[extropy-chat] Is the future under control?

[Keith Henson]

At 09:14 AM 1/15/2007 +0000, BillK wrote:

snip

>Humans don't choose a specific future. Millions of people make small
>choices. Whatever path is seen as necessary (like war) will be chosen.

Correct.  Now how can you keep people from seeing war as necessary?

That's the whole point of my recent work in evolutionary psychology.  I can 
see why people see war as necessary (a bleak economic future, often the 
result of high birthrates generating a population out of balance with their 
resources).

And I can see a case (the IRA) where lower birth rates eventually mitigated 
the population seeing war as necessary.

But *how* this understanding could be applied to the situation in the 
Islamic world is beyond me.  Ideas are needed here, maybe even harsh ones.

>If it means (as it does) that other paths are closed off in our
>future, then by default, that's what will happen.

True.

The amount of money wasted on the most recent war could have made the US 
independent of mid east oil.

Keith