What technological development has caused the most harm in human history?
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ISIS. Al Qaeda. Oklahoma City.
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Combine all three (two of which are quite statelike) and they are less effective at killing people than Britain could manage via scaled application of bayonet charges... 400 years ago.
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I don't see why, given sufficient power, other types of organizations couldn't wage war. Banana republics were a thing
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I don't see why they "couldn't" wage war. (One of my favorite discussion topics is "could Apple build a nuke?") But non-govt orgs seem generally not incentivized to pursue war.
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One could easily paraphrase Clarke's first law as "any organisation capable of waging war is indistinguishable from state", which makes that quite a circular argument.
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this explanation hangs on definitions of scaled war and government. non-state actors have waged successful wars.
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Harm, or net harm? Because it's also easy to argue that without the state, you'd never have the markets and technological development that gave us vaccines, sanitation and increasing life-expectancy.
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(This argument was literally the crux of my best high school debate case--Jan/Feb 2002).
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This Indonesian agree
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