of years, sure, but considering the fighting was done with sticks and stones, it wasn't really an issue. In less than a century however, humanity's grasp of technology evolved in leaps and bounds disproportionate to our evolution as a species - for the first time ever, Humanity is capable of ending millions of lives in less than a day in apocalyptic nuclear fire, not to mention our unnerving aptitude at both developing and perfecting conventional hardware, tuning it to more efficiently and accurately kill whatever it's pointed at. Humanity came upon the power it now wields while not necessarily being ready to be handed the reins of it.
[QUOTE=just-a-boy;47194204]Humanity came upon the power it now wields while not necessarily being ready to be handed the reins of it.[/QUOTE] Says who exactly? With the exception of a few rogue states, nobody is seriously building up nuclear stockpiles, and the existing ones in the USA and Russia are becoming useless due to neglect. If Russia and the USA wanted to use nuclear weapons right now, only a fraction of them would reach the target and go off, while each respective government would be scrambling to fix up the remaining ones and trying to launch them. Nobody in either country has built a nuke since the 80s. That's going to be a 30 year gap, and that's for the newest nukes. The shit built in the 50s and 60s will be practically unusable now. None of them have been upgraded, nobody knows how to use them, the blueprints have been lost in bureaucracy, and given enough time both stockpiles will be completely unusable due to simple neglect.
[QUOTE=Deng;47193055][URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War[/URL] The Second World War was peanuts compared to the 30 years war. Whole cities were burned to the ground and their entire populations butchered. Then there's the Mongol invasions, which were arguably much more destructive than the World Wars: [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire[/URL] To compare, about 13.5% of the population of the USSR died in WW2: [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union#Studies_by_E.M._Andreev.2C_L.E._Darski_and_T._L._Kharkova_.28ADK.29[/URL] I think wars haven't become more destructive. If anything, wars have become less bloody as time went on. The geneva conventions were generally stuck to during both World Wars, while organisations like the Red Cross existed. Nowadays, conflicts in Ukraine for instance are limited, despite the possibility for it being able to escalate. Go back 400 years, and being raped or having your house burned down was a typical part of daily warfare. Go back 4000 years, and entire societies would be eradicated in wars.[/QUOTE] while i can agree that wars are less devastating to countries, i cannot agree that they are less bloody. only the mongol invasions can hold a candle to the body count of WW2. countries in modern war can take more of a punch due to their increased population, which means while a lower percent of their population dies, the casualties are far higher. the soviets on their own in ww2 had more military deaths than those caused by the thirty year's war. also, the hague conventions in ww1 were followed for only part of the war, and in ww2 the germans never followed the geneva conventions on the eastern front.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;47186406]You can't exclude the possibility that in the future when we have sufficient technology to send a shitton of people in space at once to populate other worlds, some people may have to choose who of the billions of individuals who are alive at this point in time gets to leave and who gets to stay. The idea that we may have to leave people behind on a shitty crumpled overpopulated piece of trash is horrifying but it may come down to this depending on how badly shit turns out.[/QUOTE] we can't send all the most brilliant minds of humanity, some have to stay here or else who would inspire the next generation of brilliant minds?
atleast western deaths, i know some of the wars in china's history had tens of millions of deaths as well but i don't know much about them
[QUOTE=Deng;47194295]Says who exactly? With the exception of a few rogue states, nobody is seriously building up nuclear stockpiles, and the existing ones in the USA and Russia are becoming useless due to neglect. If Russia and the USA wanted to use nuclear weapons right now, only a fraction of them would reach the target and go off, while each respective government would be scrambling to fix up the remaining ones and trying to launch them. Nobody in either country has built a nuke since the 80s. That's going to be a 30 year gap, and that's for the newest nukes. The shit built in the 50s and 60s will be practically unusable now. None of them have been upgraded, nobody knows how to use them, the blueprints have been lost in bureaucracy, and given enough time both stockpiles will be completely unusable due to simple neglect.[/QUOTE] FYI, most of the US's nuclear stockpile is not from the 50s and 60s, the huge bombs in the several megaton range were dismantled for their plutonium, today's generation of warheads were built in the late 80s through 1991, and we don't leave nuclear weapons sitting around, one of the largest expenditures in the US military is nuclear weapons maintenance and development, the National Ignition Facility and the z-machine are both very expensive and very large facilities that were built in part for testing the integrity of nuclear weapons without actually using them, and for the amount of testing and development that went into them, the blueprints for each and every component are most certainly all archived by the military somewhere, for dismantling and maintenance and upgrading purposes can't say much about the russians but i'd assume our stockpile is pretty good, we built those bombs to last but i can't understand how you believe war has gotten less deadly since mideaval and bronze age times. when the khans slaughtered an entire city, it was like <10,000 people, when the allies burned an entire city it was like 100,000 people dead, ya the khans killed a larger % but the bombers of ww2 killed a larger number of people. also in ww2 it was still pretty common to be raped and have your house burned down, see the russian occupation of berlin, they pretty much raped every woman and vaguely womanish person in town, and also burned down many people's houses, or just lookup what isis did when they took a town
[QUOTE=Sableye;47194439]FYI, most of the US's nuclear stockpile is not from the 50s and 60s, the huge bombs in the several megaton range were dismantled for their plutonium, today's generation of warheads were built in the late 80s through 1991, and we don't leave nuclear weapons sitting around, one of the largest expenditures in the US military is nuclear weapons maintinence and development, the National Ignition Facility and the z-machine are both very expensive and very large facilities that were built in part for testing the integrity of nuclear weapons without actually using them.[/quote] Actually the maintenance for US nuclear weaponry has much to be desired: [url]http://time.com/44648/u-s-faces-challenges-maintaining-aging-nuclear-arsenal/[/url] [url]http://www.warscapes.com/blog/real-reasons-nuclear-launch-officers-cheat[/url] [url]http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f14/IG-0902.pdf[/url] The actual infrastructure keeping care of these things has been in decline for years, especially as nuclear weaponry has never actually been really used in war and the cold war is over. The job positions are being increasingly filled with bored second-rate people left to look after aging weaponry that they know will effectively be never used. [quote]Missile launch crew members, known within the Air Force as missileers, typically are ages 22 to 27. The investigation report released by the Air Force said that of 15 trainees at Vandenberg who participated in a focus group discussion with investigators, “no individual wanted to be a missileer.[/quote] [quote]The Navy had to return 11 of 23 W76-1 nuclear warheads to NNSA because of wiring damaged by the use of commercial off-the-shelf parts in the warhead’s remanufacturing. “The W76-1 weapons were returned due to the discovery of dielectric material missing from a detonator-cable assembly,” the inspector general says. “Dielectric material acts as a nonconductor to a direct electric current and is used to help ensure that an electrostatic discharge does not accidentally set off the main charge of the weapon.”[/quote] The US stockpile is going through a gradual decline. It's being increasingly seen as a giant waste of resources manned by people who don't want to be there. Nuclear weapons are the modern day dreadnoughts. [quote]can't say much about the russians but i'd assume our stockpile is pretty good, we built those bombs to last[/QUOTE] Well, the Russian one goes without saying. They have some good nukes I admit that, but they've come down a lot since the 80s. [editline]23rd February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47194404]while i can agree that wars are less devastating to countries, i cannot agree that they are less bloody. only the mongol invasions can hold a candle to the body count of WW2. countries in modern war can take more of a punch due to their increased population, which means while a lower percent of their population dies, the casualties are far higher. the soviets on their own in ww2 had more military deaths than those caused by the thirty year's war.[/quote] That is true, but to look at absolute numbers is misleading. Less people as a proportion of the population died in wars in the 20th century than in the 17th or 15th centuries. [quote]also, the hague conventions in ww1 were followed for only part of the war, and in ww2 the germans never followed the geneva conventions on the eastern front.[/QUOTE] The point is that countries made an effort to follow at least a basic modicum of them. For all of the stories of brutality in the World Wars, what made them so shocking is how uncommon such events were by the 20th century. Go back to the renaissance and people being tortured, mutilated, raped, chopped up, hanged, stabbed, shot, and starved was often a fact of everyday life. [editline]23rd February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Sableye;47194439]but i can't understand how you believe war has gotten less deadly since mideaval and bronze age times. when the khans slaughtered an entire city, it was like <10,000 people, when the allies burned an entire city it was like 100,000 people dead, ya the khans killed a larger % but the bombers of ww2 killed a larger number of people. [/QUOTE] That is precisely the point. Less people as a proportion of the population die these days. Even if you have just knives you can still kill loads of people (Look up the Rwanda genocide). In general, people are less violent these days and killing is much less common.
It will be only a short time till you had planet vs planet war if humans ever colonized another planet. Let's say Mars was colonized. How long would it take before the first Martian said "We should wipe out the people on Earth, those idiots are the ones who forced us to move to another planet by screwing up the Earth. Let's eliminate them before they ruin Mars too"? I know that's the first thing I'd be thinking if I was born on Mars.
[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;47194572]It will be only a short time till you had planet vs planet war if humans ever colonized another planet. Let's say Mars was colonized. How long would it take before the first Martian said "We should wipe out the people on Earth, those idiots are the ones who forced us to move to another planet by screwing up the Earth. Let's eliminate them before they ruin Mars too"? I know that's the first thing I'd be thinking if I was born on Mars.[/QUOTE] common sci-fi trope, mars gets colonized, terraforming starts, then earth is like "you dawg, we got space-battleships and we demand you pay us money" so mars builds bigger fleets of ships (because 1/3rd gravity + way more metals) and ensuing earth v mars battle commences really though, the economics of transporting anything from mars back to earth or launching massive slavos of missiles at earth is hilarious. if mars launched massive salvos of nukes at earth, we'd have like several months of preparations to plan a counter-barrage, especially if earth and mars are on the opposite sides of the solar system at any rate, a mars colony will be dependant on earth's specialised resources for a very long time, hopefully by the time an earth/mars war does break out humanity has the outter solar system to go to. leviathan wakes is a great book that explores this type of conflict [editline]22nd February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Deng;47194488] Less people as a proportion of the population die these days. Even if you have just knives you can still kill loads of people (Look up the Rwanda genocide). In general, people are less violent these days and killing is much less common.[/QUOTE] i'd still argue that with the advent of the Kalashnikov, killing has gotten more common and way easier. before people had access to automatic battle riffles, you had to be a pretty well armed, funded, and trained force to takeout anyone else, today just point enough of them at a target and eventually it'll die and its simple enough for a 10 year old to use. just like the crossbow made any peasent into a marksman, the AK has made any pissant into a soldier, weapons tech is currently on a plateau, we're in between real game-changer weapons, right now military weapons are getting better at countering the game-changing nature of the AK, but eventually the next game-changer will emerge and militaries will scramble to build up better counters until another game-changing weapon comes along. and plenty of groups go around killing everybody, look what bokohuran was doing in africa, they wiped out thousands of people in one night just driving through RPGing and shooting up entire villages until nobody was left
Wouldn't it be ironic if the shuttles were ready tomorrow to take us to Mars or the Moon. Hawking wheels up and is stopped by some "lowly" security grunt and told "No wheelchair ramp in space shuttle!" That'd be a dose of reality, or I guess he believes we should make special accommodations for him. Maybe just like we should be considerate of people we consider "lesser" since manual labor is always in great demand, and you can't beat good work ethic and physical strength/endurance with math problems. Maybe we should start realizing everyone has a set of skills that can contribute to the whole of humanity, there is no one subset that benefits us more than the others. The guy who mines coal for our power plants is just as important to society as the guy who manages the power plant.
[QUOTE=Deng;47186463]It's quite extraordinary that he does not realise (based on solid empirical evidence) that we live in probably the least violent time in human history.[/QUOTE] True. On the other hand it has never been more of a possibility that the entire human race could be annihilated completely due to weapons of mass destruction.
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