[ExI] Planetary defense

[Anders Sandberg]

Keith Henson wrote:
>> I doubt any xrisk is going to be a simple task. Wars are likely among the
>> hardest, since they are motivated by pretty deep seated issues - not just
>> human emotions but economics, memetics and coordination issues.
>>     
>
> See "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War" for my view
> on the order in which these are evoked and why.
>
> I have been talking about the evolutionary origin of wars for a long
> time, http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-July/052083.html
> and there has been virtually no feedback.  I can't decide if it is
> just too obvious, or way to deep for this mailing list.
>   

No idea, but I think evo psych might not be *enough* as an explanation 
or as a tool for fixing the problem. I have no doubt it might help us 
understand the original underpinnings of human aggressive behavior, but 
there are plenty of other factors - human cultural patterns are good at 
hijacking or exapting evolved affordances(just consider ideological 
warfare), the economics of warfare has changed several times (warfare 
for material resources has mutated into 'politics by other means' and 
security policy) and the technological changes make various factors very 
different (distance warfare, automated warfare, lethalty, deterrence 
game theory etc).

That you might be able to trace plenty of these factors causally back to 
some old fitness drivers doen't necessarily help understanding them 
practically. An evopsych analysis of the financial crisis is unlikely to 
give us a good recipe for avoiding the next one, while an analysis on 
the principal-agent problem level might be much more helpful.

Some basics are however likely true. If the future looks bright, then 
you want to invest your resources rather than compete for scarce 
resources. So increasing growth potential is a good thing. Institutions 
allowing conflicts to bleed off in nonviolent ways (lawsuits, 
arbitration) or make the cost/benefit ratio of violence different 
(social trust, enforcement of laws, economic incentives for cooperation) 
also help.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University