Sure, I didn’t mean to provide a full treatment of the “should it have been invented?” question. I just wanted to point out that there are many possible lines of reasoning:
It was impossible to suppress research on the bomb at all, e.g. someone in some private lab would eventually have invented it
It was possible to suppress research in one country, but impossible to coordinate all countries (especially in wartime); eventually some country would invent the bomb and gain a massive military and economic advantage over the others
It was possible to suppress research globally, but doing so would have dire moral consequences (e.g. require an authoritarian world government)
It was possible to suppress research globally in morally acceptable ways, but doing so would have prevented other useful innovations that were worth the risk (e.g. nuclear energy)
It was possible to suppress research and the specific outcomes of nuclear research weren’t worth it, but it would have created a progress-negative culture that would have destroyed much of humanity’s future potential
We could have suppressed research without dire consequences and simply failed to do so
Inventing the nuclear bomb was Good, Actually
These are not necessarily exhaustive. To me the most compelling is number 2, although nuclear non-proliferation since the cold war has shown that we can coordinate to a large extent, so maybe 6 is true or would have been if there had been no WWII.
I expect that 2 is true as well and so it made sense to invent the bomb before another less responsible country, but if we could have waved a wand prevented the invention of nukes then I think it would have been worthwhile even if it cost us nuclear energy or slowed global progress.
I mean, a lot of people oppose progress for pretty silly and not really thought out reasons, but as far as reasons go, “We invented/almost invented something that could potentially have killed everyone on earth” seems like not a bad reason to slow things down for a bit and reflect.
Sure, I didn’t mean to provide a full treatment of the “should it have been invented?” question. I just wanted to point out that there are many possible lines of reasoning:
It was impossible to suppress research on the bomb at all, e.g. someone in some private lab would eventually have invented it
It was possible to suppress research in one country, but impossible to coordinate all countries (especially in wartime); eventually some country would invent the bomb and gain a massive military and economic advantage over the others
It was possible to suppress research globally, but doing so would have dire moral consequences (e.g. require an authoritarian world government)
It was possible to suppress research globally in morally acceptable ways, but doing so would have prevented other useful innovations that were worth the risk (e.g. nuclear energy)
It was possible to suppress research and the specific outcomes of nuclear research weren’t worth it, but it would have created a progress-negative culture that would have destroyed much of humanity’s future potential
We could have suppressed research without dire consequences and simply failed to do so
Inventing the nuclear bomb was Good, Actually
These are not necessarily exhaustive. To me the most compelling is number 2, although nuclear non-proliferation since the cold war has shown that we can coordinate to a large extent, so maybe 6 is true or would have been if there had been no WWII.
I expect that 2 is true as well and so it made sense to invent the bomb before another less responsible country, but if we could have waved a wand prevented the invention of nukes then I think it would have been worthwhile even if it cost us nuclear energy or slowed global progress.
I mean, a lot of people oppose progress for pretty silly and not really thought out reasons, but as far as reasons go, “We invented/almost invented something that could potentially have killed everyone on earth” seems like not a bad reason to slow things down for a bit and reflect.