A real buzzkill (seriously; the environment dudes)

[Monty3038]

This could actually prompt an interesting discussion

I think everybody is an idealist to some degree, but I'm not sure idealism plays that strong of a role in behavior.

This could be very interesting. The first people I thought of when you mentioned this were the rocketeers and physicists who worked on the technology that eventually led to nuclear missiles, most are often portrayed as troubled by their discoveries and advancements leading to weaponization, so they could I suppose be said to be idealists... but was it their idealism that led them to their discoveries (advancement of science) which then their discoveries led them to violate more basic humanitarian ideals?

That is a pretty convoluted thought pattern, but is what I first came up with, if it makes any sense, I'll try to hash out some of the other thoughts in a bit... doing this at work now...

[wufwugy]

This could be very interesting. The first people I thought of when you mentioned this were the rocketeers and physicists who worked on the technology that eventually led to nuclear missiles, most are often portrayed as troubled by their discoveries and advancements leading to weaponization, so they could I suppose be said to be idealists... but was it their idealism that led them to their discoveries (advancement of science) which then their discoveries led them to violate more basic humanitarian ideals?

That is a pretty convoluted thought pattern, but is what I first came up with, if it makes any sense, I'll try to hash out some of the other thoughts in a bit... doing this at work now...

Actually, I'm not sure if this is a topic I can provide much for because I view micro behaviors ultimately as products of macro realities. Under that paradigm, its not ideals that affect society, but environment. Any time I see an ideal affecting things, I can see how they're more basic than assumed, and can't be isolated from environmental factors.

As for the Manhattan Project specifically, I think the ideals were normal social protections and other ones that are found everywhere human society exists, and that it's largely deterministic since any individuals without those ideals would simply be replaced by ones who do, and that it was really the natural progression of physics at the time. Ideals may even be a red herring since the causes of those ideals are biology and environment

[mbiz]

Actually, I'm not sure if this is a topic I can provide much for because I view micro behaviors ultimately as products of macro realities. Under that paradigm, its not ideals that affect society, but environment. Any time I see an ideal affecting things, I can see how they're more basic than assumed, and can't be isolated from environmental factors.

As for the Manhattan Project specifically, I think the ideals were normal social protections and other ones that are found everywhere human society exists, and that it's largely deterministic since any individuals without those ideals would simply be replaced by ones who do, and that it was really the natural progression of physics at the time. Ideals may even be a red herring since the causes of those ideals are biology and environment

Anyone care to paraphrase this for me?

[wufwugy]

Anyone care to paraphrase this for me?

I think this could be called environmental determinism. Determinism is not easy to accept, and likely impossible for humans to understand or demonstrate. But I find that every ounce of reality we have suggests environmental determinism. It doesn't feel that way on the individual level, but that may just be like we only feel like we live in four dimensional spacetime when reality is likely much deeper than that.

So when we broaden scope enough, we'll see that everything that happens is based on environment and laws, not individuals or ideals or what have you. Similar to how when you flip a coin over and over you get all sorts of different results, but when you broaden scope enough you see that the coin flipping plays by a set a rules that cannot be ignored and is rather deterministic