[ExI] Slavery Now and in the Past (was: Health system, again)

hkhenson hkhenson at rogers.com
Thu Apr 17 06:02:54 UTC 2008


At 06:17 PM 4/16/2008, Rafal wrote:

>On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 1:54 PM, John Grigg 
><possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Rafal wrote:

snip

> > The fictional nasty people of S.M. Stirling's Draka Empire 
> alternate history
> > sf series is an example of this.  The Draka are in some ways the modern
> > equivalent of Sparta.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination
>
>### This is a neat sf story....

Silly actually.  It doesn't work well with EP.

>but if we are talking about realistic
>scenarios, I think that nastiness of this kind is strongly self
>defeating, at least as long as there are competing political entities.
>Keeping a lot of people in wretched servitude by brute force is just
>not very productive. The Gulag is an example: millions of people
>devoured and nary a thing to show for it. I am reasonably confident
>that outright slavery is not a common thing among our highly-developed
>galactic neighbors.
>
>On the other hand, other nastiness may be viable: Killing off most
>people after a group develops human-equivalent AI. Developing
>mind-control techniques to make willing slaves (see Vinge's "A
>Deepness in the Sky", an excellent book). The eternal world-spanning
>AI-assisted dictatorship.
>
>I am curious where we end up after the singularity.... I really am.

http://www.terasemjournals.org/GN0202/henson.html

An alternate view where the libertarian survivors of bio warfare 
seduce the population of the world out of physical existence.

Keith 




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list