[ExI] foundation and empire

Sat Sep 3 00:06:32 UTC 2016

>… Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] foundation and empire

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 4:17 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net <mailto:spike66 at att.net> > wrote:

> >….Were Asimov among us today, he would relate to my One Chance argument I make above.

>…I'm sure he would because Asimov was logical…

Understatement.  He was logical and creative at the same time while being mind-blowing smart.  Such a combination, so seldom seen.   Oh that humanity could have a thousand like him, a million.

>… betting civilization and perhaps the entire human species on the sanity of just one person is scary…

Way beyond scary, it feels like collective insanity to keep that system in place when we don’t need to anymore.  We can make the system reliable enough and fire in response to an attack if we have about five people with veto power over any launch, one from each house from each of the mainstream parties and the supreme court chief justice.  It could be set to where if any of the five are unresponsive or already perished such as from having been slain or nuked, it is still possible to fire rockets (so we wouldn’t introduce any risk of inability to respond to attack.)

If a sitting president tried to fire a first strike illegitimately, he or she would need to slay all five of those with a finger on the safety switch.  

I would think congress would want to have the option of stopping a first strike.

Why would they not want that?

And if an outgoing president was a pacifist and wanted an actual legacy, why would not he sign that?

>…There is a 0% chance congress doing what you suggest…

No I don’t want to bet, but the probability is non-zero.  I don’t see why this isn’t a common bumper sticker in the one election year when noooobody will display either of the mainstream parties:  Secure the Nukes!

This weird cycle I have seen a full order of magnitude more Sanders stickers and a full order of magnitude more Johnson/Weld stickers than I have seen for the two mainstream candidates combined.  That is very very odd.  The people apparently hold the two mainstreamers in disdain and distrust (imagine that) and yet the real negative campaigning hasn’t even started yet.  We haven’t seen either of Assange’s planned releases.  The debates haven’t been held yet, and we can just imagine what those two are going to say to each other.  I do look forward to that with eager anticipation.  

This is a great window of opportunity to secure the nukes, a window which will likely close forever if we pass up this one golden chance to get that done once and for all.  This is such a rare combination: a pacifist termed-out lame duck president with no apparent legacy, coupled with a choice of hawkish successors, both widely distrusted with power.  Has that ever happened before?

>…And if there were such a thing as a negative probability that's the chance I'd give to Vladimir Putin deciding to give up control of his nuclear weapons… John K Clark

I come from the point of view of one who watched in absolute astonishment as a bunch of commies battered down the Berlin Wall from their side.

spike

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