[extropy-chat] Whoa! / Wafa Sultan

[Robert Bradbury]

On 7/31/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:

> I was not particularly impressed by, e.g., her unwillingness to condemn
> the various mass murders of American Indians.


I am curious with respect to your thoughts regarding (a) "mass murders" vs.
deaths due to encounters with bioagents the Indians were relatively
defenseless against [1]; (b) deaths due to human caused habitat loss (say
for chimpanzees); and (c) intentional outright harvesting of what are
presumably highly intelligent (though "different") species such as whales
during the whaling era.

Fundamentally however, what you are dealing with is cultural "my tribe" vs.
"your tribe" indoctrination (witness shiite v. sunni or many examples I'm
sure you could find in India).  This involves a perspective that life is a
zero sum game and may very well have an underlying genetic basis (for
aggression, violence, lack of fear of negative consequences, etc.).  The
only way a Friendly AI will change this part of the world is by forcibly
removing both (a) the underlying the genetic basis; and (b) physical editing
of the neurons that keep the zero sum mindset in place.  Failing to do this
will allow the hatred and violence to continue until the people who retain
such perspectives destroy one another.

Robert

1. My current impression is that deaths from bioagents significantly
exceeded any "mass murders" and was probably due to the fact that the
Indians were derived from a very limited population and lacked the MHC gene
diversity which Europeans had accumulated due to many centuries of city
living and plague encounters.
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