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[-] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago

As soon as you are asking this seriously, the answer for you personally is: better don't.

You don't know the future, you can never know what will be done with the things you have built and who will be doing it.

If you are a young person, you are simply looking to make money (and maybe don't do much harm at the same time, but that's second priority), and I think that's quite OK for a while.

The older you get, the more weight you put on the question: what are you really doing there every day and for whose benefit?

[-] Kor@lemm.ee 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Counterpoint: what about all the weapons used by Ukraine to defend itself and western democracy against Russian aggression and imperialism? Should those not have been made?

Edit: Editing my most top level comment to point out possible subsequent vote brigading. When this post was only half a day old I received way more upvotes than the people I debated. Now that this post has gotten older the ratio is closer to neutral without any new comments pointing to any flaws in my argument. Hence, I think my debate partners felt the need to involve their equally misled friends to downvote my arguments and upvote their previously negatively voted comments back into the positives. Seems very inorganic to me.

Edit 2: The above edit is mostly meant for my discussion thread with NeoNachtwaechter.

[-] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I wish I had a thorough answer for you, but I'm afraid it would be very, very complicated. This war came out of a complex situation and we (westerners) can understand only a fraction of it all.

But I give you just a simple idea to think about:

Imagine all these weapons would not have existed, on both sides, then maybe there would have been a war anyway, but probably much less killing and suffering.

[-] lycanrising@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

you make an interesting point and it reminds me of a counter point: that modern wars might have higher death tolls than historical wars, but modern wars - with modern weapons - end up costing less life overall compared to the populations of the time.

for tribal conflict of humans past, victory could mean wiping out the other tribe - 50% death toll or higher. as weapons advanced and more efficient and more destructive tactics emerged, wars can be more violent and more deadly but shorter and with fewer deaths compared to the overall population. wars became efficient.

all this is to say that if we didn’t have modern weapons there would be more killing - not less. “victory” would necessitate more deaths.

[-] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

wars can be [...] shorter

I'm not so sure about that - appears like a theoretical argument to me. Today's real wars are going much too long to let this look plausible.

You'd have to read historical facts if you really want to compare wars. I would simply think about some people fighting with bare hands, and they get exhausted after only a few minutes (and may decide to make peace then), while some people fighting with guns can do that easily for years.

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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
216 points (94.3% liked)

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