Hacker News Reader

Comment by beat | Hacker News Reader

Mostly, this reminded me of one of my favorite short stories - "Von Neumann's Second Catastrophe", by Robert Anton Wilson. This story changed my view of why we have wars.

The story is told from the point of view of a general in an insane asylum. He argues that war has been ruined by golems, creatures without souls. By golems, he means computers. The computers run scenarios for nuclear war, and always say don't do it because it can't be won - mutual assured destruction. But to him, the point of war is not about winning. That's a lie we tell. The point of war is the killing. We don't fight in order to kill enemy soldiers. We fight to kill innocent civilians. Because when you can deliberately kill a child, you become a superman, beyond morality. Nuclear weapons should be used just because we can, because it's amoral.

View on HN

I hope by "it changed your view", you don't mean that that is your current view. Look out into the world. It is not a model that makes any sense for why humans have wars. That model predicts not what we see, but an all-out bloodbath until civilization is dead. That model and civilization can not coexist in any form, and no, cynically trying to strike a pose that we aren't really "civilized" is not an out; even what we have, imperfect as it may be, would not be possible. It is not even clear that such a model would permit humans to exist as individual nomads, let alone stone age tribes. Such an attitude would be rapidly bred out of any species that somehow got into a state where that was its attitude, or the species would go extinct.

Models of the world must not just explain why it is all messed up; they must also explain why there is sometimes beauty, peace, art, science, civilization, love. It is not enough to only explain one side.

Clearly Beat meant that the book explained the viewpoint of those who cry for war and destruction. The 'glory' and 'power' they feel must surely be an addictive sensation.

Within the story, it's not glory or power either. Glory comes from defeating equals - but the point is to kill the defenseless. Power comes from victory, but the victory is irrelevant.

Could you kill a child? Of course not. What kind of monster kills a helpless child? But if you can do it - you have become something more than merely human. Humans are confined by their morality. Supermen are not. And soldiers? Soldiers kill children all the time. That's why there's war.

You would do well to go meet some real human soldiers, not just read fantasy books.

Or something less than human, I'd argue. In the same vein, a cancerous skin cell becomes a "supercell" and gets to live an immortal life, no longer constrained to the cycle of death.

I suspect that people don't like psychopaths for the same reason our bodies kill cancer cells: they aren't good for society. (some argue that in small numbers they can be, but you can't run a tribe of psychopaths).

The specific mechanisms of people going against psychopaths include things like altruistic punishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_punishment

Oh, it's not my view - but it explains why war happens, in a very interesting way. I mean, everyone hates war, why do we have wars? Everyone says it's about fighting enemy soldiers, why are more civilians killed? It's a consistent, if horrible, explanation.

What ? It's ridiculous. Leaders start wars to conquer territory and obtain material goods and sexual dominance. Followers go to war for economic opportunity or necessity. Murdering civilians for fun is a niche interest, often only the result of intense indoctrination by leaders with ulterior motives.

Clearly he was ahead of his time with countervalue targeting.

> Because when you can deliberately kill a child, you become a superman, beyond morality. Nuclear weapons should be used just because we can, because it's amoral.

Settle down, there, Trump!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com