[extropy-chat] Desirability of Happiness, Etc.

[Russell Wallace]

On 5/29/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> Again, asymmetrical warfare is not warfare.

It takes dual-use technologies
> like nitrate fertilizer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
> and civilian aircraft
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_attacks
> to achieve their goals of a high kill ratio with no subsequent retaliation
> target.


It doesn't matter whether you want to say "asymmetrical warfare is not
warfare", the fact remains that in the Middle Ages outfits the size of
al-Qaida and their support network, under people like Genghis Khan or
Tamerlane, killed millions. In modern times a similar sized outfit under
Osama bin Laden was able to kill only a handful of thousands - and
retaliation did in fact occur.

> Designer MDR pathogens are not just stories. You might be familiar with
the Biopreparat effort, which, fortunately, never saw deployment.

And which was an effort mounted by an empire of several hundred million
people.

Purexing fissibles from low-burn civilian nuclear ashes to build a nuke by
> a small group would be very different from the Manhattan project.


To make this more concrete: I personally would be able to prepare
> such fissibles


A small group precipitating a firestorm event by a few concerted acts
> of arson would be asymmetrical warfare.
>

The above are all _stories_ about things that you _think_ would be possible
in theory. Concepts existing in your imagination. I'm talking about events
that have physically occurred in the real world. Imagination is a wonderful
thing, but _it is not the same as real life_; that's the concept I keep
trying to get across.

> Comparable to the numbers you can kill with a bomb or a machine gun.
>
> Reread above sentence. You honestly don't believe this, do you?
>

Step outside your imagination and look at the empirical facts: people who've
set off car bombs or run amok with machine guns have clocked up similar kill
totals to murderers using knives or other low-tech weapons: two digits, with
extremely rare or unique cases running into three digits.
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