[extropy-chat] [fwd] London bombings and toxic memes

[Brett Paatsch]

Damien Broderick wrote:

>A British friend writes:
> =======================

> Nope -- they were young Brits of South Asian ancestry who
> had grown up all their lives in England and spoke with Yorkshire
> accents. (Or so it seems on the evidence so far.)
> 
> They did what they did out of ideological conviction, not because of
> any personal experience of suffering, not because of any family
> connections with the trouble spots of the Middle East, and not
> because of any real "ethnic" identification they might have claimed
> with the Arab world.
> 
> They did what they did not because they had any personal reasons,
> but quite simply because their minds had been infected with a set of
> very bad ideas.
> 
> Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences.

Ideas like the precautionary principal or ideas like the doctrine of 
pre-emption.

The pre-cautionary principal is invoked by those that want to slow
down the rate of technological progress lest unknown unknowns 
jump out and bite us. Whilst known knowns cancer, heart disease
etc continue to kills us.

Meanwhile the same group of geniuses decide that in matters military
its not the precautionary principal that should be applied its the 
doctrine of pre-emption. 

So despite game theory, despite the US Constitution, despite the
US Security Council they decide we will just go over and do a bit
of quick and easy regime changing. We'll install a little of that
democracy that we all like so much that well do it by force.

What does it take for people to realise that after about 3.5 billion
years of life on earth the one thing that human beings are incredibly
good at is fighting other human beings. All those that were not 
were selected out long ago.  

Mortals are used to the idea of dying, most of them take it as a given,
give them sufficient emotional provocation to do it today for a cause 
and some recognition, rather than tomorrow or later for no good 
reason, and they will happily oblige you. This applies to human 
beings of all races and creeds. 

You don't need to give them thermonuclear weapons if they want
them they will just make use of yours.  You don't need to worry
about disarming them, the weapons you bring to disarm them with
work just as well for them as you.  You don't need to worry about
going overseas or down the street to look for the danger the danger
is much closer. The more you learn to fight with modern technology
the more you teach them to fight with modern technology. 

The universal soldier is not something that is yet to be produced
nature has been producing him and her forever. 

The challenge is to produce the universal peacemaker. 

Brett Paatsch