[ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary Magdeline...

p0stfuturist at yahoo.com p0stfuturist at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 9 01:46:17 UTC 2009



This is like saying Stalin's apparatchiks let 5 million+ starve in the Ukraine, plus another 5  million+ turned into zeks, but they did improve heath care and empower women. Pyrrhic achievements. Besides, you write here as if Iraq is entirely finished because of what Bush (admittedly a hack who trashed Reagan & Clinton foreign policy) did years ago. What about the future of Iraq? one question now is: can a future Iraq treat women better?
 
>Indeed.  Iraq was one of the most hated muslim countries by the radical terrorists.  They >allowed women to go to school, hold jobs, become doctors, etc.  They has full access to western media and TV.  Iraq was the most secular and non-fundamentalist of all the muslim nations.  They would have been the least likely of any muslim nation to have ties to terrorists or fundamentalist radicals.

"good enough for government work" --Wally Shirra

--- On Sun, 6/7/09, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org <extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


From: extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org <extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 69, Issue 13
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Date: Sunday, June 7, 2009, 11:44 PM


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: USA Health Costs (BillK)
   2. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
      (painlord2k at libero.it)
   3. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Damien Broderick)
   4. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Lee Corbin)
   5. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population) (Jeff Davis)
   6. Are hard drugs not really addictive after all? (BillK)
   7. Re: Are hard drugs not really addictive after all?
      (Damien Broderick)
   8. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
      (Harvey Newstrom)
   9. Re: Archduke Ferdinand Found Alive! WWI A Mistake!
      (Harvey Newstrom)
  10. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population) (Jeff Davis)
  11. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population) (Stefano Vaj)
  12. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
      (painlord2k at libero.it)
  13. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was: Mary
      Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
      (Damien Broderick)
  14. Re: [Robotgroup] Alternative human keyboard interfaces
      (Bryan Bishop)
  15. Re: [Open Manufacturing] Re: [Robotgroup] Alternative human
      keyboard interfaces (Bryan Bishop)
  16. Re: USA Health Costs (Stathis Papaioannou)
  17. 'Gendertopia'? (Post Futurist)
  18. Re: The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War
      (Stathis Papaioannou)
  19. Re: Are hard drugs not really addictive after all?
      (Stathis Papaioannou)
  20. Re: future fizzle (spike)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:08:22 +0000
From: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] USA Health Costs
Message-ID: <ee50357e0906070508j61c67u3abe0bdb1a325d59 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 6/7/09, painlord2k wrote:
<snip>
>  It is not your or my or anyone right to choose how to use someone else
> money. It is the right of the people owning the money to choose how use it.
> Who are you or someone else to rule how they must use their wealth? Are you
> morally better than them?
>


Yea! I don't want no doctor telling me what my disease is or what
treatments might fix it. Just because he's got degrees and stuff and
years of experience. How dare he!

I'll do a google search and know just as much as he does. Get rid of
all doctors - they're just wasting my money.

I admit I can't do operations on myself. But my friend Fred could do
the operation for me, if I printed out the instructions from google.
Really, the whole medical profession is just a big con trick. We could
all save loads of money by getting rid of them.


BillK


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:22:14 +0200
From: "painlord2k at libero.it" <painlord2k at libero.it>
To: rafal at smigrodzki.org, ExI chat list
    <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID: <4A2BCD16.2000807 at libero.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"

Il 06/06/2009 14.44, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto:
> 2009/6/6 John Grigg<possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>:
>
>   it was only a matter
>> of time before Iraq developed strong ties with the major terrorist
>> organizations and became a major supporter of them.  I just wish Pres. Bush
>> had not lied to start a war that actually needed to be carried out,
>> but obviously not on a false pretense regarding WMD.
>>
> ### This is stupid.

Yes.

The invasion was not justified by WMD (this is what the press pressed 
because what bleed lead). The war was legally justified by the repeated 
violation of the armistice clauses. If the Iraq's government didn't 
respected the clauses, any and all powers had the right to resume the 
combat operations and topple the Iraq's government as they feel fit.

Rights don't need justifications when used.

People could disagree on the need to do so, or if it was a wise move or 
if it netted any gains. But the legal justification is correct.
MSM journalists are notorious to write about stuff they don't know or 
don't understand and always in a such way that adhere to their chosen 
"narrative" and not to the truth.

Mirco
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------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:24:03 -0500
From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090607122253.02325158 at satx.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 04:22 PM 6/7/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote:

>MSM journalists are notorious to write about stuff they don't know 
>or don't understand and always in a such way that adhere to their 
>chosen "narrative" and not to the truth.

But thank dog, at least that never happens on the ExI list.

Damien Broderick




------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:53:55 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War
Message-ID: <4A2BFEB3.4050600 at rawbw.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

What's the question here, and what's really driving
the diverse views?

Our emotions, let's face it, very often drive our
initial answers to many queries, at which point
our rational engines kick in to supply a nice
"rationalization" of the answers we want to obtain.

In the present case, some people are biased in
America's favor, and others resent the U.S.

Why America? Easy: since the end of WWII, the U.S.
has been the "big cheese" among nations, and so
of course garners the most attention. It also follows
that the moral question "Is America doing the right
thing" far outweighs "Is Burkina Faso doing the
right thing?"

As such, this very question provides a critical
thinker a great working example so that he or she
might  examine his or her own biases and, if there
is any interest, try to overcome those biases.

Standing back from just the current "Death Toll
Imbalance" and taking an historical view, all
throughout history invading armies commit atrocities.
And contrary to what some here have written, indeed
the soldiers often enjoy it. Armed conflict of any
kind does tend to bring out the worst in us. The
good news is that the levels of atrocities are
falling off.

I therefore thank Stathis for informing us that
"In occupied Europe, the Germans sometimes tried
and punished soldiers who committed crimes against
the local population." That's news to me. Haven't
we always been regaled with countless stories of
the Germans taking out whole villages in reprisal
for guerrilla actions?

By and large, the pattern is this: in general, the
wealthier and richer a nation is, the more likely
that it will have risen to the point that it can
afford the luxury of being less terrible to
its subjects, including the new subjects of a
conquered nation that often need to be taught a
lesson, i.e. "taught respect" or, what amounts to
the same thing, persuaded that further resistance
will be punished.

On this reading it's clear that one would expect
the U.S. to be more careful about civilian deaths
than the Taliban. If the Taliban or its ally
succeeds in killing thousands of civilians in
the United States in a "terrorist" blow, it's
cause for them to rejoice; whereas if the United States
blows up an aspirin factory in the Sudan, killing
uninvolved civilians, the Americans will consider
it to have been a mistake and will suffer a great
deal of internal criticism.

Stathis wrote

"The Soviet war in Afghanistan was similar in
type and scale to the American war in Vietnam.
Do you have any evidence suggesting that the
Americans behaved better than the Soviets?"

It does seem to be the case that the U.S.
committed fewer actions that we on this list
would regard as atrocities. More important,
however, is how the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.
regarded their own atrocities. In the former
the massacre at My Lai received a tremendous
amount of criticism, and the generals and
colonels involved---simply for the sakes of
their own careers, if nothing else---would
have prevented it had they known ahead of time.
For a gripping view of Soviet atrocities, you
could see the movie "Charlie Wilson's War", :)
though that probably isn't what you wanted in
terms of "evidence". It happens to be true that
even taking their wealth into account, Russian
soldiers and generals all throughout the
twentieth century were well known for their
relative brutality and ruthlessness.

To me it's  appropriate to criticize nations
and leaders so long as an attempt is made to
do it with as little bias as possible. If at
a deep level you resent the prestige and
power of "the big cheese" among nations, do
try to compensate for that; on the other hand,
if you are pro-American or are an American
patriot, in discussions like this some effort
also should be made to overcome bias.

The present conflicts that involve America are
too recent for one to easily get an unbiased
view of who is the *naughtiest* (given their
background level of wealth). Almost all the
information I see comes from politically motivated
sources. The endless finger-pointing suggests to
me that the pundits actually hope that their
denunciations will have some political effect,
and that that's what's important to them. That
would be sad, if it weren't so ridiculous.

Stathis wrote

> 2009/6/6 John Grigg wrote
>
>> At least in the cases of the Taliban and Al Queda, we are trying to root out
>> very vicious organizations that delight in crimes against humanity and who
>> want to cripple Western civilization.  Yes, it's terrible that so many
>> innocent Muslims have died in this war, but often their own people (the
>> insurgents), hide amongst them and use these unfortunate souls as cover
>> & impromptu human shields.
> 
> And I suppose that the Iraqi invaders would say it was terrible that
> innocent Americans had to die due to the American insurgents hiding
> among the population, when all the Iraqis wanted to do was make sure
> that America would never be able to threaten other countries again.

We see some examples of what I'm saying right here.
How do we know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda delight
in crimes against humanity? I don't think so. It
simply stands to reason, however, that their humanitarian
impulses are, due to their background, less refined than
those of the west. If they cheer when a couple of thousand
of American civilians die in a terrorist act, we have to
take their history (and even their religion) into account.
They haven't been living in the twentieth century long,
if at all.

Likewise, how do we know that "all the Iraqi [insurgents]
wanted to do was make sure that America would never be
able to threaten other countries again"? They have their
own reasons for resenting "the big cheese", a lot of it
cultural, and it's a mistake for western readers to
imagine that those reasons are identical to their own.
Far from it.

Lee



------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 11:38:32 -0700
From: Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary    Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID:
    <a6a17bd40906071138n3ad6b1aaref8270392175ca00 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

2009/6/6 painlord2k at libero.it <painlord2k at libero.it>:

> When was the last time the American supreme commander gave the permission to
> kill indiscriminately for two hours and the troops killed indiscriminately
> for two days? And no one went to court martial and was hanged?

Iraq in general, Fallujah and Blackwater in particular.

You;'re completely whacked, Mirco.

"Lips."

Best, Jeff Davis

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
   committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity
         for not even hearing about them."
                                            George Orwell


------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 19:17:07 +0000
From: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
To: Extropy Chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: [ExI] Are hard drugs not really addictive after all?
Message-ID:
    <ee50357e0906071217o74e1c6cerb87a3e41c3899de7 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/02/farout>
Quote:
The predominant model of drug addiction views it as a disease: humans
and animals will use heroin or cocaine for as long as they are
available. When the drugs run out, they will seek a fresh supply; the
drugs, not the users, are in control.

These conclusions, repeated frequently by politicians and the media,
are based on experiments carried out almost exclusively on animals,
usually rats and monkeys, housed in metal cages and experiencing a
particularly poor quality of life. What would happen, wondered
psychologist Dr Bruce Alexander, then of British Columbia's Simon
Fraser University, if these animals were instead provided with a
comfortable, stimulating environment?
-------------

Alexander found that the rats stopped drinking the morphine immediately.
He has written a book about drug addiction.
<http://www.amazon.ca/Globalisation-Addiction-Bruce-Alexander/dp/0199230129>


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park>
He told the Canadian Senate in 2001 that prior experiments in which
laboratory rats were kept isolated in cramped metal cages, tethered to
a self-injection apparatus, show only that "severely distressed
animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress
pharmacologically if they can."

----------------

Even Oprah is getting in on this.
<http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200901_omag_beck_rat_race>
they spend many hours playing roles that don't match their innate
personalities and preferences, dulling the pain with mood-altering
substances. Miserable with their jobs, relationships, or daily
routines, they gulp down a fifth of Scotch, buy 46 commemorative Elvis
plates on QVC, superglue phony smiles to their faces, and head on out
to whatever rat race is gradually destroying them.
---------

So, is drug taking just a coping mechanism for people with really
desperate life circumstances?

The monkeys in cages killing themselves with drugs has led futurists
to speculate that transhumans will wirehead themselves into oblivion
because they will be unable to resist the overwhelming pleasure. This
is proposed as one explanation for the Fermi problem. But if this
research is correct, then that won't happen. If our future lives are
pleasant and fulfilling, then wireheading will just be an occasional
pleasure and not a life-threatening addiction.

BillK


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:36:42 -0500
From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Are hard drugs not really addictive after all?
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090607143356.023565a8 at satx.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

This fits the claims of smart people like Samuel R. Delany who say 
they could take it or leave it, and seem to be telling the truth. I 
suppose the trouble is you can't be sure what sort of response you'll 
show until you're maybe in too deep. But I was able to give up 
cigarettes, alcohol, coffee and almost all black tea without 
*dreadful* trouble (although I needed about 4 runs at the smokes over 
a decade or so--that stuff is *seriously* habituating/addictive).

Damien Broderick



------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:09:00 -0400
From: Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com>
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary    Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID: <200906071209.01326.mail at harveynewstrom.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"

On Saturday 06 June 2009 8:44:10 am Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> 2009/6/6 John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>:
>
> ?it was only a matter
>
> > of time before Iraq developed strong ties with the major terrorist
> > organizations and became a major supporter of them.? I just wish Pres.
> > Bush had not lied to start a war that actually needed to be carried out,
> > but?obviously not?on a false?pretense regarding WMD.
>
> ### This is stupid.

Indeed.  Iraq was one of the most hated muslim countries by the radical 
terrorists.  They allowed women to go to school, hold jobs, become doctors, 
etc.  They has full access to western media and TV.  Iraq was the most secular 
and non-fundamentalist of all the muslim nations.  They would have been the 
least likely of any muslim nation to have ties to terrorists or fundamentalist 
radicals.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>



------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:32:13 -0400
From: Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Archduke Ferdinand Found Alive! WWI A Mistake!
Message-ID: <200906071232.13886.mail at harveynewstrom.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"

On Thursday 04 June 2009 12:10:46 am spike wrote:
> > "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote,
> > > Evidence please?
> >
> > <http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/cheney.iraq.al.qaeda/>
> > --
> > Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
>
> Ja.  Cheney is saying now, and appears to be saying then, that Iraq didn't
> do 9/11, (or if they did, the CIA couldn't prove it), but that Iraq had
> some mysterious relationship with bin Laden.  Cheney isn't saying now that
> there was no relationship between Iraq and bin Laden, only that Iraq didn't
> help with the 9/11 attacks.  I see no contradiction here.

In his March 21, 2003, letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives 
and president pro tempore of the Senate notifying them of the use of military 
force in Iraq after the failure of diplomacy, Bush stated that "the use of 
armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other 
countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international 
terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, 
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." 
On the December 9, 2001, edition of Meet the Press, Cheney said that it was 
"pretty well confirmed" that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with September 11 
hijacker Mohamed Atta shortly before the attacks.
On the September 14, 2003, edition of the NBC program, Cheney said: "If we're 
successful in Iraq ... we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of 
the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us 
under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11." 
-- 
Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>



------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 14:40:34 -0700
From: Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary    Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID:
    <a6a17bd40906071440o57138017xe953449a79b4245b at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

2009/6/6 John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 8:16 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> America has killed far more Muslims in the past decade than the Muslims have
> killed Americans, and this isn't even a cause for remorse, the usual
> justification being that they either deserved it or got in the way.
>>>>
>
> Do you feel that "not enough" Americans have died in the Mideast war??? How
> many more will it take for you to feel parity has been achieved??? Please
> let me know...

One million Iraqi dead in an illegal invasion,... let's see, out of
twenty-five million,...that's four percent of the population.  So, if
the US population is three hundred million, then four percent of that
is twelve million.  So, to answer John's (rhetorical and profoundly
stupid, manipulative, and biased) question -- (actually, it was John's
lame attempt to box Stathis in, since, no one who isn't "with the
terrorists" is "allowed" to advocate the killing of Americans) -- but,
wrongo bongo again -- on the basis of numerical equivalence then, the
"terrorists" (Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Taliban of whatever stripe,
al Quaeda, oh hell!, let's just say Muslims the world over and be done
with it) have a get-out-of-jail-free card for the killing of
11,992,000 Americans.

Please check my math.

> Americans?(even those in uniform) tend to feel very?sad about innocents
> getting killed?due to the fighting...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.  Please please stop. you're killing me.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

> And the Iraqi people have scratched
> their heads in amazement as American?troops?accused of war crimes have?(at
> least sometimes) been?tried for their?wrongdoing and convicted.

Hahahahahahahahaha.  Oh god this is good.   Hahahahahahahaha.  And
that pathetical parenthetical,... oh god that's sweet.
Hahahahahahaha.

                                 <snip>

> Afghanistan was a Taliban stronghold

Which makes it all okay, right?   The Taliban weren't "our" enemy
until the Bush cabal needed someone to shoot at so as to distract
Americans from noticing how Osama got away.

> and?it was only a matter
> of time before Iraq developed strong ties with the major terrorist
> organizations and became a major supporter of them.

Made up out of whole Neocon cloth.

>? I just wish Pres. Bush
> had not lied to start a war that actually needed to be carried out,

Yeah, right!  If he had just gone to the American people and said?,
"The Israelis have put in a order for the American military to take
out Saddam and make the mideast safe for Israel.  They want Americans
to die for the jews (there was a Holocaust remember, so that makes it
okay) and for American taxpayers to foot the bill.  Emper... er, Vice
President Cheney wants Iraqi oil for his pals at Halliburton, the
military industrial complex wants the business, and we've got a
buttload of new generals in the Army and Marines just itchin' to show
their stuff, get some more stars, and maybe get a shot at runnin' for
president some day soon on the Republican ticket.  What say, America,
are you ready to rumble?!!"

Americans would have jumped at the chance.  I can't for the life of me
figure why he thought he had to lie about it!!!  Fuck the UN charter.

> But ask yourself, how would Russia or China behave if they alone had the
> combined economic, technological and military power that the U.S.
> possesses?? I shudder at the very thought...

Because, twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union your brain is
still polluted with all that anti-communist bullshit.  Here's what you
do.  Rip the cord from some unused appliance.  Cut it to length -- a
foot less than your height -- strip the ends and tape them to your
temples.  Now lie on the floor directly opposite an electrical outlet
on the wall.  Place your feet one on either side of the outlet, and
then plug 'er in. You've heard of colon cleansing?, well, I call this
Jeff's DIY ES brain cleansing(you're gonna  get a colon cleansing as
well, at no extra charge, but that's not the main deal, just icing on
the cake).  Be sure that the cord is shorter than you are (to insure
that when your back arches and your legs straighten spasmodically, the
cord is jerked from the wall), otherwise you could cause yourself
serious injury or death.

If you are pleased with the result, and want more, you can attach one
of the "electrodes" to your nipples or genitals for that special
"National Security Frisson".  I refer to this as Jeff's DIY "Enhanced"
ES Brain Cleansing.

>
> A similar war fought by Russia or China would have had a Muslim death toll
> ten times (or a hundred times...)?what we have had due to?mass executions,
> concentration/labor camps,?the firebombing of entire cities, starvation,
> rape, body?organ stealing,?disease, and death march deportations.

Not to mention puppies set on fire, dildoes in the shape Pirogis and
egg rolls, and toilet paper with faces of American presidents printed
one to a sheet.   Aaarggggh!!!  those evil commies, is there no limit
to their depravity??!!

> The
> United States has tried, at least up to a point, to fight humanely.

And what point is that, the point at which they cross the Iraqi border?

> America has it's definite shortcomings,

A vile slander!  Off to Guantanamo with him for the international
waterboarding finals!

>  but at least we have values and
> principles to aspire to

Or hide behind, until the veil is stripped away by al Jazeera and the
blogosphere.  Why, oh why won't they just learn how to say "How high?"
All we are saying is give American exceptionalism a chance.

>(despite sometimes veering off in the wrong
> direction, until course corrections are made)

Despite sometimes veering off in the right
direction, until course corrections are made

> instead of merely always
> pursuing power for it's own?sake and with no concern for human life and
> liberty, which is the approach of our rivals.

I don't know.  Sounds an awful lot like the approach of the US political class.
>
> At least in the cases of the Taliban and Al Queda, we are trying to root out
> very vicious?organizations that delight in crimes against humanity and who
> want to cripple Western civilization.

Yeah, yeah.   And set puppies on fire, make all women look like Ernest
Borgnine, make baseball illegal unless you wear a tutu, force
Republicans to pretend that they're straight, etc

>? Yes, it's terrible that so many
> innocent Muslims have died in this war, but often their own people (the
> insurgents), hide amongst them and use these unfortunate souls?as cover
> &?impromptu human shields.

It's called defending their neighborhood.  They live there.

The "human shields" canard is just standard, lame (but nonetheless
effective) pentagon blame shifting.They much prefer (though they ever
so deeply regret) killing civilians by the hundreds than risking the
lives of grunts in house to house fighting.

                  ****************************************

John, I feel badly about taking you to task so harshly, but it had to
be done.  I hope you will forgive me.  I know your heart's in the
right place.

Best, Jeff Davis

"Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose
your taste for it when you realize how hard people try, how much they
mind, and how long they remember."
                          Martin Amis


------------------------------

Message: 11
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 00:55:00 +0200
From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary    Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID:
    <580930c20906071555j68ab0ddchf3d871d792d49208 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Harvey Newstrom<mail at harveynewstrom.com> wrote:
> Indeed. ?Iraq was one of the most hated muslim countries by the radical
> terrorists. ?They allowed women to go to school, hold jobs, become doctors,
> etc. ?They has full access to western media and TV. ?Iraq was the most secular
> and non-fundamentalist of all the muslim nations. ?They would have been the
> least likely of any muslim nation to have ties to terrorists or fundamentalist
> radicals.

But the US happily managed to fix that, so that as soon as the g-men
are away, the country will be well on the way to the Restoration of
the Caliphate and to put Saudi Arabia to shame.

-- 
Stefano Vaj


------------------------------

Message: 12
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:23:35 +0200
From: "painlord2k at libero.it" <painlord2k at libero.it>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID: <4A2C4BF7.4010208 at libero.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"

Il 07/06/2009 18.09, Harvey Newstrom ha scritto:
> On Saturday 06 June 2009 8:44:10 am Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> 2009/6/6 John Grigg<possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>:
>>
>>   it was only a matter
>>
>>> of time before Iraq developed strong ties with the major terrorist
>>> organizations and became a major supporter of them.  I just wish Pres..
>>> Bush had not lied to start a war that actually needed to be carried out,
>>> but obviously not on a false pretense regarding WMD.
>> ### This is stupid.
>
> Indeed.  Iraq was one of the most hated muslim countries by the radical
> terrorists.  They allowed women to go to school, hold jobs, become doctors,
> etc.  They has full access to western media and TV.  Iraq was the most secular
> and non-fundamentalist of all the muslim nations.  They would have been the
> least likely of any muslim nation to have ties to terrorists or fundamentalist
> radicals.

Oh my.... the naivety of the people.

Do you really believe that people that kill so easily have any qualms to 
make alliances of opportunity with anyone else?
Do you really believe that these people lack of any strategic and 
tactical vision?
Do you really believe they are all stupid lunatics unable to restrain 
themselves when it expedient to do so? The cannon fodder could be unable 
to restain themselves, the leaders, not so much.

Sunni, Wahabbi and Shia could hate each other, but they will collaborate 
with each other against a common enemy.
Iran is know to arm al-Qaeda linked and Ba'ath  linked insurgent / 
terrorists / militias in Iraq, the sunni Hamas in Gaza, the Sunni 
Sudanese. Until they kill westerns or destabilize Iraq, it is only good 
for Iran. bin Laden son (one of many) live in Iran. al-Zarkawi moved 
inside Iran to heal is wounded leg before becoming the head of al Qaeda 
in Iraq.

They can squabble about how pray, but the will not let a chance to kill 
westerns to go wasted. There is time to settle these question after 
their aims are obtained and the US is out of the region.

Mirco


-------------- next part --------------

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------------------------------

Message: 13
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:46:11 -0500
From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War (Was:
    Mary Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population)
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090607183958.02549ea8 at satx.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 01:23 AM 6/8/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote:

>They can squabble about how pray, but the will not let a chance to 
>kill westerns to go wasted. There is time to settle these question 
>after their aims are obtained and the US is out of the region.

I usually feel that any topic on this list should be allowed to 
continue until the crazies are sick of shouting at each other--we can 
always skip the threads--but this is getting not only tiresome but 
ugly and seems to be throttling other discussions, rather like 
bindweed taking over a garden. The ExI list isn't a bigotry carnival 
7 days/week, or shouldn't be.

Just my opinion, of course; I'm not a moderator or list owner.

Damien Broderick  



------------------------------

Message: 14
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 20:13:16 -0500
From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
To: The Robot Group Mailing List <robotgroup at puremagic.com>,    Open
    Manufacturing <openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com>,
    bodyhacking at lists.caughq.org, kanzure at gmail.com,    ExI chat list
    <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>,    World Transhumanist Association
    Discussion List    <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] [Robotgroup] Alternative human keyboard interfaces
Message-ID:
    <55ad6af70906071813h4160ef1au2da4da540432d247 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Sam O'nella<barythrin at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Are you trying to find something you can sit down and use or use while walking/mobile?

I have no preference at the moment. It would be nice to find something
ridiculously mobile. My main concern is that I like being able to
quickly press out my special character keys for programming and other
related tasks. With chorded keyboards you encounter this drawback
between how many keystrokes you want to use to get to a variable and
how commonly it comes up in every day usage. So, it becomes a bit of
an nightmare of either different modes, mode switching, alt and
switching, etc, etc. Playing it like a musical instrument isn't
entirely my scheme. Another important point is that it should provide
some sort of advantage over qwerty and dvorak layouts: maybe a nice
typing rate increase.

It is not immediately obvious what the maximum on human motion and
agility is. When is it a problem of personal training, and when is it
a problem of terrible keyboard design? I've been told that there are
studies in ergonomics of how long it takes people to perform different
subtasks in typing, like identification, targetting, pressing,
lift-off, etc., though I don't know how to find those studies or
whether or not anybody has bothered to use that information to help
optimize some sort of automatic design of keyboard design, whether
through displacing the plastic into different geometries and shapes,
or doing something completely different due to the dynamic ability of
the human body (degrees of freedom, or rather the domains of freedom
which can be accessed with the muscles).

Really the design process should be flipped around. The task is to
type quickly and to type a relatively equal or relatively larger set
of symbols out, without breaking the laws of motion of the human body,
and so on and so forth. Brain implants might be one method, but
unfortunately despite all of the literature I have read on
microelectrode arrays, the best that I can find is crappy EEG studies
where people look at a visual keyboard on the screen and think either
"left" or "right" in order to choose a subset of the overall keyboard
image in a slow attempt to choose which key to press. Not good.

Hm. Still need to think about this some more. Handcuffing the wrists
together and having a somewhat stable plastic shape on which to use
the hands to type might be one method, but then you don't get the same
hand-flying-across-the-keyboard freedom that you get in conventional
flat surface keyboards.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507


------------------------------

Message: 15
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 20:34:33 -0500
From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com, bodyhacking at lists.caughq.org,
    ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>,    World Transhumanist
    Association Discussion List    <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>,
    kanzure at gmail.com,    The Robot Group Mailing List
    <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] [Open Manufacturing] Re: [Robotgroup] Alternative
    human    keyboard interfaces
Message-ID:
    <55ad6af70906071834o318e2da6h3b3b1a99e80b40d1 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Paul D.
Fernhout<pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> Bryan Bishop wrote:
>> Really the design process should be flipped around. The task is to
>> type quickly and to type a relatively equal or relatively larger set
>> of symbols out, without breaking the laws of motion of the human body,
>> and so on and so forth.
>
> I didn't notice it in the list, but have you looked at the idea of "data
> gloves"? Basically, anything that records the relative motion of your finger
> joints can be used for typing input, even without finger tips contacting a
> surface.
> ? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=data+gloves
> You could also get haptic feedback in some and use them for 3D manipulation.

In the back of my mind I was considering data gloves at one point,
yeah. Haptic force feedback would help the problem that I was thinking
of with them: namely, it's easier to do typing if you have some
tactile sense of the topology of the interface. It seems to be how the
motor cortex works, or something. So, force feedback might help. I
wonder how to map it to 3D space though for different keys and motions
... that's a hard 5D image to visualize.

> But if you don't need to be mobile, stenographer's Stenotype keyboards might
> be the fastest. And might take several months to years to train on.
> ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
> "A stenotype or shorthand machine is a specialized chorded keyboard or
> typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use. A trained court reporter
> or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 225 words per minute
> at very high accuracy in order to pass the Registered Professional Reporter
> test[1]. Many users of this machine can even reach 300 words per minute and
> per the website of the California Official Court Reporters Association the
> official record for American English is 375 wpm."

Uh, what? I don't see how this satisfies the other requirement of
special characters being easily typed. IIRC, stenography machines are
mostly about phonetics more than they are about specific ASCII or
unicode keycodes.

> But voice input can easily get up to 150wpm, but with 1% to 5% errors.

What about special keycodes? I guess if I go learn the international
phonetics language it might be easier to map different grunts to
different keycodes, but that sounds kind of annoying.

> http://www.voicetypist.com/The%20Question%20of%20Speed%20and%20Accuracy.htm
> "For instance, Nuance says that Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) can keep up
> with a user speaking 160 words a minute, with an accuracy of 99%. In a
> noise-free setting with a practiced user, that's undoubtedly the case. But
> it's almost necessary to say, "So what?""

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507


------------------------------

Message: 16
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 13:13:49 +1000
From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] USA Health Costs
Message-ID:
    <f21c22e30906072013u11c17ac9xe5b432785eb5926b at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

2009/6/7 painlord2k at libero.it <painlord2k at libero.it>:

> True, to a point.
> Without a real market, it is impossible to develop real alternative to the
> current situation.
> For example, it is not possible to have comparative quotations on the
> value/cost of some procedures, like happen with the car market.
> I want know the market value of a car? a look on-line or I buy a magazine
> about cars. Why I can not know how much is the price/cost of a surgical
> procedure?

What stops you doing this? It's only if the insurance (public or
private) pays 100% that the patient would not be interested in the
cost, although the insurer would be.

>> And
>> even if the patient does his own research, an environment where drug
>> companies and other vendors of medical products or services can
>> advertise freely will result in a bias towards unnecessary treatment.
>
> Better a bias towards unnecessary treatments than a bias towards not enough
> treatments. Then, in a free market, this become a client decision, not a
> medical decision. The main point is to make possible for the buyers to know
> what is buying and how much is the cost of it.

I don't think you can make the general statement that a bias towards
unnecessary treatment is better. As a doctor, if you think a treatment
will do more good than harm, you recommend it; if you think it will do
more harm than good, you recommend against it; and if you think it is
likely to be neutral in its effects or don't know, you also recommend
against it.

Absent ethical considerations, an insurer will be motivated to reject
payment for treatments that are necessary, while a private doctor will
be motivated to recommend such treatments. Perhaps between them the
right balance will be reached.

>> Look at how much money is spent on "alternative" therapies with no
>> scientific evidence in their favour whatsoever, and extrapolate this
>> to therapies that are not completely inert, but which lack evidence to
>> show that they are helpful in a particular situation.
>
> Well, I call this "extended experimentation". If it is done with the
> informed agreement of the patient, there is nothing wrong. Main point is to
> make sure the data about the treatment is recorded and used to gauge his
> value.
>
>> You might say
>> that it's OK if people are willing to pay,
>
> So I do.
>
>> but apart from the fact
>> that these therapies may do more harm than good,
>
> "May" is the word, we are not sure.
> Until the patient is correctly informed, it is his choice.

In general, neither public nor private insurers will pay for
unnecessary or harmful treatments, but a patient is free to pay cash
if he can find a willing provider. This is fair enough if the patient
is informed of the risks.

>> it does add
>> needlessly to the total cost of health care, and takes resources away
>> from where they might yield greater benefit.
>
> It is not your or my or anyone right to choose how to use someone else
> money. It is the right of the people owning the money to choose how use it.
> Who are you or someone else to rule how they must use their wealth? Are you
> morally better than them?

But if it is tax money then we have a responsibility to use it
appropriately. Even private hospitals in most places are regulated so
that patients can be assured of a certain minimum standard.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


------------------------------

Message: 17
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 20:39:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Post Futurist <p0stfuturist at yahoo.com>
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: [ExI] 'Gendertopia'?
Message-ID: <944179.89653.qm at web59906.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


                ['Gendertopia'? or when one of the interviewees says "there's a whole world of genders out there" does it mean more hyperbole and confusion? an open question]
----------------------------------------------
?Like plenty of other high school students,
a group of about a dozen Vermont teenagers trundled into a youth center
one day every week this spring to participate in an after-school
program.
                But their program was different; it focused on gender.
                The nine-week program, partially funded by the Burlington School District, was held at Vermont's Queer Youth Center and called "Gendertopia."
                Gay,
lesbian and straight students discussed a wide range of topics, from
the characters in the book and movie "Twilight," to taking photos
around the city that show the different ways gender is portrayed in
popular culture.
                "Most people come into it
thinking, 'Oh, there's two genders and two sexualities' ... ," said
David Kingsbury, a 16-year-old junior at Burlington High School who
signed up for the program. "People assume it's boy and girl, but it's
so much more than that. There's a whole world out there full of
different genders."
                The program is among the
first of its kind to be funded, in part, with tax dollars, said
Christopher Neff, the executive director of Outright Vermont, the social service organization running Gendertopia.
                Neither
the program nor the school district's participation triggered any
objection. The tempered reaction locally to the program shows how far
Outright Vermont and the issues it raises has moved into the main
stream of youth social service organizations.
                "It's
got queer in its name. It scares the heck out of people. It's so
important that people be able to see beyond any concerns or
misconceptions that they have," said Eliza Byard, the executive
director of the New York-based Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education
Network, which has 35 chapters across the country. "Outright Vermont is
fulfilling its mission in the most wonderful way."
                The
program was designed to help young people identify the subtle signals
used to express gender and how not being aware of those signals can
lower self esteem and possibly lead to an increase in at-risk
activities like substance abuse or dropping out of school, Neff said.
                "We
often see a lot of homophobia or transphobia that happens on the basis
of how someone looks," Neff said. "If you are making fun of me because
I am wearing a pink shirt and that's sort of expressing my femininity,
my feminine side, that translates into homophobia, but it has nothing
to do with whether I'm straight or whether I'm dating boys or whether
I'm dating girls. It has to do with the fact that I'm wearing a pink
shirt."
                Neff said the significance of the
program is more than the money and the relatively small number of young
people who participate.
                "It's incredibly
symbolic and very powerful," he said. "I was incredibly proud to be
associated with them and I thought this partnership, this very unique
partnership, between a queer youth center and a school district to run
a gender identity based program was a new national model."
                Burlington School Superintendent Jeanne Collins said no one has objected to the program.
                "The
district has been in the forefront on this topic for at least a decade,
if not longer," Collins said. "We are very sensitive to celebrating the
differences in people and accepting people for who they are and what
they bring to the table."
                She said a factor that helped keep the program non controversial was that it was voluntary.
                "We
have very robust after school program," Collins said. "This is one of
the options for the students who are interested. They get a lot out of
it that will help them be much more inclusive and accepting of
differences in their own future, which can only help them be
successful."
                Steve Cable, of Rutland the founder
of Vermont Renewal, an organization that promotes what he calls
traditional family values, said he wasn't familiar with "Gendertopia,"
but he knew Outright Vermont. He said he was supportive of the group's anti-bullying efforts, but not what he said was its focus on adolescent sexuality.
                "It
just makes me really nervous that sexuality and these very complicated
social behaviors are being normalized and talked about with kids who
haven't figured out even their life yet," Cable said. "I know that
Outright Vermont promotes all gender identities and expression of gender identities, no matter how weird that might be."

In 2000, Vermont was the first state that passed civil unions for same-sex couples and earlier this year was the first to pass gay marriage without being required to do so by the courts. It's also in the forefront with laws to protect gender identity and sexual orientation.

Outright Vermont describes itself as "one of the longest standing queer
organizations in Vermont" and the only one focused on young people.
Neff said that for years his organization has done anti-bullying
presentations related to sexual orientation and gender identity in
schools across the state. He said the presentations have been
universally well received.
Byard said a number of national organizations have programs for
girls that help them deal with the pressures that can lead to eating
disorders or pressures that girls feel to be thin or beautiful.
"Now it's only relatively recently that there has been real
focus on the damaging effect of these same expectations on young men,"
Byard said.
About 40 students signed up for the program, Neff said, and
about 12 attended the weekly program. Sometimes the group watched a
movie or had food. Much of the discussion was led by the students
themselves, and it wasn't just for gay and lesbian students.
"I'm straight, but I don't like using that word because then it
feels like if you're gay then you're crooked, you're not meant to grow
up in a certain way," Sophia Manzi, 15, a Burlington high school freshman,
said during this year's final "Gendertopia" meeting. "I come because
it's a really good program. The people, it doesn't matter what sexual
orientation you are, they totally come in with open arms."

Neff said "Gendertopia" wasn't about sexuality or who people are attracted to.
"We're really clear that gender and gender identify is separate
from sexual orientation," Neff said. "Hugh Grant and Russell Crowe have
the same sex, they're both male and they're both heterosexual. But they
have very different gender presentations. One is sort of seen as much
more masculine than the other."
Burlington High School After school Coordinator Amy Mills said
no decision had been made yet on whether to run Gendertopia again in
the fall, but she'd like to.

"I think it worked well," Mills said. "They seem to have a lot of fun."
            


      
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Message: 18
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:04:05 +1000
From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War
Message-ID:
    <f21c22e30906072104l555c3b67vd83859bde5f94831 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

2009/6/8 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:

> In the present case, some people are biased in
> America's favor, and others resent the U.S.
>
> Why America? Easy: since the end of WWII, the U.S.
> has been the "big cheese" among nations, and so
> of course garners the most attention. It also follows
> that the moral question "Is America doing the right
> thing" far outweighs "Is Burkina Faso doing the
> right thing?"

It's also makes a difference that you're part of the American
alliance. People tend to fall into two camps over this: those who say
"my country, right or wrong" and those who feel that it's their duty
to make sure their country does the right thing, since they have some
control over it.

>> And I suppose that the Iraqi invaders would say it was terrible that
>> innocent Americans had to die due to the American insurgents hiding
>> among the population, when all the Iraqis wanted to do was make sure
>> that America would never be able to threaten other countries again.
>
> We see some examples of what I'm saying right here.
> How do we know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda delight
> in crimes against humanity? I don't think so. It
> simply stands to reason, however, that their humanitarian
> impulses are, due to their background, less refined than
> those of the west. If they cheer when a couple of thousand
> of American civilians die in a terrorist act, we have to
> take their history (and even their religion) into account.
> They haven't been living in the twentieth century long,
> if at all.
>
> Likewise, how do we know that "all the Iraqi [insurgents]
> wanted to do was make sure that America would never be
> able to threaten other countries again"? They have their
> own reasons for resenting "the big cheese", a lot of it
> cultural, and it's a mistake for western readers to
> imagine that those reasons are identical to their own.
> Far from it.

Humanitarian impulses are not at the forefront when your country is
being invaded. If the US nuking Japan was morally justifiable, then
would it also have been morally justifiable for Iraq to nuke a couple
of large US cities to prevent an invasion?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


------------------------------

Message: 19
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:25:21 +1000
From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Are hard drugs not really addictive after all?
Message-ID:
    <f21c22e30906072125y5b1e3657u3a24cef3a034790e at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

2009/6/8 BillK <pharos at gmail.com>:

> The monkeys in cages killing themselves with drugs has led futurists
> to speculate that transhumans will wirehead themselves into oblivion
> because they will be unable to resist the overwhelming pleasure. This
> is proposed as one explanation for the Fermi problem. But if this
> research is correct, then that won't happen. If our future lives are
> pleasant and fulfilling, then wireheading will just be an occasional
> pleasure and not a life-threatening addiction.

Having complete access to the source code of your brain would not be
like drug addiction or wireheading. This relates to the concept of
second order desires, or desires about desires: "I wish I didn't have
such an urge to use heroin; I wish I got as much pleasure from going
for a walk as I do from using heroin." If the addict could simply
adjust his brain in accordance with these wishes, there wouldn't be a
problem.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


------------------------------

Message: 20
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 22:17:07 -0700
From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] future fizzle
Message-ID: <4BA679F7046847CEAEC338AEB17BC1F9 at spike>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="US-ASCII"

> 
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:30 PM, spike wrote:
> > At first it would be only women and female embryos.  Then 
> there will 
> > be a planet full of young male volunteers eager to go live 
> on Mars.  
> > Imagine being the first guy there.  Thirty to fifty women, some of 
> > whom have never even seen a man, otherwise the planet is 
> all yours.  
> > Would that be cool, or what?
> >
> 
> 
> Or.......
> 
> 30 to 50 women saying,
> "You want to do WHAT???!!!!    Have you gone totally insane???
> Where's my tazer?"
> 
> BillK

What would happen BillK?  If you had 30 to 50 women who had been raised on
Mars with only women, and no input from Earth, any speculations anyone?  I
think they would somehow have an instinct to take that first guy for a roll
in the hay, and might actually find it delightful.  Don't know however.

spike





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