[extropy-chat] Persuading Nazis (was: What the --blankety blank-- are rights anyway?)

[Lee Corbin]

Amid the fury (avalanche of posts), there appears this remark
by Damien S.

> Your questions to Amara about the auriferous hermit or the uploadphilic
> AI are similar to how I gave up on natural rights.  (In my case it was
> "how can I convince a Nazi they're wrong?")

The argument can be made from similarity: if you show enough isomorphism
between a member of an "inferior" race and the Nazi, he must gradually
come to conclude that pain to the creature is similar to pain to himself.

Oh, oh. Come to think of it, many otherwise reasonable people won't
concede that pain to their physical *duplicates* is tantamount to 
pain to themselves, from an objective POV based on physics.

But then, we are considering a totally *rational* Nazi (who just
has beliefs that differ from ours), and---to me---totally rational
philosophers  :-)

Lee

P.S. Please drop the funny characters in #$?! in subject lines. It
creates havoc with some people's spam filters.  Unless, of course,
you'd just rather some people not even ever see your post.