this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Unfortunately this is basic game theory, so the “smart” thing is to have the weapons, but avoid war.
Once we’ve grown past war, we can disarm, but it couldn’t happen in the opposite order.
The process of collective disarming is the path towards growing past war. And that first step is the collective banning of manufacturing such weapons.
I disagree. War isn’t caused by weapons. It’s caused by racism, religious strife, economic hardship, natural resource exploitation, and more. Those need fixed before anyone will be willing to put away their weapons.
Life doesn't adhere to waterfall methodology: we don't have to do one first, and then the other. We can progressively disarm as we're addressing the problems you mentioned..
Fair enough, but there’s still far too much conflict to begin demilitarization at this point in time. What the world can mostly agree on is to limit itself to being destroyed 55 times over by nuclear weapons (by UN estimates). And that’s in a world where nobody has actually used nuclear weapons (offensively) in 90 years.
These kinds of things take so many generations because the fundamental conflict between humans is not resolved. If there had been no Cold War, maybe we would have totally denuclearized by now, but I still doubt it.
It's enabled by weapons.
And there are people who want to use weapons when they exist, simply because they exist.
And there are people - for example weapons manufacturers - who want other people to use weapons.
Obviously it’s enabled by weapons. But that strengthens my point further - the nation who reduces their weapons first loses.
When has a nation completely set down their weapons, and what was the effect? One obvious case that comes to mind is Ukraine, who fully denuclearized. Ever since that moment they have repeatedly been invaded by Russia (the nation who maintained the weapons).
What you suggest is asking for this to repeat over and over again. The only truly viable path to eradicating war, is to first eradicate the problems that cause war, then to abolish weapons.
If you have factual evidence that your method works, please present it. I shared hard evidence of my perspective.
You seem not to know much. It has happened often, and in very different ways.
Start your studying about Switzerland, because it is easy.
Then try to understand Afghanistan. But beware, it is already a little complicated, and you need to read about 4 - 8 decades of history, and you should not read only sources from one country (they all lie, and you need to overcome that - or stay ignorant).
Last, go for some of the African countries. They are harder to understand, the what and the why. But coincidentially :) our current topic starts there, so it may be important.
Well Switzerland does obsessively stay neutral, which is badass… Sadly that is mostly an anomaly in the world right now. I’d love for everyone to be the same, but I don’t think it’s likely - good luck convincing the US, Russia, or China to be neutral.
Not sure what you mean by the others. Afghanistan has been destabilized repeatedly by a bunch of big nations with big weapons, and they couldn’t do much about it. That fairly well strengthens my point again - the only nations whose rights are respected are the ones with the biggest guns, and everyone else gets trampled by them.
Heck, Africa is also embroiled in proxy wars caused in part (mostly? It’s complicated) by big, militarized nations.
I think very few people would call militarization good. In fact I’d call it explicitly evil. I would also label it as necessary in the modern world dynamic. I desperately hope that people learn to respect each other so we have the option of demilitarization.
But what until then? Your ideas do not provide any solutions. You just say that it is unavoidable as it is.
Because there’s no solution that we know of.
But now you know it because I have told you in the first comments.
Game theory says your idea isn’t a solution because the actors will disobey.
And I say this is no child's play. We need to get serious, and maybe we need to get smarter than anybody else before us.
I don’t think I’m smart enough to solve “world peace” lol.
"Basic game theory" says we should destroy this wacko system. jfc.
TBH these kinds of sloppy arguments are a big part of why game theory is a joke. It's fine as math (apart from misleading terminology) but a major problem is applying it to situations that are definitely not "games".
For example killer robots are not a game in any mathematically meaningful sense. The situation has been to be maximally simplified into a game between two people in order to reduce the situation into a simplistic analogy. This is neither science nor math. It's no reason to condone killer robots.