[ExI] ai is the easy road

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 16/10/2026 02:15, Keith Henson wrote:
> Consider what life would be like if most people no longer responded to attack either at the individual level or group. How much does fear of retaliation contribute to nice social interaction? But unless you imposed this on everyone, bullies would (I suspect) abuse the nice guys to death.
>
>     And replace it with something that's not such a knee-jerk response but equally effective when it's actually needed. 
>
>
> I have called this the "Pearl Harbor" reaction after what that attack did to change the public view of going to war. I am hard put to imagine how events could have unfolded "
> equally effective.," but I am open to discussion.


I think I'm not being clear.
I don't mean remove the response to attack. That would be clearly bad. I mean change the mechanism that leads to the response, from an unconscious, gut-level, genetically-programmed one, to a deliberative, conscious and controllable one. You would still have effective defence against aggression, you just wouldn't have the inability to think rationally about what's causing your response, and perhaps modify it if appropriate.

This would hopefully eliminate things like people senselessly rioting when they hear news that outrages them, as happened in England not too long ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots. See the Southport riots in particular). It would, in general, tend to guard against people like Tommy Robinson being able to whip up a frenzy by creating false reports. It would also, I'm sure, transform politics if people weren't so easily manipulated into being outraged about something.
-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein