Lazarus wrote:Still avoiding the question.
Would you, or would you not sacrifice yourself, or your family to these advances you espouse?
It's a simple yes or no question.
I totally understand what you're saying, and yes, mass suffering and destruction is a driver of progress, but if the cost of that progress was Rose being raped and murdered by foreign soldiers, would you still see it as a positive advancement of technological progress?
One of my favourite people died last week as a direct result of Putin's war and you talk as though those who die are just numbers in a sociological equation.
It's very easy from the safety of Australia to pontificate on warfare as a driver of development, but when someone you know, someone about whom you care, dies as a direct result of warfare, it sheds a different light on the subject.
The question is nothing to do with the discussion. You are asking if I will voluntarily sacrifice my own life and the lives of my family to create a war in the hope that some as yet unknown technology results from it? The question is nonsensical and is not worthy of a response.
You may read my words that way but that is not what I'm saying at all. I have lost people all through my life to illnesses and accidents, suddenly and excruciatingly slowly. Would I sacrifice myself if I knew that doing so might save other people's lives, possibly. Would I sacrifice the life of somebody else rather than myself, I would hope not. Nobody can truly answer these questions until they're standing in that position. You are claiming that I _want_ to see wars, that I'll happily _start_ wars, just to push our evolution along, but you have created that suggestion yourself, I never suggested anything of the sort.
A member here has recently started riding motorcycles and just last week was already confronted with the loss of somebody local to him that was killed in a motorcycle accident, it's something you have to get accustomed to if you're going to ride bikes. A friend in the US almost lost his nephew two weeks ago in a nasty car-v-bike crash and he was talking about selling his own bike. People die of illness and disease, and are killed in horrific ways every day - far more than die in wars. Over 170,000 Australians died in 2021 for example, if you haven't lost somebody close to you recently I think you can consider yourself very lucky indeed.