[extropy-chat] My Dilemma

[The Avantguardian]

--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:


> Stuart LaForge <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- 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.

Why doesn't it make sense that societies choose?
Societies choose all the time. They choose the prices
of stocks, bonds, and securities on a daily basis.
Yeah people don't wake up each morning thinking, "what
do I want the price of MSFT to be today?" yet
nonetheless the sum total of the millions of
individuals buying and selling set the prices.

The way the brain chooses is similar. After all a
person's choices are no more than the sum total of a
whole lot of little choices made by individual neurons
choosing to fire or not in response to their connected
neighbors firing. The mechanism of choice in both
cases can be modelled by vector addition of a whole
bunch of little vectors into a definite resultant
vector of choice for the larger collective.  

> > 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?

Generally destruction is always easier than creation.
When destruction is ones aim, one has entropy working
in your favor. But destruction seldomly creates value
unless the destruction is a form of "eating". You may
be able to recoup some value from the remnants of the
destroyed, but it is but a pale shadow of the value
that is lost in costs to both the destroyer and the
destroyed.  

> After
> all,
> we did get good sanitation in the west (finally)
> even
> before we invented the machine gun. (Talk about
> screwed
> incentives!)

They are actually neck to neck historically speaking.
The gatling gun was invented in 1861. Boston built its
first sewer in 1876.
http://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewhist.htm

> 
> > 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.

If I could say it any better than Frank Herbert did, I
would. Since I can't I will pay homage where it is
due:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total
obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to
see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

-Frank Herbert, 'Dune'.

> (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.)

If I was as sophisticated back then as I am now, I
would have favored a gradual disarmament. Disarming
25% of our nukes and waiting to see what the other
side did, would not have hurt us. If the had followed
suit, the world might have been a very different place
right now. All our stubborn brinksmanship got us is a
black market for nukes and every two-bit dictator or
angry sheik trying to get his hands on one. 
 
> For sure, we are glad that over the long haul
> history
> seems to gradually favor peace over war.

History favors survival whether by war or peace. I
don't find the world any more peaceful now than it was
historically. Maybe we are less prone to pull out our
biggest guns as the first option but look around
yourself. Without your permission, someone has spent
over $30,000 of YOUR money on the war in Iraq so far
and what has it got you? Your telephone calls being
monitored, automated packet sniffers going over your
emails, the gestapo going through your personal items
at the airport, and a slow but steady bodycount with
no end in sight.

And by gosh, this is in "the land of the free and the
home of the [can't quite make out that word]." While
in the less fortunate parts of the world, like Darfur,
there is blatant genocide happening. 
 
> 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).

Yes, wars have become pretty bad investments now that
we can no longer count on an ROI from looting and
pillaging the countryside.

 

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

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

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