[extropy-chat] My Dilemma

[Lee Corbin]

Damien B. writes (welcome back, old chum)

> --- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > I find vindicating technical progress by killing
> > people and destroying infrastructure morally abhorrent.
> 
> Even leaving aside morality as being fuzzy and
> relative, it is still highly irrational. By common
> sense cause and effect, one reaps what one sows. So if
> you only justify investing in technological progress
> in the name of war,

I agree, at least up to whatever sense it makes to talk
about societies as a whole "choosing" anything.

> you get the ironic imbalance of
> capability that we have today:
> 
> One man can invoke splinters of the sun to vaporize
> millions of people at the touch of a button. Yet we
> can't cure the common cold let alone poverty, old age,
> and death.

Maybe the former are/were just a lot easier?  After all,
we did get good sanitation in the west (finally) even
before we invented the machine gun. (Talk about screwed
incentives!)

> Investing in fear pays dividends in terror. Investing
> in love pays dividends of abundance. It isn't rocket
> science nor does it have to be.

Again, this is an act that one fears to undertake alone.
(Did you back in the cold war days favor, I wonder,
unilateral disarmament by those countries where you
were free to give out such suggestions? I am very glad
that Western nations did not succumb to those memes.)

For sure, we are glad that over the long haul history
seems to gradually favor peace over war.

I also agree that war probably retards wealth creation,
even given the peculiar types of technology that seem
to arise in 20th century wars (probably other tech
would have come along sooner in place of them).

Lee