[extropy-chat] RE: POLITICS: terrorism and strategies

[Jef Allbright]

Robert J Bradbury wrote:

> Proposed utilitarian solution: eliminate the points for
> discussion.
>
> e.g. For Muslim radicals:
> Nuke Medina, Messina, Faluja and Najaf.
> e.g. For Jews & Palestinians:
> Nuke Jerusalem.
> e.g. For Sudan
> Nuke the city with the greatest population of prejudiced Arabs.
>
> No debate, no long drawn out discussions, no attempting to
> come to terms.  Its either "Stop the violence or suffer
> the consequences".  (And in this case the group with the
> bigger stick wins).


Robert -

I admire your integrity for posting this kind of difficult question as 
you have in the past.  It challenges people to confront their reflexive 
disgust with the idea, and by doing so, likely grow in the process.

It seems we have something of a precedent, with the bombing of Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki, and it is interesting that I can assume some who react in 
disgust to your proposal have come to terms with those mass killings of 
Japanese as being an effective utilitarian solution that saved a 
significant number of American lives.  It is also interesting to note 
that the lives of the Other were heavily discounted in relation to the 
value of the lives of the Self-group.

Of course, the human animal being what it is, past events are more 
easily rationalized, and future-oriented difficult moral choices are 
most often decided by means of evolved feelings of right and wrong 
rather than cold hard utilitarian facts.

But even the most detached utilitarian argument rests ultimately upon a 
value system.

If we were tribes of intelligent reptiles with nuclear weapons, it may 
well be that the obvious and universally agreed "right" choice would be 
to destroy the enemy (and eat any that remained twitching.)  There would 
be no moral compunctions and no drawn out discussions -- the "right" 
answer would be clear and obvious.

But we are not reptiles.  We are social mammals that generally feel 
revulsion at the thought of killing anyone that we see as similar to 
ourselves.  And we've recently gotten to the point where we can easily 
see other tribes (even other species) as similar to ourselves, and 
worthy of respect, except, for example, when overridden by fear.

The generally accepted correct answer, of course, is that it would be 
wrong to do what you propose, because we would not like what we had 
become by doing such a thing.  But this answer is easily overcome by the 
extropian viewpoint that we must go beyond the limitations of our 
evolved nature.

So let's try a more enlightened approach to the question.

Framed as an absolutely utilitarian question, just as in the iterated 
prisoner's dilemma, the obvious rational answer would be to defect and 
drop the bombs.  But just as in that game-theoretical situation, 
something seems amiss, because both sides lose when such harsh logic is 
evaluated in such a limited context.

We could point to a likely counter-example:  The Cold-War posed the same 
question as you raise, and there were leaders who argued strongly for 
the same "solution" of catastrophic destruction of the Other while we 
could.  Wiser (in my opinion) voices prevailed and argued that while 
risky, we could expect the enemy structure to collapse under the weight 
of its internal contradictions.  It did, and looking back, this seems to 
have been a positive course of events.

Humanity is just now on the verge of waking up to the fundamental nature 
of cooperation at all levels of complexity.  The benefits of synergy and 
cooperation are not part of the first-order thinking that currently 
predominates, but they appear to be universal and pervasive and evident 
in the non-zero sum interactions that constitute long-term progress.

I don't have time to attempt an persuasive argument right now, and I 
realize many people consider these words mush-brained and mystical, but 
the enlightened answer to your question is that if you destroy the 
Other, you greatly reduce the opportunities available to Self.

I expect that the repressive and isolated geopolitical entities that you 
mentioned will collapse under the weight of their internal 
contradictions too, and We (the more inclusive we) will experience 
greater growth from the process.

- Jef