What sectors of technology would be more advanced if the world wars didn't occur?

So, should the world wars have not occurred, what technologies and sciences would be more advanced thanks to more people living?
 
. . . more advanced thanks to more people living?
The real killing fields were in the Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. First from Stalin manipulating famines in the 1930s, then Hitler invading, then Hitler and the Nazis shifting the Holocaust into high gear.

So, we could ask what advancements were being made in these communities which were halted by all these killings, particularly Jewish, and other communities as well. Sad topic, but important.
 
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The real killing fields were in the Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. First from Stalin manipulating famines in the 1930s, then Hitler invading, then Hitler and the Nazis shifting the Holocaust into high gear.

So, we could ask what advancements were being made in these communities which were halted by all these killings, particularly Jewish, and other communities as well. Sad topic, but important.

The same region was also hard-hit by WW1 as well.

No Bolsheviks and no mass-killings due to invasions also mean Russia is very different. So different it's hard to imagine. For example, does the less turbulent 1914-1945 period mean Russia produces more science and technology, or did the Bolsheviks actually do some good for Russia in this area? (Almost certainly no Bolsheviks mean Russia is a much more important player in the 21st Century however, the Soviet collapse absolutely wrecked research and education in Eastern Europe and the FSU.)

The Middle East is likely to be more populous and developed as well. Not only did WW1 wreck the Ottoman Empire as a political entity, it wrecked the region's economy. In Persia, as much as half of the population died in the famine caused by bad weather and the Anglo-Russian occupation of the country.

As for technology:

Without WW1, the British experiments in solar power continue in Egypt, and we possibly have solar power spreading across the sunnier parts of the world as a major energy source in the 1930s.

Without WW2, the British adopt jet engines for their airplanes earlier (probably around 1943 or so) and television develops earlier and faster.

Without WW2, the French remain leaders in aviation technology, ramjet technology will be developed further and the French will be competing with the Germans to be the second largest jet engine manufacturers and innovators after the British.

Just what I can think of off the top of my head.

fasquardon
 
Much like the lady who was about to answer the question of life, the universe and everything, but died when the Vogons blew up the Earth to make way for a hyperspace by-pass, the question of what discoveries and advances could have been made could likely be answered by those who perished in some disaster or plague of man-made or natural origin. Every time the batteries in my remote control die, I ponder that something like batteries, created 3,000 years ago in some middle-east city, should have advanced somewhere beyond the current state of development.
 
So, should the world wars have not occurred, what technologies and sciences would be more advanced thanks to more people living?

I think it's very hard to estimate. On the one hand, during the war you have lots of death, destruction, and disruption. However, during war you also tend to have a great deal of investment in certain technologies (that spawn other technologies), as well as a very energetic, even frenetic, pursuit of that technology. For example, if you control for inflation, the US government probably spent more on technology R&D than it normally would in several decades.
 
I think it's very hard to estimate. On the one hand, during the war you have lots of death, destruction, and disruption. However, during war you also tend to have a great deal of investment in certain technologies (that spawn other technologies), as well as a very energetic, even frenetic, pursuit of that technology. For example, if you control for inflation, the US government probably spent more on technology R&D than it normally would in several decades.

Yes, I guess the standard answer would be that without the mass killings there would have been much more human capital which could go on inventing and developing great things. But, on the other hand, without the World Wars and the Cold War the state apparatus in most of the countries would probably be much smaller and if larger due to socialist pressure it would more probably focus on sectors like health care, basic education etc. Without the pressure of the wars (I'm counting the Cold War as one of them) there might be much less possibilities to go for "moon shots" like space travel, nuclear power etc.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
No Bolsheviks and no mass-killings due to invasions also mean Russia is very different. So different it's hard to imagine. For example, does the less turbulent 1914-1945 period mean Russia produces more science and technology, or did the Bolsheviks actually do some good for Russia in this area? (Almost certainly no Bolsheviks mean Russia is a much more important player in the 21st Century however, the Soviet collapse absolutely wrecked research and education in Eastern Europe and the FSU.)
Well, Russian education was vastly improved under the the Bolshevik.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
An important though boring area that has been somewhat stunted by the World Wars and Cold War is economics and it's management, actually. Were it not for the polarising nature of these conflicts, crystallizing bureaucratic communism and unregulated capitalism not only in economic but ideological terms as the only two 'acceptable' forms of market then we'd probably see a lot more true experimentation with components of both systems and independent research rather than academically justifying the superiority of the American Dream or World Communism. We still don't know how to effectively transition a given economy through a depression without significant, rising levels of unemployment and our attempts to avoid or deflate market bubbles are mediocre at best, for example. I feel, personally, that a more effective and compassionate system of managing that market devaluation would've been achieved by now had the world not been so tied up in its ideological knots.
 
An important though boring area that has been somewhat stunted by the World Wars and Cold War is economics and it's management, actually. Were it not for the polarising nature of these conflicts, crystallizing bureaucratic communism and unregulated capitalism not only in economic but ideological terms as the only two 'acceptable' forms of market then we'd probably see a lot more true experimentation with components of both systems and independent research rather than academically justifying the superiority of the American Dream or World Communism. We still don't know how to effectively transition a given economy through a depression without significant, rising levels of unemployment and our attempts to avoid or deflate market bubbles are mediocre at best, for example. I feel, personally, that a more effective and compassionate system of managing that market devaluation would've been achieved by now had the world not been so tied up in its ideological knots.

Amen to this.

fasquardon
 
At work.

I can but think perhapse great squadrons of flying boats or 'Clippers' since airport infrastructure would not be underwrit by the wars.

Perchance the great leviathan airships would still grace the skies majestic?
 
At work.

I can but think perhapse great squadrons of flying boats or 'Clippers' since airport infrastructure would not be underwrit by the wars.

Perchance the great leviathan airships would still grace the skies majestic?

Focke-Wulf FW-200 Condors and Douglas DC-4 were not developed with war in mind, and could find places to cross oceans and land.
 
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