[extropy-chat] Freedom and Practicality

[Lee Corbin]

Samantha writes

> > Just---pray for us---the very minimum it takes to keep WMD out of
> > the hands of small groups and individuals.
> 
> That minimum is very intense surveillance of everyone.  Not good.

Sigh, yes, not good.  I wish that we were living in space, thousands
of miles from people we don't know and trust. But it just doesn't
happen to be so at this time.

> >> What do you mean "no alternative".
> >
> > No alternative to millions of deaths.
> 
> Why live your live or advocate running others lives based on such fears?

Because millions of deaths is something to avoid?

> >> How would you watch if you don't know what you are looking for?
> >> If you do know then there are other means of more or less just-
> >> in-time detection.
> >
> > That sounds just fine to me.
> 
> But you can't know what you are looking for completely, can you?

At the present time, yes.  You look for bio-tech capability, nerve
gas preparation facilities, and plutonium or highly-enriched uranium.

> I will take my chances with the terrorists over total government lock  
> down.

Your feelings and intuitions are just human, and will be driven
by your own prudence. Just how much damage---feelings aside---
have the police or the government done to you lately?  How much
damage have terrorists?

After a few cities have gone up, your feelings will change, as I
say. If it were to be, heaven forbid, dozens and dozens of cities,
then you will change your tune.  But you swear that you will not.
Even if San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Fresno,
Long Beach, Santa Clara, and several other cities have been
destroyed---even then you'll cling to ancient loyalties, and 
fear government in the abstract much more than the possibility
that San Jose could be next?

Perhaps. One thing is certain: people would rather die than admit
that they could be wrong.

> > Your life will be affected in tremendous ways by the first nuclear
> > attack upon the nation in which you live.
> 
> My life is already tremendously affected by the mass paranoia and  
> uses thereof that have been going on for the last five years.  I  
> don't need any more of this.

Really?  Affected in what way---and I don't mean about memes that
scare you about what the government *could* do.  I mean daily effects
that you can see and hear with your own senses sans the media.

Right now I am equally fearful of the police, robbers/thieves, the
government, and nuclear/biological/chemical terrorists.  Which is
about the best I can hope for at the present time. I'm really not
complaining.

Lee