[extropy-chat] Hating versus Loving

[The Avantguardian]

--- Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> I am about as far from being a Bush fan as you can
> get.
> 
> Yet from an EP viewpoint, he is the correct sort of
> leader for a tribe that 
> feels they are under attack.  I.e., irrational, or
> if you don't want to use 
> that word, "the thinking impaired state induced by
> xenophobic memes."

Bush is indeed the correct tribal leader for a group
of Neanderthals under attack by rival cavemen in the
stone age. In a modern world of intricately linked
ecomomies, weapons of mass destruction, and global
energy shortage, he is the worst possible leader. That
EP seems to explain WHY he was elected certainly does
not make him the right leader. Just the one that
cavemen would want, not civilized men.  
 
> "Our way of life" is far more dependant on an
> economy growing faster than 
> the population and relatively low cost energy.  I
> would far rather see 
> nanotube/space elevator/solar power satellites being
> developed or lot of 
> high temp nuclear reactors being installed than Bush
> being impeached.
> 
> (Though impeaching Bush for lying the US into a war
> is a good idea too.)

This late into his presidency, I think impeachment
would not be cost effective. It would be far more
efficient at this point to let him serve out his term
and then bring criminal and civil charges against him
and his crew afterwards. That is if he actually steps
down from the presidency. If ever there was a
president that had the gall to try to install himself
as a permanent dictator, it would be Dubya.

If he is so willing to disregard the Bill of Rights
then him disregarding term limits is not out of the
question.

As far as the energy crisis goes, I don't see how all
of his expenditure of resources did a bit of good. The
amount of oil and dollars he will need to burn, to
kill all his "insurgents" does not make what's under
the ground there worth it. So long as there are
insurgents, they can't drill for oil. The insurgents
would rather see it all burn than give him one drop of
it.

Where is the ROI on this fool's bet? Iraq has maybe 20
years of oil. Less if everybody in China buys an SUV.
For a trillion dollars, you could probably have had
cold fusion, warp drive, and an exoplanet to aim it
at. But instead of EXPLORING like we ought to have, we
had to listen to our genes instead of our brains and
give a caveman the "nucular" football.

> An alternative is to kill (by starvation for
> example) a few hundred million 
> Arabs and take the oil in that region.  I really
> don't like saying it, but 
> a Bush type leader is what you need for something
> like this.

No. Absolutely not. Even if I wanted all out war with
the Arabs (and I don't), I wouldn't want Bush in
charge of it. He has no concept of HOW to best fight a
war. The fact that he started a war with NO exit
strategy, tells me he hasn't the first clue of HOW to
use the military. There are senior officers (who
majored in warfare in military academies mind you)
telling him it's an "un-winnable war". Of course there
are kiss-asses telling him different, but they just
want to get promoted. And he is too egotistical to
tell the difference. 

> 
> >Without hate, Rome WOULD not have destroyed
> Carthage.
> >But did not Carthage hate Rome just as much? Why
> did
> >hate serve one and not the other? Hate is the most
> >treacherous of all emotions. It makes you *feel*
> >invincible and beligerent all the way up to point
> >where you run up against someone stronger.
> 
> You are exactly on target here, but you need to take
> it a little further, 
> namely back to the stone age.  Why do we have hate
> if if makes us so crazy?

Because it served us well as hunter-gatherers. In the
agrarian age, it held its own. In the nuclear age, it
will be our downfall.
 
> You have to look at this "feature" from the
> viewpoint of genes in the stone 
> age.
> 
> Population growth eventually resulted in a bleak
> future where it was 
> obvious the tribe was going to starve.  So genes get
> selected that detect 
> this condition approaching and turn up the gain on
> xenophobic (hate) 
> memes.  Eventually the warriors get hyped up to a do
> or die attack on 
> neighbors.

That is why a warrior's mind must be disciplined. You
cannot trust a sword to an undiciplined mind, let
alone a nuke. Warriors can't afford hate. Hate will
cause them to be rash, fall for traps, die, and lose
the cause. Warriors need calm cold reasoning.   
 
> I make the case that this was better for genes *even
> for those genes in the 
> tribe that lost.*  Even if all the males in a tribe
> were killed, copies of 
> their genes existed in the young women who were
> usually booty and were 
> incorporated into the tribe that killed all the men
> folk.

Genes are pretty darn stupid. That is why brains that
generate minds evolved from them. Genes take
generations to change. A mind can change in the space
of a heartbeat. The whole evolutionary advantage to
minds is that they can change quickly. But if minds
can't over-rule genes, then what's the point of having
one?

> The subjects you discuss here are complicated beyond
> what I can respond to 
> in a reasonable time.  But you really should try to
> recast them in light of 
> understanding EP.

Oh I understand EP. I just don't find it very useful.
It's less useful than either evolution or psychology
are separately. What a caveman should think of
blackholes, is trivial.

> >You think so huh? Then why did the Lord of Hate end
> >his days in a bunker abandoned by all, hating even
> >himself enough to put a bullet in his own brain?
> 
> I think the bad guys of history need to be
> reconsidered in the light of 
> EP.  When there exist a widespread belief in a
> population that there is a 
> need to slaughter neighbors or some sub group in
> their population, then 
> people like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot will rise to
> leadership.  In some 
> ways it isn't their fault.  If Hitler had been born
> plus or minus 20 years 
> from when he was, we never would have heard about
> him.

Revisionist history seems a fine pursuit of EP. We
certainly cannot make policy decisions with it.
Although it seems good for marketing purposes.

> 
> >Hate is entropy. Love is spontaneous
> self-organizing
> >complexity.
> 
> Unfortunately, human "spontaneous self-organizing
> complexity" eventually 
> overloads the the ecosystem.  And since we are the
> top predator . . .

We best ration the resources we have left, start
looking for others, and find another ecosystem . . . somewhere.

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Phillip K. Dick

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com