[extropy-chat] POLITICS: terrorism and strategies

[Matus]

> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eliezer Yudkowsky
> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 10:55 PM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] POLITICS: terrorism and strategies
> 
> I'll just chime in to say that Robert Bradbury is out of his freaking
> mind.
>   No grasp on reality.  Maybe if we just go on saying that every time
he
> proposes mass murder, he'll eventually stop it.
> 
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/


Of course Robert seems to be using the exact same argument that led to
the use of Nuclear weapons to end World War II.  Kill a lot of people
now to save a heck of a lot more later.  I don't see anyone even trying
to challenge his points.  Consider the Normandy invasion cost almost
50,000 lives of allied, German, and civilians.  The invasion force
consisted of 160,000 men.  The planned invasion of the Japanese mainland
would exceed that of the Normandy invasion, which has been the largest
in history.  Best allied estimates suggested nearly 100,000 allied
casualties.  Hirohito had been militarizing his civilian population
since the time the war took a down turn for Japan, and was preparing
every civilian for hand to hand combat and resistance.  Dropping the
Atomic bombs in Japan not only saved a lot of allied troops lives but
saved a lot more Japanese civilians lives as well. Yet it was not until
after the firebombing of Tokyo after both atomic bombs were dropped that
Japan surrendered. If atomic bombs existed before WWII started and one
was dropped on Berlin at the start of Hitlers mad expansionism it could
be argued that some 50(?) million lives would have been saved.  There
were nearly 100,000 deaths at the invasion of Okinawa, 90,000 of which
were Japanese. Okinawa was only to be the launching point for the
Japanese mainland invasion.

While I am no utilitarian and don't endorse Robert's suggestion, his
motivation is to prevent as many deaths as possible (or more accurately
prevent as many human-year losses as possible) while everyone else's
motivation appears to be to avoiding having to make tough decisions
about things which may have drastic consequences.  What would his
critics have suggested Eisenhower do to end WWII?  Let the Japanese
mainland alone?

Michael