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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Peace time = smart phone incrementalism, social media, ad tech, Bitcoin, NFTs, WeWork, low interest rate malinvestment, Twitter/Tumblr pessimism

Cold war = rocket science, new fuels, materials science, major computing advancements, supply chain changes, innovation, science hype, broad optimism

I know most of this is happenstance and that peace time doesn't itself cause lackluster development, but it is interesting and palpable.

I was so down on 2000 - 2020, but the decade ahead is exciting, and I'm filled with motivation.

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2000-2020 want exactly peacetime.

The US declared war on the concept of terrorism in 2001, directly invaded two nations as part of that effort, and overthrew multiple governments before ultimately abandoning the war and handing a broken Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2021.

We did an excellent job of making sure the war was fought on foreign soil and largely stayed out of our daily life back home, but we definitely were at war.

(I'm focusing on the US here, but there were quite a few other major conflicts and military coups around the world during the same time)

Well, you could make the argument that during the 2000-2020s the US was at war with undeveloped countries that definitely had no chance of dethroning the US technologically; this is different because China is in a position to do just that.

For sure there are differences in the enemy if you consider us already at war with China and/or Russia. It's my personal opinion that WWIII kicked off the day Russia's navy left port and circled around Europe to get to the Mediterranean (Dec 2021), but we haven't technically declared war yet.

Its worth noting that Afghanistan may be less developed technologically but they have now successfully fended off invasions from both the Soviet Union and the US. Never underestimate your enemy in war, especially if you're Goliath invading David's home.

> Cold war = rocket science, new fuels, materials science, major computing advancements, supply chain changes, innovation, science hype, broad optimism

Next time the cold war cools down, we need to invent something to replace it.

They tried with the war on terror, but it just wasn't the same thing.

That one was about oil.

Hot war in outer spaces is should do. War is fine so long 1.(selfishly) it won't kill me, 2. it has no chance of ending the humanity, and 3. the sites devastated can recover.

Colonial wars in the asteroid belt and beyond. Interstellar wars. Maybe the first FTL drive could be on an autonomous space torpedo, and that could be lore explanation for the shape of warp nacelles in this timeline.

As wacky as this all sounds it's definitely not the worst possible outcome. Megalomaniacs ruling over tribes, kingdoms and nation states have been throwing their people into bloody wars since the dawn of time.

If America and China are dead set on having another dick measuring contest, we're all much better off if they do it with drones halfway between here and the moon, instead of near earthbound population centers. By all means let's make outer space the future of war, as far away from humans as possible.

That should also help with the post battle debris situation - most lunar orbits are inherently unstable, so any debris should auto clean in a relatively short while, unlike with many important Earth orbits where stuff might stay up for millenia due atmospheric drag being just too low.

Broad optimism? Science hype? Are we living in the same country?

One thing I learned from the outside, the US - like any large country, BTW - is wildly diverse in pretty much every aspect.

It's almost intuitive if you consider the distance from Bangor to LA is pretty much the same distance as Madrid to Moscow. Think of the diversity between Madrid and Moscow. Bangor to LA won't take you through an equal amount of diverse cultures, the US is a single country after all, but the diversity is certainly there.

Not that intuitive, as the country has a language in common and one can simply drive from Bangor to LA without any local government asking questions. I have the impression cultural differences spring more from the economic and educational ones, unlike Madrid and Moscow, which have very long histories that are almost completely disconnected for most of that time.

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