[extropy-chat] POLITICS: terrorism and strategies

[Kelly M. Ramsey]

The magnitudes of the 40-50 million and 100 billion numbers aside - I'm not 
familiar with that Jenga game of speculation-stacking, so the best I can 
muster is a skeptical, super Spock-sized raised eyebrow - this moral 
argument doesn't really seem to speak to terrorism. One could probably 
construct a strong case that anti-technology activists (neo-Luddites, 
opponents of stem cell research, etc.) in a position to affect policy and 
research funding in the wealthiest states do far more to delay progress 
than any violence in the impoverished periphery.

If so, the resulting question, then, isn't about how much murder of 
religious radicals in the Middle East is necessary to preserve life in the 
future. It's about how much murder of religious radicals in the West is 
necessary to preserve future life. Nuclear weapons, obviously, would be 
counterproductive, but car bombs, shotguns, and the like would work just as 
well. After all, every stem cell not used in biomedical research is, well, 
a whole bunch of human lives that will never be.

That doesn't take us to a very useful place, does it.

Moreover, assuming that technological development isn't going to stop any 
time soon (compare the 100 year lifespan to the 2000 year lifespan to the 
40,000 year lifespan to the...), the chain never ends. On top of that, 
anyone who isn't 100% on board with total progress is, by this calculus, 
committing mass murder against future generations simply by not doing 
everything possible to fight for life-enhancing technology. Doubt is a 
crime against eternal humanity; all infidels must die.

I really don't like where this "killing as triage" argument leads itself. 
It doesn't sound terribly transhuman or extropic. Quite the reverse.

As for the pragmatic side of the terrorism-specific case, I feel very 
comfortable waiting for empirically-grounded evidence from contemporary 
fields of social study. (And am I the only one reminded of the 
"negotiation" scene in "The Fifth Element"?) Reason alone, particularly 
from amateurs in foreign policy such as myself, solves precious little.


Kelly Ramsey
ramseyk at uci.edu