Why Didn't America Take Over the World (1945-1950)

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: JoshuaCox

You really don't have to occupy everywhere. Just be willing to nuke anywhere they try and create nuclear technology.

I'd argue you underestimate the human capacity for empathy, but I might lose lol. Not sure if the citizens of the regime would stand behind a policy like that. Nuke the soil and take the oil might work for a while, but it leaves a lot of humans perpetually pissed off.

Yea I'm not sure the American people would have gone for it either, but it is hard to argue that it might have been the right choice...


If you ask whatever remnants of humanity that survive a future nuclear war , if one country should have made sure only one state had nukes , thus averting a global nuclear war, I bet they say yes..

a reply to: JoshuaCox

It's an ethical issue the way you are framing it.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the most ethical choice?

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: JoshuaCox

It's an ethical issue the way you are framing it.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the most ethical choice?

en.wikipedia.org...

Yup, but the ultimate ethical issue where you only get one time to screw up.

We can not have a global nuclear war for 509 years, but it only take one war.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

How do you handle the Trolley Problem? Do you pull the lever?
What is your decision?

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: JoshuaCox

How do you handle the Trolley Problem? Do you pull the lever?
What is your decision?

Every time.. ten lives trump one , even if the ones blood is on your hands..


That said in real life where the options are rarely definitive.. maybe not in a less certain situation.

Mainly about the OP , I can't think of a greater evil than a nuclear Armageddon...

Hitler, the kkk, Stalin, no matter who is ruling the world's only nuclear power. It beats the alternative that sooner or later a couple world powers launche thousands against each other.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Every time.. ten lives trump one , even if the ones blood is on your hands..

What if the one life was your mother?
Is it still every time?

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: JoshuaCox

How do you handle the Trolley Problem? Do you pull the lever?
What is your decision?

I know this wasn't addressed at me but I'll give my 2 cents:

Me I handle it unfairly if I have a stake or reason for bias. Otherwise I have no problem taking the action that maximizes the preservation of life.

Likewise if I have an automated car, it's job is to keep me and the passengers alive, unless I'm in a suicidal mood to switch settings. Those ethical debates about the car killing passengers to save some baby or group on the road("or the real unspoken implicit idea, some billionaire, politician or celebrity"), I'm sorry but you shouldn't be killing me and my family to protect strangers. And be aware that if these settings are available to you, setting them up would be similar to the trolley issue.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

We certainly should have stomped the Soviets into the ground, but no one listened to Patton.

We've wasted trillions on the Cold War. Retarded.

originally posted by: JoshuaCox

originally posted by: Xenogears

originally posted by: JoshuaCox

originally posted by: Kryties
a reply to: JoshuaCox

You could have nuked yourselves and saved the rest of the world from the warmongering and greed that spanned the last 71 years and counting.

I can literally think of nothing worse than 2 world powers launching 10,000 nukes at each other.

Oh there is something worse, the doors opened by the powers of technological advancement. We're at a point where within decades the ability to create advanced manufacturing systems capable of replication and self-repair will be possible. Powered by advanced fully autonomous control software. If you realize that both biological immortality as well as computers directly interacting with the brain are also technological developments that will also likely happen this century...

You realize all of these developments combined allow for the possibility of both the absolute concentration of power, as well as the ability to have absolute control over the population. You can imagine humans unable to die by their own hand or by aging or disease, who're born connected to machines where every sensation, every thought, every single thing is monitored and controlled from birth.

All it would take is for a sadistic group or entity to have control of the system, and a living hell can be created on earth. A hell inescapable even by natural causes of death, where people are imprisoned without realizing it. A North Korea to the thousandth power, where those in power have godlike power over their subjects within virtual reality, and can use them as their play things.

Technology, knowledge, eventually allows man to become as god, opening both the doors of heaven and hell.

That still beats a nuclear Armageddon...

Under those conditions we are likely to conquer the galaxy...

A bunch of super smart immortal cyborgs with one common purpose?!?!

So nuclear extinction vs. conquering the galaxy?!?!

That's a very easy choice.

Depends on concentration of power how far it can go. IF there's only one entity or human at the top, and it is an eternal north korea where the military force is automated and everyone is in vr hell from birth, with an ever expanding group of people within virtual hell houses for all eternity. That's like saying better for hell to exist than nothingness. Some would make that argument, but many would prefer an end to their existence as opposed to eternal suffering.

Many speak of expanding throughout space, but it is likely the power of the law cannot hold cohesion over an expanding frontier. If such happens, there's a very good chance of pockets of hell(where slavery, rape and torture might be common place) taking place.

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: JoshuaCox

Every time.. ten lives trump one , even if the ones blood is on your hands..

What if the one life was your mother?
Is it still every time?

Oh no then it's my daughter (for example) and we will roast marshmallows while the world burns.

That's why no one wants me choosing when my kids on the line.

originally posted by: 123143
a reply to: JoshuaCox

We certainly should have stomped the Soviets into the ground, but no one listened to Patton.

We've wasted trillions on the Cold War. Retarded.

We couldn't have stopped there if avoiding an Armageddon is the goal.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Yea I don't think anyone would disagree about that, and people forget WW1 wasn't the good vs evil that ww2 was.

This shows to me why I think you're really not thinking things through before coming up with some silly "what if" threads.
First you would have to define what good or evil is then move on to how you measure the events during and after both wars. Good luck with that. You completely ignored the valid point that a Hitler wouldn't have arisen if it wasn't for the way Germany was treated after WW1.

You can make these baiting threads all you like but you need to add some substance and maybe even links to support your conclusions and responses.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

We couldn't have stopped there if avoiding an Armageddon is the goal.

Your scenario involves perpetually nuking countries that will not submit to your authority.
Sounds like a slow torturous death instead of a swift end.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

quoted to demonstrate the idiocy of this thread

"quoted to demonstrate the idiocy of this thread"
Repeated in total agreement

a reply to: JoshuaCox

LOL living like:

originally posted by: Xenogears
You can imagine humans unable to die by their own hand or by aging or disease, who're born connected to machines where every sensation, every thought, every single thing is monitored and controlled from birth.

is better than a nuclear armageddon where you are already dead? Do you actually pause and reason out your thoughts before committing them to the screen? What pain do you feel after you're dead?

a reply to: JoshuaCox

For the umpteenth time, you nuke the British first, to stop their silly accents from taking hold and bring about an American only dr who.... it's for the species

You aren't even serious in your own thread's.
STOP! TROLL ALERT!!!!!

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight
a reply to: JoshuaCox

LOL living like:

originally posted by: Xenogears
You can imagine humans unable to die by their own hand or by aging or disease, who're born connected to machines where every sensation, every thought, every single thing is monitored and controlled from birth.

is better than a nuclear armageddon where you are already dead? Do you actually pause and reason out your thoughts before committing them to the screen? What pain do you feel after you're dead?

Again it might be better if all you have is a plain dictator which might allow you moments of respite. But if it is a sadistic dictator with perpetual torture, well some would prefer nonexistence to perpetual torture.

a reply to: Xenogears


Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

-R.A. Heinlein.

originally posted by: JoshuaCox

originally posted by: Wolfenz
Corporations Runs the World !!!

Not a Government or a Nation!!

Corporations run single politicians...just a whole lot of them lol...ok most of them.

no

or a Group of Politicians or Just the Party LOL

Well posting again the Famous Speech from the Movie called Network

Usually titled The World is a Business


So Much Truth !!

www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Xenogears


Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

-R.A. Heinlein.

One should be free from having the will of the masses forced upon one. Of course our existence as social animals, it necessitates certain limitations. But like the limitations of the past, these present limitations are not necessarily desirable.

The thing is as technology grants more and more power, I've hypothesized you get either a scenario of agents with enough power to defend their domains, within which they are the absolute law, or you attempt to limit everyone's power with a central authority in which case you risk a single agent with absolute power over all.

A population of potential dictators or one big potential dictator.

I'm sure people will manage to live through, even if their neighbor can murder, rape, and torture with abaddon within their domain, it'd be kind of like now where this takes places in other places and people in general just don't give it much thought.