[extropy-chat] Freedom and Practicality

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> 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?

Um...

Terrorists have done a completely insignificant amount of damage because 
there are just not many terrorists around.

Certainly, I personally have been a lot more damaged by government than 
by terrorists.  No terrorist has ever done anything at all to me 
personally.  But every time I pay my income tax...

I'm not saying that this answer should determine the course of the 
debate, but Lee, it was a silly question.

> 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?

You assume that there's something the government can do to prevent this.

I sure expect a lot of civil liberties to go up in smoke along with the 
first city to get the Bomb, but I don't expect that to prevent the next 
city from going up in smoke.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence