2007-02-24 That's a lot of words

[Tapewolf]

Second: Actually most of our more interesting technology (jet engines, spaceflight, nuclear power, sound recording, transistors, integrated circuitry, computers etc) all came from conflict.
Um, the United States was not at war with anyone when Edison invented the light bulb or phonograph, or the Wright Bros. invented the airplane. Honestly, the only things I can think of as war tech are tanks (British, WWI), atomic bombs and self-sealing gas tanks (American, WWII). And maybe radar, but a lot of airlines wanted that.

Most of those are pretty solid counterexamples.  I could be wrong about the transistor as well.  You're probably right about magnetic recording too, since it was mostly a refinement of pre-WW2 technology, although the magnetofon was a military secret and was supposedly designed to record Hitler's speeches.  The Wright aircraft was definitely designed to sell to the military.

IIRC both integrated circuitry and teflon came from the space program, which is difficult to categorise - it was relatively peaceful yet the whole point was to needle the Soviets, and the original rocket technology was developed in WW2.

Concorde was a supersonic bomber.

Second, an advanced, technological economy makes people expensive to replace, so smart military leaders leverage technology to spare lives.

The counterargument is that losing less of their own people means they have less to lose by starting a conflict, but yeah.

[somercet]

The Wright aircraft was definitely designed to sell to the military.

Wrong. After their first successful flights, they went into the airplane business, closing their bicycle shop. They never received grants for their work; they sold licenses to their patents and later built planes for the US military and a private French company.

Henry Ford perfected the assembly line and the Model T for no military purpose.

IIRC both integrated circuitry and teflon came from the space program, which is difficult to categorise - it was relatively peaceful yet the whole point was to needle the Soviets

Teflon: blundered upon during refrigerant research in 1938, patented in '41. Transistors: one model was designed for war-time radar, but the most common model today was civilian in origin.

original rocket technology was developed in WW2.

And once again Robert Goddard is doomed to be an also-ran, crippled by the empty rhetoric of the mean and small who denounced V-2s, ICBMs, Newton's third law, the expense of the Apollo program. But he started the long march to XM/Sirius radio, satellite phones... all excellent civilian efforts.

Apollo's "purpose," insofar as the government was willing to drop a great deal of cash into it, was to counter propaganda that Soviet science was superior. If it comes to that, a great deal of SDI (Star Wars) was pure counter-propaganda. Sun Tzu would have approved. (And I'm sure Apollo stimulated more research, and more positive feelings toward the U.S., than a purely military project would have.)

Concorde was a supersonic bomber

And a financial bath. If it isn't cost-effective for the military, which is simply another, rather specialized market, how will it be cost-effective in the civilian sector?

Second, an advanced, technological economy makes people expensive to replace, so smart military leaders leverage technology to spare lives.

The counterargument is that losing less of their own people means they have less to lose by starting a conflict, but yeah.

But a counterargument to what, exactly? Not war as a driver of tech.

The counter-counterargument to your argument that technology makes war less costly in casualties and physical horror: suicide bombers (including the most sophisticated of such attacks, 9/11), machine guns, weaponized anthrax, the Oklahoma city bombing, poison gas: none possible without modern tech.

Another counter-argument is to compare the Soviets to the Islamofascists: the former had to maintain their own standard of living and industrial infrastructure, thus were far more rational (I do not say intelligent) actors than the parasites of Al Qaeda and such groups. A few phone calls reminded India that outsourcing would stop in the face of an Indian-Pakistani war. On December 8th, 1941, some Pentagon officials sat down, did the economic math and concluded, "This is our war to win or lose." The Anglosphere economies (the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia) outweighed the Axis by something like 7:1. Those economies made us risk-averse. They made us victorious.

"Money is the sinew of war." -- Tacitus

[superluser]

The Wright aircraft was definitely designed to sell to the military.

Wrong. After their first successful flights, they went into the airplane business, closing their bicycle shop. They never received grants for their work; they sold licenses to their patents and later built planes for the US military and a private French company.

Henry Ford perfected the assembly line and the Model T for no military purpose.

Quite right about the Wright Bros.  The early planes had very little military use.  They were slow, fragile, and wouldn't fly very far off the ground.  I do recall that in an early war (maybe as late as early WWI), bombing runs in planes would consist of a guy in the plane essentially lighting the fuse and then tossing the bomb overboard.

I'm not sure if the assembly line would have succeeded had there not been a war to consume all of those cars.

Teflon: blundered upon during refrigerant research in 1938, patented in '41. Transistors: one model was designed for war-time radar, but the most common model today was civilian in origin.

The point-contact transistor was based on military research by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.  The most common model today is the Shockley transistor, developed by the same Shockley that used military research to develop the former.

Interestingly, the only reason that Shockley developed his transistor was to spite his erstwhile partners (Shockley was a total ass and later developed some quaint ideas about eugenics).  Had the point-contact transistor not been developed, Shockley would never have developed his own.

[Tapewolf]

The Wright aircraft was definitely designed to sell to the military.

Wrong. After their first successful flights, they went into the airplane business, closing their bicycle shop. They never received grants for their work; they sold licenses to their patents and later built planes for the US military and a private French company.

http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1216-04.htm
See the 4th paragraph.  I knew I'd read it somewhere, and it was probably from The Guardian some years back.  Doesn't mean it's correct, of course - but at least I have a source now

While this doesn't help my argument any, it's an interesting piece of trivia, especially since you mention forgotten pioneers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stringfellow
...supposedly he landed lower than he started on the first attempt so it was disqualified on a technicality.  The second attempt destroyed the machine and he lacked the funds to rebuild it.  Or so I've heard.

Apollo's "purpose," insofar as the government was willing to drop a great deal of cash into it, was to counter propaganda that Soviet science was superior. If it comes to that, a great deal of SDI (Star Wars) was pure counter-propaganda. Sun Tzu would have approved. (And I'm sure Apollo stimulated more research, and more positive feelings toward the U.S., than a purely military project would have.)

Indeed, but the point I was making was that if there hadn't been a cold war against the Soviets, they wouldn't have done it in the first place.

Concorde was a supersonic bomber

And a financial bath. If it isn't cost-effective for the military, which is simply another, rather specialized market, how will it be cost-effective in the civilian sector?

Too true.  I'm not sure the reason it was ditched was strictly financial, though.  The Government around that time firmly believed that aircraft had been superceded by guided/ballistic missiles and were obsolete - therefore they cancelled a sh_tload of advanced projects, including the TSR-2.  I suspect the original supersonic bomber project went the same way.

Second, an advanced, technological economy makes people expensive to replace, so smart military leaders leverage technology to spare lives.

The counterargument is that losing less of their own people means they have less to lose by starting a conflict, but yeah.

But a counterargument to what, exactly? Not war as a driver of tech.

No, it was to your apparent assertion that increasingly high-tech weapons will save lives rather than cost lives.  If that wasn't what you were saying - and your following counter-counter-argument suggests it wasn't - then disregard it.

For the record, I'd like to think that we would have reached/surpassed our current technology level without the wars, but I'm not optimistic enough to really believe it.

[somercet]

http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1216-04.htm
See the 4th paragraph.  I knew I'd read it somewhere, and it was probably from The Guardian some years back.  Doesn't mean it's correct, of course - but at least I have a source now

I shudder that you think of such a creature as The Original Moonbat as a "source". Here's a link taking down George's fearmongering on Peak Oil, the greatest humbug since the Goracle's Global Warmening. Monbiot is just another deconstructionist Marxist pretending to knowledge he doesn't have.

To be blunt, my take on your provided article is: it is an utter fabrication and cheap propaganda from start to end, the effete, degenerate leavings of an economic movement that always had a problematic relationship with reality:

When Wilbur Wright was asked, in 1905, what the purpose of his machine might be, he answered simply: "War."

Really? My impression of the Wright Bros. was hardly one of monosyllabic inarticulates. Sorry, Mr Monbiot has no credit without co-signers, I mean, sources. I have no faith in him; I would sooner subscribe to the belief that the Joooos rule the world on the basis of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the word of Adolf Hitler than believe Monbiot's sworn declaration that I am a human male.

...supposedly he landed lower than he started on the first attempt so it was disqualified on a technicality.... Or so I've heard.

Yes. Anyone can fly from the top of a building to the ground; manned gliders were known before the Wright Bros. And the Wrights used a catapult once they left Kitty Hawk's headwinds for Dayton. The point was, they could fly, and climb, once they were in the air without stalling. Their engine (with an aluminum engine block, quite advanced) was always underpowered. That is a given. They used track and rails and an external platform instead of mounting wheels to their aircraft to save weight. Yes, we know.

To put the Wrights in their proper place in history: they corrected the figures for airfoil performance by rigorous experiment (their greatest achievement), they placed flight control as the main problem of flight and solved it (their second), and they built and flew a craft that was heavier than air (not a balloon, another amateur enthusiasm adopted by the military) and could turn, climb and land (merely their most visible work).

Not so much, then? Could you do it? Did Stringfellow?

Indeed, but the point I was making was that if there hadn't been a cold war against the Soviets, they wouldn't have done it in the first place.

Ah. Redefine, redefine. "War" doesn't drive technological progress, "rivalry" does. Again, aside from Tang and the speeding up of the integrated circuit, what did Apollo do again? The first computers owned by the U.S. government were used to process taxes. Just another Cold War by-product, then? I say it is another sign of a healthy, growing society using tools to adapt to (civilian) needs.

No, it was to your apparent assertion that increasingly high-tech weapons will save lives rather than cost lives... For the record, I'd like to think that we would have reached/surpassed our current technology level without the wars, but I'm not optimistic enough to really believe it.

Indeed, that is what I assert, and I do have optimism. As bad as Okinawa and Iwo Jima were, the superiority of the American fleet, air force and intelligence guaranteed the island-hopping strategy would work; it sped up the conquest, and enabled the Americans to skip unnecessary islands. It saved lives, even Japanese soldiers' lives on those skipped islands.

Again, I say: a strong, civilian economy enables the military far more than the other way around. You can point to the Somme, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and say, see what evil technology wrought. I reply, you cherry pick your data, and refrigeration and trucking keep more people alive than bullets or cruise missiles could ever kill.

[Tapewolf]

http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1216-04.htm
See the 4th paragraph.  I knew I'd read it somewhere, and it was probably from The Guardian some years back.  Doesn't mean it's correct, of course - but at least I have a source now

I shudder that you think of such a creature as The Original Moonbat as a "source".

That may be.  I have no idea who wrote the original piece I read 10-15 years ago, but the Guardian is usually a fairly trustworthy source, or at least it was when I used to read it regularly (again, about 10 years ago).

At some point I'll see if I can find a more immediate source, since the discrepancies you note intrigue me, but I don't currently have access to the references I'd usually use for this kind of thing.

[superluser]

I would sooner subscribe to the belief that the Joooos rule the world on the basis of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the word of Adolf Hitler

Godwin'd!

Given my previous interactions with people who won't pronounce Mr. Monbiot's name and instead call him a moonbat, and also given my previous experiences with those who deny that global warming is happening (though Goracle is a new one on me), I'm not sure if further debate is going to be productive, so I'm moseying on.

P.S. Thanks for killing my thread. 

[Reese Tora]

No, it was to your apparent assertion that increasingly high-tech weapons will save lives rather than cost lives... For the record, I'd like to think that we would have reached/surpassed our current technology level without the wars, but I'm not optimistic enough to really believe it.

Indeed, that is what I assert, and I do have optimism. As bad as Okinawa and Iwo Jima were, the superiority of the American fleet, air force and intelligence guaranteed the island-hopping strategy would work; it sped up the conquest, and enabled the Americans to skip unnecessary islands. It saved lives, even Japanese soldiers' lives on those skipped islands.

Again, I say: a strong, civilian economy enables the military far more than the other way around. You can point to the Somme, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and say, see what evil technology wrought. I reply, you cherry pick your data, and refrigeration and trucking keep more people alive than bullets or cruise missiles could ever kill.

Very true.  Had the american forces NOT dropped the bomb on Japan, they would have had to slog thier way accross the island of japan, thorugh the streets of japanese cities, and suffered huge casualties on both sides.  The nukes that hit japan were nothing compared to earlier, but less impressive or advanced, attacks, including firebombing various cities to the point where they effectively ceased to exist.

google found me an excelent page on that, by the way... http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/fire.html