[extropy-chat] Desirability of Happiness, Etc.

[Russell Wallace]

On 5/29/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 05:30:59PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:
>
> > The general trend since the Stone Age has been for the minimum group
> size
> > for effective action (for both good and harm) to always increase with
> > advancing technology. Technophiles have tended to assume without
> evidence
>
> Whoa. I would like to see the reasoning behind this claim. It takes many
> people to build a nuke, but it takes a single person to detonate it.


The destruction of Hiroshima in 1945 took the cooperation of millions of
people. The (more thorough) destruction of Kiev in 1240 took mere thousands.

Designer MDR pathogens or other self-replicating malware package
> even more wallop in a smaller envelope.


In the stories we make up, yes. Not in real life.

You sure can build an atlatl, but how many can you kill with it, before
> being overwhelmed yourself?


Comparable to the numbers you can kill with a bomb or a machine gun.
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