Mary Sears’ pioneering ocean research saved lives in WWII

smithsonianmag.com

22 points·sohkamyung··8 comments

It is stuff like this that probably helps entrench the US Navy as the most powerful navy in the world.

It is pretty much the only real blue water navy across all the words oceans and has been doing this for 80 years (since WWII). There is probably a ton of operation knowledge that was gained.

Did she save lives? The soldiers she protected went on to kill more people.

Sure, they killed people. But there's a second order effect: They also probably prevented the soldiers of the other side from killing more people.

Ok so was her act of protection a net saving of life or simply a different form of violence?

That's probably very hard to say.

But consequentialism/utilitarianism [1] isn't the only form of moral reasoning. By most forms of deontological [2] morality, saving someone's life is a good act by itself, even if the fella goes on to become a murderer later.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

[2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

The first one. If you are trying to prevent loss of life, that is admirable. Even if the people you save choose to commit violence later, that is on them; the responsibility is not on everyone who had previously helped or healed a (potentially) violent actor.

But you’re saving a soldier, in an active warzone. You can’t pretend to be naive and say maybe they’re going to have a change of heart and become a flower farmer. By saving that life, you’re executing the future victims of that killer/soldier. That you don’t actually pull the trigger on those victims is neither here nor there.

Of course she did. Just like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "saved lives".

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