[ExI] Beowulf

[hkhenson]

At 06:23 AM 11/24/2007, David wrote:
>Spike wrote:

snip

> >Can we really say we shouldn't be helping the Iraqis beat this plague?  All
> >cultures are not fundamentally equivalent.  It is our business because we
> >are good people.  Al qaeda is evil.
>
>I've brought this all up before, but it bears repeating --
>
>To me, the way to answer most questions like this is to simplify them
>to one involving two or three people.

That's not entirely legit. Very small numbers of people invoke 
different mental modules than larger ones. See "The Nurture 
Assumption" for a discussion of relations vs groups.

snip

>The challenge for extropians is to think of clever ways to free the
>world (and to end the enslavement or subjugation of women, which is a
>good metric for freedom) that are cheap (in dollars and lives),
>non-governmental, and/or non-violent.

Agreed. The first step is to understand the problems. That takes 
biology, evolution and especially evolutionary psychology if you are 
going to make progress on your list.

>I like micro-loans directly to women in the Congo to start up small
>businesses. I like assassination of despots. I like dropping laptops
>(without permission) into villages in North Korea and Chad. I like 
>golden rice.

How about analyzing these in EP terms?

Keith