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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  4379 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Reddit Format is Broken

...Joseph Pulitzer invents the Spanish-American war, and quickly creates a prize to celebrate important journalism.

Explosives to kill people predated Nobel by a fair shot. Dynamite just made it less likely to be hoist on your own petard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard#.22Hoist_with_his_own_pe...





b_b  ·  4379 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm aware that Nobel didn't invent explosives. My point was that his intention wasn't to make bombs originally. But when you create a great force that is free for the masses to use in any number of ways, they will often find a destructive way to use it.

kleinbl00  ·  4379 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No, I get that. And my point is that when people accomplish great evil by accident they tend to put a band-aid on it and hope nobody notices. Nobel gets a bye from me because the morality of making it easier for your guys to kill the other guys is pragmatic in nature, whereas so many humanitarian awards are directly related to the scumminess of the people they're named after.