Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.
> Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited.
That is not quite entirely true, war -- especially long-term -- results in huge funds being funnelled towards things that can blow up the other guy, which can then move into more peaceful realms. Not to mention the requirements for research safety and grants are often quite different.
Without WWII, would we have operational jets in the early 40s? What about rockets? All of rocket science from the late 40s and early 50s came from WWII germany. Likewise for fission and fusion research, how much longer would it have taken without Los Alamos?
> Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.
That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Inventors generally don't need motivation, only funds (of time, of money, of equipment, of relations). And the reason for those funds and where they come from is the lowest of worry, as long as they are provided. Competition is irrelevant to invention and advancement.
I think you've both hit on and missed the point of the article at the same time. We think war = technological progress because that's how it happened in our civilization. We're biased toward that line of thinking because the evidence -- our history -- keeps us biased. The article is saying, it didn't have to be that way. Likewise, that isn't how it has to be in the future. So, yes, you are correct that funds provide progress, war provides funds, so war provides progress, but that's only one of many possible scenarios. It isn't a law of nature.
So what you're saying that intense competition between national armies is not the kind of competition that humans are willing to stake almost anything and commit endless resources on?
War itself may not increase technological growth. But preparations for war certainly do. And please show me another competition that has yielded lets say 50% of technological advances that various arms races have?
Sadly when human develops new kind of tech and is looking for money to get it widespread - the first and deciding question is: "Can it be used as a weapon?"
Wasn't low-cost sequencing of human genomes created by the competition generated by an X prize? Maybe we simply aren't harnessing gamification principles properly. Maybe really big games like wars aren't the only way.
If you re-read my comment you will notice that I haven't said that wars are only way to induce progress.
However I did say that I would like to see an example of a phenomena that produced at least 50% of technological advances that warfare has.
Low cost genome sequencing is all nice and dandy - but thus far worthless. I'm not saying it ain't got potential, but thus far it hasn't really impacted us in any meaningful way. And I'd be willing to bet that any future impacts on this field are going to be financed through military complex.
Even the renewable energy sources will probably come from military and not from enlightened corporations.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to pass judgment here. It's just an observation.
Not really. Unfortunately, while the Nazi doctors did a lot of stuff, it was almost all useless to the scientific community because they didn't really apply the scientific method. There are only a few citable results, in particular the Dachau hypothermia experiments (for example), and even those are rarely used for obvious political concerns. So actually, the Nazis have not advanced modern medicine very much at all.
A lesser known WW2-era legacy is the Japanese Unit 731 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 which perpetrated horrific experiments upon great numbers of Chinese and some POWs.
Unlike the Nazi experiments these don't seem as well known in the west, though they've had a potentially greater effect. I say potentially because most of the doctors were pardoned (the ones that weren't captured by the Russians) and several rose to prominence in Japanese medical circles. The results of Unit 731 are mostly classified, and have been used to jumpstart biological weapons programs in both the USSR and the US (at least one Unit 731 doctor moved to the US to work on bioweapons).
