[extropy-chat] Re: Recipe for Destruction - Joy/Kurzweil NYTimes Op-Ed

[Russell Wallace]

On 10/18/05, justin corwin <outlawpoet at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But that's not really the point under contention. The point is that
> Kurzweil didn't say 'you should have decided not to publish the
> genome', he and Bill Joy proposed an institutional solution, where the
> scientists would not have had the choice.


If you read the exact words, they didn't propose a legal ban, not yet. What
they proposed is that this sort of thing be stopped one way or the other.
And my point is that it would be much better if the way it gets stopped is
that scientists agree to behave responsibly, rather than get to the point
where the world feels (with reason) that there's no alternative to a legal
ban.

There is a very large difference between saying that drinking bleach
> is a stupid idea, and saying it should be illegal.


Bad analogy. Drinking bleach will only kill the drinker.

- Russell
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