I think it is fairly clear that maximum equality—in the sense of nobody having access to nuclear weapons—would be better. This does not mean uninventing them in the sense of destroying all knowledge of how to build them. Just dismantling existing ones and preventing everyone from being able to build new ones would suffice. There are obvious problems in getting to that state from here, but that doesn’t make it less desirable.
The maximum inequality situation would be that exactly one person in the world has the ability to use millions of nuclear weapons, in their sole discretion. That seems strictly worse than the current situation in a great many ways.
In the current state, multiple people can order detonation of nuclear weapons, but with each subject to the implied or explicit consent of a bunch of other people. Even submarine commanders must find at least a second person to actively agree with their decision, and even then that wouldn’t be sufficient if others in the crew believed that those two were acting without legal authority.
Even if it were feasible, wouldn’t that by definition guarantee that future people will be less important individually then the most important people of the present day?
Since when nuclear weapons are eradicated, nobody would ever, presumably, be able to reach the same heights as a select group of previous individuals did.
(There’s the possibility of something more dangerous arising in the future that would have to be entrusted to an individual, but then eliminating nuclear weapons would be redundant.)
I’m not sure what you are saying here. Were you using some notion of equality across all of time without saying so? If so, that seems a rather unexpected and definitely non-central notion of equality.
Following this through, it seems to me that you are saying that if there ever existed any absolute ruler in the past, that necessarily makes every possible future society unequal. After all, every future society will have people who have not reached the heights of being an absolute ruler. Is this a correct reading?
If so, I respectfully decline to use your meaning of the word “equality”.
There will be a limit on the maximal future importance of any given human individual, and the limit would necessarily be lower than what has already been reached, which is clearly demotivating. This seems undesirable from my perspective.
The rest of the comment seems confused. For example,
Were you using some notion of equality across all of time without saying so?
All comparisons between multiple individuals must necessarily span across some period of time to have any practical meaning.
Often it’s implicitly assumed in discussions that the time basis is averaged over a calendar year or less depending on context, such as over a day or a minute.
Since comparing multiple individuals over an averaged calendar year is near universally accepted, then comparisons over a longer period such as a decade, century, or millennium, should also be accepted to varying degrees. Personally I find millennia long durations highly credible, but billion year long durations less credible.
It’s not possible to compare ‘equality’ or anything else ‘across all of time’ since it’s not understood whether time has an end.
I think it is fairly clear that maximum equality—in the sense of nobody having access to nuclear weapons—would be better. This does not mean uninventing them in the sense of destroying all knowledge of how to build them. Just dismantling existing ones and preventing everyone from being able to build new ones would suffice. There are obvious problems in getting to that state from here, but that doesn’t make it less desirable.
The maximum inequality situation would be that exactly one person in the world has the ability to use millions of nuclear weapons, in their sole discretion. That seems strictly worse than the current situation in a great many ways.
In the current state, multiple people can order detonation of nuclear weapons, but with each subject to the implied or explicit consent of a bunch of other people. Even submarine commanders must find at least a second person to actively agree with their decision, and even then that wouldn’t be sufficient if others in the crew believed that those two were acting without legal authority.
Even if it were feasible, wouldn’t that by definition guarantee that future people will be less important individually then the most important people of the present day?
Since when nuclear weapons are eradicated, nobody would ever, presumably, be able to reach the same heights as a select group of previous individuals did.
(There’s the possibility of something more dangerous arising in the future that would have to be entrusted to an individual, but then eliminating nuclear weapons would be redundant.)
I’m not sure what you are saying here. Were you using some notion of equality across all of time without saying so? If so, that seems a rather unexpected and definitely non-central notion of equality.
Following this through, it seems to me that you are saying that if there ever existed any absolute ruler in the past, that necessarily makes every possible future society unequal. After all, every future society will have people who have not reached the heights of being an absolute ruler. Is this a correct reading?
If so, I respectfully decline to use your meaning of the word “equality”.
There will be a limit on the maximal future importance of any given human individual, and the limit would necessarily be lower than what has already been reached, which is clearly demotivating. This seems undesirable from my perspective.
The rest of the comment seems confused. For example,
All comparisons between multiple individuals must necessarily span across some period of time to have any practical meaning.
Often it’s implicitly assumed in discussions that the time basis is averaged over a calendar year or less depending on context, such as over a day or a minute.
Since comparing multiple individuals over an averaged calendar year is near universally accepted, then comparisons over a longer period such as a decade, century, or millennium, should also be accepted to varying degrees. Personally I find millennia long durations highly credible, but billion year long durations less credible.
It’s not possible to compare ‘equality’ or anything else ‘across all of time’ since it’s not understood whether time has an end.