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martin-w

Now this is an interesting UFO documentary.

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33 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Yeah, the 20th and 21st century gave us World War 1, World War2, Korea, Vietnam, and now our forever wars and along with them the technological development to produce super weapons and super soldiers the likes of which the world has never seen.

Our war making technology grows on a par with our space technology.  And how long will it be before we have our first space war?

I was 8 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered WW2.  My country has been at war somewhere in the world continuously ever since and I have been in two of them and was still in uniform for a third, Desert Storm.  Least violent ever?  I don't think so.

Noel

 

Yeah, this Steven Pinker (not only him, I know) argument about how history has just been a long march to greener pastures and kinder, gentler societies seems clearly absurd and ahistorical on its face to me. Sure, you've had societies that were more or less violent for most of recorded human history, and yes, there are examples of hugely destructive wars in the pre-modern era (30 Years War in Germany jumps out here, and of course there's stuff like Genghis Khan). But come on. Even if World War II is the only thing you consider in the 20th century, it led to the deaths of nearly 5% of the world population, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians -- and the deliberate, near-successful genocide of an entire group of people. And then you get to stuff like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine in the USSR, etc. etc. etc.

Aside from the obvious scale of the atrocities you saw in the 20th century, an underappreciated point is that the intensely bloody 20th century came as an unwelcome and stunning rebuke to the sense in the Belle Epoque that things really were getting more civilized. If you were a European, life genuinely was getting generally kinder and gentler from 1815 to 1914; wars were largely limited and civilians were less threatened by them than ever before. The great powers didn't fight any major wars at all between 1871 and 1914, and it seemed like maybe things would just keep getting better.

Then you have not one but two horrific world wars, one that slaughtered most of an entire generation of young men across Europe and one that visited death and devastation on civilians on a scale probably not seen in centuries. Oops. Turns out it wasn't the end of history after all! Turns out we actually have to work hard at not being monsters to each other, that we can't just sleep sound in the knowledge that it will all work out and things will just keep getting better.

James

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5 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Time will prove me right.

I'm done.  Back to the original topic, please.

 

😁 Okay then. I'll look forward to your scholarly prediction. 

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18 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

When Martin stated this yesterday:

"Its no diferant to climate change, its not what's happening down your road, it's average trend over the whole planet. Climate change deniers make the same mistake."

Dave

 

Which was an example... wasn't intended to be the que for a full scale climate debate. 

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13 minutes ago, honanhal said:

Then you have not one but two horrific world wars, one that slaughtered most of an entire generation of young men across Europe and one that visited death and devastation on civilians on a scale probably not seen in centuries. Oops. Turns out it wasn't the end of history after all! Turns out we actually have to work hard at not being monsters to each other, that we can't just sleep sound in the knowledge that it will all work out and things will just keep getting better.

 

Should we really be considering extreme events like world wars though. Shouldn't we really be considering the experience of the average human being day to day? If we do that, then we lead pretty comfortable lives these days, on average of course. I think we have to go further back in time too, to get a better picture, 100, 200, 300, 500, 800 years ago. What was life like then? How does it compare the the "individuals" experience today? 

We are addressing just violence, but the trend lines for poverty, economics, infant mortality, life expectancy, and dozens of other indicators are up. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by martin-w
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Just now, martin-w said:

 

Should we relay be considering extreme events like world wars though. Shouldn't we really be considering the experience of the average human being day to day? If we do that, then we lead pretty comfortable lives these days, on average of course. 

Yes, of course we should! If you lived anywhere between Brittany and Hokkaido between 1933 and 1945 your life was likely to have been massively marked by the war, even if it didn't actually kill you. I'm typing this in a city that lost two-thirds of its population in that period.

You're also confusing two separate, albeit related, questions. "Would I rather be a human being in 1650 or 1950?" and "Was the 17th century or the 20th century more violent?" I'm open to evidence that, contrary to what seems obvious to me based solely on the number of deaths, the earlier period was actually more violent. But "we now have modern medicine, indoor plumbing, and electricity," while true, doesn't actually help answer that question.

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2 minutes ago, honanhal said:

Yes, of course we should! If you lived anywhere between Brittany and Hokkaido between 1933 and 1945 your life was likely to have been massively marked by the war,

 

And what about the periods between world wars? Do we ignore those? 

 

3 minutes ago, honanhal said:

the earlier period was actually more violent.

 

Exactly, that was what we were talking about. Whether the human race has become less violent, on average, over an extended time period.  The context for which related to whether an alien species visiting this planet would be malevolent or benevolent.

I suggested that if an alien species had survived long enough to develop space craft that could travel at relativistic velocities, they would have had to overcome their tendency for violence or they would have destroyed themselves long before.

I argued that individual human beings today are less violent than they would have been hundreds of years ago and perhaps we are on the same path.

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1 minute ago, martin-w said:

I suggested that if an alien species had survived long enough to develop space craft that could travel at relativistic velocities, they would have had to overcome their tendency for violence or they would have destroyed themselves long before.

I argued that individual human beings today are less violent than they would have been hundreds of years ago and perhaps we are on the same path.

I think our own experience here is actually telling. Even if it's the case that individual humans are less violent over time (again, not sure it's true, but for the sake of argument), history doesn't move in straight lines -- and presumably wouldn't necessarily do so for these aliens either. If you happen to encounter these aliens in the equivalent of their timeline of our 1936, say? Militarism, authoritarianism, and racism (leading shortly to murderous genocidal activity) were all in the ascendant, even in the societies that were still liberal-democratic.

You can argue that's a blip, but my point is, what if we just happen to run into the aliens during a similar blip? How much better would we feel to know that they killed half of us and enslaved the other half only because it was a brief "extreme event" for them? 😃

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1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Read some books on ancient and medieval history.  There were constant wars, invasions, battles, pillaging, raping, etc.  Human life was cheap for most of history, and the vast majority of folks lived in what would be considered today abject poverty.

Yes, but the weapons they had weren't mass casualty weapons.  They fought one on one for the most part.  They didn't deploy poison gas (WW1) or carpet bombing (WW2 and Vietnam).  Even the War of 1812 and our own Civil War were limited to artillery and grapeshot.

While some pillaging went on in medieval times they were reduced to insignificance by the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo that targeted civilians and of course Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 

Life is cheap in any war.  But lives become cheaper by the dozen as we get better and better at it.

Noel

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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1 hour ago, martin-w said:

I argued that individual human beings today are less violent than they would have been hundreds of years ago and perhaps we are on the same path.

Individually, perhaps.  But not collectively as a society.  During WW2 we interened almost all of the Japanese-Americans on US soil.  And as we decry that today we are doing the same thing to refugees who cross our southern border; for our own safety, of course.

Noel

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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13 minutes ago, birdguy said:

And as we decry that today we are doing the same thing to refugees who cross our southern border; for our own safety, of course.

Really?  The USA has one of the most generous and liberal immigration policies in the world.  No country on Earth allows a person to just come and live there without going through a tedious, and in many cases egregious, process involving permits, criminal, medical, and financial checks, documentation, fees, etc.

Comparing the temporary detention of undocumented migrants to the internment of Japanese Americans during the 1940s is absurd.

Dave

 


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8 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Japanese Americans during the 1940s is absurd.

Not absurd.  We are still trying to re-unite children who were taken from their parents three or four years ago.  Some of those parents will never be found, especially those of toddlers and infants who don't even know their names.  And undocumented Hispanics live in fear of the INS and deportation.

Noel 

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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2 hours ago, martin-w said:

Should we really be considering extreme events like world wars though.

Perhaps for those who never witnessed wars.  But for those of us who did it remains a large part of our personal life history and remembrances.  Witnessing it personal and up close has a bigger impact than watching it on a TV screen.

And aside from that extreme events like world wars and even local wars are a large part of our histories.  They can't be ignored to make it seem like violence is waning.

Noel  

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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Has anyone here actually witnessed a UFO?  Are we just supposing based on witness accounts without actual evidence of their existence?

Like Big Foot!  Plenty of people have said they saw one but has any real evidence of their existence been found.  Like droppings?  A dead Big Foot?  They are not immortal are they?  Evidence of what they eat?  Their dens or sleeping places?

Like the moderator said...let's get back on track here.  I've added Big Foot to the argument so we have something new to chew on that relates to the original thread.

In keeping with this I'm refraining from replying to war and violence here.

Noel


The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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2 hours ago, birdguy said:
1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Has anyone here actually witnessed a UFO?  Are we just supposing based on witness accounts without actual evidence of their existence?

 

 

Personally you mean? Even if one of us claimed we had, it still wouldn't be physical evidence and could be lies. 

I haven't personally. My father said he saw something just after the war. He described it as a spark traveling across the sky at altitude. He grabbed his camera and quickly took a photograph and said he just caught the tail. Sounds like a meteorite skipping across the atmosphere to me.

 

Quote

Like Big Foot!  Plenty of people have said they saw one but has any real evidence of their existence been found.  Like droppings?  A dead Big Foot?  They are not immortal are they?  Evidence of what they eat?  Their dens or sleeping places?

 

People claim to have seen footprints, and some claim to have caught a glimpse. I guess its possible that some king of large apelike or semi humanoid creature has survived undetected in the wilderness. 

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7 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Personally you mean?

Yes, a first person sighting.  We are friends and acquaintances here.  I would give more credence to someone I knew or was familiar with.

Noel


The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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