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eiaoa

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Please don't Godwin already-flameprone threads. That's trolling, whether you intended to or not.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546130 and marked it off-topic.

> Please don't Godwin already-flameprone threads. That's trolling, whether you intended to or not.

If you weren't aware: Godwin has repealed "Godwin's law":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/...:

> If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.

Or any other regime.

My comment was not hyperbolic, as WWII is pretty much the perfect real-world example of the political ramifications of scientific and technological advancement. Far from "benefit[ing] all of mankind even if the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted," if the Nazi's had invented the atom bomb before the allies, mankind would have suffered more than it has.

Do you equate the Chinese to nazis? Because that's insane and totally fear-mongering, especially if you think China is evil but other countries would use scientific research for only rainbows and puppies.

> Do you equate the Chinese to nazis?

No, I emphatically do not. That's the most false and inflammatory misreading of my comment possible. The Chinese people are not villains, full stop.

The point I was making is that political regimes matter when it comes to the desire for progress in science and technology, and the idea that it doesn't is naive. I'm glad the Nazis and the Soviets were technically and scientifically behind the Allies and the West, and I think the world would be better off they had stayed even further behind -- even if that meant that humanity as a whole has its scientific and technical progress retarded for the want of their contributions.

Remember when Bush said Saddam aided "al Qaeda-like organizations"?

People just heard al Qaeda.

Everything is not black and white. There is a spectrum and let us not pretend that China is close to most democratic countries on this scale.

> let us not pretend that China is close to most democratic countries on this scale.

Why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

Read your own link and see how it disappears as time progresses. You can't say the same for China.

https://qz.com/906142/a-chinese-medical-study-is-being-retra...

They are conducting ethical cleansing right now.

As bad as the US is in many different ways, China is immeasurably worse. A future dominated by a hegemonic China would be a dark world. Little steps like these are helping to contribute to that possibility in 50-100 years.

If current trends prevail, it's inevitable. When all else is equal, won't the largest countries dominate?

Great powers historically have not usually been the largest countries population-wise. That would seem to indicate that there's no reason we should expect the inevitability of all else becoming equal.

Just to provide some historical context, our space program that ultimately put a man on the moon was largely driven by Nazi science. In particular, Wernher von Braun was a key figure in the design and development of the Nazi's V-2 ICBM, receiving accolades and rewards directly from Hitler himself for his successes. After WW2 he, along with hundreds of other Nazi scientists and engineers, were secretly recruited (see: operation paperclip [1]) to the US where he worked on ballistic missiles before eventually moving onto NASA where he served as the chief architect of the Saturn V that brought us to the moon.

Braun was primarily interested in space travel, but it does lead to a good satirical quote, "I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Exactly my point. Science wasn't neutral in WWII, and it's not neutral now. If von Braun hadn't been part of their regime, they may not have had V-weapons. If Hitler hadn't been such an anti-Semite, Jewish scientists may not have fled Europe en masse and instead helped the Nazi's develop the atom bomb.

Back then, if people celebrated and supported Nazi science in the name of an idealistic concept of politically-neutral human scientific advancement, Europe and maybe even America may be subjugated under a Nazi flag.

Everyone who cares about liberal political institutions should hope that authoritarian regimes are scientifically and technologically backwards, and work to keep it that way.

There is a yin and yang to nearly everything in reality. Without this great evil, it's entirely possible humanity might have remained completely stagnant, or even have begun to regress. Stick 1000 people in a utopia where they have everything they need to subsist and endless digital entertainment. You've now set those people on the path to idiocracy. By contrast, put 1000 people in an oppressive environment where the only path to survival is ingenuity and you've laid the groundwork for creating the great thinkers, and creators, of tomorrow.

The Nazis were a large part of the reason that our technological development accelerated like nothing before, or since. We went from having never even put a man in orbit to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade - which remains what I think is by far the greatest achievement in the history of our species. A great evil created resulted in the most unimaginable good.

The times since then remained dominated by yang. We've had relative peace, prosperity, and our greatest threat was literally just a threat. And so now we are in an era where after decades of technological devolution we struggle to even fly a rocket by the moon, unable to come even close to replicating what we achieved with seeming ease some 50 years ago.

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