Nuclear bombing of Japan saved NO lives. Invasion and conquest were unnecessary. Japan was supine WITHOUT nukes. Their gates were open. American propagandists merely denied it.
The lie has stuck - all my life. It will outlive me.
I would normally agree. Japan was indeed beaten, but that isn’t relevant. The question is whether Japan knew it was beaten. Interviews with the Privy Council in 1974 proved they did not.
Actually, human extinction not having been observed to occur doesn't mean extinction threats are rare. There's something called the anthropic principle: only living observers can observe anything, so everyone would experience a world where they aren't extinct, and this is true even if, hypothetically, nuclear buildup would make humanity extinct 99% of the time.
My doomsday bogeyman is dysgenic fertility. Skull-capacity comparisons and common sense strongly indicate that median hominid intelligence increased greatly over the course of the past million years or more, which could come about only if individuals with relatively high intelligence generally produced more offspring who lived to maturity than did individuals of lower intelligence. That condition no longer holds true in the USA or other First-World countries with relatively high median intelligence, and the world's fastest-growing populations are in regions where median intelligence is considerably lower. There is evidence, moreover, that the median intelligence of First-World populations is declining. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000463# and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613000470
I don't lose much, if any, sleep worrying about this trend, since there's little I can do about it and because I doubt that the dumbing-down will reach crisis proportions within the span of my remaining lifetime, which is unlikely to last much longer than another decade.
No nightmares for me, for exactly the reason described by Bryan: people seem predisposed toward predicting nightmares, while the actual occurrence of nightmares is extremely rare. I used to worry about climate change and even joined Al Gore's Climate Reality group. Then, one day someone pointed out to me how long Gore has been predicting a climate disaster, and the end has not happened yet. Sure there are signs of unsavory things happening, but I have a feeling that there is very little we can do at this point anyway, that we have already passed the point of no return if indeed the nightmare will materialize. If it happens, it will probably be after I die, so I wish the best to my descendants if they do need to deal with a climate nightmare.
Nuclear bombing of Japan saved NO lives. Invasion and conquest were unnecessary. Japan was supine WITHOUT nukes. Their gates were open. American propagandists merely denied it.
The lie has stuck - all my life. It will outlive me.
I would normally agree. Japan was indeed beaten, but that isn’t relevant. The question is whether Japan knew it was beaten. Interviews with the Privy Council in 1974 proved they did not.
"with no clear harm to host countries’ institutions."
That is certainly a take, even if it doesn't change the overall point of the essay.
Actually, human extinction not having been observed to occur doesn't mean extinction threats are rare. There's something called the anthropic principle: only living observers can observe anything, so everyone would experience a world where they aren't extinct, and this is true even if, hypothetically, nuclear buildup would make humanity extinct 99% of the time.
My doomsday bogeyman is dysgenic fertility. Skull-capacity comparisons and common sense strongly indicate that median hominid intelligence increased greatly over the course of the past million years or more, which could come about only if individuals with relatively high intelligence generally produced more offspring who lived to maturity than did individuals of lower intelligence. That condition no longer holds true in the USA or other First-World countries with relatively high median intelligence, and the world's fastest-growing populations are in regions where median intelligence is considerably lower. There is evidence, moreover, that the median intelligence of First-World populations is declining. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000463# and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613000470
I don't lose much, if any, sleep worrying about this trend, since there's little I can do about it and because I doubt that the dumbing-down will reach crisis proportions within the span of my remaining lifetime, which is unlikely to last much longer than another decade.
Taleb comes to mind. I suppose Bryan has a response to those kinds of objections, but id like to hear them.
No nightmares for me, for exactly the reason described by Bryan: people seem predisposed toward predicting nightmares, while the actual occurrence of nightmares is extremely rare. I used to worry about climate change and even joined Al Gore's Climate Reality group. Then, one day someone pointed out to me how long Gore has been predicting a climate disaster, and the end has not happened yet. Sure there are signs of unsavory things happening, but I have a feeling that there is very little we can do at this point anyway, that we have already passed the point of no return if indeed the nightmare will materialize. If it happens, it will probably be after I die, so I wish the best to my descendants if they do need to deal with a climate nightmare.