Would you work in a munitions factory?

[phyllo]

Can you summarize 'Humane Physics' for us?

[Ned]

What I quoted from my book was from the chapter: "The Ethics of Science". That is the only relevant part to this thread.

To finish the quote:

"There are many reasons why scientists decide to participate in weapons development. Here are a few of them:

• We need it to defend our nation
• These weapons will prevent war
• The enemy won’t stop, so we can’t either
• If I don’t do it, someone else will
• It is a great challenge and “super physics”
• Nobody else would fund my research
• It’s the only job I could find
• It’s a living
• It is fun!

A few of these arguments sound convincing and did convince superb minds back in the 1940-s to develop nuclear weapons for the first time in human history. What many scientists don’t realize is the simple fact that arguments are dime a dozen. Anything can be justified by clever demagogues if they pick their facts and reasons carefully, omitting anything that contradicts their pre-conceived conclusions.

And this is precisely what scientists should never forget: the arbiter of any theory is experiment. Arguments aside, the world did not face total destruction before nuclear weapons were developed.

Now it does.

As Richard Rodes writes in “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” (pg 784):

“…the death machine that we have installed in our midst will destroy the nation-state, ours and our rival’s along with most of the rest of the human world. The weapons with which the superpowers have armed themselves – collectively the equivalent of more than one million Hiroshimas – are linked together through their warning systems into a hair-trigger, feedback-looped contrivance, and no human contrivance has ever worked perfectly nor ever will. Each side is hostage to the other side’s errors. The clock ticks. Accidents happen.”

Nothing will change this fact!

Yes, the war may have lasted longer without it (historians seriously doubt it), yes, there may have been another world war or two without nuclear deterrent, instead of the many, many small wars all over the world that killed millions since WWII.

But humanity would not face the possibility of extinction today, if scientists refused to participate in that ‘superb and magnificent’ project of evil and insanity.

The ethics of science that should be taught to science students all over the world should be the same as the Hippocratic Oath taught to medical students: “First, do no harm!”. Say no to weapons research, say no to projects that could harm the environment, that would cause pain and suffering to life on this planet.

Nothing can be simpler than that."

[Hjarloprillar]

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Memories from the black death where plague took most in cities as they were called then. We call them towns now as pop passes 7 billions

I was always mystified as to why any carts at all. the cartmen could walk into any house and claim it as own.

[Ned]

I was always mystified as to why any carts at all. the cartmen could walk into any house and claim it as own.

Then we would have missed the famous line from "Life of Brian" -- "Bring out your dead!!"

[Hjarloprillar]

I was always mystified as to why any carts at all. the cartmen could walk into any house and claim it as own.

Then we would have missed the famous line from "Life of Brian" -- "Bring out your dead!!"

WOW

I was thinking exact same while typing post. He's not quite dead yet.. hhHhAAA


http://youtu.be/grbSQ6O6kbs


my library on youtube. I've been warned so many times for offences to copyright yet i still exist..funny that.
http://www.youtube.com/user/hjarloprillar/videos

[Ned]

Prill, I will look at your Utube links later when I am at my other computer. This one is my business computer (we have an online book business) and I never follow links from this one -- I had a horrible virus infestation a few months ago and since then this unit is top security.

I only publish online (saving trees), so I can't give you an autographed copy, but thanks anyway. I will let you know when it is available on Amazon Kindle (almost finished). However, if you want to read more of my poetry, I just published a collection with the name "Prism of my Mind" -- you don't need a Kindle reader if you download from Amazon the "Kindle for PC" application.

[Hjarloprillar]

Prill, I will look at your Utube links later when I am at my other computer. This one is my business computer (we have an online book business) and I never follow links from this one -- I had a horrible virus infestation a few months ago and since then this unit is top security.

I only publish online (saving trees), so I can't give you an autographed copy, but thanks anyway. I will let you know when it is available on Amazon Kindle (almost finished). However, if you want to read more of my poetry, I just published a collection with the name "The Prism of my Mind" -- you don't need a Kindle reader if you download from Amazon the "Kindle for PC" application.

Understood. i run an avirii programe and a top end milspec firewall. nothing comes or goes without permission.
As a lapsed PC techie.. i still keep finger on pulse as it were.
youtube is 'if you want a bit deeper here is something i like'.. not more than that or defining. Some of clips are me playing games .like halo exct. skill candy
the one is Our deepest fear which i made for a young girl to show her the path. is not blocked. merely obstructed.

many have commented on seeming incongruous imagery of 'our deepest fear'
what you?

[marjoramblues]

Hypothetical scenario:

You need a job and you have three offers:

- A bread factory
- A surgical instruments factory
- A munitions factory (land mines)

All else being equal, the pay in the munitions factory is double of what you would make at the other places.

Which job would you take?

The thread title: Would I work in a munitions factory?

Only if I really, Really, REALLY needed to would I become a 'munitionette'; and hopefully, these days there would be Equal Pay for doing the same job. Damned dangerous work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munitionettes

[Ned]

It's not the danger that would stop me from working in land-mine factories, for any amount of money.

In "Your own morality" thread I said the following:

"When I go to the store and buy food, I get something from people who worked hard to give me something I need to keep me alive, keep my body healthy and well fed. I OWE them something in return. What I owe them has to be equally nourishing to them, equally beneficial to them, to their children, to others. "

Land mines are not one of those things. They are made to rip human bodies apart. If I contributed to making them, I would not repay my debt to those people who feed me and cloth me and keep me alive. Rather the opposite.

I know, EVERYTHING can be justified on some level and has been justified, from the beginning of history. By war, by self-defense, by righting a wrong, by purifying a race, by revenge, by god.

Justifications are dime a dozen.

The facts remain as they have always been: nothing ever changes because the fight started when the other hit me back.

Now I can get involved in the justification game and start producing poison gas and anthrax and torturing instruments – or I can just get out of the entire game and say: “I will do no harm”.

I live on Planet Earth, the same Planet that armies have been marching on, back and forth, from the beginning of time, killing raping, pillaging -- each army seeing their 'cause' justified by what the previous army did to them.

This is the true tragedy of the human species.

This a a cycle that has no beginning and no end, other than people like me refusing to play the game once and for all.

Don't even try to justify blowing legs and arms off of little children all over the world, in the name of the righteous protection racket of an organization that is taking all the resources out of people's lives.

Maybe, if you stop shooting back at the person who is shooting back at you, some sanity will dawn on the human species.

Try to sit down and work things out without trying to dominate and rip off the other side.

And all that rant above goes for all the armies in the world, whatever the colour of their uniform and the stripes on their flags are.

[marjoramblues]

Ned: It's not the danger that would stop me from working in land-mine factories, for any amount of money.
Ref: 'Your OWN personal morality':
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=12011

M: Then that is your choice based on your own personal morality.
My personal morality would be doing what is best for me; to try to maintain a physical and mental balance - well-being.

What you then go on to discuss is something beyond personal morality.
We enter the social and complex 'game' of the human species.
I don't know what you mean about refusing to play the game.
When it comes to basic survival, people will protect self-interest first and foremost.
It might not be by using landmines, even surgical instruments or knives can be used.
The withholding of bread and food - Starvation is used as a weapon of warfare. What use then working in a bakery, if the product doesn't reach the consumers.

One person who decides for his/her own reasons to work in place X, Y or Z will not change the world. It is not the individual who does the harm.
So, it will take more than our own different personal moralities.
We have had some version of the Golden Rule for generations and still we have wars.
I don't see an end anytime soon...

Drones...

[Ned]

One person who decides for his/her own reasons not to work in place X, Y or Z will not change the world.

That's true, however I don't act the way I do to change the world. I do because I believe that it is the right way to act. I do it for myself.

It is not the individual who does the harm.

That's not true. It is like saying that matter is not made up of atoms and molecules.

I don't see an end anytime soon...

I don't either.

[thedoc]

Maybe, if you stop shooting back at the person who is shooting back at you, some sanity will dawn on the human species.

Like this?


"Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines, and at certain points the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.

At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man's-land, calling out "Merry Christmas" in their enemies' native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.

Some soldiers used this short-lived ceasefire for a more somber task: the retrieval of the bodies of fellow combatants who had fallen within the no-man's land between the lines.

The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. It was never repeated—future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers' threats of disciplinary action—but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers' essential humanity endured.

During World War I, the soldiers on the Western Front did not expect to celebrate on the battlefield, but even a world war could not destroy the Christmas spirit."

[Ned]

Maybe, if you stop shooting back at the person who is shooting back at you, some sanity will dawn on the human species.

Like this?

Exactly.

[marjoramblues]

One person who decides for his/her own reasons not to work in place X, Y or Z will not change the world.

That's true, however I don't act the way I do to change the world. I do because I believe that it is the right way to act. I do it for myself.

M: Ah OK, I had thought you were leaning towards a 'one small step' scenario whereby if each person took a similar moral stand then some critical mass would fuse into World Peace.

It is not the individual who does the harm.

That's not true. It is like saying that matter is not made up of atoms and molecules.

M: Quote taken out of context doesn't make the same sense. The scenario presented is not about any scientific mass.

Don't you have anything to say about the rest of my post?

[Ned]

What you then go on to discuss is something beyond personal morality.
We enter the social and complex 'game' of the human species.
I don't know what you mean about refusing to play the game.
When it comes to basic survival, people will protect self-interest first and foremost.

When I started this thread, I asked the question about individual choices, by members of this forum.

I didn't get very far with that.

Then I stated my own individual choice and the reasons for them.

At no time did I suggest social changes or strategies to alter the 'game'.

What I meant was that I wanted to break the pattern, on the individual level, that almost everyone follows: the 'justification' game.

When Albert Einstein was approached during WW2 and asked to contribute to the Manhattan Project, his answer was (quoting from memory):

"Gentlemen, your reasons are convincing, your arguments are unanswerable, your justification is flawless, but I still won't do it. Why? Because it is wrong".

As I said: justifications are dime a dozen. Look at the result: humanity on the path of self-destruction.

I won't change it, of course, but it does not mean that I have to participate.