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posted by martyb on Saturday October 07 2017, @08:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-come-in-peace dept.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, as the Norwegian Nobel Committee warned that the risk of a nuclear conflict is greater than for a long time.

ICAN describes itself as a coalition of grassroots non-government groups in more than 100 nations. It began in Australia and was officially launched in Vienna in 2007.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-peace/anti-nuclear-campaign-ican-wins-2017-nobel-peace-prize-idUSKBN1CB0XR

[Also Covered By]:
Nobel peace prize 2017: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons wins award
2017 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons Wins 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Given the current tensions due to North Korea, this prize seems somehow apt. What do you think?


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 08 2017, @10:42PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 08 2017, @10:42PM (#579014) Journal

    Perhaps, but not in this case as the war has tendency to be exponentially more vicious the longer it is postponed. The logical action would be to provoke WWIII before weapons have a chance to become truly apocalyptic.

    Like how we're so much more exponentially dangerously armed now than in 1980? It's been almost 40 years and last I checked nuclear firepower is down almost an order of magnitude.

  • (Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:54AM (2 children)

    by legont (4179) on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:54AM (#580914)

    Nuclear firepower may be down at least if measured in number of warheads, but there are other developments such as AIs powered weapons that are almost here. In a few years we'll probably get nano sized AI weapons that perhaps would be able to procreate in a couple of decades and that will really be it.

    Perhaps a nice nuclear war would be a blessing just to stop this progress?

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @02:39PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @02:39PM (#581146) Journal

      Nuclear firepower may be down at least if measured in number of warheads, but there are other developments such as AIs powered weapons that are almost here. In a few years we'll probably get nano sized AI weapons that perhaps would be able to procreate in a couple of decades and that will really be it.

      Foresight Institute which was a great transhumanist wankfest - good food and lots of crazy ideas. That year we were doing space-related themes and the participants were organized into groups to discuss various space-related topics. Our group covered space property and came to the rather pedestrian conclusion that we should divide bodies into three categories: small crap that no one will miss (denoted as smaller than 1 meter in radius arbitrarily), stuff that could be claimed automatically by a mining stake and physical presence (I think 10-100 km as upper bound IIRC), and stuff that should "belong to all of humanity" (so that no one can claim the whole thing outright just with a little physical presence).

      Anyway, as an incidental observation to our endeavors we agreed that cost of access to space from Earth would be a key driver/bottleneck of any sort of human activity, requiring property rights. One particularly bright person noted that this would probably be fixed when the Singularity [wikipedia.org] happened inside of 20 years. Well, it's 2017 and the Singularity hasn't happened yet.

      Making aggressive technology predictions about the near future tends to be very wrong. I think this will be no different. We're not that close to making self-replicating nano-weapons (deliberately or not).

      • (Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 13 2017, @12:04AM

        by legont (4179) on Friday October 13 2017, @12:04AM (#581449)

        I really hope you are right. However, is does not change my point which is that weapons tend to become more deadly. Hence the earlier a war starts the easier it will be for everybody.

        I don't think there is a way around. It's either one state for the whole planet (the idea I personally hate:) or human extermination. Looking for at least theoretical alternatives...

        --
        "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.