Psychoengineering was Re: [extropy-chat] The existential threat ofinternational law

Dirk Bruere dirk.bruere at gmail.com
Wed Dec 28 13:49:03 UTC 2005


On 12/28/05, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/24/05, Hughes, James J. <james.hughes at trincoll.edu> wrote:
> > > ### As if building a world-spanning apparatus of enforcement,
> > > ...would stop torture, rather
> > > than leave no sanctuary for the victims.
> >
> > Some believe the best way to protect human rights is to eliminate
> > states, and some (like me) believe it is to build political cultures and
> > states that can protect human rights. Since I only see empirical
> > evidence for the latter, and not the former, I think the burden of proof
> > is on the anarchists. I would rather have the rights enjoyed by Swedes
> > than those enjoyed by Somalis.
>
> ### We have been over this ground before, even the examples are the
> same. Let me then repeat some of my previous answers:
>
> You cannot compare Swedes and Somalis because they differ in more than
> political organization - political culture differs as well. Compare
> Somalis and Rwandans, or rather, the numbers of murdered Somalis and
> exterminated Rwandans. Compare Swedes with Americans - look at the
> economic growth rates, general affluence, and cultural diversity to
> see the pernicious effects of state-enforced conformity. Compare North
> and South Korea, and then compare Hong Kong and mainland China.
> Finally, compare the levels of corruption and waste at the UN, as
> close to the maxi-state as you get, to the corruption and waste in
> Luxembourg, the mini-state.


*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3737410.stm

"** Nordic countries are leading the way in global economic competitiveness,
according to a new business survey. *

Finland topped the World Economic Forum's (WEF) rankings as the most
competitive economy in the world for the second year running.

The US took second position, followed by Sweden, Taiwan, Denmark and Norway,
while the UK was 11th and Chad bottom of the list of 104 nations."
*
*

>
> -------------------------------------------
> > Some of the fiction that I think is helpful in imagining these varieties
> > is:
> >
> > - John C. Wright's Phoenix series, which imagines a society in which
> > humanity has been borged, and de-borged, and now has borganisms and
> > individuals in co-existence;
> >
> > - Alastair Reynolds' idea of the Conjoiners, among whom there is a great
> > deal of individual identity, although other species fear being absorbed
> > into their collective;
> >
> > - Stephen Baxter's Convergence, which suggests that the evolution of
> > human collectives into vole-like insectile borganisms is an ever-present
> > evolutionary dead-end that future individualist posthumans will have to
> > stamp out like rat nests
>
> ### I would also add some books by Greg Egan ("Diaspora"), Robert
> Heinlein (some of the Methuselah stories feature borganisms), and
> Stanislaw Lem ("The Invincible").
> ---------------------------------
>
>
I will add Iain Banks 'Culture' novels.
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~stefan/culture.html

Dirk
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