{"id":3599,"date":"2017-07-09T03:16:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-08T18:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=3599"},"modified":"2017-07-09T03:16:47","modified_gmt":"2017-07-08T18:16:47","slug":"weekend-thought-where-do-you-draw-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/weekend-thought-where-do-you-draw-the-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Thought: Where Do You<\/em> Draw the Line?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following appears in a footnote to chapter 7 of Herman Kahn<\/a>‘s 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable<\/em>. \u00a0He is discussing whether it is inevitable that a conflict will escalate to the highest level of violence available to the combatants.<\/p>\n

\n

The fact that such unilateral restraints exist should not surprise anyone. Indeed almost all nations and individuals are likely to have limits which they will not cross even if under great pressure to do so to protect themselves or to further their policies. I have used the following chart to illustrate this point:<\/p>\n

Where Do You<\/em> Draw the Line?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Insecticides<\/li>\n
  2. Eating meat<\/li>\n
  3. Any violence<\/li>\n
  4. Police<\/li>\n
  5. Conventional warfare<\/li>\n
  6. Kiloton weapons<\/li>\n
  7. Megaton weapons<\/li>\n
  8. Gigaton weapons<\/li>\n
  9. Doomsday machines<\/li>\n
  10. Galaxy-destroying machines<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It is the purpose of the above chart to make it clear to both the pacifist (who generally draws the line somewhere between 3 and 5) and the more resolute militarist (who draws the line somewhere between 7 and 9) that both believe in some degree of universal disarmament; that there are means neither would use, no matter what risk results. In particular, if one could show that by building a doomsday machine one doubled one’s personal (or one’s nation’s) chance of survival, one would still be unalterably opposed to building such a machine.<\/p>\n

    \n

    So, where do you<\/em> draw the line?<\/p>\n

    \r\n
    \r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div>
    \r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The following appears in a footnote to chapter 7 of Herman Kahn<\/a>‘s 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable<\/em>. \u00a0He is discussing whether it is inevitable that a conflict will escalate to the highest level of violence available to the combatants.<\/p>\n

    The fact that such unilateral restraints exist should not surprise anyone. Indeed almost all nations and individuals are likely to have limits which they will not cross even if under great pressure to do so to protect themselves or to further their policies. I have used the following chart to illustrate this point:<\/p>\n

    Where Do You<\/em> Draw the Line?<\/strong><\/p>\n

  11. Insecticides<\/li>\n
  12. Eating meat<\/li>\n
  13. Any violence<\/li>\n
  14. Police<\/li>\n
  15. Conventional warfare<\/li>\n
  16. Kiloton weapons<\/li>\n
  17. Megaton weapons<\/li>\n
  18. Gigaton weapons<\/li>\n
  19. Doomsday machines<\/li>\n
  20. Galaxy-destroying machines<\/li>\n

    It is the purpose of the above chart to make … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[148,149,146,147],"class_list":["post-3599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doomsday","tag-escalation","tag-herman-kahn","tag-thinking-about-the-unthinkable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5813"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3600,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599\/revisions\/3600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}