Ethics (OT) (was Re: Antiwar License)

[Michael St . Hippolyte]

Sorry to keep alive an OT thread, but the last post contains
a historical inaccuracy which I don't want to let stand
unchallenged.

On 2003.03.03 05:02 Sergey Goldgaber wrote:
> Computer scientists and engineers should not make the
> mistake of the pre-atomic bomb physicists in believing
> that their work could stay divorced from messy,
> uncofortable realities.  Their mistake was made clear
> to them and to the world in a very graphic and tragic
> manner.

The physicists understood very well what they were doing,
and it was by no means a mistake.  By the 1940's there were
physicists in the U.S., Russia and Germany who understood
the military implications of nuclear fission.  The American
physicists understood how horrible the weapon they were
developing was, and (with the exception of Edward Teller of
course) they judged it to be evil.  But they also knew that
if Hitler got the bomb first, that would be even more evil.
Their only mistake was to underestimate how far away the
Nazis were from getting the bomb, and it's difficult to find
fault in that, considering that the Nazis had Heisenberg.

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