[extropy-chat] Freedom and Practicality

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 27, 2006, at 10:23 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:

>
> But let's take a more practical everyday threat. At the beginning
> of the 21st century, human beings find themselves piled by the
> millions into large cities.  It so happens that it is now possible
> for very small disaffected groups, possibly even single individuals,
> to destroy large cities. For example, just think of how many people
> tonight are in an uncontrollable rage because of what their
> girlfriends or bosses have just done to them. How many of these
> people are so hysterically angry or crazy that they'd destroy the
> entire city in which they live were it only easy?
>

Likely very few to none.  It is not that easy and it is even less  
easy to do so in a way that is not detectable and to some degree able  
to be successfully countered.  Evil and competent geniuses are  
fortunately a bit thin on the ground.

> There is, unfortunately, at the present time NO ALTERNATIVE but for
> citizens to keep a close enough watch on each other---or enable
> their governments to be able to keep such a watch---to ward off
> total destruction.
>

How close is close?   What do you mean "no altenative".    How would  
you watch if you don't no what you are looking for?  If you do no  
then there are other means of more or less just-in-time detection.    
If, and it is a large if, nut jobs could easily take out cities, then  
I would still prefer to live under that chance occurrence than the  
very certain evils of total surveillance.

> How many people reading this list would be shocked, just *shocked*,
> if New York or San Francisco or Washington D.C. were to be destroyed
> tonight?

I would because it is not that easy to bring motive and means  
together short of an appropriately sized nuke.

>
> I wouldn't be at all shocked, because I have been expecting it for
> years. I think about it every day.
>
> Therefore, the absolute *minimum* intrusion into our lives must
> logically be arranged---either now, when we can do so calmly and
> rationally---or later, after the first cities have gone up.

What does this look like?  How is it rational to govern that much of  
our lives on the worse case scenario?  Where are the trade-offs?

>
> (I have every hope that the United States government, for one,
> is secretly engaged exactly in such monitoring, and that that
> is the reason nothing since 9-11 has happened. The U.S.
> Government is still under *some* control of law, or so it
> seems.)

I very much believe the government was in collusion regarding 9-11.   
That is much more believable than the string of ineptitudes and weird  
physics trotted out in the official story.    Whether or not that is  
to whatever extent so,  government is attempting to scare the people  
for its own purposes including greatly increased surveillance and  
control and a corresponding decrease in freedom.   I will not let  
fear push me into allowing that.
>

> But the bottom line is: unless it's a threat to *everything*---
> outside monitoring of what individuals are doing ought to be
> prevented (by checks and balances, of course).
>

A threat to even a city in not a threat to everything.

- samantha