Piwin -> RE: The Dam Busters (May 31 2023 18:26:55)
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quote:
Human history proves, two guys pointing guns at each other means if they both put the guns down at the same time they can be “friends”, but truth is, the first one to put the gun down will become the slave of the other that refuses to give it up. And if some magic intervention removes the guns, then it is the big guy vs the little guy, whatever that might mean, and the “big” guy wins That's where I think we suffer from a lack of imagination. Outside of outright genocide where the motivation is just to get rid of you, there are theoretically a wide variety of options where you do drop the gun and maybe don't become the other guy's slave because you are doing something else that makes their aggression either pointless or actually a loss. You'll find that in the anthropology of war they're constantly distinguishing types of wars based on their purpose and motivation. Not all, but at least some types of wars can be circumvented through peaceful means IMHO. I also think it should be clear by now that even within the context of warfare, it is simply not true that the bigger guy necessarily wins. In a pitched battle sure. But, if that were true, would Mao have won in China? Would both the Soviets and Americans have left Afghanistan on a loss? Would the US be an independent country rather than a British colony? That they received some degree of support from other powers is true and shouldn't be discounted, but IMHO it's not enough to explain their victory. What bothers me with the "history proves" argument is that really we just don't know. You can carefully curate the facts to craft a narrative of violence as innate to human beings, and the state as a necessary evil to keep it in check, essentially what Pinker did in his Better Angels book. But that's all it is: a very selective view. What we do know is that somewhere around more or less 10,000 years ago, certain forms of social structures emerged and spread like wildfire. So much so that it's pretty much the only game in town now, and we're stuck in that rut. And since there is no written history for the other forms of social structures, we have a lot less to go on to know how exactly they interacted with one another and how they resolved conflicts. That there was violent conflict is attested. But the archaeological findings are few and far between. Hardly enough to reach any conclusion as to how widespread it was. The "innate violence" crowd points to chimpanzees and says that since chimps are also war-like, our common ancestor must've been too, so we must have been like that at least for the last however long it has been since our lineages split (6 or 7 million years IIRC?). The argument falls apart of course as soon as you take the bonobo into account. So in that kind of context, how do we figure out if war is indeed innate or if it's just a product of the kind of social structures we've set up? In the absence of a clear answer on that, personally I'd rather invest my efforts on social engineering rather than biological... BarkellWH: I agree. More permanent seats would just be more of the same and potentially even make things worse. What I have in mind would be to abolish the permanent seats altogether. The veto rights would either be abolished along with them, or you could have a rotation system where a select number of countries hold veto rights for a limited amount of time. That's what I had in mind when I mentioned seasonality. We have examples of cultures where, for example, positions of judicial or military decision-making were handed over to different factions on a seasonal basis. The idea being that, since you know for certain that the other guy will be in the decision-making position later on, you're incentivized to not be a jerk while you hold the position. So, either no veto rights, or veto rights that rotate. Would any of the current 5 permanent seats comply if, say, Peru vetoed something? I doubt it, but IMHO that's the kind of step we would have to take if we really want to move in the direction of a fair and peaceful world order. It's not entirely without precedent, with informal traditions of alternating appointees for the leadership position of certain international institutions (except when it's freedom fries time, then all bets are off) or formal set-ups like the rotating presidency of the EU Council.
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