[extropy-chat] My Dilemma

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jul 6, 2006, at 3:13 AM, BillK wrote:

> On 7/6/06, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> I find vindicating technical progress by killing people and  
>> destroying
>> infrastructure morally abhorrent.
>>
>> Besides, the motivations and capabilities of intelligent technologies
>> to come out of military lab are most likely to produce a Singularity
>> a la SkyNet. I'm not sure "saving millions of lives" would be the  
>> result...
>>
>
> 'Morally abhorrent' is irrelevant. (But nice to know).

Huh?  You want to back up and try again?  Morality is irrelevant?

>
> All the wonderful stuff that we now take for granted came out of the
> huge WWII R&D projects.  It would all probably have arrived eventually
> at a much more leisurely pace, but the frantic wartime effort produced
> it all within about a decade.
>

I doubt it.  Even simple transistors came long afterward.  The  
computer revolution was not 'leisurely' nor was much of it driven by  
purely military needs.

> I am in no way supporting or trying to justify the Iraq war. Just
> pointing out that the heat of this wartime development will have more
> wonders available to us in five or ten years. We will, of course, once
> again take these wonders for granted at the same time as regretting
> all the wartime death and injuries.
>

You are 'pointing out' something you have no way of knowing.  More  
wonders will come out of civilian space in this period by far than  
from Iraq imho.   More wonders are threatened by this "war on terror"  
than are being produced by it.

> We regret the 40,000 road deaths every year in USA, but it doesn't
> stop us taking advantage of cars without trying to severely control or
> restrict them so as to minimise road deaths and injuries.

That is truly irrelevant and one of the worst analogies I've seen in  
quite some time.

- samantha