touch foxglove NOW 
Alright, no more discussion of the limits of free trade. Let's talk about technology. I saw a lively debate on here between @TheTroubleWithPibbles,
@August,
@Geralt_of_Uganda, etc, about whether it is ethical to develop technologies...
Scenario
This, of course, actually happened
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist.
being so brilliant, he was able to conceive of, and help build, the greatest weapon known to mankind - the atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer, of course, didn't know the long term consequences of developing such a weapon - but he understood the sheer destructive potential of such a device.
Your question is: Was Oppenheimer acting ethically by assisting to develop the atomic bomb?
NOTE: In this hypothetical, history is at a crossroads. You don't know what will happen in the future - whether the device you created will be used to end life on earth or to usher in a new golden age.
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DIMWIT. It was very ethical. This weapon, while destructive, could save the lives of many American soldiers. Sure, it might kill some enemy combatants, but that's just war for you. Liberals, SMH.
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R-SLUR. You didn't go far enough - it is extremely ethical. Oppenheimer was a dorky nerd while his nation was in a state of total war. Men were on the front lines bleeding and dying for his right to be a dorky nerd - it's only right that he help out in some way.
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IDIOT. It is ethical. Oppenheimer had no idea how the weapon was going to be used - he created it, and left it to the hands of the military to decide how to use it. He didn't kill anyone.
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NUMBNUTS. It is unethical. You say he didn't know how the weapon was going to be used, but he did - he knew it was going to be used to kill people. He enabled the government to use this weapon of mass destruction, and they did - the responsibility is solely upon him (and the other collaborators).
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The ability of fission exists whether we harness it or not. It is only expected that you attempt to be equal in arms to your potential enemies
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I think the US occupation and subsequent cultural influence drawn from American culture is primarily responsible for anime. However if it weren't cartoons, japs would purvey their s*x pervert id through some other form of popular entertainment
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they'd just continue raping the koreans and chinese
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yeah and look how well that worked out
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it clearly didn't.
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Warning! This is guerrilla marketing for the upcoming Nolan film
disguised as a debate.
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I will NEVER stop sperging on rdrama
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you on vacation right now?
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If it wasn't him it'd be someone else.
Adm. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, expressed some regret later in life.
Rickover deserves his own effectpost, he would personally interview every officer for nuke school and would go out on every new nuclear submarine. He would make candidates stand in a closet for hours if they answered a question wrong during the interview and if they gave him pitted grapes on a sub he'd spit them out on the floor.
He's worth a Google if you've got time to kill and his first name is Hyman.
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its unethical that he didnt use it on israel
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If I don't do it first the enemy might get it and wipe us all out what an ethical conundrum
Edit: while also developing a tech that effectivelly stopped the existance of wars between major powers that used to cause tens of millions of deaths woe is me
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How long did Oppenheimer plan that sweet "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" line?
Chat GPT buys Oppenheimer's bullshit.
How long do you think Oppenheimer planned to say "I am death, the destroyer of worlds" to seem cool?
It is likely that Oppenheimer did not plan to say the phrase at all. He was reportedly quoting a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as he witnessed the first successful atomic bomb test in 1945. He was expressing his mixed feelings of awe and horror at the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
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It is a pretty sweet quote.
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Isn't a more accurate translation something along the lines of "I am time, that which makes death of all things?"
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Well glad someone fixed it for him if that's the case.
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That's a much cooler quote in general and a much more r-slurred one in this specific context
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Two weeks
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He also misquoted the line, which is I have become time, the destroyer of worlds.
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What a kitty
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@ truman
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"Get this cry baby cute twink out of here"
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Aw heck I actually don't know about this one. I'm gonna say no it's not moral, but then again war itself is amoral and you don't win it by following your ethical convictions. He did help an evil thing come to life in this world, but only so much of the responsibility is on him- he was not the only person to develop it, nor was he the one to order its use, nor was he the one actually priming and dropping the bombs
Ultimately I believe he did contribute to an evil thing, but if one day missiles are launched it will not be his name that I will be cursing in my last moments but rather those of men sitting by the big red button
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More nukes --> smaller wars.
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We are only able to make that point because the weapon has not been used so far. Given how recently it has appeared when considering the timescales of human history, it is merely an inevitability that nuclear weapons will be used in the future, at which point it will be impossible to justify them having been a deterrent for war
When Maxim gun was first created it too was thought to be the weapon to end all wars- a gun so fast and so deadly that no one would wish to war against it due to the potential casualties alone. Fast forward 150 years and each soldier in the world is equipped with a descendant of the Maxim gun that is deadlier in every aspect
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This doesn't require much introspection to figure out.
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No I understand that, maybe I have not articulated what I meant well enough:
The idea that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent for larger wars is mute because it at the same time creates a risk of an even larger war breaking out, and given enough time such war will inevitably happen. It merely creates a barrier- any tensions lower than a given threshold will lead to nothing, but should they be large enough to overcome this barrier then the results will be more disastrous than anything we could have caused with conventional weapons.
The nukes dropped on Japan are not an example of such war because it was done in an era where only one of the side had access to a limited amount of them. We already live in a completely different situation so to assume that future nuclear interactions would play out just like that one is inappropriate
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*moot, but that's false. It is a deterrent.
No, it mitigates against having large scale conflcits with multiple countries (a la WW1 and WW2) because of MAD.
Yeah, that barrier is called MAD, and it imposes a high price for engaging directly with a nuclear-armed country. Hence, less major wars, etc. Without nukes, that barrier (or cost) to engaging in war is much lower, so you get more conflict and at a larger scale (such as WW1 and WW2).
MAD still holds, and yes the probability of nuclear holocaust exists, but it's really silly to assume that nukes aren't a deterrent, that MAD somehow doesn't exist, and that the benefits of nuclear weapons have been significantly smaller conflicts and zero direct conflicts between the major powers.
Think of the world before nuclear weapons. You got these big butthole countries jostling around the globe for control, wreaking havoc on civilians. It culminates in WW2, during which 10s of millions of people died. The chance of some major event that results in a similar casaulty rate is much lower in a world with nuclear-armed countries., even if such an event is a nuclear armageddon or whatever.
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I agree that MAD is likely to prevent a smaller conflict from breaking out, but in my belief that benefit is outweighed by the risk of throwing humanity back to the stone age. Given the long history of government frickups I wouldn't trust my own life to them, much less so the lives of billions to some third-world nuclear capable shithole like Pakistan, because under MAD any mistake or incident, even one caused by incompetence rather than evil intent can be interpreted as an act of aggression
And while I just stated that MAD does prevent conflict on paper, it is impossible to quantify how much of an effect it really has. We still have proxy wars like Syria and Ukraine, because both sides know that the other won't engage nuclear weapons for a cause this petty or insignificant. So we can observe that it doesn't prevent this kind of conflict, despite the fact that they are large enough to permanently frick up a country and ruin millions of lives. You bring up world wars and how we haven't had anything this destructive for 80 years, but I would argue that predominantly this is not due to MAD but due to development of global trade and communication technologies. It is simply not profitable to go to war when the supply chains span and intertwine all the world. Global communications allow you to have operations essentially everywhere on earth, thus if you want to achieve something it is now much easier to talk or buy or apply political pressure. Even without nuclear weapons we would not be going to war with each other now over political threats or disagreements because there are other much cheaper and more effective ways that countries can 'send a message' and hurt each other.
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Your pulitzer's in the mail
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How is developing a nuclear bomb not commendable, you silly cute twinks?
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Bomb kills people, simple as
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Wasn't talking to you, HeyMoon.
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you replied to my post, idiot.
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Kills people?
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How is developing a nuclear bomb not commendable, you silly cute twinks?
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Irrelevant. The atom bomb was already being worked on and would have eventually been developed with or without his involvement.
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Uh-huh, and who built it? Him and his team, so they deserve praise.
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How is it?
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More nukes --> less wars, less deaths.
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he didn't know that at the time
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We don't know that yet...
Nuclear annihilation is still a possibility
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I donβt care. Itβs a paradox. Death cult, when they feed into it theyβll get their hands caught into their own trap. More nukesβ> different kind of wars β> more deathsβ> more economic growth (which fights climate change) β> less human spirit β> zorg future
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Think of it in terms of risk (probability of bad event * "damage", such as lives lost). So far, nuclear armed countries haven't gone directly to war with each other, so it's panning out better than the pre-MAD world.
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This isnβt the only measure of if things are going well. Itβs also no guarantee that the scenario would never will in the future.
The original vision of nukes was theyβd usher in total peace, hegemony, unity of people. That didnβt happen, so instead the cope version is just that the worst case scenario hasnβt happened (yet). Not as comforting as it could be!
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100s of million not dead over 80 years of post-WW2 battles among major powers is a much better tradeoff.
Nothing is guaranteed, so that's pointless.
Last paragraph is nonsense.
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It's neither commendable no deplorable. It's just a fact of the universe that a sufficiently advanced species will discover fission and that there will be power struggles with "revolutionary" weapons ie guns, explosives, etc. regardless of the technologies we develop so making a weapon from nuclear fission is just a neutral, natural outcome of being a sentient species
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Same goes for vaccines.
No wonder you got the question wrong!
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Yes. And?
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Itβll be a neutral, natural outcome too when the people who suffered most from nuclear weapons eventually take their revenge + interest (using nuclear weapons).
There are groups on planet earth who are very committed and motivated to this! A clear fact that they are at work, since the original bomb holders are becoming a bit nervous and paranoid at world events. They expand control, hoping to find the attack before it happens. Good luck, search all over!
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Yes
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btw I only voted that way for drama, as always Machiavellian is right
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You don't get to my position without feigning remorse.
It had to be done, but we allow others to save face by not revelling in it nor condemning/lauding the contributions of those who enabled it.
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You're the first to get thrown into the meat grinder.
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How is creating a weapon that has the potential to destroy the Earth in any way commendable?
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*potential. Vaccines have the potential to cause harm too; therefore, they're not commendable. (You) =
Have fun celebrating the post-WW2 world of bigger wars, ya immoral nigro.
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Nuclear bombs created peace between super powers that the world has never seen before.
Still a good chance someone eventually goes mad king and kills all of us but we would probably do it anyway without them.
Q.E.D. the temporary benefit is worth it as the ending consequences are inevitable.
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I'ma go with ethical on this one.
I'll leave out the ethics of using the bomb entirely because that's a whole different quagmire. Oppenheimer absolutely 100% knew what they were going to use the bomb for. I agree with the meme image that he shouldn't have signed up for the task if he had an ethical problem with it, and he shouldn't pretend he was surprised by the outcome.
However, if he hadn't participated someone else would have. The atom bomb was inevitable. Thus, his participation was ethically neutral, aside from being an annoying cute twink about it afterwards.
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I'm neutral
, but it is funny how he went all emo after dunking on the japs. Like what did he think was going to happen 
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If Oppenheimer hadn't done this, the U.S. might have lost World War 2. So whether it was good or bad depends entirely on whether you think the Axis Powers or Allied Powers should have won. Personally, I'm glad the Allied Powers won so I think what Oppenheimer did was good. He was a bit of a neurodivergent r-slur though for somehow failing to foresee that the giant bomb he built might be used to bomb people. Who could ever have seen that coming?!?
"How could this happen?!?"
-J Robert Oppenheimer
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I'm surprised this talking point has lasted so many decades. Almost the entire Pacific war was fought in Japanese territory. Japanese cities were being bombed, American cities were not. The Japanese threat to the United States effectively ended after Pearl Harbor. By the war's end, America had all the leverage, and, the only question was just how total its victory would be. How could any plausible series of events after a nuke-less 1945 lead to a Japanese "victory?" Or are we simply defining an enemy victory as any time the US doesn't get to topple, occupy, and humiliate the country it's at war with?
In my eyes, simply containing Japan would have been preferable to either a long, bloody, invasion, or to mass bombing campaigns against cities, and I can't see a real reason not to opt for this other than nationalist fervor.
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The "total victory" part is what is important here. The US wanted to end the war with Japan before the USSR could get involved and have part of Japan like they did in Germany. In the eyes of everyone important, the war was already over and it was just about keeping the Soviets out.
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You don't think winning quickly and decisively through the use of a terror weapon has strategic value?
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I'm saying the purpose of getting to unconditional surrender was ambiguous at best. "It was either nuke them or invade them" raises the question of why would you need to do either.
If you don't buy the need for unconditional surrender, then much of the money and lives spent for that end were wasted. The goal should have been securing American assets, territories, and military freedom of movement in the Pacific, and that was accomplished well before the endgame of the war.
Regardless of my peacemongering perspective, a lot of the initial postmortems of the war argued that Japan was already done, and they would have reached a total surrender in short order without either the nukes or an invasion.
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Oh, OK, I see what you're saying. Although I do disagree with you.
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Oppenheimer was heavily involved in the Target Committee, which chose where the bombs would be dropped. He was actively involved with choosing to drop it on people.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf
These are the minutes from one of their meetings and there is some wild shit in here.
Don't bomb those other cities. They aren't smart enough to appreciate their city evaporating.
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Wow, I learned something new today. Really makes his pearl-clutching seem more hypocritical, doesn't it?
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yes of course it was ethically, if every country had nukes like north korea then US imperialism could finally be stopped, every country in the world should get nuclear weapons to achieve global peace
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