[ExI] nature's indifference to survival

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2026 at 11:11 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 'Mostly trying to survive and improve your own life' and 'mostly trying to tear down other people' are not mutually incompatible

But they are.

> What are the Israelis doing by trying to wipe out the Palestinians?

Tearing them down.  Building them up - so the Palestinians don't get
raised on "our primary purpose in life is that Israel must die" -
would involve education, providing actual security, and other stuff
that seems harder than simply killing them as justifications arise.

> What does Putin think he's doing by openly attacking the Ukraine, and covertly attacking several other countries?

Tearing them down.  Survival, perhaps, by distracting his people - but
he's sure not primarily focused on building up Russia.  If he was,
then throwing his people into meat grinders would stop, immediately.

> What is Trump doing full stop?

Tearing people down.  As many, many witnesses have attested, he had
little to no concept of actually building people up since long before
his first term as POTUS.  His life would have been better if he did
not focus on scamming people.

Note that "merely increase the numerical value of your bank accounts"
is not always the same as "improve your own life".  This is more often
the case with people who are wealthy enough that mere money by itself
can no longer meaningfully improve their lives.

Consider Elon Musk, for example.  For all the damage he has done and
still occasionally does, the majority of his efforts do genuinely seem
to be spent on attempting to improve his life and others' - though he
has been having some notable failures of late.  Would this continue to
be the case if his assets were, say, merely $100 million or even $10
million?  Arguably yes, and there are plenty of people with merely
that amount of money who likewise spend the majority of their efforts
on building instead of destruction.

(This is in contrast to someone with $1 to their name, for whom more
cash quickly gets spent on survival, then if there's any left over,
trying to build a life.  It is also in contrast to someone else with
$1 to their name who, if they got $100, would spend it buying
narcotics with intent to sit around doing nothing, or a gun with
intent to murder and intimidate others.  In both of those cases, the
money is but a means to an end.)

> China, Iran, etc., etc.?

The governments of China and Iran contain some people who are focused
on tearing others down, and some who are genuinely focused on building
up their countries.  We're talking about individual people here; large
governments are not individual people, even if some are run by
individual people.