sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 12/14/2001 7:36 AM by martine@unither.com

Terrorism is part of the noise of development. It can be reduced substantially by pre-attention to socio-technical system design. Ultimately, though, every system has an exploitable weakness, and "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." This means we must put every effort into terror-proofing nanotech, but we must also be fully aware of the non-zero probability of failure(s).

There is a fail-safe solution to a nano-tech Sept 11th. It is called dispersion. We evidenced it well by the fact that Sept 11th losses were localized and came nowhere near bringing down our world. However, the nanotech world will be vastly "bigger" than our micron+ world. A nanotech Sept 11th would cause a much larger crash. Such a horror could, conceivably, bring down a world (just as nuke or bioterror could now). This is why galactic and intergalactic dispersion is a crucial prong of our destiny.

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 12/14/2001 12:38 PM by adyrotaru@yahoo.com

Dispersion is a good approach but I think this should happen as a result of human race evolution rather than a refugee for us. Let me explain.
The main cause of terrorism is the deep differences between large communities (e.g. modern world and 3rd world). We should all understand that we will only succeed together rather than as elites that will always try to be above the others. So, we all should begin to understand the importance of being united and to be guided by good intentions.
Think about how much costs us today to build safety from military point of view to individual point of view. And how many briliant brains are concentrated in this area.
WHY do we need these things? Because we think that there's always somebody that wants to attack us or to steal from us (not a false suspicion, yet). We produce powerful weapons everyday and buy guns.
I only want you to think about how would be like a world without these things. We could concentrate more effort to things that really are important and contribute to our evolution.
So, my opinion is that we should be more focussed to solve our human leaks so we will not have to run away from some ill-minded people. Of course, this is a long-term process, but this process can be speeded with education.
I always imagine a superior civilization as a civilization whose basical attribute is that its people have passed their small and ephemeral interests and focus on evolving together.
The place we choose to evolve is a minor detail but somehow important.
All I tried to point out here is that in parallel with technology we MUST concentrate also on our OWN development as humans so technology will be our tool (or friend) not our enemy, because technology doesn't kill people, but people do kill each other (with or without help from technology).
Waiting for your comments.

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 12/15/2001 9:57 AM by grantc4@hotmail.com

How do you propose to change human nature in time to stop all of this? Who is going to change the minds of all the people who are involved? Right now everyone is doing his/her own thing but to solve the problem we all have to work together toward the same goal. What are the chances of that happening?

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 12/18/2001 3:17 AM by americanfree44@hotmail.com

>How do you propose to change human nature in time to stop all of this?

I'm not sure I understand your definition of human nature, but if you are referring to the human propensity towards the destruction of self and others, I would postulate that this propensity towards destructive ends is not natural to human consciousness at all. Rather an abberation, or a disease of the human mind. Given the freedom to act according to their own nature, human beings can fulfill their needs and be happy. Human beings by nature are good, rational, and productive, or mankind would not exist. They are capable to serve themselves and society best in the absence of force or coercion from any authority, or government.

Human consciousness is capable of controlling existence, and human consciousness is taking control of the evolutionary process at an accellerated rate. When faced with death, most individuals will do anything to prevent it, whether clinging to a small branch to keep from falling off a cliff, or demanding the best medical attention available to save ones life. Even Bin Laden is running to save his skin right now, even though he has expressed his willingness to die. Unlike animals whose survival mechanisms operate automatically, humans can volitionally choose to act according to their nature, or against it.

The root of the problem from my perspective, is the delusion that non-reality and non-existence is real and exists. It is the acting upon nothing as if it were something. For example, the beleif that crashing an airliner into the world trade center will guarantee 72 virgins in some make beleive afterlife, or that eternal life in paradise will be automatically given to those who follow some religious dogma given by a make beleive God, or Allah, for whom there is no evidence. It aint gonna happen. Errors of belief lead to the errors of action, and I consider those errors are actually contrary to human nature. A disease of the human mind if you will, forced upon individuals by external authorities who usurp unearned power and glory, and who produce little or no long term benifits to civilization. There is a cure, but I would agree that time is of the essence, and the survival of civilization lies in the balance.

>Right now everyone is doing his/her own thing but to solve the problem we all have to work together toward the same goal.

Indeed, we have been led to complacency. Why put in the disclipline and hard effort necessary when we can simply die and go to heaven?

>Who is going to change the minds of all the people who are involved?

Someone like yourself my friend.

>to solve the problem we all have to work together toward the same goal.

I concur, and would enjoy seeing contribututions from you and others who share your perspectives at the discussion at http://listen.to/911response This site dedicated to bringing together great minds for the purpose you mentioned; working together toward the same goal. What we don't need is external authorities telling us what to do and how to do it. What we do need is leaders like yourself, who can bring in a tide that will raise all boats.

Best Regards
Ron Robinson

humans are the worst persons, not the best
posted on 12/18/2001 8:18 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"this propensity towards destructive ends is not natural to human consciousness at all. "

Provable nonsense. The great difference between Homo Sapiens and similar organisms like Pan Bonobo and Pan Trogolydyte (Chimps), or Gorilla Gorilla etc., is that Homo Sapiens transforms its environment to a greater degree, and wars over the means and rights to do so to a greater degree.

Every other difference between the pre-sentient homonid genus (of whom there are three: Homo (Sapiens being the only survivior), the Pan (Chimps and Bonobos), Gorillas, is quantitative. Orang-Utan (technically not a Great Ape as such but in a fourth genus, have very similar capacity (e.g. for language or mothering/nurture) but not the cultural complexity of the other apes. All the same they lack in language ability only a bit, an adult Orang can learn about 2000 words in a direct-verb vocabulary, a baby Chimp maybe 3000.

It's hard to explain this small degree of difference given how much more sophisticated the Chimp cultures are, than those of the Orang-Utan.

One theory is that the Orangs once had culture much like Chimps or Bonobos or Humans, but human pressure on their habitat made solitary living a better way to survive, and so lost their culture. Effectively that it's a species made up of refugees. Which could happen to Homo as well!

To be blunt, your statement regarding what is or is not natural to humans is not scientific nor is it rational. I think you should simply retract it and admit that humans are, morally, the worst of the hominids. At least those that survived.

That recognition could lead us to a new Eden or at least to a more rational expectation of humans.

As B. F. Skinner put it, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and towards a more realistic new society.
One where perhaps the creatures above would be more fully treasured and appreciated than today, and of course granted the full status of persons (see http://www.personhood.org). Of course doing that entails that we admit humans are the worst persons... for which I offer the whole 20th century as evidence.

Craig Hubley

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 01/21/2002 3:53 PM by krobbins@neoversia.com

At what level of organisation or at what quantity of members do you become an extrenal authority or government as you progress in your drive to have everybody work towards the same goals?

I might think that for everybody to work towards the same goals then they must either agree or have been coerced under some threat to work towards the goals of a controlling power. I am curious about the motivations for setting goals. I am curious about these goals.

What are these goals? Why are they important? Do I believe that "better" is more than just an opinion? I do start to get a sensation of qualative reasoning when I read an

I suspect as with an ecosystem, diversity is an important factor of longevity of that system, whether it is based on little fish swimming around or little thoughts.

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 12/18/2001 6:42 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> How do you propose to change human nature
> in time to stop all of this?

First part of that problem is recognizing which parts of human nature is the problem.

In the area of terrorism we can identify several general views motivating it:

1) Religion.
Osama bin Laden is obviously motivated by religious belief.
Unfortunately, and contrary to popular opinion, the Holy books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam actually endorse terrorism. Consider the Old Testament, the God/Moses combo are essentially terrorists. They use terrorism against Pharaoh and Egypt to get the Jews free. Remember all those plaques? The kind of rhetoric used by Bush and his people will not convince Islamic fundamentalists, who see Bush as hypocrite.

2) Political ideology.
Other terrorists are motivated by political ideologies.
Consider Pol Pot or Stalin. Or, to bring it closer to us, consider the American revolutionary war, the Boston Tea Party, the elimination of many Indian tribes. Unfortunately, and contrary to some opinion, terrorism can work toward achieving political goals.

Both religion and political ideology can be summed up as 'bad reality maps.' Of course, that label isn't going to help you much in an argument with someone of a different religious or political view. The point has to be proved to them.

> Who is going to change the minds of all the
> people who are involved?

Well, there are groups like "Rationalist International."
http://www.rationalistinternational.net

These guys knew Islamic fundamentalism was going to be a huge problem years before Sept. 11.

>... but to solve the problem we all have to work
> together toward the same goal.

Not true. We merely have to eliminate the bad goals informed by bad reality maps.

> What are the chances of that happening?

Zero. Humanity will never see eye to eye on everything. We can never all share the same goals. The best we can hope for is to be left alone to follow our own goals and hope no one insists, violently, that we should be following their's instead.

there is actually only one solution
posted on 12/18/2001 8:34 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Your analysis is irrelevant. You have omitted factor 0. technology:

It is the technology of airliners, anthrax, etc., that makes the "terrorist" response effective... no solution other than foolproofing the technology itself can reliably work.

You are arguing for a world where everyone is allowed to tinker with technology and quack some ideology about "freedom" if any potential victim of that technology decides to attack them instead of allowing it to be completed. Well the Israeli approach to hostile nations building a nuclear reactor was to bomb it. I notice Israel is still in the UN. Therefore I assume that I can remain within the human race for killing you to stop your technology development, or at least burning your lab to the ground, if you can't justify to my satisfaction why your work should be continued.

Protests against genetic modification or nuclear escalation are only the beginning of a long war of attrition in which all the most prominent researchers in most weapons-grade technologies will either be killed or driven underground by those who, rationally or not, oppose their work.

There is actually only one solution with both ETHICAL and ENVIRONMENTAL constraints that contain the ENERGY and ENTROPY constraints of the tech that is itself "trying" to burst out of the lab and turn you into more of itself:

ETHICALLY, the onus of proving safety is, under Precautionary Principle, on the researcher not the public (who is usually not aware of the work or its implications). Informed Consent, in which the researcher publishes some paper warning of his work's dangers, and then proceeds as long as he is not legally injuncted against doing so, is not a sufficient protection to ensure Biosafety.

Either from genetic, or from sub-genetic, i.e. nanotech, threats. As Drexler has pointed out many times, it is the technology itself which must be developed, or not, along lines that are friendly, or not, to the natural wild life of the Earth's biosphere. Commercial and military levels of care, or even civilian regulatory levels of care, are simply not sufficient to prevent what he calls "abuse" but which many will call "use" (recall the genetic modification debate and its range of positions from absolute opposition to free-for-all based on market wants).

I could argue that any participation in a debate with people who don't see technology development itself as the primary problem is itself abusive, as I am giving you ammunition to use against the positions, in advance of using them to direct the violent forces that will soon be required to kill you. I consider revealing these arguments to be an ethical obligation, though, so flame away... or report me and other "eco-terrorists" to your local police. You may find they agree more with me than with you, since you are arguing with your high-tech-anarchy position in favor of keeping a nanotech lab in your basement without scrutiny.

ENVIRONMENTALLY, think about combining ISO 14000 methods with Biohazard Level 5+ isolation issues; I developed the position some time ago that any such lab without an implosion device placed on it sufficient to implode the lab and the researchers to genetically and nanotechnologically inactive nothingness, or without controls to activate it in the hands of the three most hostile neighbors to activate at a whim based on a 2/3 vote, is not only a biohazard but a crime against humanity as understood in international law. If you cannot respect mutually assured destruction of multiple hostile parties at every stage of the development of the technology, the technology itself is wrong.

I now believe that this solution, with certain social and instructional capital optimizations, is optimal:

I am absolutely certain that no "researcher" who does not adopt this solution will be dead within 20 years. There is no room for them on this, or perhaps any other, planet. They are a biohazard.

So, ethically, my obligations to reveal this are satisified. You have been warned. Continue with an Informed Consent regime at your peril. The onus is now on you to design and enforce a Precautionary Principle regime assuming Mutually Assured Destruction and a Three-Neighbor-Quorum rule. Nothing else is going to be good enough for any person who can do the math of entropy and ethics.

Such as
Craig Hubley

Re: there is actually only one solution
posted on 12/19/2001 11:37 PM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> It is the technology of airliners, anthrax,
> etc., that makes the "terrorist" response
> effective...

Nope, a primitive technology like a stone ax can do damage, just not as much. Technology makes fewer people more destructive. You just
need larger numbers of people who believe the damage needs to be done with primitive tech.

You forgot a core part of the argument. Terrorism is motivated, in the case of bin Laden, by religion. That is not irrelevant at all.

> ...no solution other than foolproofing the
> technology itself can reliably work.

Foolproofing technology is more impossible than changing human nature. Human nature has changed, religion has changed, Christians were burning witches back when Thomas Paine wrote "The Age of Reason."

Technology is just knowledge and tools. You can only keep yourself and those you bully ignorant. You can't keep track of all the labs in every country. If we don't develop nanotech and biotech, then China and Russia will, secretly. Your solution is the worst and most unworkable.

In the end, you yourself seem to be an ignorant terrorist.

> You are arguing for a world where everyone
> is allowed to tinker with technology and quack
> some ideology about "freedom"

"Quack ideology" about freedom?

Freedom isn't just a quack ideology, it's a fact of life. In order to enslave people you have to either enslave their minds or use force and threat.

>...if any potential victim of that technology
> decides to attack them instead of allowing it
> to be completed.

So, why aren't you fire bombing Ford and General Motors? Cars are the biggest killers and their are more substantial odds of you dying because of a car wreck than by the hands of an intentional terrorist
attack.

> Well the Israeli approach to hostile nations
> building a nuclear reactor was to bomb it. I
> notice Israel is still in the UN. Therefore I
> assume that I can remain within the human race
> for killing you to stop your technology
> development,

You assume wrong.
Israel is at war with those hostile nations, are you at war?

>...or at least burning your lab to the ground,
> if you can't justify to my satisfaction why
> your work should be continued.
>
> Protests against genetic modification or nuclear
> escalation are only the beginning of a long war
> of attrition in which all the most prominent
> researchers in most weapons-grade technologies
> will either be killed or driven underground by
> those who, rationally or not, oppose their
> work.

Terrorists don't need "weapons-grade technologies," as we saw, a transportation technology could be turned into a weapon.

When it comes to weapons research, you don't even know who and where it's done -- it's usually a government secret.

//snip

> As Drexler has pointed out many times, it is
> the technology itself which must be developed,
> or not, along lines that are friendly, or not,
> to the natural wild life of the Earth's biosphere.

Our military is probably violating your protocols now. What are you going to do about it?

>...no "researcher" who does not adopt this
> solution will be dead within 20 years. There is
> no room for them on this, or perhaps any other,
> planet. They are a biohazard.

Craig Hubley, you are the biohazard here.

How do you feel about stem cell research and cloning human embryos in order to get the cells?

pre-emptive execution of human biohazards
posted on 12/20/2001 9:18 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

""Quack ideology" about freedom?

Freedom isn't just a quack ideology, it's a fact of life. In order to enslave people you have to either enslave their minds or use force and threat. "

Nonsense. Read B. F. Skinner, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity", 1971. People begin and end their lives enslaved by some kind of transhuman environment beyond their personal comprehension.

They certainly do not make their linguistic or cultural or political environment, nor those aspects of their character determined by genes, great or few as those may be.

All of your arguments, Mr. "Mad Scientist", amount to "might makes right", i.e. "we" (the USA, Russia, China) can do it therefore we will therefore you have to kill us to stop it.

Fine, so, there are five point eight billion people at least with good reason to fear the USA's morality and behavior w.r.t. these new technologies. That's more than the one hundred million who voted Republican and Democratic last fall, and more than the other hundred million who could have voted and didn't, and more than the three hundred million North Americans who might believe they are made "safer" by this technology.

Your ideological blinders render you an unlikely person to make any sort of bona fide breakthrough, but if I thought you were going to produce such a breakthrough I'd snap your neck in an instant with absolutely no moral hesitations. It is absolutely clear what you would do with it: you would make yourself safer while making eveyone else less safe. That is your ideology.

Since you don't believe in Mutually Assured Destruction, you are not part of my species. It's that simple. You're a parasite on my species, which has already accepted that paradigm.

The solution is to make it impossible for your too-big-to-live dinosaur governments and militaries (be they Russian, Chinese, or American) to continue their secret research. If they don't have universities feeding them trained smart young people, if they don't have industries profitably making civilian consumer products with related technologies that cut the cost of military work, and above all if they don't have near-infinite tax dollars to play with, there's much less risk of them making a biosphere-killer.

It would be sad to throw the babies out with the bathwater, but it seems necessary to end your kind. Note that I didn't say your *genetic* kind, it is your psychological kind which can no longer be allowed to parasite on the rest of us.

Every ordinary person working in a factory or a coffee shop is paying taxes to subsidize people like you to terrorize others, to keep other people like you in power. That has to end at some point, either because nations have pulled the triggers on the ultimate weapon, or because more effective ways to deliver charity and maintain shared infrastructure or commons exist (military-fiat nations are no longer practical), or because technology itself guides itself to a poesis that works without human controls at all.

You may visit the Unabomber's argument on this score, or mine, or even Gandhi's about the lack of any moral core in Western non-civilization. The Unabomber is more violent, Gandhi less so (violence only permissible to prevent moral cowardice), and I am more operationally driven.

Our disagreement is already violent: we are supporting presumably different political parties which would bend the law in different ways and thus shape force against us different ways. It is up to you whether or not it becomes lethal. I only advertise, as an ethical obligation, that I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever, no reason to hesitate, no belief in any further dialogue, should your ideology conflict with my own bodily survival.

Sooner or later, some one person in the five point eight billion non-North-Americans will have the means, the motivation, and the opportunity to remove the three hundred million North Americans from this biosphere. That could be a nice "Matrix" type removal, shoving their faces into 24-hour-a-day sensory porn "feelies", or a nasty "Terminator" type removal, wiping out their civilization using means the attackers or their robots are immune to. In your scenario that is the only possible ending to this global conflict.

Accordingly, it is not any greater a sin to take a few lives on the way, in order to prevent what your ideology necessarily implies. No more so than shooting a few Nazis on the way to Berlin.

You have crossed the moral divide between them and those of us who accept the MAD paradigm. I hope you do not force me to make the choice between cowardice and violence. However if you do, I have already made it in advance, and I've put to rest any doubts I have about my decision.

If you force a biohazard-response, you will die.

How could I make myself any clearer than that? And what ethical obligation do I have to you, other than to announce what will make me do so?

Re: pre-emptive execution of human biohazards
posted on 12/21/2001 1:14 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

>> Freedom isn't just a quack ideology, it's
>> a fact of life. In order to enslave people
>> you have to either enslave their minds or use
>> force and threat. "
>
> Nonsense. Read B. F. Skinner, "Beyond Freedom
> and Dignity", 1971. People begin and end their
> lives enslaved by some kind of transhuman
> environment beyond their personal comprehension.

When did I say people were not enslaved? I don't agree with everything Skinner has said, but on that point he is right. However, that environment is more comprehensible to some than to others.

> They certainly do not make their linguistic or
> cultural or political environment, nor those aspects
> of their character determined by genes, great or few
> as those may be.

Not true. We do make our linguistic, cultural and political evironment. We may learn to remake our genetic character. Artists and media shape our cultural environment, linguistic environment and through them, the way people vote which shapes the political environment... Artists and news people (movie makers, writers, and CNN) are potentially very powerful shapers of society.

Art and technology have the power to reshape the world and the human condition.

> All of your arguments, Mr. "Mad Scientist", amount
> to "might makes right", i.e. "we" (the USA, Russia,
> China) can do it therefore we will therefore you
> have to kill us to stop it.

Who said anything about what's "right." I'm talking about what is. The world does not conform to any human moral principles.

//snip

> Your ideological blinders render you an unlikely
> person to make any sort of bona fide breakthrough,
> but if I thought you were going to produce such
> a breakthrough I'd snap your neck in an instant
> with absolutely no moral hesitations. It is
> absolutely clear what you would do with it: you
> would make yourself safer while making eveyone else
> less safe. That is your ideology.

You make a lot of stupid and dangerous assumptions.

> Since you don't believe in Mutually Assured
> Destruction, you are not part of my species. It's
> that simple. You're a parasite on my species, which
> has already accepted that paradigm.

If people don't believe as you, they are less than human -- you sound so religious when you talk like that.

> The solution is to make it impossible for your
> too-big-to-live dinosaur governments and militaries
> (be they Russian, Chinese, or American) to continue
> their secret research. If they don't have universities
> feeding them trained smart young people, if they don't
> have industries profitably making civilian consumer
> products with related technologies that cut the cost
> of military work, and above all if they don't have
> near-infinite tax dollars to play with, there's much
> less risk of them making a biosphere-killer.

Only slightly true. Top secret government labs are a danger, however, Osama bin Laden had a biotech lab too, though a primitive one. Odds are Saddam Hussein has a biotech lab too.

>... it is your psychological kind which can no longer
> be allowed to parasite on the rest of us.

Hitler felt that way about the Jews. Bin Laden feels that way about the Jews and Christians. Stalin felt that way about the capitalistic class and Stalin carried out his purges. Pol Pot felt that way about the intellectual class in Cambodia.

> Every ordinary person working in a factory or a
> coffee shop is paying taxes to subsidize people
> like you to terrorize others, ...

I would never get past the security checks to work for our governments secret labs -- I'm an atheist. They want religious people.

> ...to keep other people like you in power.

What power?

//snip
> ...(military-fiat nations are no longer practical),

What nation isn't a military-fiat nation? You're living in a dream world that doesn't exist.

>... the Unabomber's argument on this score, or mine,
> or even Gandhi's about the lack of any moral core in
> Western non-civilization. The Unabomber is more
> violent, Gandhi less so (violence only permissible
> to prevent moral cowardice), and I am more operationally
> driven.
//snip
>...I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever, no reason
> to hesitate, no belief in any further dialogue, should
> your ideology conflict with my own bodily survival.
//snip
>...it is not any greater a sin to take a few lives on
> the way, in order to prevent what your ideology
> necessarily implies. No more so than shooting a few
> Nazis on the way to Berlin.

What ideology?
What do you think my ideology is?

> You have crossed the moral divide between them and
> those of us who accept the MAD paradigm. I hope you
> do not force me to make the choice between cowardice
> and violence. However if you do, I have already made
> it in advance, and I've put to rest any doubts I have
> about my decision.

Your MAD paradigm is stupid.

MAD worked with nuclear weapons because each side made their own weapons to destroy the other side. There is no way you can get them to make weapons to destroy themselves at the arbitrary command of their enemy. There's no way to keep them from cheating.

there is no escape from Mutually Assured Destruction
posted on 12/21/2001 9:58 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Well, to talk is to de-escalate if there is any chance of changing minds, so let this continue:

>You make a lot of stupid and dangerous assumptions."

Absolutely. That process, of making stupid and dangerous assumptions, is called "living". When people went to work on the morning of Sept. 11th on the top floors of the World Trade Center, or boarded domestic airplanes that same morning, they made a lot of stupid and dangerous assumptions that in the end got them killed.

What is dangerous is dependent on the biosphere and its interactions with technology and bodies. Opinion has nothing to do with that, it's quite radically autonomous. What is stupid is perhaps a combination of ignorance of what is dangerous, and social factors that make ordinary things very dangerous. For instance, groupthink, that convinces people that just because all Americans believe something, that the world must believe it.

If you can come up with objective measures for levels of stupidity and danger, I am all ears. So far I see only the Green Parties doing this, and faltering at it, but at least trying to define what is "safe ignorance" and what is not.

All I said, and all I stand by, is that if someone who believes as you do is close to a breakthrough, I believe that is a sufficiently dangerous biohazard to do to you what Mossad (apparently) did to Gerald Bull, the "supergun" designer who was working for Iraq: whack him.

You should hardly object, since your own US government is increasingly adopting the Israeli policy of assassinating people they believe are operational threats, without the formality of a trial even in secret.

>> Since you don't believe in Mutually Assured
>> Destruction, you are not part of my species. It's
>> that simple. You're a parasite on my species, which
>> has already accepted that paradigm.
>
>If people don't believe as you, they are less >than human -- you sound so religious when you >talk like that.

Not a question of beliefs, but certainly one of faiths and axioms, beyond rational challenge, so I don't object to your terms of reference. If you like I could rephrase as "you are not of my religion, and my religion demands I war against people like you until you cease to be "like you"".

You then go on to criticize the MAD paradigm as a solution to world conflict, which is a debate that now rages between the peace movement (which still believes in it) and Communist world (which still believes in it) and Bush's Republicans (who believe somehow that they can unilaterally move "beyond" it without triggering it, given some strange new wisdom or faith of their own).

Now, let's be very clear about this: I believe that G. W. Bush does not oppose climate change prevention measures as such when he kills Kyoto, and that he does not oppose government funding of social services when he introduces "faith-based funding", but it is VERY clear in his speeches that he DOES believe in moving "beyond Mutually Assured Destruction" to some unilateral America-rules world: A United States of the whole Earth.

So, the choice that Bush and his supporters and funders (including you US taxpayers) is offering the world is this: adopt our US mediation of all world disputes, i.e. y/our World Trade Organization, y/our International Monetary Fund, y/our US Navy and Air Force, y/our US Special Forces, y/our US Supreme Court, and y/our US Constitution, which lays out one set of rules for US citizens, one set for US officials, and yet another set for every other living thing on Earth.

The only alternative? Be suppressed and attacked and ultimately destroyed. Bush's stance was quite clear: "You are with us, or with the terrorists." Well as time goes on and the war expands, more and more will be "with the terrorists" and this Bush League idea of world peace will be demonstrated as an absolute fraud.

Provably false doctrines like "national missile defense" will be exposed as corporate scams and Israeli homeland defense subsidies. I recently heard a Canadian journalist say that the way an old-line journalist would deal with NMD would be to hire ten Iranians and ten North Koreans to take trace-radioactive-but-harmless materials inside devices the shape and size of atom bombs, into the US to reveal them all at the same time. No doubt more than one would make it through...

There is nothing "beyond" Mutually Assured Destruction other than Destruction itself. That is the whole point of it. I can prove that to any intellectually honest person. I cannot prove it to an ideologue addicted to the US Constitution or its various promises of freedom that, as you point out, does not exist in the world. And as you are discovering, there is a limit to the price the world will pay for what you call "freedom".

Mutually Assured Destruction is operative one on one, each time we pass each other on the street without knifing each other. It is operative one billion on one billion, in our military blocs (which are certainly not based on nation states but on trade blocs and technology exchanges, thus my claim that there is no "national security" any more), where MAD operates with about six players.

The game gets harder as technology "improves" and as patriarchal moralism grows more and more futile. But the rules remain roughly the same: whatever rules you respect with respect to the other five Great Powers (today those being China, India, the EU, the Muslim world, and the NAFTA/US) are those which will be enforced on you.

Watch and see whose 'theological' assumptions are well-founded, and whose come out of an old book. Watch and see. My record for prediction is good. How's yours?

Re: there is no escape from Mutually Assured Destruction
posted on 12/22/2001 7:20 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> All I said, and all I stand by, is that if someone
> who believes as you do is close to a breakthrough,
> I believe that is a sufficiently dangerous biohazard
> to do to you what Mossad (apparently) did to Gerald
> Bull, the "supergun" designer who was working for
> Iraq: whack him.

Gerald Bull was not killed because he had any significant breakthrough in supergun design: He didn't. He was killed because of who he had chosen to work for: Saddam Hussein. I could design a better supergun. As a military tactic, when you are at war, those kinds of things need to be done and they are effective; not only do you eliminate one of Hussein's engineers, you scare away anyone else who would work for him. Mossad is not killing off American scientists who have designed, and are now designing, much more effective weapons than Bull's stupid gun. Nor are they killing their own scientists and their deadly projects. Hussein is a direct threat to Israel's existance. It's not technology in itself, but how Hussein would have used it.

> You should hardly object, since your own US government
> is increasingly adopting the Israeli policy of
> assassinating people they believe are operational
> threats, without the formality of a trial even in secret.

I wish! If they were, why didn't they do that with bin Laden back in the '90s? If you want to fight a nasty war, then your should kill off your enemy's scientists and engineers. It's a good way to insure you keep your technological edge. When it came to Hitler's scientists, we didn't kill them, we welcomed them with open arms and put them to work on our American and Russian space programs. It was the generals and polititians that were tried for war crimes there, the scientists were just a commodity to be looted and used. That's the way things work in a technocracy.

Re: there is no escape from Mutually Assured Destruction
posted on 12/22/2001 7:24 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> Not a question of beliefs, but certainly one
> of faiths and axioms, beyond rational challenge,
> so I don't object to your terms of reference.
> If you like I could rephrase as "you are not of
> my religion, and my religion demands I war
> against people like you until you cease to be
> "like you"".

And that's what makes human beings a danger to each other. To the extent I take your threat seriously I am forced to consider you a person who must be destroyed in order to protect my own survival.

> You then go on to criticize the MAD paradigm as
> a solution to world conflict, which is a debate
> that now rages between the peace movement (which
> still believes in it) and Communist world (which
> still believes in it) and Bush's Republicans (who
> believe somehow that they can unilaterally move
> "beyond" it without triggering it, given some
> strange new wisdom or faith of their own).

MAD will eventually fall to new technologies. That's the nature of MAD and technology. Technology doesn't stand still, but nuclear MAD was stagnant from its birth, it totally depended on equal technologies supported by equal resources. Those things could never remain equal.

>...G. W. Bush ... DOES believe in moving "beyond
> Mutually Assured Destruction" to some unilateral
> America-rules world: A United States of the whole
> Earth.

What Bush proposes is possible to a degree and it does threaten to end the "balance of terror" with the other two super powers. The old missel technology is becoming obsolete because the missels can be shot down before they are half way to their targets by airplanes carrying powerful lasers. This only shifts the balance of power where Russia and China are concerned, as you pointed out: The Islamic states have a different technology: religious mind control where suicide squads infiltrate our borders with suitcase nukes.

> So, the choice that Bush and his supporters and
> funders (including you US taxpayers) is offering
> the world is this: adopt our US mediation of all
> world disputes, i.e. y/our World Trade Organization,
> y/our International Monetary Fund, y/our US Navy
> and Air Force, y/our US Special Forces, y/our US
> Supreme Court, and y/our US Constitution, which
> lays out one set of rules for US citizens, one set
> for US officials, and yet another set for every
> other living thing on Earth.

That's not entirely true. I don't think they care enough to involve themselves in many disputes that don't impinge on us. Not that they haven't gotten involved before.

However, power does corrupt, and absolute power can corrupt absolutely.

> The only alternative?

No.

> Be suppressed and attacked and ultimately destroyed.
> Bush's stance was quite clear: "You are with us, or
> with the terrorists." Well as time goes on and the
> war expands, more and more will be "with the terrorists"
> and this Bush League idea of world peace will be
> demonstrated as an absolute fraud.

I don't like Bush, he is too religious in his views, but on this point I think you are unjustly paranoid. Our system of government has checks and balances on power and Bush doesn't have that much control. Odds are he won't even get re-elected. I didn't vote for the guy.

> Provably false doctrines like "national missile
> defense" will be exposed as corporate scams and
> Israeli homeland defense subsidies. I recently heard
> a Canadian journalist say that the way an old-line
> journalist would deal with NMD would be to hire ten
> Iranians and ten North Koreans to take
> trace-radioactive-but-harmless materials inside
> devices the shape and size of atom bombs, into the
> US to reveal them all at the same time. No doubt more
> than one would make it through...

That's probably true, and lasers on airplanes won't defeat that tactic. However, as is now being demonstrated with bin Laden, any group that uses that tactic will be discovered and destroyed.

> There is nothing "beyond" Mutually Assured Destruction
> other than Destruction itself.

Not true. There are other ways to put checks and balances on power, that's part of why we've chosen democracy.

which is worth more, embryo or baby chimp?
posted on 12/20/2001 9:25 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"How do you feel about stem cell research and cloning human embryos in order to get the cells?"

Fine. The cells and embryos have no unique experience, no independent cognition, and no mother. Accordingly they just don't count.

I care far more about already-born actually-mothered chimps, bonobos, orang-utans, gorillas, than I do about any potential human that has no mother volunteering to raise it to a real human.

So, if you take a poll, do most other humans:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/getfgap/messages/?msg=14.1

It is only journalist, banker, lawyer and left- and right-wing brainwashing that confuses this point. Those who have seen past it, ignore it.

Re: which is worth more, embryo or baby chimp?
posted on 12/21/2001 1:18 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

>> "How do you feel about stem cell research and
>> cloning human embryos in order to get the cells?"
>
> Fine. The cells and embryos have no unique experience,
> no independent cognition, and no mother. Accordingly
> they just don't count.

So, you're not typically religious, like George Bush is.

//snip
> It is only journalist, banker, lawyer and left- and
> right-wing brainwashing that confuses this point.
> Those who have seen past it, ignore it.

George Bush isn't ignoring it.

religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/21/2001 10:10 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"So, you're not typically religious, like George Bush is."

I don't believe in a male god whose virtual sperm contribution is valued higher than the mother's nurturing, no. I could buy into a male god whose perspective w.r.t. all life on this planet is that of loving father. But not that of rapist or plunderer, which is how Judeo-Christian ethics is portraying the obligations imposed by Covenant. Islam is actually far wiser about that issue in particular, and Sufis at the top of the theology heap. But that is the only substantial sect in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic "Western World" that was started by a woman. Worth thinking about.

I can find vast value in the core axioms used by Buddha, K'ung/Confucius, Lao Tze, Solomon, Jesus, Muhammad, and also in the usefulness of moral codes defined by Hammurabi, Moses, the ijtihad (resulting in the sharia, which is a byproduct not intended to be raised above the process), and the scientific method and Precautionary Principle.

However, the individuals who were in charge of the United States' vast firepower and research resources on September 10th believed in fictional missile threats and Dinocratic faiths of control.

They are clearly not qualified to rule the real world, let alone choose what technologies shall shape the Earth, which is as much mine as theirs.

The more so, perhaps, given how they abuse it...
"So, you're not typically religious, like George Bush is."

I don't believe in a male god whose virtual sperm contribution is valued higher than the mother's nurturing, no. I could buy into a male god whose perspective w.r.t. all life on this planet is that of loving father. But not that of rapist or plunderer, which is how Judeo-Christian ethics is portraying the obligations imposed by Covenant. Islam is actually far wiser about that issue in particular, and Sufis at the top of the theology heap. But that is the only substantial sect in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic "Western World" that was started by a woman. Worth thinking about.

I can find vast value in the core axioms used by Buddha, K'ung/Confucius, Lao Tze, Solomon, Jesus, Muhammad, and also in the usefulness of moral codes defined by Hammurabi, Moses, the ijtihad (resulting in the sharia, which is a byproduct not intended to be raised above the process), and the scientific method and Precautionary Principle.

However, the individuals who were in charge of the United States' vast firepower and research resources on September 10th believed in fictional missile threats and Dinocratic faiths of control.

They are clearly not qualified to rule the real world, let alone choose what technologies shall shape the Earth, which is as much mine as theirs.

The more so, perhaps, given how they abuse it... Religion has a place in shaping the world. But not the old-testament Moses-like role they see. Nor the Tony Blair Antichrist-like pandering to common fears and hopes. The English speaking "leaders" are becoming a biohazard, and it is perhaps the language itself causing those beliefs that are incompatible with the future. Or at least the legal codes that language tends to encourage, based on precedent and limited liability for dangerous actions taken in common.

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/22/2001 7:04 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> I can find vast value in the core axioms used
> by Buddha, K'ung/Confucius, Lao Tze, Solomon,
> Jesus, Muhammad, and also in the usefulness of
> moral codes defined by Hammurabi, Moses, the
> ijtihad (resulting in the sharia, which is a
> byproduct not intended to be raised above the
> process), and the scientific method and
> Precautionary Principle.

Oh really? Sounds like politically correct bullshit to me. Have you swallowed it whole without thinking or reading their books? I see little value in a few common sense ethical principles wrapped in various poisonous fairy tales. Have you actually read the books you endorse?

Here are some quotes from the Koran:

Sura 8.12 "Remember thy lord has inspired the angels with the message. Give firmness to the believers and instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Smite them above their necks and smite the fingertips of them."

Sura 8:60 "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of God and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom God doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of God, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly."

Sura 8:65 "O Apostle! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding."

Sura 9.5 "When the sacred months have passed, kill the idolaters whereever you find them."

Sura 9:14 "Fight them, and God will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you (to victory) over them, heal the breasts of Believers,"

Sura 47.4 "When you encounter the unbelievers, Strike off their heads. Untill you have made a wide slaughter among them tie up the remaining captives."

What do you think the core axioms are? Can you quote them?

The only one on your list I value is the scientific method. However many values may be found in religons like Islam, it's important to know that Democracy, secularism, separation of church and state, free speech and rational scientific inquiry unhindered by religious dogma are values that do not have any source at all in any ancient religious document. In fact, both the Bible and the Koran are opposed to those ideas. Those ideas came out of the "Age of Enlightenment."

> However, the individuals who were in charge of the
> United States' vast firepower and research resources
> on September 10th believed in fictional missile threats
> and Dinocratic faiths of control.

Yep, they were stupid. The cold war was over when the wall fell and China confronted democratic revolutionaries within. Russia and China are on our side now. We've got a new kind of enemy.

> They are clearly not qualified to rule the real world,
> let alone choose what technologies shall shape the Earth,
> which is as much mine as theirs.

Who is qualified? You?

> The more so, perhaps, given how they abuse it...

Be specific, what abuse? I can't agree or disagree if you're not specific.

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/22/2001 4:13 PM by raram@avaya.com

>> I can find vast value in the core axioms used
>> by Buddha, K'ung/Confucius, Lao Tze, Solomon,
>> Jesus, Muhammad, and also in the usefulness of
>> moral codes defined by Hammurabi, Moses, the
>> ijtihad (resulting in the sharia, which is a
>> byproduct not intended to be raised above the
>> process), and the scientific method and
>> Precautionary Principle.

>Oh really? Sounds like politically correct bullshit to me. Have you swallowed it whole >without thinking or reading their books?

Well it sounds like you have decided to take the anti-politically correct bullshit line whole without thinking. You aimed your 'Evidence' at only one aspect of craighubleyus@yahoo.com paragraph, that of Muhammad. The code of Hammurabi is/was the foundation of laws and created the concept of a 'Civilized' society. Confucius likewise expressed and created a set of pronouncements on how people should live their lives. Confucius edicts were especially harsh on women but there is a great deal of wisdom in what he taught. This is why he is still highly regarded and many of his teachings are still followed.

>I see little value in a few common sense ethical principles wrapped in various poisonous >fairy tales. Have you actually read the books you endorse?

If these ethical principles are so common sense why has it taken several thousand years to develop them? Are the people of the world just unbelievably dense? Or is it because ethical principles are extremely complex, in that they try to allow people to create environments in which they can contribute to develop learning rather than simply worrying about survival. Recent developments (Last 200-500 years or so) in the evolution of ethical principles have focused on the notion of fairness and equality. This is still a new and greatly debated concept. So which parts exactly are common sense?

The 'various poisonous fairy tales' I assume you mention, are known as allegories. And they are used to help the <B>direct audience</B> to understand the concepts the person is trying to convey. They were never meant to be used thousands of years later, codified & dogmatisized and analyzed on wither or not since Jesus mentioned a story about slaves that he condones slavery. I fear that the Authoritarian Personality has traditionally focused entirely too much on the messenger and not on the message. If however what you meant by 'various poisonous fairy tales' is the perposed history expressed in the Bible, Koran, and other religious books. You must understand that History was not divorced from Religion until recently and unfortunately is still not separated from Power. These books were written and rewritten to influence the people of their time to undertake a certain position or view or action. The New Testament, Old Testament, and the Koran each were rewritten during times when that religion held a dominant position. Each also was changed to reflect the newfound acceptability to 'Will to Power' of that religion. It is only after the decline of the association of power and the religion do you see a focus on the actual teachings and 'Core' of the religion. For example only after the Roman Catholic Church separated itself from the ruling of countries (Excepting, Vatican City) was it able to begin to extract itself from the dogma that had collected after 1500 years of near absolute rule over Europe. Personally I find it hilarious when people quote passages from the bible to me. I always ask, 'Is that the original bible or the king James version.' It was named after all, after the English king who's 'patronage' allowed it to be translated from Greek. Who here doesn't believe that some articles were rewritten or dropped altogether? The History of Islam echoes this belief that large portions of Muhammad's teachings were changed or distorted to suit the powerful caliphs. This is one of the foundational differences between Sunnis and Shia Muslims.

>'Have you actually read the books you endorse?'
I think a better question is wither or not you understand the books you condemn.
>'What do you think the core axioms are? Can you quote them?'
I sincerely hope that you do not believe that possessing the ability to quote passages from one religion means you have any understanding or mastery of that religion, and boiling down a religion to a few axioms is probably the worst form of reductionism.

>The only one on your list I value is the scientific method. However many values may be >found in religions like Islam, it's important to know that Democracy, secularism, >separation of church and state, free speech and rational scientific inquiry unhindered by >religious dogma are values that do not have any source at all in any ancient religious >document. In fact, both the Bible and the Koran are opposed to those ideas. Those ideas >came out of the "Age of Enlightenment."

I too follow the scientific method. However the scientific method does not replace religion, rather it is a codification of the principals of logic, and unfortunately many times when logic is applied to religion you end up with contradictory religious dogma. Scientific method simply does not apply due to a lack of evidence one-way or the other, when the two are forced to mix you end up with problems. Ancient religions <B>have</B> created, Democracy, Free speech and rational scientific inquiry. These things were created and refined by the Greeks and Romans who had no difficulty in incorporating them into their religions. Those religions ended up containing large amounts of superfluous religious dogma. This is what allowed the concept of the separation of church and state. That religion and faith did not have any direct influence or relationship with scientific method, Democracy and rational scientific inquiry allowed for the possibility that they could be separated without enormous difficulty.

>Russia and China are on our side now.
I would say that Russia and China are on the side they have always been on, their own. Currently those sides are more closely aligned with our own then they have been for quite some time. But those can quickly and easily change.
>We've got a new kind of enemy.
No, they have been around for quite some time. What's new is now they have made themselves heard and we must sit up and take notice or continue to ignore them at our peril.
>Who is qualified? You?
If you believe in a democracy then you believe that each person is equally capable of deciding the course of a government. If you believe that one person is more qualified to run a country than the people of that country, then you believe in a dictatorship. If you believe that a few select people are more qualified to run a country, then you believe in a republic or communism.

Robert Aram

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 2:48 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

>>> I can find vast value in the core axioms used
>>> by Buddha, K'ung/Confucius, Lao Tze, Solomon,
>>> Jesus, Muhammad, and also in the usefulness of
>>> moral codes defined by Hammurabi, Moses, the
>>> ijtihad (resulting in the sharia, which is a
>>> byproduct not intended to be raised above the
>>> process), and the scientific method and
>>> Precautionary Principle.
>>
>> Oh really? Sounds like politically correct bullshit
>> to me. Have you swallowed it whole without thinking
>> or reading their books?
>
> You aimed your 'Evidence' at only one aspect of
> craighubleyus@yahoo.com paragraph, that of Muhammad.

Yes, I did. My time to write and knowledge of history are limited.

> The code of Hammurabi is/was the foundation of laws
> and created the concept of a 'Civilized' society.

When was this? Before Egypt? I have only a dim memmory of what the Hammurabi's laws were.

> If these ethical principles are so common sense why
> has it taken several thousand years to develop them?

I don't think they did take thousands of years. Social animal societies often seem to live by a set of ethics too, from wolves to apes to ants. Even pre-human homids seemed to have social laws and organization. The ethics seem to be in our genes. I pretty much picked up most of my ethical principles by the time I was in kintergarden.

> Are the people of the world just unbelievably dense?

It often seems that way.

> Or is it because ethical principles are extremely
> complex, in that they try to allow people to create
> environments in which they can contribute to develop
> learning rather than simply worrying about survival.
> Recent developments (Last 200-500 years or so) in the
> evolution of ethical principles have focused on the
> notion of fairness and equality. This is still a new
> and greatly debated concept. So which parts exactly
> are common sense?

The parts that are common sense are the parts that any group of children can figure out for themselves when playing in the playground. I'm not saying that kids wouldn't degenerate into a "Lord of the Flies" type society, what I'm saying is that in the case of the Bible, the Koran and the Torah, they are no better than a "Lord of the Flies" society.

> The 'various poisonous fairy tales' I assume you
> mention, are known as allegories.

Oh, bullshit!

It's patently obvious that the story of Moses is supposed to be taken as literal history. Much of the Koran is referenced to actual historical events. Even the allegorical parts of these books support a rather poisonous conception of man's role in the universe.

> And they are used to help the <B>direct audience</B>
> to understand the concepts the person is trying to
> convey.

You're being vague. What concepts are trying to be conveyed when the Bible portrays Moses as someone who talked to the creator of the Universe and took orders from him. This creator/owner god then told Moses to go around and kill people for various absurd and morally offensive reasons, and that's in addition to God's own terrorist actions.

What concepts is being conveyed when God orders the mass murder of Israel's fighters for democracy: Numbers 16:2-3?

"And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?"

Numbers 16:20-39: "And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment... the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up..."

Num 16:41-49: "But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD...And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment..."

Some Israelite leaders approached Moses and Aaron and not quite politely asked that Moses stop being a theocratic dictator and be replaced by something resembleming a more democratic governing structure. They wanted a say in their fate. They felt that the whole nation was holy, and should share in governing themselves rather than being led by a single individual who claimed to speak to God alone. They advocated a transition from a dictatorship to an oligarchy or partial democracy. God's response was to destroy them. The next day, some Israelites were critical of Moses and Aaron for such a tragic loss of life. God again wanted to kill them. Moses persuaded God to merely send a plague. So any thoughts of a move towards a democratic government were suppresed by fear of God and people were happy Moses was there to talk God out of it.

Democracies insure greater respect for human rights from their governments. Dictatorships and theocracies, like the Taliban's, are noted for their lack of fundamental freedoms because the rulers do not have to answer to their subjects. Obviously god didn't like democracy and religious freedom, two of the foundation stones of U.S. government. God pretty much told Moses to rule over his people like the Taliban rules over Afghanistan.

What concept is being conveyed when the Midians are killed, all of them except the virgin girls: Numbers, Chapter 31? On God's instructions, Moses sent soldiers against the Midianites in response to some of the Israelite men having had sex with some of the Midianite women. Moses then ordered them to slaughter all the captives, saving only female virgins. The latter were apparently to be retain for purposes of rape. Verse 35 talks about 32,000 virgin captives; this implies that there were probably about 32,000 boys killed.

What concept is being conveyed here: Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and here:
Joshua 6:21? After the walls of the city of Jericho fell, the soldiers ran into the city, and killed every man, women and child, even infants and newborns. Their goal was to entirely wipe out the Canaanite culture by destroying its people; this is, by definition, genocide. Acts of genocide are today condemned by all religions and secular groups and by the international community.

When Moses orders the worshippers of the golden calf killed it's an example of murderous religious intolerance: Exodus, Chapter 32

Exodus 32:26-28: "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."

God had responded to the people's desire to change their religious beliefs by killing off thousands of them. This contrasts with the concept of "separation of church and state" in an extreme way. Current laws in most of the civilized world allow individuals full freedom to change their religion. It's only in a few of the Islamic countries where religious beliefs are enforced.

//snip

> If however what you meant by 'various poisonous fairy
> tales' is the perposed history expressed in the Bible,
> Koran, and other religious books.

I mean what Craig called the "core axioms." In the case of The Bible, the Torah and the Koran, the core axioms are ones I reject. They are:

1) God is the one and only Supreme Being, the Creator of everything.
Nothing exists except that God wills it.

2) God created human beings to serve and to obey Him. But God needs a human spokesman who is ultimately the real person being obeyed.

3) Humans will be judged after death as to how well they have fulfilled God's plan for them. Those who have failed, the sinners, will be punished for eternity.

4) God issues commands and these are the basis of morality. To be a good person is to obey the commands of God. Apparently, if God did not command that humans not commit murder, murder would be morally justifiable.

I'm not particularly familiar with Hammurabi to boil down its "core axioms."

> You must understand that History was not divorced
> from Religion until recently ...

The problem is that it's still not divorced from history in the fundamentalist mind. As far as I can tell, the old holy books were written with fundamentalist intensions in mind by people who were like Jack and Roger from "Lord of the Flies."

> and unfortunately is still not separated from
> Power. These books were written and rewritten to
> influence the people of their time to undertake a
> certain position or view or action.

Perhaps... but you're making a claim that there was an original document that was different in its intention -- prove it. I have not seen evidence of any such thing.

> The New Testament, Old Testament, and the Koran each
> were rewritten during times when that religion held a
> dominant position. Each also was changed to reflect
> the newfound acceptability to 'Will to Power' of that
> religion.

Were they re-written? How is it you know what the original documents were like?

> ...the actual teachings and 'Core' of the religion.

You know the real teachings? Prey tell, what are they?

> I think a better question is wither or not you understand
> the books you condemn.

I've read the Bible and the Koran as I found them and I find them no better than the kind of things Jack, from "Lord of the Flies" would tell his follwers. They exploit fear and superstition.

> I sincerely hope that you do not believe that
> possessing the ability to quote passages from one
> religion means you have any understanding or mastery
> of that religion, and boiling down a religion to a
> few axioms is probably the worst form of reductionism.

Not exactly, but I do think one ought to support such generalistic claims as you are making with some sort of evidence from the texts you endorse. If there are original documents, where are they -- the dead sea scrolls? the gospel of Thomas? What the hell are you talking about?

> Ancient religions <B>have</B> created, Democracy, Free
> speech and rational scientific inquiry. These things
> were created and refined by the Greeks and Romans who
> had no difficulty in incorporating them into their
> religions.

The hell they didn't! There was no seperation of church and state in Rome or Greece. The philosophers who argued for such things tended to get killed and always had their books banned. Atheism was illegal in Athens and Rome. Socrates (if he existed and wasn't Plato's invention) was ordered to drink hemlock because he was charged with atheism, Lucretious' books were banned in Rome.

> If you believe in a democracy then you believe that
> each person is equally capable of deciding the course
> of a government. If you believe that one person is more
> qualified to run a country than the people of that
> country, then you believe in a dictatorship. If you
> believe that a few select people are more qualified
> to run a country, then you believe in a republic or
> communism.

What I believe in is "enlightened democracy." In order for democracy to work the majority of people who rule themselves have to be enlightened. If not, things degenerate as they did in "Lord of the Flies." If not, the enlightened minority will be forced to give into the "Jacks and Rogers" and run out the "Ralphs and Piggys."

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 7:06 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

Very good!

- Thomas

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 7:49 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

What's very good?
Are you refering to my post?
What did I do right?

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 9:09 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

It's not good enough to give somebody some credits these days any more! She wants additional explanations!

Well, I think, they are deserved in this case. :))

> I mean what Craig called the "core axioms." In the case of The Bible, the Torah and the Koran, the core axioms are ones I reject.

> the majority of people who rule themselves have to be enlightened. If not, things degenerate as they did in "Lord of the Flies."

> what I'm saying is that in the case of the Bible, the Koran and the Torah, they are no better than a "Lord of the Flies" society.

We have no other way, than to become a science and reason fundamentalists.

The only attractor, we have a chance, if we go after.

We do not want to have any false statement in our agenda.

Bible, Koran etc. - are full of them - in the CORE.

Saying that - is what you did right.

- Thomas

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 1:02 PM by raram@avaya.com

>Yes, I did. My time to write and knowledge
>of history are limited.

However you admit that you have read the Bible and quote from it in this response.

>When was this? Before Egypt? I have only a
>dim memmory of what the Hammurabi's laws were.

I don't know if an exact date is set for then the Code was written. I do believe it predated the expanse of Egypt. It certainly had more effect on civilization then the Egyptians, as the Egyptians tended to keep to the Nile valley. The Code originated in Babylon and aspects of it directly influenced Persian and Greek culture. From those empires the Code was able to influence the rest of the world. More info can be found here. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hammenu.htm

>I don't think they did take thousands of years.
>Social animal societies often seem to live by
>a set of ethics too, from wolves to apes to ants.
>Even pre-human homids seemed to have social
>laws and organization. The ethics seem to be in
>our genes. I pretty much picked up most of my
>ethical principles by the time I was in kintergarden.

If you are implying that a code of ethics are a biological aspect of our makeup then it would have taken tens of thousands of years. But then how would this biological aspect allow us to change our ethics values? Or are you implying that humans have a biological need for ethics? Or is there a happy medium? Our biological ethics require us to kill animals for food and kill other humans for access to food, breeding rights, etc' Yet most religions have created rules that are contrary to these biological ethics. Unless you are/were a child prodigy the basic ethics you had mastered were just that, basic. Most of the conflict between religions and ethics are not over the basic fundamentals but of more unlikely scenarios. 95% of the time you can just let you biological ethics guide your actions. The 5% of the time it doesn't, and you need to turn to the more advanced forms.
Perhaps this is why we humans are dense when it comes to ethics. We are working against biology.

>The parts that are common sense are the parts
>that any group of children can figure out for
>themselves when playing in the playground.
>I'm not saying that kids wouldn't degenerate
>into a "Lord of the Flies" type society, what
>I'm saying is that in the case of the Bible, the
>Koran and the Torah, they are no better than
>a "Lord of the Flies" society.

See above. Most religions don't address the basic ethics; they address the more complex aspects of coexisting in large groups of dissimilar people. If your empire/city sate/etc' has five thousand people living in one city, you are not directly related to a large portion of them. Basic biological ethics do not address behavior patterns for something that did not exist eight thousand years ago, like very large communities. Try creating a community of apes or chimpanzees with one thousand members from multiple families and see wither they are able to co-exist in any positive or progressive manner.

>> The 'various poisonous fairy tales' I assume you
>> mention, are known as allegories.

>It's patently obvious that the story of Moses
>is supposed to be taken as literal history.
>Much of the Koran is referenced to actual
>historical events. Even the allegorical parts of
>these books support a rather poisonous
>conception of man's role in the universe.

It is also patently obvious that the stories themselves have been rewritten to directly influence the people of their time. We do not know what the original works contained. Only that in each of the three major religions they were able to create a community of dissimilar people and direct them to a positive goal. We cannot even be sure that the basic tenants of the religions were not something that evolved over time. Islam for instance borrowed heavily from both Judaism and Christianity. Did their influence spring wholly formed into the mind of Mohammed? Or did he adopt aspects of their religions as he encountered them or encountered problems that they had devised solutions to. Please note that I am taking an atheists point of view here. A religious answer could be that God told Mohammed to look to his previous teachings (Judaism and Christianity) for some of the answers to Mohammed's questions. As for the teachings being poisonous, if they were so poisonous wouldn't they contribute to the collapse of the religion rather than its expansion and dominance? The worst that can be said is perhaps they contribute to an ethnocentric view. (Islam and Judaism certainly follow these leanings.) Interestingly enough, ethnocentric views are more likely the result of biological ethics and not religion.
The view that ethnocentricity itself is a bad thing is a recent ethics conclusion. A conclusion that was reached more likely due to the increase in the population of the world and growth of individual communities than any revelation from God or discovery of man.

By the way some of the 'Core axioms' you list are not shared by the three primary religions. Some are not even espoused as a belief. Ones like,
> 2) God created human beings to serve and to obey Him.

This is in direct opposition to the concept of free will. Current Catholicism teaches that god created us to love him, as children love their father, and God loves us as a father loves his children. That sin is the rejection of gods love. Much the same way that a child is 'Bad' when they break the rules laid down by the parent. If you want to point out that much of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Koran are hypocritical, I would agree. For the reasons mentioned before. When people rewrite these books to support their propaganda they will often create ethical paradoxes. Not to say that the original incarnations of these religions did not contain the same or worse examples of hypocrisy.

>I've read the Bible and the Koran as I found
>them and I find them no better than the kind
>of things Jack, from "Lord of the Flies" would
>tell his followers. They exploit fear and superstition.

Elements from the Bible and the Koran are hypocritical and often used by people who would use them to 'exploit fear and superstition.' This does not mean that the entirety of either of these books support those intentions. If I cared to, I or someone else could quote an equal number of lines from either book to counterpoint those you used. Which of us is correct? Both, Nether? We as human beings are quite adept at divorcing form from function and devising our own functions.

>Not exactly, but I do think one ought to support
>such generalistic claims as you are making with
>some sort of evidence from the texts you endorse.
>If there are original documents, where are they '
>the dead sea scrolls? the gospel of Thomas?
>What the hell are you talking about?

I do not know what the original articles are. But there exits ample evidence that whatever existed before was changed several times over the course of history. Perhaps the originals were much more ethnocentric or espoused activities that are now condemned by civilized society. It is possible that the changes over the history of these books have been made to reflect the current (at the time of revision) ethical mores of society. It is also possible that the exact opposite is true. I simply do not know what the originals were, just that they changed.

>> Ancient religions <B>have</B> created, Democracy, Free
>> speech and rational scientific inquiry. These things
>> were created and refined by the Greeks and Romans who
>> had no difficulty in incorporating them into their
>> religions.

>The hell they didn't! There was no seperation
>of church and state in Rome or Greece. The
>philosophers who argued for such things tended
>to get killed and always had their books banned.
>Atheism was illegal in Athens and Rome. Socrates
>(if he existed and wasn't Plato's invention) was
>ordered to drink hemlock because he was charged
>with atheism, Lucretious' books were banned in Rome.

Please read my original response above. I never clamed that separation of church and state was one of the things embraced by the Greeks and the Romans. I said that Democracy, Free speech and rational scientific inquiry were. Then I went on to say 'That religion and faith did not have any direct influence or relationship with scientific method, Democracy and rational scientific inquiry allowed for the possibility that they could be separated without enormous difficulty.' Unfortunately it would take 1700 years since the time of Christ for the possibility to become reality.

>What I believe in is "enlightened democracy." In order for democracy to work the >majority of people who rule themselves have to be enlightened.

'Enlightened democracy' has always been considered a pipe dream. The range of subjects that the general population would have to be well versed on would require that each member of the population become subject matter experts on every subject they voted on. The Founding fathers of the United States, conducted some of the most in-depth discussions of how to create and run a country fairly, decided that a true 'enlightened democracy' was impossible to achieve for a group of people larger than a city council. They decided on a Republic or a group of (Hopefully) 'enlightened leaders' who would democratically decide on the correct course of action. Smaller groups could then vote democratically for local matters that directly affected them. Although not a true Republic either, this is very close to how our actual government was originally set up.

Robert Aram

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 1:11 PM by raram@avaya

>Although not a true Republic either, this is >very close to how our actual government was >originally set up.

I do realize that this is an ethnocentric view. As I assume that you are an American.

Robert Aram

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/31/2001 9:37 PM by evilewok@cave.af

"Galileo being proved right after he was suppressed by the Church"

There is a new book, "Galileo's Mistake" which contrasts empirical evidence and ethical instincts as routes to morality and truth.

The Church had good reasons to suppress Galileo, and the idea that ordinary people peeping into an instrument should be willing to conclude that the Church was wrong because of what they saw.

There are two sides to this debate, and most modern people neglect the Church's side.

Re: religion has a place in shaping the world
posted on 12/23/2001 9:49 PM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

>>I don't think they did take thousands of years.
>>Social animal societies often seem to live by
>>a set of ethics too, from wolves to apes to
>>ants. Even pre-human homids seemed to have
>>social laws and organization. The ethics seem
>>to be in our genes. I pretty much picked up
>>most of my ethical principles by the time I was
>>in kintergarden.
>
> If you are implying that a code of ethics are a
> biological aspect of our makeup then it would
> have taken tens of thousands of years.

Millions of years for life and evolution, but no thought at all for humans who inherited the basics before humans were humans and had full human language.

> But then how would this biological aspect allow
> us to change our ethics values?

The basic biological ethics express themselves through our emotional responces to things. My sense of "justice" and "fairness" begins as an emotional reaction to events. I feel anger when I perceive injustice. I feel compasion when I see another being in pain (but they have to have a mammal's eyes, lobsters boiling just look tasty to me). Emotions don't necessarily lead to actions, I feel more horniness than I ever express. No matter how stupid I see my own breast fetish, my sexual reaction to female breasts is still the same deep down. We can't change our emotional reactions, but we can find ways to act on them intelligenetly.

Religion feeds on emotional reactions too. Fear, the desire to know things, the desire for magic...

> Or are you implying that humans have a biological
> need for ethics? Or is there a happy medium?

More than a need, animals will often behave ethically. The altruistic behavior is written into our genes.

http://www.etsu.edu/biology/Alsop/BehavioralEcology.pdf

> Our biological ethics require us to kill animals
> for food and kill other humans for access to food,
> breeding rights, etc' Yet most religions have
> created rules that are contrary to these biological
> ethics.

Only within a single social organism defined by shared religious beliefs. A religio-centric organism rather than an ethnocentric one.

> Unless you are/were a child prodigy the basic ethics
> you had mastered were just that, basic. Most of the
> conflict between religions and ethics are not over
> the basic fundamentals but of more unlikely scenarios.

Name one unlikely scenario derived from an ancient holy book.

> 95% of the time you can just let you biological ethics
> guide your actions. The 5% of the time it doesn't, and
> you need to turn to the more advanced forms.

Religion is not an advanced form of ethics. You can find theologians who write about modern ethics, but you cannot find their sources in the ancient holy books. Their real sources are humanists, atheists, theological rebels and the like. Such theologians are sneaky rebels against the ancient revealed religion.

> Perhaps this is why we humans are dense when it comes
> to ethics. We are working against biology.

Biology does throw a few negatives into the mix. Religion exploits them mercilessly.

>>The parts that are common sense are the parts
>>that any group of children can figure out for
>>themselves when playing in the playground.
>>I'm not saying that kids wouldn't degenerate
>>into a "Lord of the Flies" type society, what
>>I'm saying is that in the case of the Bible, the
>>Koran and the Torah, they are no better than
>>a "Lord of the Flies" society.
>
> See above. Most religions don't address the basic
> ethics; they address the more complex aspects of
> coexisting in large groups of dissimilar people.

Not the way I see it. All primitive religious societies insist on a similarity and reject those who are dissimilar in their beliefs.

> If your empire/city sate/etc' has five thousand
> people living in one city, you are not directly
> related to a large portion of them. Basic biological
> ethics do not address behavior patterns for something
> that did not exist eight thousand years ago, like very
> large communities. Try creating a community of apes or
> chimpanzees with one thousand members from multiple
> families and see wither they are able to co-exist in
> any positive or progressive manner.

Ah, but our way of civilization civilizes more than people, many of our animals are civilized as well and they're not buying into human religion. There are dogs that have sacrificed their lives for their owners and dogs that help strangers. Our pets get a degree of civilization from our care and love.

//snip
> It is also patently obvious that the stories themselves
> have been rewritten to directly influence the people of
> their time.

Re-written from what?
How is this obvious?

I think the obviousness for you comes from the fact that you are a believer in God and can't accept what is claimed to be his word. Your God must endorse what you believe, but you have no book. You assume a book that doesn't exist any longer.

> We do not know what the original works contained.

They might have been worse examples of barbarism.

> Only that in each of the three major religions they
> were able to create a community of dissimilar people ...

Dissimilar in what way?

>...and direct them to a positive goal.

That goal being the murder of neighboring civilization and the spreading of their own religion through fear and opression.

> We cannot even be sure that the basic tenants of the
> religions were not something that evolved over time.
> Islam for instance borrowed heavily from both Judaism
> and Christianity. Did their influence spring wholly
> formed into the mind of Mohammed?

No. Mohammed was a plagerist.

> Or did he adopt aspects of their religions as he
> encountered them or encountered problems that they
> had devised solutions to.

Yes, the problem of controlling people and getting them to kill other human beings for your benefit. He did this by promising heavenly rewards to those who died fighting for God -- which was really fighting for Mohammed.

//snip
> As for the teachings being poisonous, if they were so
> poisonous wouldn't they contribute to the collapse of
> the religion rather than its expansion and dominance?

No. They are poisonous to people and to the truth they need, not to religion. Before science started uncovering significant truths about us and our world religion was an advantage for creating soldiers willing to die because they believed in heavenly rewards, now its power is being eclipsed by those who understand the deeper truths of science.

> The worst that can be said is perhaps they contribute
> to an ethnocentric view.

No. They contribute to genocide, barbarism, superstition and oppression of reason. Religion is religio-centric, not ethnocentric.

> (Islam and Judaism certainly follow these leanings.)
> Interestingly enough, ethnocentric views are more
> likely the result of biological ethics and not
> religion.

No. Religion has a religio-centric view which is confused with ethnocentricism.

> The view that ethnocentricity itself is a bad thing
> is a recent ethics conclusion. A conclusion that was
> reached more likely due to the increase in the population
> of the world and growth of individual communities than
> any revelation from God or discovery of man.

The problem is that human beings are killing themselves over idiotic things. Ethnocentricism is a phony excuse to mask the real culprit: religio-centrism. John Walker was accepted by the Taliban.

> By the way some of the 'Core axioms' you list are not
> shared by the three primary religions. Some are not
> even espoused as a belief. Ones like,
> 2) God created human beings to serve and to obey Him.
> This is in direct opposition to the concept of free will.

Not really. You have free will, but you will be punished if you don't give your will over to God. So says the Bible.

> Current Catholicism teaches that god created us to love
> him, as children love their father, and God loves us as
> a father loves his children. That sin is the rejection
> of gods love. Much the same way that a child is 'Bad'
> when they break the rules laid down by the parent.

But there is no God, how can I reject what has not really been offered? It's an obfuscation of the true situation. It still comes down to the surrender of your will to a God that doesn't exist and so you surrender it to those who speak on God's behalf.

> If you want to point out that much of the Old Testament,
> New Testament, and Koran are hypocritical, I would agree.
> For the reasons mentioned before.
>
> When people rewrite these books to support their propaganda
> they will often create ethical paradoxes. Not to say that
> the original incarnations of these religions did not contain
> the same or worse examples of hypocrisy.

You keep insisting what we have isn't the true work of God, but you believe there must be one. Do you believe in God?

>>I've read the Bible and the Koran as I found
>>them and I find them no better than the kind
>>of things Jack, from "Lord of the Flies" would
>>tell his followers. They exploit fear and superstition.
>
> Elements from the Bible and the Koran are hypocritical
> and often used by people who would use them to 'exploit
> fear and superstition.' This does not mean that the
> entirety of either of these books support those intentions.

Prove it. Find passages that support better intensions.

> If I cared to, I or someone else could quote an equal
> number of lines from either book to counterpoint those
> you used.

Do it. I don't believe you can.

> Which of us is correct? Both, Nether?

I am correct. You are wrong.

> We as human beings are quite adept at divorcing form
> from function and devising our own functions.

You are adept at make claims you don't back up with evidence.

>>Not exactly, but I do think one ought to support
>>such generalistic claims as you are making with
>>some sort of evidence from the texts you endorse.
>>If there are original documents, where are they '
>>the dead sea scrolls? the gospel of Thomas?
>>What the hell are you talking about?
>
>I do not know what the original articles are.

Or if they ever existed in a different form.

> But there exits ample evidence that whatever existed
> before was changed several times over the course of
> history.

Not really. The dead sea scrolls had a copy of Isiah that dated back before Christianity existed and is almost word for word what's in the Bible.

Please list your evidence. I know of none.

> Perhaps the originals were much more ethnocentric or
> espoused activities that are now condemned by civilized
> society. It is possible that the changes over the history
> of these books have been made to reflect the current (at
> the time of revision) ethical mores of society. It is
> also possible that the exact opposite is true. I simply
> do not know what the originals were, just that they
> changed.

Changed, no. Edited, yes. In the case of the Bible. Christianity was a confused mess at its birth and a lot of stuff attributed to Jesus, like the Gospel of Thomas (a gnostic, cynical view of Jesus) was edited out of the final Bible.

Jewish tradition is different. They've worked hard, with an anal repressive obcession, to preserve their holy books as given to them. They seem to have done a good job of keeping their insane religion intact. The dead sea scrolls revealed as a very ancient copy of the Old Testament: St Mark's manuscript of the Book of Isiah. It's practically word for word what is in today's old testament and dates back very close to the time of King David.

>>> Ancient religions <B>have</B> created, Democracy, Free
>>> speech and rational scientific inquiry. These things
>>> were created and refined by the Greeks and Romans who
>>> had no difficulty in incorporating them into their
>>> religions.
>>
>>The hell they didn't! There was no seperation
>>of church and state in Rome or Greece. The
>>philosophers who argued for such things tended
>>to get killed and always had their books banned.
>>Atheism was illegal in Athens and Rome. Socrates
>>(if he existed and wasn't Plato's invention) was
>>ordered to drink hemlock because he was charged
>>with atheism, Lucretious' books were banned in Rome.
>
> Please read my original response above. I never
> clamed that separation of church and state was one
> of the things embraced by the Greeks and the Romans.
> I said that Democracy, Free speech and rational
> scientific inquiry were.

Banning Lucretious' books is hardly an example of allowing rational scientific inquiry. One book banned was called "The Nature of Things" and banning it was essentially a ban on rational scientific inquiry and a ban on Lucretious' free speech.

The only one I'll give you is "democracy." What made free speech and scientific inquiry possible for the West was Galileo being proved right after he was suppressed by the Church. The East, through the Islamic countries to China, have not quite caught on to free speech. Pakistan even has a law against blasmphemy. Dr. Shaikh, a Pakistani rationalist and founder of "The Enlightenment", got a death sentence for blasphemy. All that Dr. Shaikh had said was that Mohammad's parents could not have been Muslim since they died before the prophet got his message. That's not blasphemy, that's a slight bit of rational criticism. One of the reasons for this kind of suppression of free speech is because the Islamic faith didn't suffer the same kind of dogma crushing blow Christianity did when it encountered modern science. Things like orbital mechanics didn't shatter their crystal spheres and pull the Earth away from the center of the universe. This lack of division has created an environment where critics and free thinkers are still silenced and thus fundamentalism runs rampant. The critics in the West don't succeed in removing Christianity, but they do help keep a lid on the rampant fundamentalism through continual rational criticism.

> Then I went on to say 'That religion and faith did not
> have any direct influence or relationship with scientific
> method, Democracy and rational scientific inquiry allowed
> for the possibility that they could be separated without
> enormous difficulty.' Unfortunately it would take 1700
> years since the time of Christ for the possibility to
> become reality.

It took Galileo.

>> What I believe in is "enlightened democracy." In order
>> for democracy to work the majority of people who rule
>> themselves have to be enlightened.
>
> 'Enlightened democracy' has always been considered a pipe
> dream. The range of subjects that the general population
> would have to be well versed on would require that each
> member of the population become subject matter experts on
> every subject they voted on.

Total knowledge is not the same as enlightenment.

> The Founding fathers of the United States, conducted some
> of the most in-depth discussions of how to create and run
> a country fairly, decided that a true 'enlightened democracy'
> was impossible to achieve for a group of people larger than
> a city council.

One of the reasons they decided that people were not enlightened enough was their take on religion and its dominance. Here are some quotes from Paine and Jefferson:

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." -- Thomas Jefferson

Here are some Jefferson sources:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbsyl.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_2.html

"The belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man."
-- Thomas Paine (author of The Age of Reason)

"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."
-- Thomas Paine (author of The Age of Reason)

Here are some Paine sources:

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_1.html
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Paine/AOR-Frame.html

> They decided on a Republic or a group of
> (Hopefully) 'enlightened leaders' who would democratically
> decide on the correct course of action. Smaller groups could
> then vote democratically for local matters that directly
> affected them. Although not a true Republic either, this is
> very close to how our actual government was originally set
> up. -- Robert Aram

Their hope was that, given the right environment, people would become enlightened. They didn't have a lot of faith in that hope, but they tried to encourage the possibility and time is beginning to justify more hope in that possibility -- but strangely, more so in Europe than America which is still deeply plaqued with fundamentalism.

moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 12/20/2001 9:29 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Technology makes fewer people more destructive. You just need larger numbers of people who believe the damage needs to be done with primitive tech."

True. Accordingly, low-tech is democratic, high-tech is elitist. Also, low-tech has safeguards that high-tech does not have. High-tech powers become morally lazy, indulgent, greedy, and evil.

It is a moral obligation to the other species on this planet, to choose the lower-tech side in any human conflict, even if we find it repugnant. If forced to choose between high-tech Bush and low-tech "terrorists", or between high-tech Americans and low-tech Viet Cong, or high-tech Israelis and low-tech Palestinians, we must *always* choose the latter, or else we are siding with technology against humanity.

Unpopular as that point may be, it will stand the test of time in the 21st century. Burden of proof is always on the high-tech power, as we can clearly see in the world's reluctance to accept the "bin Laden smoking gun tape" as real evidence.

That's as it should be.

Re: moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 12/21/2001 1:19 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> True. Accordingly, low-tech is democratic,
> high-tech is elitist. Also, low-tech has
> safeguards that high-tech does not have.
> High-tech powers become morally lazy, indulgent,
> greedy, and evil.

Elitism, like freedom and anarchy, is not an ideology so much as it is a fact of life.

The high-tech, bio-tech and nanotech genies are not just out of the bottle. The bottle's broken. They cannot be avoided. Any attempt to avoid them will simply remove you and your victims from the game.

> It is a moral obligation to the other species on
> this planet, to choose the lower-tech side in any
> human conflict, even if we find it repugnant.

Keeping other species alive and healthy doesn't require going backwards in technological development. It just means chosing high tech that doesn't damage the environment.

> If forced to choose between high-tech Bush and
> low-tech "terrorists", or between high-tech Americans
> and low-tech Viet Cong, or high-tech Israelis and
> low-tech Palestinians, we must *always* choose the
> latter, or else we are siding with technology against
> humanity.

Technology is not the enemy. Human beings who use technology for destructive ends are the enemy.

> Unpopular as that point may be, it will stand the
> test of time in the 21st century. Burden of proof
> is always on the high-tech power, as we can clearly
> see in the world's reluctance to accept the "bin
> Laden smoking gun tape" as real evidence.
>
> That's as it should be.

I accept it as real evidence. Don't you?

the tape doesn't satisfy reasonable doubt
posted on 12/21/2001 6:29 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

">see in the world's reluctance to accept the "bin
> Laden smoking gun tape" as real evidence.
>
> That's as it should be.

I accept it as real evidence. Don't you?"

I'd apply the same standard as a judge in any criminal trial: are the people who were there shown in the tape actually testifying that they were there and heard something like what the bin Laden image said?

Anyone who's seen Forrest Gump *knows* that such a tape can be faked. And after having bombed the hell out of Afghanistan with a shaky coalition, the Bush administration would be under immense pressure to justify that act no matter what. So the motivation and means to fake the tape exist. It doesn't satisfy reasonable doubt on its own.

Given the Bush family's history of engaging in dirty tricks from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to the S&L Scandal to the 2000 Florida election, I really don't think hostiles can/will trust 'em.

The tape could well fall in the "OJ pile" of evidence that isn't trusted simply because of who handled it. Without corroborating testimony, I'm simply not going to draw any conclusions about it.

Nor should anyone else who is interested in real rigorous justice systems. Not "Bush tribunals". If his evidence is more than crap, have him bring it to an open court with a judge he doesn't own.

Re: the tape doesn't satisfy reasonable doubt
posted on 12/22/2001 7:08 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

> Given the Bush family's history of engaging in
> dirty tricks from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra
> to the S&L Scandal to the 2000 Florida election, I
> really don't think hostiles can/will trust 'em.

It's not impossible that they faked it, but I don't think they did because they couldn't even see what was really on it. They claimed bin Laden was cynical when he obviously wasn't, but rather quite the true believer.

No, Bush has made too many revealing mistakes in his handling of the Islamic threat to be faking this. For one thing, the Taliban just resembled the Religious Reich that supported Bush too much to be a fake enemy, and then there was when Bush went to that Islamic temple in Detroit (where Louis Farrakhan once preaced) and proclaimed Islam to be a religion of peace while behind him stood Imam Hassan Qazwini, who, unknown to Bush had previously been preaching anything but peace. Qazwini openly promoted terrorism and hatred before Sept 11, but Bush didn't know until some old news media tapes surfaced and embarrased him for his choice of Muslim's representing Islam as a religion of peace.

When campaigning in Michigan, Bush met repeatedly with Qazwini, and when he held his January press conference announcing his "faith-based" initiative, Qazwini was front and center among the religious leaders on stage at the White House. Bush had even said Qazwini's mosque, which he didn't know had preached jihad against America, would be a major recipient of our "faith-based" tax-money.

Or way back when FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted the agency had "no warning signs" of the Sept 11 attacks and it later came out that they had several warnings they ignored, such as the Philippine investigators who found evidence of Islamic terrorist plans for targeting commercial towers in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City and turned that over to the US.

Who fakes embarrasing themselves like that?

Re: moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 12/23/2001 1:17 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Technology is not the enemy. Human beings who use technology for destructive ends are the enemy"

Amish, Mennonites, luddites say different. Your use of "is" and "are" constitutes a form of quacking like a duck, without thought.

You cannot show me an instance where a technology that *can* be used destructively has not been.

Your paradigm makes extermination of "bad" humans the number one goal of new technologies. That has consequences.

Your own extinction may well be one of them.

Re: moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 12/25/2001 2:48 AM by normdoering@mad.scientist.com

>> "Technology is not the enemy. Human beings who
>> use technology for destructive ends are the enemy"
>
> Amish, Mennonites, luddites say different.

Well, the Amish, Mennonites and luddites pay for those views by depriving themselves and they all ultimately cheat and use high tech. The Amish are dwindling away, their kids no longer want to live without technology. You yourself are using a computer to spread your message and computers started out as calculators for aiming big guns.

> Your use of "is" and "are" constitutes a form of
> quacking like a duck, without thought.

Just because you don't like what "IS" and can't face up to it doesn't make it not so. What is, simply is, and your rhetoric will never change it.

> You cannot show me an instance where a technology
> that *can* be used destructively has not been.

In very general terms, true, but in specific terms I can. Organ transplant technologies have not yet been made into a weapon.

> Your paradigm makes extermination of "bad" humans
> the number one goal of new technologies. That has
> consequences.

I never made it number one -- that's your lie and distortion of what I said. I don't believe the number one goal for nanotechnology is weapons. The number one goal of most nanotechnologists is in fact indefinite lifespans, superhuman bodies, the conquest of space and other such non-military goals. But military uses are inevitable.

> Your own extinction may well be one of them.

Our my own immortality.

The risks and rewards will accelerate, and life will be more interesting.

Re: moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 08/23/2002 12:56 PM by trait70426@aol.com

THE POST SINGULARITY ERA

Maybe "morals" and "ethics" don't really exist. Maybe they are animal tools, invented to perpetuate the biological life form. When the Machines woke up, maybe they didn't use them.

Re: moral obligation to choose low tech side in any conflict
posted on 12/21/2001 5:43 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

[Flame deleted by moderator]

agreement and understanding are dissimilar
posted on 12/21/2001 6:23 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Agreeing and understanding an ethical rationale are not the same. I understand the rationale of suicide bombers without sharing it, or agreeing in most cases. [Flame deleted by moderator]

Re: agreement and understanding are dissimilar
posted on 12/21/2001 7:18 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

I don't 'lack the ability'! I can understand something and (still) say it's a bullshit. What's your siding with the technologically inferior is.

I guess, you could understand 'the rule of siding with those, who have an odd number of characters in their name.

[Flame deleted by moderator]

- Thomas

the United States itself may/should break up
posted on 12/21/2001 10:25 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Siding with" them might be extreme, but it is certainly ethically defensible in all cases that I can recall in the 20th century. At the least, a more powerful low-tech defense guarantees that the high-tech side must at least start to listen. There are, in other words, no low-tech "sides" that I would not take up as defense lawyer, although there are many that I would not have fought for (bin Laden's group likely being one, but in retrospect we'll see just how bad his opponents really are, and then history will decide). Ethical defense is not bodily defense.

I certainly feel comfortable with the idea that the burden of proof of any moral or legal case must be much higher for a high-tech rather than a low-tech party. Not only can the high-tech party more easily fake alter or plant evidence, without being detected, or buy testimony with technology, it is necessarily subjecting other parties to whatever ill effects its high technology creates. It is accordingly in a moral hole to begin with. English legal tradition implicitly recognizes this by assigning a higher burden of proof to the state accusing someone of a crime, than would apply between private citizens simply suing each other to transfer property assets in court. It's time to make that tradition more explicit, and the state's actual technological capacity (to fake evidence, induce false witness, invoke patriotism to justify abhorrent actions) should become an active factor against them in any international legal proceeding.

The US, which presumably would be most disadvantaged by this rule, would object to it, and would increasingly become isolationist. But that is better than letting it become a unilateral dictator of terms to others, by use of evidence-faking, moral-persuasion, "truth drugs", "decryption" ("hey this bunch of bits says Al Gore is conspiring with the Taliban - and you HAVE TO believe us since no one is allowed to see our algorithms!"), and other false technology.

What I am telling you is, the assumptions by which you have run your social and legal and moral life, are part of the 20th century, and it is now the Seventh Millenium (since recorded history began). There is no "21st century". Everything you have used to mark your life has been provably wrong since 1962, when "Silent Spring", Cuban missiles, viral ultrastructure, and numerous other factors made Mutually Assured Destruction an absolute fact of our human lives.

It took 40 years, generations, to wake the United States up to this. When the USSR woke up it *broke* up. Why should it be different for you? Why *not* divide North America into nine newly minted bioregional/culturally-cohesive republics, as Joel Garreau proposed in his 1979 "Nine Nations of North America"? Why have a US at all?

The United States itself may break up simply to avoid the strategic disadvantages of *being* the "United States." You should think about it. Canada, just North, has actively considered this kind of breakup for decades, since about 1962 (no coincidence), and almost broke up (a narrow 0.1% margin) in October 1995. How many Americans know or care? It's quite interesting how ignorant the US is of events in both Canada and Mexico usually.

Accordingly, large numbers of you get killed by surprise. You should really become more like "us" and less like "US".

Re: there is actually only one solution
posted on 12/21/2001 12:09 AM by tig3933@yahoo.com

Craig, oh, my lesser ape friend,

I find you healthy and at full steam on this issue, and "ethically" and "aesthetically" on course. I must admit, it took a while re-reading your posts at Greenpeace (and all of them here) to come to the same conclusions you do on nanotech and ethics for tech development. I had not given it the proper thought, and thank you. The nanotech in China post lost me for a while, but I think you have hit the nail on the head.

Ah, but now your anonyminity is lost.

Peace,
Tig

"outers" don't have a role in the debate
posted on 12/21/2001 6:34 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Ah, but now your anonyminity is lost.

Peace,
Tig"

If so, that would have been entirely your fault.

Thankfully, there are lots of people who share these views, and so I have no idea what you are talking about. I spent some years spreading these exact memes in Toronto and among Greens worldwide, and encouraging others to do so. I expect you have confused me with someone else.

Given you have a penchant for outing anonymous parties, I don't think I want to know you at all. It would make many of my friends uncomfortable.

Goodbye,
Craig

superior civilization based on apes and gardens
posted on 12/18/2001 7:12 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"I always imagine a superior civilization as a civilization whose basical attribute is that its people have passed their small and ephemeral interests and focus on evolving together.
The place we choose to evolve is a minor detail but somehow important."

It is not a minor detail. It is the whole point.

Imagine any environment whose "people have passed their small and ephemeral interests and focus on evolving together." In what such world could "the environment" be anything but the prime player? The stage is the most important actor.

For "people" to pass their "small and emphemeral interests" they need to make two very specific adjustments to how they see self and interests:

1. they must recognize that a "person" is a thing that shares empathic, emotional, attributes with us and not necessarily linguistic or intellect - accordingly the FIRST SMALL AND EPHEMERAL INTEREST they must transcend is their corporate identity. "We" are a bunch of pre-sentients in ape bodies struggling to become sentients. By that definition Exxon is not a "person", but Koko the Gorilla *IS*. There is no option here, this is a strict formal constraint of transcendence. If we insist on personhood status for our simple responsibility-evasion systems like corporations, and deny it to those biologically and culturally similar to us in non-linguistic non-intellectual ways, "we" will simply never transcend anything.

2. Aesthetics, the basis of morality, must become clearly and obviously rooted in the aspects of our wild natural environment that we desire and prefer. An art of "ape realism" perhaps where what is natural and wild and part of our bodies is celebrated. In this sense perhaps porn is a very healthy phenomenon - it's certainly popular, so saying it's unhealthy is like saying that all males who view it are unhealthy which transcends any democratic definition of "health" ;-) Eco-porn, combining ecology and pornography, may be a way to move beyond our current "war aesthetic"...

Then "we" can start to think about what "evolving together" is...

Whatever "we" is, and whatever "we" are evolving towards, which I hope is some "wilder" aesthetic that does not involve paving over *this* planet.

If it does, I expect that the organisms and organizations which did that, have no future.

A superior civilization based on apes and gardens, I'll fight for. Anything else, I'll fight against. Call me an Edenist, if you like.

Craig Hubley

Re: superior civilization based on apes and gardens
posted on 12/22/2001 5:20 PM by adyrotaru@yahoo.com

Dear Craig,

Thank you for your post. I'd like to tell you from the start that I agree with you in many points, but I'll try to argument

my statements based on your observations.

"<<I always imagine a superior civilization as a civilization whose basical attribute is that its people have passed their

small and ephemeral interests and focus on evolving together.
The place we choose to evolve is a minor detail but somehow important.>>

It is not a minor detail. It is the whole point."

Yes you're right. Right now I depend, let's say about 90-95%, on my environmental conditions. Right now, where I live are -20

Celsius degrees, so if my home wouldn't be warm enough, I could dissapear in short time. So far I agree with you. What I see

different from this point here is that technology will make us independent of our enviromnental conditions.
Let me tell you what is the most important thing I have learned since I first entered this site. I realised that Mr. Kurzweil

is right. We, the human beings (and here I agree with Ron Robinson that posted a comment on this thread above: "Human beings

by nature are good, rational, and productive, or mankind would not exist"), are still linear thinkers that "[...] have been

led to complacency. Why put in the disclipline and hard effort necessary when we can simply die and go to heaven?" (qouted

Ron again).
So, my opinion is that we should start thinking differently because we will have technology on our side and this will amplify

our powers.
I think we live crucial moments, when life is no longer a weak force that threads its way in Universe, but becomes an active

player that will fight for supremacy. So, in the future I see that "the stage" will play a smaller and smaller role as time

passes. Why? Look around and in history. No matter what period of time you consider, the man was constantly in a sort of

battle with his environment: has built bridges, dikes, etc. and used technology for that. Now we can predict weather or even

bring the rain.
But, all we did until now was to protect ourselves from environmental causes that can harm us and/or produce disconfort. What

we do now is to cure and prevent the effects of those presumably infallible factors. I guess we will not stop here, but we

will try to clear away the CAUSES. Although I am a great admirer of what nature has created, we also are her creation, so we

should contiune its creation with respect. Our environment will suite perfectly for our nature... Of course, for that we must

define ourselves (or redefine, take it as you like) so we know very well what we want.
So this is the reasoning that leads me to the conclusion that we must also have a free debate on ourselves which is at least

as important as technical debates because if something will go wrong in the future (see Mr. Drexler's articles) it will have

the seeds in us. Everytime we fear of nanotech power we consider that "someone" (that is a person) will use this force for

evil purposes.

Adi.

should robots be required to be feminist organic gardeners?
posted on 12/23/2001 1:12 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"technology will make us independent of our enviromnental conditions. "

I say the opposite. Technology can help us survive longer in tough conditions or be more comfortable with them. But it doen't make us independent. It actually makes us *dependent* on the heated houses etc.

I lived for two winters in a city (Toronto) that often got to -20C in January and February, with no heat nor light. I just used sweaters and blankets, as have generations before this one. There was no problem. What mattered, was the roof and the walls that kept me dry and the wind off.

Kurzweil is wrong to focus on attributes that are uniquely human. That is what is *bad* about us. What is *good* is what we share with other mammals. I will stand by that point.

And "life" can win in the end, without anything we actually care about surviving. "Life" would triumph perhaps if silicon forms extincted us in the most horribly painful way and then terrorized all mother mammals into eating their own children.

Is that morally "good"? Well my aesthetic says no, mammal life is not here to become experimental subjects for silicon life.

This refusal to use our aesthetics and empathy in combination, to shape societies, instead doing it by some kind of rote, is dangerous.

People who focus on "ethics" in the abstract without actually looking at moral examples (like the aforesaid mammal mothers) or dispute resolution itself (by what *process* shall "we" decide who "we" is and how "we" stop short of killing ourselves?) are part of the problem.

We will not get to a decision by symbol manipulation but perhaps by poetry and dance we can begin to step towards empathy.

Moral machines must be spiritual, yes, but not abstract detached observers, active helpers of what is valuable: organic gardening, nurturant mothering.

Property rights and freedom rhetoric aside, why should I not destroy your robot? What is it doing to advance my values? On what level would all mammals agree the robot is a good thing? That's where to focus.

If the focus is anywhere else, the foregone conclusion is that the machine will have some priority unrecognizable or suboptimal from our empathic point of view.

Am I suggesting that all robots must be feminist organic gardeners? Maybe even holding a Green Party card? Well, YES, in the beginning, that would work out well, prove the principles.

What is the alternative? Bush's robot drone planes killing live humans, most "bad", some "good"? Statistical success is not good enough with a billion tiny bots that may each go wrong in a fun new way, evolving faster than bacteria.

"KurzweilAI" is not going to escape the assumptions of commercial/corporate life. "Foresight" is not going to escape the bias that symbols can predict outcomes in a way meaningful to empathic mammal-type creatures.

Given the 20th century, seen clearly from 1901, the mammals would likely not have chosen saturation bomboing, nuclear physics, poison gas shells, maybe not even radio (which Hitler Churchill and Roosevelt all used to similar effect).

Shall we ignore them again in a new century? Repeat the same mistakes on a larger scale?

I am tired of abstract talk about robot ethics. Show me exactly how a robot makes ethical decisions, how it sets its terms of reference, what its profession is. What unions or parties it joins. How it interacts with other robots socially.

What are its robot POLITICS?

Re: should robots be required to be feminist organic gardeners?
posted on 12/23/2001 5:30 PM by adyrotaru@yahoo.com

Excellent rhetoric, but I do not sustain the idea of making robots that will act as a super-human that should be integrated in our society. Maybe - I say maybe - one could imagine such a *thing* and even build it (what would be the point? just because it won't *eat*, only produce? hmmm). What muddles me is the other alternative, which overrides this one. It is the so dreamed handshaking between the human and the machine.
Your aesthetic and ethic problems would still remain to the human part of the android. Humans are attracted to the idea of android for several reasons, like healthiness, life prolongation, superior intelect, and so forth. Why do I sustain this? Ask somebody that prefers to buy an artificial heart or leg or arm.
If some kind of nanocircuit will HELP me to extend my intelectual capabilities, I could be very attracted to it, yet aware of failure (until a 100% reliable product will arise). Right now I'm using my - say, 0.25 cubic meter - PC to extend my communication capabilities. You are doing the same thing. I'm using my PC to emprove my work also. PC means technology. Now, why not using some sort of presumably available chip (see Johny Mnemonic) to gain my independence from my office and to travel around the world and yet to do my job?
I wander what the nature that we properly call *mother nature* wants from us? My instant response is that she wants us to evolve, she want that every person to fulfil his/her dreams because that dream is PART of her dream. My aesthetic tells me this.
So, you can be as aesthetic as you want using your experience, but you'll be more powerful and here is the point where I want to return to the idea that I wrote down in my first post: we need to redefine our society, and now I add: to make aesthetics a general accepted and internalized principle. Did terrorists internalize aesthetics? Maybe you and me and other billions of people did. What about the rest? They will have access to the latest technologies as we do (I will refer to *good* people as "we"). They will be as powerful as we are but their living target will not be leaded by the same principles that guide us. What will happen next? I fear of even worst "Sept. 11"s. What's the solution? Should we keep the penitentiary system up to protect us? How could I fulfil my dreams when I will lose my freedom to travel by plane or stand at home or take my girlfriend out? And all these just because me and the society I live in are vulnerable to any person that gets a knife? I use a knife everyday. Why is that I don't see that knife as a resort to reach my ideals and why other people do? Now extend this taking a bigger knife, than a hammer, than a bomb and see how different people use these *tools*. What I am sure of is that all of them are guided by their power craving at different scale. This is aesthetic as long the battle is fair (see mother nature's selection principle).
Is the computer a good thing? An overwhelming majority will say yes. Is a hammer good? They will say: "Yes, if you don't break somebody's head". What about breaking the computer? Mother nature has expected millions years for us to arise than evolve and look how easy the creation and evolution can be stopped and burried by a hammer. Let me replace the hammer with an electronic bomb that costs about $400 (four hundred dolars) and is able cu cut the whole electricity forever.
But who wants this? Somebody without the sense of aesthetics you may say.
So, let's make aesthetics and ethics a normal way of living. How? Anyone that has an idea is invited.

Adi.

Heaven of 72 Virgins vs. Island of Britneys and Cindys
posted on 12/24/2001 2:00 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Yours is a very wise statement, I think, and it stands in contrast to the "Fight Club" style that the rest of this thread has adopted (mea culpa!).

It's entirely fitting, I think, that those who are debating technology itself, far downstream from what you and I would agree is "the real problem", are caught in a hopeless conflict of views. If we wish a peaceful society we might start by looking at what aesthetic choices are actually guiding them into "choosing technology" as opposed to say choosing dance, music, cooking, gardening, or sexual prowess. A 2" penis, which is the most important qualification for those who build prosthetic technologies, could motivate one to become *either* a robot organ designer, *or* a sexual athlete. But society rewards the former more than the latter, which shapes the aesthetic of the fear-driven, ordinary "epsilon" or "delta" class hu-man, and rewards the "gamma" doctrinaire and demagogue for pro-tech anti-sex rhetoric etc.

In a democracy, those choices are going to bubble up, with outcomes like a robot-like President with a 2" penis, or a lively demagogue who "has to invest in nanotechnology" to cover for his (quite rightful and moral) pursuit of sex prowess.

Clinton at least demonstrated the point of power: more varied fun sex. Bush and his desire to "punish" are the result of a much more inhibited and fearful set of aesthetic choices. Clinton is Hustler - Bush is a scary bondage rag.

But now that I have scared off all except alphas and betas, let me return to your primary point:

"I wander what the nature that we properly call *mother nature* wants from us? My instant response is that she wants us to evolve, she want that every person to fulfil his/her dreams because that dream is PART of her dream. My aesthetic tells me this."

I agree with the *sexy* part of that dream, which includes our sexual attraction to potential mates, our indulgence in fantasy and variety, and the poesis that ultimately creates a new planet.

Those who think "mother nature" is just a pile of "resources" will soon be invited off this planet, and they'll go "terraform" another one. Maybe the purpose of a life-bearing planet is to generate another life-bearing planet? Thus the Mother Earth dies but the Baby Mars lives on and remembers her fondly. Hopefully Earth does not die in childbirth! At least for most of us who shall never get to Mars, statistically speaking.

"So, you can be as aesthetic as you want using your experience, but you'll be more powerful and here is the point where I want to return to the idea that I wrote down in my first post: we need to redefine our society, and now I add: to make aesthetics a general accepted and internalized principle."

You can require leaders to *have* an aesthetic sense, to be individuals and have what I call "individual capital" (initiative, moral example, inspiration, instinct to take risks for what is morally right even if ethically difficult to defend before or after the fact given society).

The Japanese Zen Buddhist Samurai were required as a matter of court protocol to write poetry and paint gentle pictures. Medieval courts emphasized courtly love and the arts of humour. Over time I've come to realize that when you have a military class of powerful competing males in armored plumage talking plain brutal truth to each other, it is an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY to get them to state their beliefs honestly BUT IN VERY POETIC TERMS so that the ladies (whose aesthetic should dominate in peacetime) and retainers (gammas) and sherrifs (deltas) and peasants (epsilons) do not totally follow the bards instead of the generals. Generals must BE bards if only for inspiration and to do diplomacy in the peacetime. Too-plain talk about threats and response, unpoetic prose about the battlefield, well, this is just not how you hold the society together for long desirable peaceful periods.

So to make "aesthetics a general accepted and internalized principle," I'd say, start where the medieval courts did: with poetry, romance, humour. In different mixes based on culture, but still fundamentally the same process of civilizing the most powerful strategic minds to spend at least *some* of their time on poetry and thus diplomacy.

"Did terrorists internalize aesthetics? Maybe you and me and other billions of people did. What about the rest?"

The "terrorists" had an aesthetic of moral duty to Allah to destroy infidels dominating their lands and demonstrate absolute belief in their cause - and of course to get 72 virgins in Heaven!

There is part of this which is appealing, even to those of us who don't believe in Heaven at all or who find self-and-other-body-destruction for moral causes to be inefficient. There is clearly an aesthetic there, and a quite powerful one, to motivate people who *could* fit into Western society but *chose* this other aesthetic instead.

We may abhor the fact that they imposed that choice on airline passengers, bond traders, and poor bastards working at Starbucks and the NYPD. But face it, the NYPD imposes similar choices on immigrants who are mowed down in doorways for reaching for a wallet, Starbucks and the coffee monopolies impose similar choices on the peasants in some countries, and bond traders? Don't get me started. You can see for yourself how the practices in debt valuation cause "IMF riots", as Joseph Stiglitz predicted Argentina's in advance.

Aesthetic is subjective, relative, and is going to surprise you. Like art. We have to accept that. We can reject the "terrorist" aesthetic or the "Wahabist" (militant violent Islamic fundamentalist, a 20th century phenomenon based in part on pollutions to Islam due to Christians) guerillas idea of a good society or sensual sexist Heaven. But they will impose it on us, just as Bush imposes his aesthetics on us in a "kinder, gentler" way. It's all violent, in the end, no one is talking about eliminating cops and laws and courts and militaries. We just hope for a judiciary and police force with aesthetics more similar to ours, not more similar to theirs.

Moral relativism has its limits, and we have hit them...

"They will have access to the latest technologies as we do (I will refer to *good* people as "we"). They will be as powerful as we are but their living target will not be leaded by the same principles that guide us. What will happen next? I fear of even worst "Sept. 11"s."

"We" say "worse", "they" say "better". Relative. This is war. But don't mistake the aesthetic principles that are still in common: in phone calls to their loved ones at home, the passengers on at least one of the planes related that the hijackers were angry at a woman for having brought children on board, and even for being there on an early morning weekday flight. They seemed genuinely upset that women and children were going to die in their mission! Their aesthetic did not include doing such harm. Also they attacked people AT WORK not at home, a distinction which Bush and co in Afghanistan, and Israel in the West Bank, did not respect. Each of the people in the Pentagon or World Trade Center was actively participating in the business done in those places, benefitting from it to some degree. That is not true of Afghan children who slept at home beside a building full of Taliban theocrats, not knowing it would be bombed tonight.

Very often the more repressive or traditionalist faction in a conflict respects such distinctions, e.g. Hitler refused to let German women work, he felt it was important to let them live "as women". He had an aesthetic he wished to protect.
He also kept consumer goods production going right up to 1944, knowing that the public was supporting the war only because they saw little or no reduction in their quality of life for it, outside the towns that were bombed very heavily.

Let us not make the mistake that "the terrorists" are anything other than people who have made some different aesthetic choices, and who justify their actions to a different ethical community (e.g. Wahabist mullahs) whose leaders they accept.

Also, we can't support all of "the West's" choices, e.g. to send in proxy soldiers whose children are very often in the front line with them, e.g. to allow prisoners to be shot while expressing their own abhorrence to this behavior to folks back home, e.g. to bomb from 30,000 feet and bribe natives to go after their enemies on the ground, e.g. to employ robot airplanes to kill people, or smart bombs rather than commandos, which have by definition a greater chance of collateral damage, and a higher chance of escalating technology development of weapons.

"What's the solution? Should we keep the penitentiary system up to protect us? How could I fulfil my dreams when I will lose my freedom to travel by plane or stand at home or take my girlfriend out? And all these just because me and the society I live in are vulnerable to any person that gets a knife? I use a knife everyday. Why is that I don't see that knife as a resort to reach my ideals and why other people do?"

I am not trying to offer a solution, only get the two different aesthetics to the bargaining table, and to stop referring to each other as "evil-doers" and other such nonsense that only freezes up sides, and prevents us from getting to those handshakes that Rabin and Arafat finally got to.

The knife analogy is important because it highlights that mutually assured destruction is operative every day on the street. You are still in vastly greater danger of being knifed in petty economic crime or killed in car accidents, and the Mutually Assured Destruction issues there seem to get us to cooperate in road rules and in generally reporting what we see of street crimes.

That is not true of the "War on Drugs" domestically or this "War on Terror" globally - you cannot count on any universal acceptance of an aesthetic that totally rejects both drugs and terror. Hell the German Green Youth wing gave a lot of dope to their leaders (instead of the traditional flowers) to get them to chill out after a vote keeping the Greens in cabinet and supporting the war (albeit with conditions that led to the Afghan peace conference being in Bonn).

So Bush has dopers in his War on Terror and terrorists in his War on Drugs. Think about it. There is no personal aesthetic there, just a lot of spin and opportunities to sell more gadgetry:

"Now extend this taking a bigger knife, than a hammer, than a bomb and see how different people use these *tools*. What I am sure of is that all of them are guided by their power craving at different scale. This is aesthetic as long the battle is fair (see mother nature's selection principle). "

Well, the battle is not "fair" as long as we have someone building robot planes and using cable TV to send out the message that people building robot bombers are "good" and people mailing anthrax are "bad". That is just more escalation.

"Is the computer a good thing? An overwhelming majority will say yes. Is a hammer good? They will say: "Yes, if you don't break somebody's head". What about breaking the computer?"

Good plan. When I'm sure no one else is using them, and the people who could re-invent them are so crippled or perma-stoned that they can't do it again, I'll happily send my computer to Hell where it came from. Especially if I can retire to The Island Of Naked Britney And Cindy Clones. Which gets us to *how* the inventors, who are a different form of "terrorist", can be "removed". If the clones are sterile, so much the better - no overly-inventive genes with the inclination to force their aesthetics on everyone else via acts of terror and technology! Just more sex manuals.

"Mother nature has expected millions years for us to arise than evolve and look how easy the creation and evolution can be stopped and burried by a hammer. Let me replace the hammer with an electronic bomb that costs about $400 (four hundred dolars) and is able to cut the whole electricity forever."

Yes, but can you really be sure it won't return? Or that solar and wind and slug-flesh and UV light are not sufficient to get a robot bug crawling into the water supply full of plague? It doesn't take very much, and this electric grid mess is not going to be our power supply for much longer. For one thing we can't agree on how to divide up its liabilities (dead kids from coal smog, nuclear waste and attacks on nuclear plants and ordinary "Homer Simpson Chernobyl" accidents as the quality of staff in these places devolves).

"But who wants this? Somebody without the sense of aesthetics you may say."

Let's say someone without "the electric sense of aesthetics". The kind of people who would really *rather* stare at a screen playing Age of Empires than play with those naked Britneys and Cindys. I wonder if cloning is not going to end up as the cure for computers? But imagine 1000 of *Bush*!!! Three is enough...

"So, let's make aesthetics and ethics a normal way of living. How? Anyone that has an idea is invited."

I'd distinguish aesthetics, which is relatively subjective, from ethics, which is relatively objective or at least widely shared in a society.

Training camps and courts and biospheres have *ethics*, means of resolving disputes. Households and families and species and tribes have *aesthetics*, means of setting goals. I think we make a mistake if we mix the two. I am to some degree highlighting that by pointing out the similarities and differences between a Heaven of 72 Virgins Per Martyr and The Island of Britney And Cindy Clones, which are exactly the same concept, but believed by two different cults.

Now, the Talib-cult and the biotech-cult may have different advantages and disadvantages, but both are pursuing what amounts to male sexual fantasy.

Maybe we should ask *women* to set the aesthetic for a world of peace, as men seem only able to set the aesthetic for preparations for warfare?

"Fight Club" style posts
posted on 12/24/2001 3:44 PM by amara@kurzweilai.net

Craig said:

"Maybe we should ask *women* to set the aesthetic for a world of peace, as men seem only able to set the aesthetic for preparations for warfare?"

Well put. :) As moderator of MindX, I'd like to set the aesthetic for peace on this forum (especially this thread) by asking the alphas and betas to kindly eliminate the personal flames.

Thanks,

Amara D. Angelica
Editor, KurzweilAI.net

China a more responsible player than the USA
posted on 12/20/2001 10:26 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

The best way to force dispersion is to require that new micro- and nano- technologies be tested out in space on a robot craft going *away* from this solar system.

And to keep even tested ones exiled on asteroids, Mars, or the Moon (the safer, the closer) or in equivalently "distant" facilities on the Earth (which can be imploded with their researchers to end runaways instantly and reliably).

There's nothing inherently wrong with finding a terraforming suite of artificial molecules and slowly perfecting them as a means of making new human habitat, especially if it means that humans can exploit those same technologies to build good compact urban, sea, or underground habitats, and gradually leave the land surface of Earth alone.

What's inherently wrong, is to argue that humans have a right to alter the Earth to their own politically derived specifications, at expense of all other species. This mind-set leads without reprieve to robots or other autonomous technology that terraforms the Earth to suits its own desire, ignoring whatever we ape-like critters may still wish to do with it. Like live on it.

Arguments that this "can't happen" are fatuous. One billion years ago a slightly more effective energy transducer called cyanophytes (blue-green algae) "terraformed" Earth's atmosphere and high biosphere to its present state, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Before then, it was methane...

What is of concern, is that the actual bodies of the individuals who create such technologies, may not be at risk in the process of testing them. This is the ultimate moral hazard. Requiring the researcher to put his or her own body in the way of any runaways is an absolute prerequisite to permitting any such research to proceed.

Interestingly, China, which seeks to become the world's premier nanotech power, has seemingly already put this philosophy in place in another circumstance. For several months prior to Dec. 31 1999 no member of the board of China Air was permitted to resign, and all were ordered to be on China Air planes as of midnight of that date.

This simple body-force-feedback system is the only kind of regulation that actually works in the long run to force responsibility using the body's innate kinesthetic mechanisms. There is no symbolic or delegate system that works as well.

I am forced to conclude that China *should* be the world's premier nanotech power. Those who are interested in more arguments along these lines should read Neal Stephenson's novel "The Diamond Age" where several such arguments arise.

Thankfully, American nanotech "pioneers" seem to be lagging behind both due to fears about the ecological impact (good) and desire to hijack the taxpayer's money to pay for further research (bad). Here's hoping the US falls *far* behind!

Unless, of course, the US decides to revive its space program and argue strongly at the UN to ban these technologies from Earth until they can be tested "out there". No doubt you technophiles will be pleased to make that kind of argument!

taking this up with the Green Parties
posted on 12/15/2001 6:38 AM by root@greens.org

<a href="http://www.globalgreens.org/story.php?op=reply&id=85&pid=0">GlobalGreens</a> are now discussing the issues with artificial life and brains. It may be contingent on all those who argue that these technologies have benefits, to do so in Green forums where there is some chance of encountering the serious technology skeptics.
<p>
Failing to do so, only guarantees that you meet late, angry, resistance later, without having a serious dialogue in advance about the real issues.

Re: taking this up with the Green Parties
posted on 12/15/2001 7:11 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

I already don't like greens and their views.

Of course, that the clean air and water is good, everybody see that ... but that is not their agenda.

If they want to win, they have to get rid of humanity and let the Sun eventually fries the Earth.

Everything will be natural then - of course.

That the greens now want to interfere in techno development - I am not surprised at all.

Those annoying mortals are indeed pain in the ass!

- Thomas

Re: taking this up with the Green Parties
posted on 12/15/2001 11:24 PM by roBman@iOFtheSWARM.com

Tomas,

Did you actually read that article...?

I think it's a very even handed commentary on the current situation from the greens point of view.

I also think it (and the greenpeace proposal) is an excellent step towards development of the ethical debate we DESPARATELY need in this area (see my other posts on this topic - Flesh eating robots etc).

I agree with you, luddite-greens give me the shits. Personally, I don't want to live in a tee-pee.

But this seems like a mature and sensible debate that can only help make our future safer and better...

I think a BAN like the one called for by the Foresight Institute on "all 'artificial life' which is both self-reproducing and capable of competing with organics" is ESSENTIAL. These two points should be the centre of our whole debate on this topic. If a "self-replicating" AL is created that "competes with organics", then we are well on the way to creating our own extinction.

The only benefit of this would be that we won't have to worry about explaining to our grandchildren why we let this happen...because we won't have any grandchildren....


roBman

Re: taking this up with the Green Parties
posted on 12/16/2001 4:04 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

I don't want the Greens involved anywhere.

Remember the fuss about the Shell oil platform? Greenpeace did everything not to submerse it. So it ended somewhere on the shore. For substantial costs. Environmental and financial.

While submersed would be a great source of iron for the marine life.

Remember their coal promoting? Anybody?

What they are standing for? For the life on Earth minus humanity.

That sometimes they are hostile for the nonhuman life also - no wonder. Their myth base axioms are risky.

Greenpeace - 'Peace authority' - which could spark a major war.

- Thomas

if you can't deal with them *now*... when will you?
posted on 12/16/2001 6:53 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Well, my friend, if you exclude a given party from a debate, they tend to show up in your face in the street or on the sea. That's not an option. If you want to exclude Greenpeace, fine, but excluding the Green Parties? Not an option.

http://www.globalgreens.org is the place to bring up the question of "what's the right Green policy"

But if you sit on geek lists expecting greens to just catch up, you may find that some of them are instead burning you out of your house or your lab.

The world is not rational by default. It is quite brutal and stupid by default. If you want people inclined to do violence to instead talk to you or trust you, it's up to you to go to them, not up to them to come to you. They'll come for you when they're ready, and they'll be *armed*...

I think you take this issue not seriously enough. Go read some Hugo De Garis, who predicts A BILLION DEAD OVER THE AI ISSUE ALONE. Ugly. Add in nanotech and biotech and nukes and oil to that. Uglier. Add in your own general attitude that this group of "overly emotional greens" can just be ignored. Stupid. Just don't go that way.
If you can't deal with them *now*... when will you? When they're freaking out about accidents or killer robots or AI-augmented riot preachers?

You share a planet with these people, which is reason enough to talk to them.

Don't you think?

Craig Hubley

Re: if you can't deal with them *now*... when will you?
posted on 12/17/2001 3:23 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

> this group of "overly emotional greens" can just be ignored. Stupid. Just don't go that way.

> If you can't deal with them *now*... when will you?

A harsh criticism (of my view), I am ready to think about it. Thanks.

- Thomas

people who can change their mind in short supply
posted on 12/20/2001 10:11 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"A harsh criticism (of my view), I am ready to think about it. Thanks."

You deserve much credit for taking this attitude when at least two others here are resorting to the dishonest debate topics of (a) referring the whole debate to authority to resolve violently (b) arguing that their "freedom" and "might" are sufficient justifications for any atrocity that might be wreaked on others with the products of their research.

In such an environment, your attitude stands out as even-handed and compassionate in the extreme. You are to be complimented on not falling for the bizarre stories that seem to corrupt others here.

Perhaps including myself, but that is not for me to say. Political processes keep me in line and hoping for some more constructive way to solve an already-violent conflict between opposing views of technology. I think if we avoid Hugo De Garis' "Gigadeath War", and suffer only say one hundred million casualties, that would be the best we can hope for, given the presence of the "freedom and dignity" idealogues in US and UN.

I don't think there are even one hundred million of these, but I do think that they can convince one hundred million to die defending those ideas, since they are themselves experts in persuasion.

In a world of institutions and ideologies, it's
people who can change their mind who are in short supply. It took me perhaps ten to change mine from neutral to dedicated Green. If you are ready to hear out an opposing view after only one exchange, then you are a better person than I.

Re: people who can change their mind in short supply
posted on 12/22/2001 7:20 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

Don't give me too much credit for that.

What I am thinking about is how to convince those 40% "greens" - that they are wrong.

Instead of ignoring them.

- Thomas

the 40% aren't going to change their minds
posted on 12/23/2001 12:58 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

You will fail at that, except perhaps by producing some kind of breakthrough in ethics and control technology that automatically shuts down all technologies that have become predatory and which offer no great edge in ape-body life support.

luddite-Greens aren't so bad
posted on 12/16/2001 7:09 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"I agree with you, luddite-greens give me the shits. Personally, I don't want to live in a tee-pee."

I've known people who lived in worse. I actually lost a girlfriend once to a guy who *did* live in a tee-pee! In Cape Breton. Then he died of a brain aneurysm. But at least he got to *live*. That's more than I can say for many who live in ranch style homes. Frankly, I envied them both: her for her lack of concern with social opinions, and him for his willingness to live on the land.

Let's not throw Gandhi out with his diaper...!

The term "luddite" is interesting - it actually refers directly to sabotage and meant "saboteur of technology which is degrading human life" in its original incarnation. It still means that. I don't think we should use it as a perjorative. It's right to ask "what good will this technology do for its user that is so vast that it outweighs the potential for harm to six billion others and every other species on this planet?" Most forms of accounting over-reward capital investment and under-reward energy conservation and resolution of disputes (de-escalation). Think about that.

Yeah, some Greens have a general anarchist critique of capitalism, some are socialists of the old school, but many also are capitalists of energy technologies or the arts. There's no one dominant strain - yet. If you exclude yourself from their ranks, that biases things towards the less rational more emotive types. Eventually a whole power base of those may be formed. When 38% of those polled by the Christian Science Monitor say "eco-terrorists at least sometimes have a point", you are getting close to problems.

That's a power base equivalent to anything US Republicans or Democrats have been able to muster.

And more permanent. Because once you accept the general moral acceptability of sabotage as a way to reduce technological threat, you're away from legalism, and away from trusting elected parties, and away from anything other than raw responses... "war".

You can preach if you like, but no doubt there are plenty of arguments that the *predictable* death toll of coal power or hard manual labour among humans are preferable to the *unknown* death tool from cool new nuclear powered devices that we discover (too late!) can be made into bombs. The consensus required here is political.

You can't get around it by preaching "what is", you need scenario analysis and all that other stuff you find out about at http://acunu.org - where we spent SEVEN YEARS JUST SUMMARIZING ALL THE METHODS OF FORECASTING. There's some pretty intense stuff said by the Swedish peaceniks there: like nanotech, AI and biotech make nuclear, chemical and biological weapons look like toys. What might people who believe *that* do to your stock price?

At present, this debate is not rational and I and others are trying to bring it to a rational basis.

That's not easy. But until it can be done I have to agree with the Swedes: just don't do any of it - you can see for yourself on TV the mentality we're dealing with among politicians, preachers, and other dealers in human doubt. Think about it.

If you and I can't agree what to do, what will *they* do...? Whoever "they" is.

Craig Hubley

Re: luddite-Greens aren't so bad
posted on 12/16/2001 8:49 PM by grantc4@hotmail.com

Some of these posts really renew faith in my theory of the war between genes and memes. Afghanistan is a good example of a place where the genes won.

Some of the arguements above boil down to the refain: If you don't agree with my view of what's wrong with the world, I'm going to burn down your houwe and kill you. None of the greens seem to see the problem for what it is and I have yet to see any of them come up with a valid solution for the population explosion that is behind all of the problems they complain about.

Of course, destroying the jobs that are feeding all of these people will help resolve that problem. Bring down a big company and you destroy ten to one hundred thousand jobs. That should make the world a more pleasant place to live. Then we can run around in the street blaming the unemployment on the system that allows companies to market their goods around the world.

The world has basically two choices: It can get organized or it can end up looking like Afghanistan. If you're against organization, guess what side that leaves you on.

humanism + "population crisis" = dead N. A.
posted on 12/18/2001 6:59 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"None of the greens seem to see the problem for what it is"

This is pure ignorant nonsense. My experience is exactly the opposite. Unless someone has actually joined a Green Party and goes to the meetings to help make the participatory democracy process work, or is a member of a union or some small NGO or community social organization that applies a similar consensus (non-unanimous more-than-majority agreement) process, they are not only incapable of "seeing the problem", but also incapable of negotiating any of the solutions.

There is no *other* global organization that is committed to peace, ecology, and participatory versions of democracy, that is in 100 countries and getting greater than 1% of the global vote.

There is therefore, given the time constraints on the problem, no alternative but to make the Green Parties work. No matter what flakes or weirdos may have hijacked it in your local jurisdiction.

If you can't negotiate a rational position on energy sources, on consumption taxes, on carbon constraints, on limits of government powers, in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other or near enough, how the hell can you do it for the whole planet?

And if you're not going to do it by negotiation, do you honestly expect to be able to do it by hypnotism (memes) or force (genes generating organisms that defend the genes)? Fat chance.

To promote violent, or non-universal technology, solutions, is simply to be promoting anarchies.

And anarchies do a pretty good job of promoting themselves. They don't need any help from us.

If you insist on predicting the future rather than choosing and shaping in a green way, then I "predict" that five point eight billion people armed with anthrax and smallpox and plague and ebola will destroy three hundred million North Americans and Israelis who insist on the "right" to keep developing "defensive" high technologies.

Not that EU, Russian, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Latin America, are innocent, quite the contrary, but they will all be only too glad to direct the heat towards those nations (USA, Israel) who wilfully ignore rule of law in favor of "trial, conviction and death by intelligence" which is now policy of both nations.

It will buy them another generation of peace in which to apply the French, German, Chinese, (not English or American) notion of Jurisprudence, a much more robust and rational system of laws in a time of mutually assured destruction, than "ours".

It is you non-Greens who fail to see the problem "as it is" - North Americans unwilling either to curtail consumption or CO2 pollution.

If you insist on applying the twin doctrines of humanism and population crisis, then the result will be as follows: you will be successful at arguing that there are too many people on Earth and that they are consuming too many resources. You will not be successful at arguing that the highest-consuming people on Earth, in North America and Europe, are "earning their keep" even if they are developing energy and materials conservation techniques and technologies at a feverish pace (as advocated by Hawken Lovins Lovins in their book "Natural Capitalism", see http://www.natcap.org). Accordingly "the most humane" solution will be extincting the North American lifestyle and perhaps North Americans (if they cannot adjust to living as in say India).

So, extinction of North Americans and Europeans is the natural consequence of promoting both the idea of population crisis (due to lack of resources globally) and humanism (which would require us to kill or inconvenience the least number of people so as to serve the most). It seems to me that the natural consequence of that consequence, will be outrageous "national socialism." Blind assertion of equality within nations while applying brutal racist ideologies outside. We may all end up at http://nazi.org

But that, too, is a Green Party, albeit not one I would trust on day one. Too nationalist and too socialist for me. But other than that, a good read. It's a new century. It will take all kinds.

Craig Hubley

the USA and Afghanistan are bad examples
posted on 12/18/2001 6:41 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

You want "a valid solution for the population explosion that is behind all of the problems they complain about"?

Simple. Everyone live at roughly the average material consumption standard of the lower middle class of India or Pakistan, which is not starving and not obese, and not using more than 1.0 Earths on average to support their lives at the present level of *deployed* technology.

There is no "population crisis" except the one invented by white people to morally judge non-white people for not being "as prosperous" as them when in fact the whites simply stole all the good land and resources from the non-whites and invented moral codes like slavery and 'chosen people' and 'manifest destiny' to justify this.

There is a much larger point here, you clearly are reading 1960s pre-Green-Party literature to get your impression of what a "green" might be.

The choice is not between living like they live in Afghanistan (a country which was distorted by the import of weapons they never would or could have manufactured within that local culture) or as in the US (an obviously unsustainable energy and nonrenewable product consumption lifestyle).

It is, rather, between fighting an increasingly hot biological and ontological unpeace with more and more un-named enemies, simply to defend some truly indefensible habits (like gross consumption of fossil fuels or dumping CO2 in the atmosphere), and deciding to end these conflicts.

What part of "Mutually Assured Destruction" don't you understand?

Re: the USA and Afghanistan are bad examples
posted on 12/18/2001 10:44 PM by grantc4@hotmail.com

What Afghanistan has had for the past 20 years and may have still if they don't get their act together is "mutually assured destruction." I don't find that much of a solution to any problem, other than overpopulation.

Of course, it's overpopulation that is emptying the oceans of fish and destroying the habitat where they breed. It is overpopulation that is replacing the world's forests and biodiversity with farm land to feed all of these people. It is overpopulation that is making all the water on earth too dirty to use without processing. You're not going to reverse these trends by recycling your trash or blaming everything on North America.

China is soon going to surpass the U.S. in all the areas you blame us for -- they now have some 200 automobile factories and will soon have more drivers on the road than America. Taiwan and Japan have already gone that route and Korea is right behind them. The rest of the world is trying their best to catch up. That's what I mean about greens not being able to see the big picture. They just run around playing the blame game and sticking their fingers in various dikes while ignoring what is making the oceans rise.

And when you promote mutually assured destruction as the way to solve the problem, remember that you are no more likely to live through it than the rest of us. We'll try to remember that you died attempting to save the world. We can put on your gravestone: He destroyed the world in order to save it.

Osama bin Laden thought that was what he was doing. He wanted everyone to live by Taleban rules -- the extreme version of Islam that did away with all education and technology so people could just spend their lives praying and preying. A very green way of life. Afghanistan was the model he was going to force on the rest of us. You can see how that turned out.

"over-population" is just racist rhetoric
posted on 12/19/2001 5:49 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Overpopulation" is a white racist concept. I stand by my statement about that. Fish-eating is perhaps wasteful of energy in many ways but it is bottom-draggers that actually do most of the long term damage to the fishing grounds. Meat-eating likewise, it is the forest clearing that is of greatest concern. Total quantity of food is not an issue at current population and productivity, except of course for obese North Americans who seem to anxiously consume > 3000 calories / day doing no particularly stressful work. Thankfully they drop dead of heart attacks before their time.

Of course, any radical change in lifestyle would be resisted by those who like living as they do. Every change in human lifestyle has always been fiercely resisted by those who liked what they had. For instance, in the US Confederate states, the elite fought to keep owning slaves including their harems of black females. The Communists in the military fought a coup to regain power in Moscow in the last decade. The Taliban is still fighting in Afghanistan under a new leader it seems. And Bush is spouting 'consume! travel!' rhetoric as if it can magically keep his economy afloat. One expects changes in lifestyle to be resisted. Bush's daddy said "our lifestyle is not negotiable" in Rio in 1992. Over-population rhetoric is one way to keep it non-negotiable and point at other countries with higher densities of population but lower overall use of resources. But at this point "your" lifestyle is indeed negotiable - since you need the whole planet's cooperation in hunting down people who attacked your largest city and put a trillion-dollar dent in your economy. What is negotiable is not up to people named Bush.

Nor is America really a global power in this century. Everyone has the Internet. By the time China has cars they'll be hydrogen or biodiesel. By the time India has computers they'll be DNA processors not silicon or the toxics used now. These economies may leapfrog the US, and leave its own manufacturing and software in the dust.

Of course, if it turns into an armed struggle, of course people on *both* sides will die, but unlike Americans it seems there are still people elsewhere in the world who see there as being some values worth dying for. Americans send robots and Northern Alliance child soldiers and B--52s in to bomb children, rather than do their own fighting. Accordingly they miss bin Laden, who escapes easily simply by bribing those who are only going through the motions of caring if he escapes, to please their American bosses...

I'm afraid that the fate of the Taliban doesn't have much relevance to the fate of future mass movements against US hegemony, or any US attempt to enforce "over-population" rhetoric with bombs.

But if you're still using such rhetoric, the fact is, you're so blind you need anthrax in your mailbox to wake you up. If you're lucky, it will be the rarely-fatal kind. If not, then not. It is not a rhetoric you can use in the 21st century without it backfiring on you, getting you in fact "de-populated". I'd keep my name off any such statements if I were you. You think this planet has too many people? The obvious response is that it only has *TOO MANY PEOPLE LIKE YOU*... a claim bolstered to plain truth by consumption numbers, and issues like CO2 dumped into the air.

Racists like you are already in a death struggle with the whole planet, so there ought to be no shortage of people willing to "wake you up", but I am not volunteering. Those who predict what they should instead be choosing, well, there's no point waking them up. Better to let them keep sleepwalking and die in a series of Sept. 11ths.

Enjoy your narcolepsy. It may be all you have left.

Re: "over-population" is just racist rhetoric
posted on 12/19/2001 9:51 AM by grantc4@hotmail.com

I'm glad we finally flushed out your true beliefs, which have nothing whatever to do with making the world a better place. I've forwarded your anthrax threat to the proper authorities. You may soon be contacted. Meanwhile, have a good day. ;-)>

Re: "over-population" is just racist rhetoric
posted on 12/20/2001 2:50 AM by americanfree44@hotmail.com

"If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you, but if you really make them think they will kill you." -- Albert Einstein

Re: "over-population" is just racist rhetoric
posted on 12/20/2001 10:47 AM by grantc4@hotmail.com

Nobody make more people think than Einstein did, and he died a natural death at age 76.

don't let your kids do physics or AI
posted on 12/20/2001 9:36 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Einstein also regretted his part in creating the atomic bomb, and said near the end of his life: "If only I had known, I would have become a watchmaker."

He also turned down the Presidency of Israel, not sure that he had the judgement to do it right. That is sad, given the type of leadership that now prevails in Israel, the kind Gandhi warned against: those who were glorified in conflicts.

If you wish to do some good today, encourage a would-be physicist or artificial intelligence researcher to become a watchmaker or a political organizer. Craftsmanship and leadership towards morally defensible goals are in great lack now.

Don't let your kids do particle physics, pure AI, or psychiatry. These fields only do harm. It is more and more obvious from the cognitive science of mathematics, that these fields are illusions that do nothing to advance the health of the body and everything to advance the power of murderers.

Unless you are much smarter than Einstein, and much wiser than Gandhi, do not expect to achieve insights into morality that will exceed theirs. Do not justify your self-indulgent actions with a sick "Better Dead than Red" ideology or whatever.

It won't wash. At least not for your kid's generation. They are already wiser than that.

Re: "over-population" is just racist rhetoric
posted on 12/20/2001 9:39 PM by americanfree44@hotmail.com

>Nobody make more people think than Einstein did, and he died a natural death at age 76.

An excellent point indeed. Perhaps that is the advantage of operating from a platform of honesty and objective reality. I have taken note of your ability to extinquish a flame. :^)

Ron

what one "deserves" is not what one gets
posted on 12/20/2001 9:59 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

It was not a flame, and the response was no joke.

I honestly believe that people who spout racist or elitist rhetoric will indeed be "woken up" by anthrax or other surprises, and that they deserve it. That has nothing to do with whether I would choose to do it, nor with the criteria by which others may choose to do it, nor with any type of relationship that I might have with those people.

You may always choose to wake up in some other way. As to who will kill who, it is far more likely that stupid government authorities will decide to kill people saying things they don't like, or just being honest about their morality, than that receivers of anthrax would die from it.

Your smiley'd threat to report my name to some "authority" is far more dangerous to me, than my honest assessment of your morality w.r.t. mine is to you. You are doing more danger to my body with your attempt to intimidate me with your immoral authority structure, even if you didn't actually "report me", than I am doing to you by telling you the circumstances that force me to consider your safety or awareness "not my problem".

All human beings, if pressed, can tell you of some circumstances where they would kill someone, even an authority figure doing their "duty". If North Americans trust their own legal systems and authorities so much that they don't actively have to think of it every day, that's nice, but it's got nothing to do with their own moral thresholds.

Many people in Yugoslavia in 1990 had no clear explicit idea of where they would draw that line. By 1999 not only did almost everyone know it, but almost everyone had had to draw that line in a real physical action they had to take or not.

You are right to treasure your bubble of deluded trust in stupid authorities, just as you were right to believe your parents were gods as a child. These are nice beliefs in times when they can be sustained. But after 9/11 you really are on short notice to "wake up", before people who are acting in your name starting getting you (and me) killed. The anthrax mailers have done all of us a favor - most likely they are "domestic US" people who ultimately believe in the Constitution or some semblance of the system defined in 1776: by Adam Smith and by Thomas Jefferson, one might say. But no doubt they will be branded "traitors" by a system with no intellectual integrity whatsoever, i.e. the current US Supreme Court majority, or Democratic National Committee, or whatever demons you prefer.

It's only in a deluded amoral authority-worship state that one confuses a moral statement about what one "deserves" with a threat to take some vigilante action. Many people believe, and will tell you, that John Walker the American Taliban "deserves to die" - does that mean they are about to go lynch him themselves? Unlikely.

Einstein was quite right that those who don't think will kill you rather than be forced to.

Einstein also deserved to die a horrible death of radiation poisoning, as did his victims at Hiroshima. But as you point out, he didn't get it.

Your own veiled threat to report me to some "authority" which believes in its own right to carry out its own moral judgements on others, is a perfect example of the inverse relationship of ethics and punishment:

It's quite likely that someone would put me "on a list" and harass me in future based on your report. While leaving off 10,000 others who have long since stopped arguing with "the other side" and blend in seamlessly and silently with society.

The same mindless reaction that causes the USA to bomb Afghanistan to attempt to stop people who are inside the USA and seamlessly blend in with Americans, is at work in your post above. If I am rational at all, and I think I am, the way I state the case against your delusion argues against myself being any more than inspirationally responsible for your doom:

If I actually wished you harm that I intended to do myself, the very last thing I would do would be to make some kind of stupid threat in public from an email address containing my body's name.

That is more like something a Democrat or a Republican, who cannot tell morality from murder, would do. I assure you I am not one of *those*.

But in a nation ruled by them, it's natural that you would confuse my morality with one of those morally retarded moralities that they represent.

Re: what one
posted on 12/23/2001 8:01 PM by nate96b10@hotmail.com

[Flame deleted by moderator]

enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 12/24/2001 12:52 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"You're sick"

Perhaps so, but if you attempt to shove pills down my throat, I will *cut* yours. So you will have to decide whether you are willing to bet your life on your psychiatric qualifications, or try to enlist some violent force on your own side that drastically exceeds that which I, and people who see things as I do, can bring to bear on you. I make no attempt to convince you: it is well past time to draw battle lines, and if you choose to open fire psychiatrically, so be it. It is just another weapon of a more general ontological and biological war.

Before you do that, you may wish to actually be seen as being *qualified* to make such statements:

German psychiatrists are, as a requirement, forced to acquire at least a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy before being permitted to make such diagnoses as you have offered casually above. This is to prevent abuses of medical trust, as often occurred in the 1940s for instance in Germany, and which continue today, e.g. "doctors" prescribing Ritalin for children. Non-German psychiatry is by definition quackery: Unless you can tell whether what someone is saying is actually defensible in a rigorous investigation, whether it might have been said by Heidegger or Wittgenstein or Schopenhaur or Schrodinger, you are simply not in a position to tell someone that "you're sick." You are in fact diagnosing the whole 20th century and all its philosophers and attempting to impose some 19th century dream.

The belief that you can define who's "sick" and shove pills down their throat this based on some kind of colloquial understanding is itself a form of sickness, a kind of North American delusion perhaps, which most Europeans recognize as such.

But, rather than attempt to prove to you that you are "sick", I'll simply label you as a product of your pointless dying society, and leave it at that.

I repeat the warning: do not attempt to psychiatrically diagnose people who are both more intelligent and more eloquent than yourself. You may well find yourself being confined instead. I recommend that you confine your persuasive activities to Democratic or Republican forums, where garbage like you is permitted to speak with little or no active inhibition from physical and biological reality. In fact, anthrax may well be all that contains people like you from destroying all that is meaningful on this planet. Please do not force me to choose between you and "the terrorists", and do not make the mistake of assuming that I am going to do as they do simply because they are clearly and provably right on a few points. The need to wake up being one of them. North Americans can't rule this planet any more or unilaterally dictate terms to real people.

You are pathetic, and I am genuinely sorry for anyone who is forced to rely on your judgement.

But "sick"? No way to tell. I am not looking at your brain scans or judging your neural pathways as "normal", have no measures of your seratonin levels. And even if I did, well, takes all kinds.

"Arrogant"? Sure I'll buy that, the shoe fits. I don't believe people like you must be heard, only contained, and if necessary neutralized in some way. No doubt you feel the same about me, so it's war, and others can read what we write and decide whose side they're on. Or whether this is really the kind of fight they want into.

If you wish an open debate, pick the venue and topic, invite the guests, send me a plane ticket, and I'll crush you in front of any audience you can gather. If not, then abide by rules of war, and keep your pet quack psychiatrists out of my face. You should stop criticizing your betters in any case, lest they stop explaining themselves to you and start reaching for the straitjackets.

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 12/25/2001 12:33 AM by nate96b10@hotmail.com

Wow, you really wasted a lot of time on that didn't you? :) You're also amusing.

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 12/31/2001 9:32 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

I type over 100 wpm, and I assure you I did not slow down, but wrote that at full tilt.

People like you do not deserve any less than my full typing speed or any thought more than I can muster while typing fast.

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 01/01/2002 12:13 AM by nate96b10@hotmail.com

Well maybe that explains something. Maybe if you took the time to think before you typed, your statements wouldn't sound so much like childish ravings of lunacy. It might even occur to you that you don't know anything about me. I don't have any ill will toward you. I really do hope you get some help.

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 02/14/2002 8:02 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

You just don't get it, do you? Psychiatry doesn't work, it's just another social control system. And those are not good enough to stop AI or nanotech, once loose. You are trying to stop nuclear weapons with a copper shield.

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 02/14/2002 10:22 AM by Nate96b10@hotmail.com

Hold on, I'll reply in a month and a half...in the mean time, go refill your medication. (Whoops, I forgot you're a bit sensitive about that...hey don't give up on your doctor just yet, you're just really messed up- a tough case.)

Re: enforce a diagnosis of "sick" at your peril
posted on 02/14/2002 10:27 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Bush logic: pills neutral, people bad. Make more scarier pills. Shove down throat. Threaten more. Escalate danger. Wait for backlash. Idiot.

It won't work on me, it won't work on North Korea, and it won't work on anyone with any morality of their own other than terror, which is clearly yours.

Anything other than your (suburban?) priorities is "sick", hm? The Apache were sick? The Stone Age Amazonians are? Afghans? Everyone starting with "A"?

Bush's "better" is a sane man's "evil"
posted on 12/20/2001 10:04 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"nothing whatever to do with making the world a better place."

By your criteria, no, they do not. By your criteria, a world where millions are allowed to starve simply for being so polite as not to walk across a border and ask for something that may have been stolen from them, and 5% of the Earth's population is allowed to use ever-escalating means of technological 'defense' to keep these people herded behind fences called 'borders', with its own consumption and pollution never reconsidered, is "better" than the alternatives.

Your concept of "better" is my concept of "evil".

Accordingly, no, I have no interest in making the world "better" (as you put it, "evil" as I put it). You are with Bush. I am with his enemies.

beliefs subject to change, ideology not
posted on 12/20/2001 10:31 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"we finally flushed out your true beliefs"

Beliefs are subject to change in any honest person. What is not subject to change is what we call "ideology". Flushing out my beliefs is a small price to pay for flushing out your ideology.

I would be pleased to flush my belief that you are a racist who deserves a nasty wake-up call out the toilet with your ideology that "over-population" is somehow responsible for the ills of the Earth. That would be fair trade I think.

Of course, that's just a belief. Not an ideology.

Re: beliefs subject to change, ideology not
posted on 12/20/2001 11:05 PM by grantc4@hotmail.com

My Chinese wife and half-breed children would no doubt be shocked to learn that I'm a closet racist. Especially after all the years I've spent teaching them, successfully, how to deal with racism. I'll tell them how they should have been suffering under my tutelage all this time.
;-)>

On another subject, the Scientific American just came out with an excellent issue discussing energy and other issues as well as a review by several prominent scientists on THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST -- a book that might have been written just for you.

In the words of John Rennie, Editor in Chief:

"We asked four leading experts to critique Lomborg's treatments of their areas -- global warming, energy, population and biodiversity -- so readers could understand why the book provokes so much disagreement. Lomborg's assessment that conditions on earth are generally improving for human welfare may hold some truth. The errors described here, however, show that in its purpose of describing the real state of the world, the books is a failure."

"The problem with Lomborg's conclusion is that the scientists themselves disavow it."

In the section on Population, reviewed by John Bongaarts, he said:

"Lomborg's unbalanced presentation of some of these trends and their influences emphasizes the good news and neglects the bad. Environmentalists who predicted widespread famine and blamed rapid populations growth for many of the world's environmental, economic, and social problems overstated their cases. But Lonberg's view that 'the number of people is not the problem' is simply wrong."

Oh God! Another white racist! Maybe you should write a letter to the Scientific American and set them straight. ;-)>

the scientific community is confused
posted on 12/21/2001 6:45 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

The scientific community is confused by a lack of coherent ethics. Debunking one set of arguments about 'the number of people being the problem' has no impact on all the other arguments that a deeper ethical critique might bring to bear. I don't think "scientists" have much to contribute.

If we are going to address the issues raised by Hugo De Garis, who predicts a billion deaths due to wars over AI, or the deep ecologists who claim (at http://dieoff.org) that *five* billion deaths are inevitable, then we are beyond science and the prediction of any extrapolation of the present. Conflict on that scale breeds both new technologies and new forms of social, instructional and infra-structural organization. It necessarily takes us beyond paradigms and trends that we know, and brings us to the brink of destruction.

The debate which the scientific and academic community can't begin to address, and which it has totally failed to address even in long years of trying, is the gap between those who choose to rigorize ethics, and those who choose to make any existing systems "better" by a measurable degree.

Quantity and quality are utter opposites in this debate. Either you accept existing measures and seek to optimize them, or you reject the existing measures and you pursue a vision of the future... requiring new measures to make it operational. I see no dialogue between the two groups except in the fairly limited circles debating "quality of life" and "value of life" and "price of a life", e.g. in insurance and global commons (e.g. climate change) circles, and to some degree in the Green Parties. There is some activity also in the labor movement but it will tend to fail as labor long ago adopted its national standards - and accepted "national socialism" as its ethics.

I have no interest in debates without clear body axioms at their foundations. If you want to convince me of anything, start with gravity, and move to body geometry, then to breatheing air, then to drinking water, then eating food, then finding shelter, setting ethical priorities in the same order as the ape's body pursues goals.

If you can't do that, chances are, you're arguing yet another crap rationale for top-down elitism, or you're seeking a PhD, or some other waste of time. Sadly, there is no cure for a 2" penis, so I do not expect that this activity can ever stop.

Re: beliefs subject to change, ideology not
posted on 12/25/2001 5:29 PM by unwashed@masses.com

You seem to have your own issues with racism - focused on recent history and pointed directly at Americans... Before you cast stones from your livingroom, you might take a look at what 'your' house is made of:P

Re: beliefs subject to change, ideology not
posted on 12/26/2001 9:31 AM by tomaz@techemail.com

To be a racist toward Americans is difficult. Too many races among them. It's more ludism, primitivism etc. Dressed as intellectualism.

- Thomas

Re: taking this up with the Green Parties
posted on 08/23/2002 1:06 PM by trait70426@aol.com

But Thomas,

Dude! Those are the same guys that will actually move the Earth, and save it from the Sun's encroachment, after all of us HIT THE ROAD.

Re: sept 11th issues for nanotech
posted on 11/18/2002 12:32 PM by Vincenzo Pasquantonio

I am in agreement that there seems to be a misguided focus on the methodologies
of terrorism, rather than the deep-seeded reasoning behind why acts of terror are allowed
to occur. It is true that without the availability and accessibility of weapons to terrorism,
that the reality of terrorism would be no more than a bunch of mud-slinging exchange of
words between culturally diverse entities across the world. It is impossible to prevent a
terrorist's access to technological development. Technology has essentially made
terrorism more accessible, convenient and possible for those wishing to commit it.

With the development of nanotechnology and its possibilities of causing a worldwide
September 11th tragedy is was suggested that dispersion of the human species be the
fail-safe solution to a highly potential nano-tech September 11th. There are two flaws
to this proposition illustrated below.

The proposition's first flaw is its focus solely on avoidance rather than prevention.
The world's terrorism problem will not be solved by "running away" from those who
perpetrate and commit acts of terror. Galactic and intergalactic dispersion, as suggested
in the article, is in essence "running away" from the symptoms of the terrorism problem
rather than focusing on its causes. Debate is needed towards a discovery of what causes
a group to take this extremist approach to cultural diversity through the murder of others.
A focus on cultural harmony, acceptance and respect of the dignity of each human must to
be reestablished. People running away from a social problem may initially result in
harmony amongst them, but the root problem of hate will eventually re-evolve over time
as it has evolved to the present day state.

The second flaw with the use of dispersion as a solution to the use of nanotechnology as
a future tool towards terrorism relates to the mobilization of terrorists and their
respective organizations. As human society disperses itself throughout this and other
galaxies, the means to communicate and travel between these respective world realms
will need to be developed. Just as the airplane is used today for inter-world travel so will
a vehicle need to be developed for galactic and intergalactic transportation.
ommunications must also be developed. Other technologies will undoubtedly be
eveloped until we are wired to the new worlds as we are wired within our present world.
This future travel and communication technology will mirror the technology today but on
a larger scale. Because of this, the terrorist's use and access to this communication and
travel technology will undoubtedly mirror their use of today's technologies thus allowing
them to spread their actions to the galactic and intergalactic realms. If the will of the
terrorist is to destroy human life, he will pursue that life wherever it is, on this planet or
not. Again, the resolution here is the same as stated previously: Attack the cause of
terrorism not the effects.

two lists where Geeks and Greens can debate
posted on 12/16/2001 6:48 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

I agree that it's high time for a debate and I'd encourage others to follow roBman over to http://www.greenpeace.org where the activist and ecologist community can be made to pay attention.

For those afraid to do that, there are more neutral places where Geeks and Greens can debate the relative merits of their Singularity and Precautionary Principle. (I prefer the Hugo De Garis "Cosmists versus Terrans" to differentiate the positions from the Geek and Green societies, but obviously "G&G" is a more familiar paradigm).

I run two lists which may be of interest to you:

If the question of economic incentives to do good or harm to the biosphere interests you, please <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/biosafety">subscribe to the Biosafety mailing list</a> (also available in web-readable form with no mail sent to your mailbox).

If you believe we're already into rearguard action and that the best defense is a good offense, <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/biohazard-response">subscribe to the Biohazard-Response mailing list</a>, and tell us how to deal with threats to Biosafety (whatever it turns out to be). You think the labs should be smashed and the universities closed? Tell us. You think all AI researchers are moral equivalents of Mengele? You think all anti-globalization protesters should be shot? Tell us. I promise to be fair and only moderate out threats to named people or false claims of empirical evidence. Trust me! ;-)

If not, well, thanks for your time.
Craig Hubley, moderator.

http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/biohazard-response

http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/biosafety

three-moderator strategy: two extremes and neutral
posted on 12/20/2001 9:40 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Given my Green>Geek leanings, I have asked roBman, and I open the invitation to other Geeks>Green types, to become co-moderators.

Although I'm quite capable of moderating a debate fairly despite a strong position of my own, it's better for balance if there were two extreme and one neutral point of view moderating these lists.

I think the debate is over. And the Greens won.
posted on 12/18/2001 7:58 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Greens aren't going to see it the way Drexler does. \"The solution\" is not more organizing and regulating and controlling and voluntary controls on \"good people\". It's a new civilization that has no inherent incentive to develop technology other than very limited improvements that save energy and perhaps strong life support and biological and ecological controls (space suits and space habitats) which can be adapted back to Earth use only when proven safe out in space.
<br>

<br>
Some will not accept space as a valid testing ground, arguing that anything done there will double back on humanity.
<br>

<br>
The nano-weapons will only amplify the need to make peace - they will change nothing on the diplomatic front. And they will be *weapons*.
<br>

<br>
As with the atom bomb, the first crude working replicators will be primarily useful to *kill*. They will probably seek out something in human bodies to 'mine', and make more of themselves.
<br>

<br>
For instance, they might 'mine' the ATP in our muscles, and release its energy as heat (which a simple 78-atom motor built by Ross Kelly at Boston College can already do) to cause what will be perceived as 'spontaneous human combustion'. If it can recognize a DNA signature with reasonable reliability somehow with a retroviral signal, then it can be made specific to one guy.
<br>

<br>
If the DNA signatures of everyone in the Western world are on file due to 'airport security' or whatever, what do you think will happen next?
<br>

<br>
Some of the posters here seem to understand nothing at all about the way modern Greens look at the world. We are not dreamers arguing equal rights for humans or some kind of top-down control of habits. It may be more correct to say that we are polite fanatics, potential terrorists restraining ourselves from wiping out humans before they wipe out the biosphere, whose moral value exceeds that of all humans ever produced or which ever will be. It is that belief that the moral value of the biosphere >> that of humanity, that pretty much characterizes the modern Green.
<br>

<br>
For evidence we can offer only our own aesthetic convictions about what technology has done both to conflict, and to our willingness to ignore the sufferings of quite similar beings all around us:
<br>

<br>
What *right* do human beings have to kill off pre-sentient species like chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orang-utans, or even dolphins or whales or the octopus (which represents a different branch of evolution). Some evolutionary pressure on the species is natural, but to wipe them out to *eat* or turn them into grotesque parodies of us in our circus and marine parks, well... that speaks for itself. If you can't respect a species similar to your own, then you can't be allowed out into space amongst genetically-altered relatives who may in time resemble you no more than an ape does.
<br>

<br>
So, those of you pushing technology as solution to diplomatic or social problems, think again:
<br>

<br>
The simple provable constraint on human activity in space is that it must foster and engender true tolerance for emotionally similar but physically and intellectually different creatures. Thus it is *ONLY THOSE WHO RESPECT THE APES AND WHALES* who can be allowed to go to space and colonize it. The rest of you, out there, is a biohazard.
<br>

<br>
For all we know, they are better astronauts than us: the great whale song, the great ape mothering, are superior to human capacities of information processing and mutual care, thus they might sustain space voyages far better than we.
<br>

<br>
To return to the point about luddite-greens, they are those who simply wish to stay on Earth and not build the technologies incompatible with staying on Earth forever. They are not the Afghans who were forced to pick up AK-47s (built by Russians and bought and delivered by Americans) in the 1980s, nor those who adopted tribal patterns to deal with the post-war crisis in the 1990s. Judging those cultures is stupid in the extreme since we simply were not there when the Soviets invaded in 1979, nor when the USA invaded in 2001. Many choose to draw parallels that do not apply to either the political or technological situation.
<br>

<br>
Americans may need to consider their biases here; If \"organizing\" is what you worship, then start by getting your electoral system to work and your Presidents to keep their promises (Bush said he would deal with \"CO2 pollution\" in his campaign and I have yet to see any proposal for doing so).
<br>

<br>
If you can't do that, expect to be exterminated.
<br>

<br>
That is what Nature does to those who don't live up to their promise. And that is what can happen to you, too, if you don't learn how the world is really organized.
<br>

<br>
If you contest the premises of the above, then I suggest you read http://www.personhood.org and http://www.gci.org.uk - two underappreciated sites. There is room for debate on the price of life and what a person is, but none on the need to expand the definition of personhood to apes, retract it from corporations, and abandon this absurd concept that human life has no price. It clearly does. The question is, \"who sets it for me?\" - and whether it can be fairly set for any process that is not fundamentally infrastructural.
<br>

<br>
Ralph Nader first started asking this question of automobile designers in the 1960s - even in 1966 his premises were perfectly founded, I just saw an interview with him from that time. In the 36 years since, he has only discovered that it applies beyond the design of simple vehicles to the design of your entire US \"democracy\". In the process he has become a Green. Think about that.
<br>

<br>
I guess I could speak for all Greens to all Geeks:
<br>
We are not people like yourself, who have chosen an irrational icon or god to worship, and then chosen our beliefs in accordance with that god. We are rational people who began with many vague visions of the same physically-real biospheric and material entity, and gradually converged on a limited range of visions that we call \"Green\". For some it has been the journey of a lifetime. For others, simply a matter of reading a few pamphlets and sorting out reality from nonsense.
<br>

<br>
Ray Kurzweil is quite right to quote the Unabomber and discuss his analysis extensively - to some degree the Unabomber is to militant Greens as Nelson Mandela was to the blacks in South Africa. His analysis is one that you have to deal with, his personality one that you have to tame, and his reaction, perhaps, the default.
<br>

<br>
Few have commented on what bin Laden and the Unabomber have in common. It may be time to do that. We don't know where the anthrax is coming from. But we know it has little to do with the pressures of \"over-population.\" Much more likely, it is these pressures of trying to organize the world \"from the top\" and reaching the limit of that process, as resistance \"bubbles up\" biologically and ontologically from below.
<br>

<br>
Jaron Lanier is probably right to argue that \"meme totalists\", putting their whole trust in the rational processes based on known axioms, are as bad as the \"gene totalists\" who promulgated racist doctrines in the 20th century.
<br>

<br>
Greens are \"body totalists\" and pay attention to the body as an expression of both meme and gene; And in particular to the processes of nurturing and default compassion which make us \"feminists\".
<br>
And, not incidentally, supporters of Great Apes, better mothers than humans in almost all cases, and extincted in part due to human contempt for creatures so emotionally similar to themselves, and genetically similar, as to be near identical from any reasonable alien point of view. There's no point talking to humanists or \"meme totalists\".
<br>

<br>
I'm here to see who *isn't* one, not to get into some debate with Drexler or Kurzweil or Dyson that will give them points to make spin out of.
<br>

<br>
If the issue of \"nanotech abuse\" concerns you on an *emotional* level, and it seems *aesthetically* wrong to you to have to take your own personal time and apply it to such a problem, i.e. it is not a narrow technical problem that you must solve in the process of making some greater glorified phallus or logos, then you're best advised to ignore these debates, and join a Green Party to fight against the whole technology.
<br>

<br>
I think the debate is over. And the Greens won.
<br>

<br>
Craig Hubley

promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/20/2001 10:37 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Terrorism is part of the noise of development. It can be reduced substantially by pre-attention to socio-technical system design."

Sadly, people like Drexler and Merkle and Freitas make the point that "ethics" and "character" are absolutely critical to avoid a disaster, then they put 99.99% of their own effort not into the development of those things, but of technologies.

I can't take them seriously as advocates of any regime of controls. I'd rather see Greenpeace, which would be skeptical and require a burden of proof much higher than the promoters themselves, taking the lead role in this "regulatory" debate.

It is a matter of daily concern at Greenpeace or within Green Parties (not directly related except theologically perhaps) "how far to go" to protect non-human from human life. They are specialists in the development of ethics and character by now.

For that reason alone, it is they, and not self-promoting boosters like The Foresight Institute, or technophilic body-hater's forums like nanodot.org, that ought to take the lead in this debate. From what I see here, there are body-haters preaching "freedom" ideology here too, at least two. But they may still be the minority.

What do the rest of you think? Let's not leave an important debate up to extremists, either of "freedom" or against same.

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/21/2001 11:59 AM by grantc4@hotmail.com

Hurricaines, floods, forest fires, earth quakes, volcanoes and humans are all destructive forces that take lives and make drastic changes to the lives of thoses who live through them. They destroy habitat, kill off species and wreak havoc on conditions all over the planet. What kind of debate do you think we should have that would changes these forces into something kinder and less destructive?

You have about as much chance of changing humanity through endless debate as you do of changing the course of a typhoon. We will change when nature forces us to, whether we want to or not. I don't think debate will either speed it up or slow it down.

Trying to make each other feel righteous or guilty about what we are doing won't change anything either. We can't change the past and the momentum of the present has more to do with where we are going than anything we feel or can do. The world we inherit will be the world we made. We'd better learn to live with it.

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/21/2001 9:03 PM by tig3933@yahoo.com

I don't think the analogy to natural disaster (creation?) is applicable, except in the sense that massive upheaval of an ecosystem, or social system, both have the potential to create profound change.
<br>

<br>
We are changing and creating humanity constantly, but then you make the point we will create whatever we inherit. The problem is that \"we\" are not setting the standards or \"ethics\" we need to ensure a proper environment, free of biohazards to the environment AND all living things, from \"our\" own creations. This is the \"physical\" aspect to your analogy.
<br>

<br>
\"have no chance to change humanity\"
<br>

<br>
I think a few very dedicated people did just that, in a way, on 9/11. Remember, this thread started by discussing the \"post 9/11\" ethical development of potential biohazards, and followed with a long series of definitions on the subject. It is the \"movers and shakers\" who need the wake-up, to implement the parameters under which the momentum of \"humanity\" will follow like sheep.
<br>

<br>
As you do yourself, by accepting a fate you had no part in creating,
<br>

<br>
Tig

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/23/2001 11:09 AM by grantc4@hotmail.com

>As you do yourself, by accepting a fate you had no part in creating,

On the contrary, we all had and still have a part in creating it. We do that when we buy a home and a car, buy food at the grocery store, send people to Washington and London to represent us, etc., etc. I accept it because raging against it is not going to change it. The events of 9/11 barely caused a ripple in our lives.

We are still doing the same things we did before it happened. We made a lot of noise about it, but little else changed. Other than the families of the victims, nobody even knows who they were. The stock market didn't collapse. Our political system didn't fall apart. People are still flying home for Christmas to eat huge portions of turkey and ham while sitting in front of the TV watching football.

So what did bin Laden accomplish? How did his "rage" change the world or what we are doing to it? All it did was change what we've been talking about for a few months. The fall of the price of technology stocks has had a greater impact, and that would have happened without him. The hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs lost them to foolish investments on the part of greedy investors who wanted to get rich. That had much more real effect on our lives and how we live them than the collapse of the twin towers in New York and the destruction of an already bombed-out Afghanistan.

Speaking of Afghanistan, the destruction of its infrastructure is causing a greater number of people to suffer and die than the war itself. Hunger and cold are killing more women and bablies than bullets did. And now that the Taliban are gone, the people are going right back to the customs and practices they followed before the "true believers" started making their lives misterable.

As you can see, my true belief is that not accepting my fate is not going to change it.

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/23/2001 7:58 PM by tig3933@yahoo.com

"On the contrary, we all had and still have a part in creating it. We do that when we buy a home and a car, buy food at the grocery store, send people to Washington and London to represent us, etc., etc. I accept it because raging against it is not going to change it. The events of 9/11 barely caused a ripple in our lives. "

So, you define creating a living environment and developing events that shape your human destiny as (a) buying things, and (b) voting. You seem to have lost the big picture, my friend, as to what is human and seem to have no *ethic* at all.

You seem to have no clue whatsoever as to how 9/11 changed your environment and destiny. Therefore, you are a sheep with no impact on humanity or the environment, in any large sense, except for the small surroundings and relationships that you call your "world".

I repeat, you are accepting a fate you had no part in creating, as you yourself point out in your reply.

You have no impact on what you buy, as you choose from what others offer. You have no voice in whether or not your drinking water is safe. You probably don't even know. You accept without question and therefore do not control your destiny, nor have any relevance to humanity.

"So what did bin Laden accomplish? How did his "rage" change the world or what we are doing to it? All it did was change what we've been talking about for a few months."

Well....aside from restricting civil liberties and due process, how about ....

* finally creating an atmosphere of restraint and proper protocol for the development of biohazards, things not discussed before.

* empowering the right-wing political apparatus to create a more dangerous world, all in the name of homeland security.

* opened the discussion on US hegemony

* created a new govt in Afghanistan, about to receieve more financing than they ever dreamed of.

* turned political adversaries into allies, and vise versa.

* distracted the US public from real issues like putting checks on their govt

* redefined issues on *immigration *govt role in tech development *US policy in the world *etc.

By the way, I never mentioned Afghanistan in my post. Why did you bring it up?

You seem to have lost the fact that we are discussing how to set a standard or ethic for tech development. Something that will affect us all, thus creating our environment, like the internet has done for you and I. But you and I did not have any impact on its development.

Get it?

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/23/2001 8:49 PM by tig3933@yahoo.com

Maybe I should make this simpler for you.

A person puts some Anthrax into an envelope. It disrupts his entire govt and their way of thinking about technology and its uses.

Can't (or won't) change your environment? Or at least the rules of the game?

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/23/2001 11:18 PM by grantc4@hotmail.com

But it isn't changing the behavior that put us in this position in the first place. People are not going to stop trashing the environment because someone put anthrax in an envelope. They are just going to be afraid to open their mail. That will cause the government to buy big machines to kill the anthrax but little else. Thinking about making changes in our behavior is not the same as actually changing it.

Farmers will not stop putting pesticides on their crops because of 9/11 nor will they start growing only vegetables because of anthrax in the mail. Farmers grow beef and pork because that's what the American public wants. Not because the government or some big corporation thinks that's what we should eat but because history has made these products more palatable to us. Chinese eat rice and pork because that's what they grew up eating. You're not going to change that with threats and tirades.

But I don't begrudge you your view. I just don't agree with it. The means you use to try and change the world will help shape the kind of world you get. In my view, that is the universal ethic. You are responsible for your actions and the results they produce. If you make bad choices, they will come back to haunt you.

The results probably won't be what you expect. But crying or raging about them won't change them.

Re: promoters can't be trusted to regulate selves
posted on 12/24/2001 12:06 AM by tig3933@yahoo.com

You still don't get it.

Ranting and raving just removed the Argentine govt. And now they are forced to address their grievances of not being paid. And the new govt has a totally new mind-set towards the problem.

"They are just going to be afraid to open their mail. That will cause
the government to buy big machines to kill the anthrax but little else. Thinking about making changes in our behavior is not
the same as actually changing it. "

So being afraid of the mail and flying and other things we usually take for granted is not changing behavior?

Farmers will stop putting pesticides in their crops if the govt says those pesticides are potential biohazards. People will stop eating beef if it appears that the beef is contaminated. Mad cow? I haven't had a mouthful of beef for about a year. Something changed my thinking and now I don't eat beef. Can't change behavior?

"The means you use to try and change the world will help shape
the kind of world you get."

Exactly. I will use any means necessary to remove risks to my body, including "eco-terrorism" as some put it. What are you doing? Accepting a stupid fate from authority.

there are no 'machines' to kill anthrax
posted on 12/24/2001 1:02 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"That will cause the government to buy big machines to kill the anthrax but little else"

The Canadian post office, which has had false alarms but no real verified anthrax cases, came to the conclusion that these machines don't and can't work. My own brother was in the meetings, and has been asked to keep his eyes open for anything that *does* work, his company is likely to get the contract to install it the day it exists. So if there were anything that could stop anthrax in the mail, I would know about it, and it would already be on order.

The opinion of the Canadian post office is that the US post office and US administration is just buying worthless junk that is proven not to work, so as to appear to be "doing something". That in fact they are counting on "evil doers being caught" rather than counting on the machines to do anything. You are being fed a bill of goods by Bush and the US post office, which is panicked over the thought of mass strikes and lawsuits by postal workers. And by the corporations who build the irradiation devices they plan to buy.

However, this will only have an effect on the technology believers in the US public and post office, and have little effect on the anthrax, which can be easily delivered in radiation resistant envelopes... which will of course provide an excuse to X-ray every piece of mail, etc., and the cycle of waste of public money will continue until there is no post office at all, since film and disks and such can't be sent through the mail any more.

You are in effect trusting your magical machines, which is par for the course here on kurzweilAI!

But there are no such machines, you are living in a bubble, and it will soon be burst, to the great shock and surprise of a vast number of people who do not have the inside information on this issue, and who are counting on general public ignorance.

universal ethic: means determine ends
posted on 12/24/2001 1:10 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

" The means you use to try and change the world will help shape the kind of world you get. In my view, that is the universal ethic. "

Now here, finally, we can agree. If you try to change the world with "better technology" and you accept that "technology is not the problem, the humans are", your choice of means will backfire on you in the following way:

The best of all technologies will be used by the worst of all possible people to attack those who developed the technologies, until they are dead.

Any attempt by technologists to shape access to their technologies will focus them more and more on the threat of technology itself, and away from the threat of any particular group of people. So in the long run the means (technology) will shape the entire world of the poor inventors, who will spend their whole lives (like Einstein or Nobel) simply trying to undo the great harm they did in inventing the dangerous gadgetry to begin with.

So it *is* the universal ethic, and it remains only for you technology promoters to apply it to yourselves. And to ask what slightly more subjective criteria we might wish to add to get to a Green Ethic of a peaceful, ecologically and psychologically balanced Earth where no one species believes it is destined to become a God, or is willing to chew up that whole planet to achieve that. As you say, means determine ends.

Personally, I won't be part of a God that eats its own mother as its debut public performance, and I won't leave those who choose that path to their own devices without taking up arms against.

I just refuse to *invent* any arms to do that... it is invention itself, not the bearing of arms, that is the sin.

Re: universal ethic: means determine ends
posted on 01/18/2002 2:58 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

>Personally, I won't be part of a God that eats its own mother as its debut public performance, and I won't leave those who choose that path to their own devices without taking up arms against.

I just refuse to *invent* any arms to do that... it is invention itself, not the bearing of arms, that is the sin.<

I find this to be the pinicle of amusement. What you're suggesting is a classic human response to "barbarism" and "heathens", and is a basic symptom of supremacism, the primary evil of our kind. I'm not trying to put you down. I'm just pointing out that our mutually habitual response to assumed encroachment on our lives is the cause of much suffering. Let me ask you: which inventions will you use to destroy these "mother-eaters"? How many folks will have to die? How will you justify it? Believe me, you'll justify it, and in the end the inescapable pall of relativism will ring in your answer. This is not bad in itself, just inevitable. Trouble is, in your quest to enlighten us, you may be doing more harm.

You see, the problem isn't the invention. I could kill someone with my thumb. These "mother-eaters" are simply socialized against your own frame of reference to such a degree that you'll take arms against them. The inventions you deride have given you the means to do so more effectively. The problem is your desire to change others, becuase "your way is better". That's fine, but I won't let you kill me, or anyone around me in the attempt.
Increasing levels of technology, as experienced in the twentieth century anyway, afford enormous destructive potential to an individual's will. We saw this demonstrated on 9/11. The techonology won't go away. Destructive nature won't go away. The only reason we're still alive is that systems have been "invented", such as treaties and mutually assured destruction, in order to allow our species' survival. None of our invented systems can dispell our nature, because our humanity has given rise to manifold replicating social systems which compete for limited commodities (food, water, money, attention, geography, influence, power). These commodities, especially food and water, are becoming scarcer every day as a result of mankind's lack of focus on the problem and the inability of the teaming masses who need those said commodities to invent the systems necessary to expedite their relief themselves.

You, sir, leverage invention, the so-called sin, everyday simply to survive and separate yourself from that teaming mass, as do I. That population, almost everyone on earth, doesn't have the luxury. That population considers your access to your keyboard and ability to utilize it part of the problem. That population considers you the "mother-eater". Two-thirds of the world prefers barracks life and war to their current situation, because armies get the best food and resources, being instruments of a social system's power.

When that army marches to your door, as the consequence of chaos and destabilization, what will you do? Which invention will you use?

As I see it, the only solution is to leverage invention against invention, as has been done for generations all the way back to the cave. Our survival depends on the development of systems and tools capable of countering the appalling risks faced by mankind already, and I believe nanotechnology can be the key to the swift accomplishment of this task. Dynamic, adaptable counter-measures are the answer, and nanotech is uniquely suited to that objective.

*nanotech may cheaply desalinate ocean water
-this solves thirst
*nanotech may, theoretically, produce food from base-carbon
-this solves hunger
*nanotech may, theoretically, provide immunity to pathogens
-this would make bioterror obsolete

Nanotech is not a panecea, but it is a good start.

We can't destroy the Biosphere -- it has seen worse than a simplistic nuclear apocalypse. If natural history is any indication, the Biosphere is out to kill us, metaphorically, anyway. We can only endevour to save ourselves -- that is all. The chimps are on their own. Any ethic that hastens the development of these dynamic counter-measures will eleviate the stresses on the daily lives of billions.

The inventions are going to come, precisely because one man can change the world. So, you're right: one person or many with a mind to can change the world. The trouble is they rarely change it the way they think they will. Usually revolutions lead to chaos. What we need is mass evolution. Argentina was the worst example to follow; those people reacted, they didn't think. Now Argentina is a failing country. A thinking-man's evolution could have slowly pulled them from the brink before all this chaos errupted.

Examples:
Magna Carta, an evolution = Great Britain's success

Red October, a revolution = Soviet Union's failure

Ike Davis

Ike Davis eloquently states the position of the techno-cultist
posted on 01/18/2002 7:48 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Your analysis of the technological and culture clash is correct. We'd agree on that. In fact the vast majority of net users are indeed \"the problem.\"
<br>
<br>Your analysis of the solutions is wrong. Inventing a dualism between invention and obedience and then resolving in it in favor of invention is no trick.
<br>
<br>Your absurd non-analysis of Argentina proves the point. Read Joseph Stiglitz on this.
<br>The IMF is following the path of Lenin: starve the desperate to build infrastructure and a middle class.
<br>
<br>If your nanotech silver bullets were actually the focus of research, we might relax. If they were the *only* objectives of research, we might celebrate.
<br>
<br>But as I only use the Internet for political purposes, I really don't feel very guilty about that.
<br>Just like the \"terrorists\", I'll pick up what's there and make use of it to shape thought my way.
<br>
<br>Without inventing anything. Invention itself is the practice that leads to what yo'ure talking about.
<br>
<br>Ike Davis eloquently states the position of the techno-cultist. Better than Drexler or De Garis.
<br>
<br>But not enough to change the minds of anyone who understands.
<br>
<br>The fact is, when the villagers come in a mob to burn Dr. Frankenstein's castle, and I like Igor am in the lobby, I shall open the door.
<br>
<br>You will no doubt claim that I simply wish to inherit the castle. Perhaps.
<br>
<br>But I too fear the Monster.
<br>
<br>So pursue your Monster, suffer for it, and in the end, die as the wise ally with the villagers.
<br>
<br>Goodbye Doctor Frankenstein.
<br>
<br>- Igor

Re: Ike Davis eloquently states the position of the techno-cultist
posted on 01/19/2002 2:20 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

><br>Your analysis of the solutions is wrong. Inventing a dualism between invention and obedience and then resolving in it in favor of invention is no trick.<
<br>

<br>
First off, I didn't invent anything. Our lives can be comprehended, if we so choose, as competing dualities. This is how it has been and will probably always be: the alternative is fascism, the death of alternative views and means.
<br>
Inventions and counter-inventions will always be with us as a matter of survival and competition. When you open the door, they may not stop to thank you but just kill you first. If you value survival you have to prepare for that -- if you don't, the conversation is over.
<br>

<br>
You may be entirely right. It doesn't matter, sadly. You will do what you will, the and the inventor has just as much power -- here's the rub: invention, by its nature, is a force multiplier. If I invented an assembler and released it, that gives me overmatch against anything you might do with a weaker invention. Whether this is good or bad isn't the point. Tell me exactly how you can prevent this from coming to pass, aside from relying on the weak assumption that the production of an assembler is an impossibility. That has never stopped the imaginative genius of humanity. I could write a book on all the so-called scientists who believed a trip to the moon was impossible. Impossibility is the crutch of the short-sighted and fearful.
<br>

<br>
We who claim the initiative will prepare for probability; letting the mob in the door will only lead to our ruin. The trouble is that they are a mob at all. If we refuse to leverage our power as a technological and generous society to help them, they will remain dangerous to us and themselves ultimately. Remember, while you let them in, that they wish to have what you wish to destroy, and they'll kill you before you destroy it. A mob's basic aim is destruction, for whatever purpose, usually without a structure that will lead to a fruitful end. We can give them a fruitful end and deny them their reason for being a mob in the first place.
<br>

<br>
If you succeed in turning us all into echo-Buddhas before doing what I suggest, the mob won't care that we've reached Nirvana. They will simply tear down the Bodhi tree for firewood. It is what they know.
<br>

<br>
By the way, I never said nanotech would solve all our problems: I merely listed three; on the contrary, I believe it will lead to the most egregious evils imaginable. So what? It has always been; anything we do bares the double-edge of benevolence and bloodbath. Your beef with the IMF is just a manifestation of this principle; intentions, good or bad, lead to both good and bad. So will yours. I merely suggest, since these things will come to pass, that we leverage them in an effort to benefit us as much as possible. Opening the door to the mob won't even benefit the mob -- it will simply achieve acquiescence to their pain while doing nothing to alleviate that pain.
<br>

<br>
What difference does it make if we clean our water and do nothing to ease the suffering of the mob, do nothing to change the mob? We commit suicide that way.
<br>

<br>
<br>So pursue your Monster, suffer for it, and in the end, die as the wise ally with the villagers.
<br>

<br>
You're not pursuing your own Monster? I'm not the only Dr. Frankenstein. At least I'm trying to avert some of this death and suffering; your solution simply invites more of it. Again, how many people do you wish to die? When will it be enough? Can you really separate the evil of the invention from the evil of its use? A pile of guns with no one to pull the triggers endangers no one.
<br>

<br>
Drop me a line when the body bags start piling up.
<br>

<br>
>\"*nanotech may cheaply desalinate ocean water -this solves thirst\"
<br>

<br>
And if the molecules get out into the ocean?<
<br>

<br>
Who said anything about allowing them to enter the ocean; there is a neat invention called a pump.
<br>

<br>
>\"*nanotech may, theoretically, produce food from base-carbon -this solves hunger \"
<br>

<br>
And the billions of bored people on a crowded world trashing it for amusement? What of them?<
<br>

<br>
So? You've never been bored? I never claimed to save the world, just feed it. Anyway, if we can produce food from base-carbon I'm sure we could terraform Mars and solve the over-crowding trouble eventually.
<br>

<br>
>\"*nanotech may, theoretically, provide immunity to pathogens -this would make bioterror obsolete\"
<br>

<br>
And the USA invincible. Guess what. Attack is always stronger than defense beyond a certain level of knowledge and technology.<
<br>

<br>
Where is this mystic level of knowledge and technology? Besides, when your nose is bloodied that's not a signal get hit again. Please, roll over; I'll do the punching. The US isn't invincible, and I never said the US would achieve any of my postulations. However, I'd rather be on the US's good side for now; they're friggen powerful. Fighting the US on shear principle hasn't gotten anyone anywhere -- two buildings fall = big whoop. Now the US is pissed.
<br>

<br>
>I sense that you're fishing for a Defense Department grant, and nothing more than that.<
<br>

<br>
Nanotech, biotech. And? Either will do. Lets not lose the forest for the trees; the point isn't the particular technology. The point is the benefit from either one.
<br>

<br>
Besides, I'm not \"important\" enough to fish for grants. I'm sure the defense industry can do that on their own. The only reason the rest of the world hasn't developed multiple massive military-industrial complexes is that most of the world is at least nominally on our side. We foot the bill. Lockheed loves this; they shiver at the notion of cheap nanite-driven defenses. Their business would crumble. How could I be a defense spook? Remember, nanites as envisioned by Drexler, would wipe out any notion of \"economy\" Most work would be pointless, except maybe \"imagineering\", artistry, and programming.
<br>

<br>
I believe I'll be doing a bit more than meditating if I no longer need to eat. Mmmm ... the possibilities. Lets all trash a neighborhood McDonalds! The bastards have been raising triglyceride levels for far too long anyway(see, destruction isn't always so bad after all ;)
<br>

<br>
Ike \"Frankenstein\" Davis
<br>

<br>

<br>

Re: universal ethic: means determine ends
posted on 01/18/2002 8:17 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"*nanotech may cheaply desalinate ocean water -this solves thirst"

And if the molecules get out into the ocean?

"*nanotech may, theoretically, produce food from base-carbon -this solves hunger "

And the billions of bored people on a crowded world trashing it for amusement? What of them?

"*nanotech may, theoretically, provide immunity to pathogens -this would make bioterror obsolete "

And the USA invincible. Guess what. Attack is always stronger than defense beyond a certain level of knowledge and technology.

I sense that you're fishing for a Defense Department grant, and nothing more than that.

Here is what you don't consider:

I can solve all these same problems by changing the human genome so that we have chlorophyll instead of melanin in our skin.
With some minor adjustments to turn UV into blood sugars via that chlorophyll,
we can suck sunlight right out of the sky like plants, no need to eat at all. We can sit very quietly meditating all day.

Why is that world so repulsive to you, and the world of nanotech manipulating things so attractive?

Think about it.

You're just scared of all those little Green men and what they'll do to you...

Re: universal ethic: means determine ends
posted on 01/19/2002 2:27 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

Sorry, didn't know replies would parse that way. Here's my answer to the above.

>"*nanotech may cheaply desalinate ocean water -this solves thirst"

And if the molecules get out into the ocean?<

Who said anything about allowing them to enter the ocean; there is a neat invention called a pump.

>"*nanotech may, theoretically, produce food from base-carbon -this solves hunger "

And the billions of bored people on a crowded world trashing it for amusement? What of them?<

So? You've never been bored? I never claimed to save the world, just feed it. Anyway, if we can produce food from base-carbon I'm sure we could terraform Mars and solve the over-crowding trouble eventually.

>"*nanotech may, theoretically, provide immunity to pathogens -this would make bioterror obsolete"

And the USA invincible. Guess what. Attack is always stronger than defense beyond a certain level of knowledge and technology.<

Where is this mystic level of knowledge and technology? Besides, when your nose is bloodied that's not a signal get hit again. Please, roll over; I'll do the punching. The US isn't invincible, and I never said the US would achieve any of my postulations. However, I'd rather be on the US's good side for now; they're friggen powerful. Fighting the US on shear principle hasn't gotten anyone anywhere -- two buildings fall = big whoop. Now the US is pissed.

>I sense that you're fishing for a Defense Department grant, and nothing more than that.<

Nanotech, biotech. And? Either will do. Lets not lose the forest for the trees; the point isn't the particular technology. The point is the benefit from either one.

Besides, I'm not "important" enough to fish for grants. I'm sure the defense department can do that on their own. The only reason the rest of the world hasn't developed multiple massive military-industrial complexes is that most of the world is at least nominally on our side. We foot the bill. Lockheed loves this; they shiver at the notion of cheap nanite-driven defenses. Their business would crumble. How could I be a defense spook?

I believe I'll be doing a bit more than meditating if I no longer need to eat. Mmmm ... the possibilities. Lets all trash a neighborhood McDonalds! The bastards have been raising triglyceride levels for far too long (see, destruction isn't always so bad after all ;)

>Why is that world so repulsive to you, and the world of nanotech manipulating things so attractive?

Think about it.

You're just scared of all those little Green men and what they'll do to you... <

First of all, I've always been a fan of green, and I am a man, so I don't see a problem.

Second, both biotech and nanotech manipulate things. Both are equally exciting to me.

You weren't really arguing with me, were you?


Ike "Frankenstein" Davis

life cannot be comprehended as competing dualities, only so destroyed.
posted on 01/19/2002 9:26 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

It isn't "arguing" if all that is happening is to reveal competing assumptions. That is strictly due to this assumption of yours:
>Our lives can be comprehended, if we so choose, as competing dualities.

They can be so *described* but it is an article of faith to accept that the conclusions and actions that gives rise to, are actually "comprehension" and not more derived "assumption".

This is an ancient battle, that between those who claim they can tell good from evil and so seek to become gods, versus those who only claim to know a very local good from bad, and that temporarily.

This is not going to be settled today. You are, from my point of view, a vampire to be exiled. Not a partner...
Our assumptions cannot be reconciled. Competing dualities equals warfare. Creativity equals competition. So,
as you suggest, those assumptions will meet on the battlefield and emergency room. Not in the debating room.

Too much at stake.

I am seeking to propagate the stable patterns called "life" and "love" into the future.
You are seeking to propagate the unstable patterns of replication, imitation, creation
of what you think is "original". You are obsessed with linear time and status relative to (say) "God".
You claim to *be* a god or at least have a way of managing that same level of power.
I do not. There are ways to insulate "us" living beings from "you" vampire/demon/gods.

Mindless slaughter of a statistically-significant sample of you is one way. Not the most efficient. There are
more useful techniques than a general release of biowarfare agents, more pervasive than propaganda.

Perhaps, "master", I shall assist you? Would you prefer that?

Craig "Igor" Hubley

Re: life cannot be comprehended as competing dualities, only so destroyed.
posted on 01/22/2002 2:27 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

Lets see:
<br>

<br>
>They can be so *described* but it is an article of faith to accept that the conclusions and actions that gives rise to, are actually \"comprehension\" and not more derived \"assumption\".<
<br>

<br>
Man, you've just given up, haven't you? And we were doing so well...
<br>
Anyway, any description understood is by definition comprehension: I never said my view was either the exclusive or godly view. But I haven't seen any description of life capable of defeating a recognition of inherent competition between various systems within the System. To do so would be to deny reality, as you seem so fond of doing. Happily, you're right about us not being able to solve this anytime soon; this, of course, reinforces my point, doesn't it? Our \"ideologies\" are in competition. You declare this by your very attempt at changing the world.
<br>

<br>
>This is an ancient battle, that between those who claim they can tell good from evil and so seek to become gods, versus those who only claim to know a very local good from bad, and that temporarily.<
<br>

<br>
You've got to be joking. You're willing to destroy how many lives for this willow-the-wisp notion of a \"temporary good\"? What if \"good and evil\" changes tomorrow? This strategy seems as fragile as your point-of-view. I don't claim to be the arbiter of good and evil; I just live my life on the basis of allowing others to live theirs. Apparently you're not content with that, since we all know the punishment for vampirism. When will the witch-burning begin?
<br>

<br>
>I am seeking to propagate the stable patterns called \"life\" and \"love\" into the future.
<br>
You are seeking to propagate the unstable patterns of replication, imitation, creation
<br>
of what you think is \"original\". You are obsessed with linear time and status relative to (say) \"God\".
<br>
You claim to *be* a god or at least have a way of managing that same level of power.
<br>
I do not. There are ways to insulate \"us\" living beings from \"you\" vampire/demon/gods./<
<br>

<br>
You're willing to propagate a plainly fascist ideology of murder and supremacism, you mean. Your local good will have millions killed, many of whom may even agree with you, in order to achieve a goal that in your own view can be justifiably considered evil by the kid next-door, if he survives your psychopathic cleansing campaign. You've already delegated to yourself the god power of life and death. Far be it from me to compete with that.
<br>

<br>
For someone who believes \"mindless slaughter\" is just one of many justifiable techniques on the journey past megalomania, the odd thing is that you don't seem to consider yourself a vampiric demon-god. You're beginning to sound a lot like a man I've read about. He had a funny mustache and a bizarre obsession with the occult. Do you speak German?


Ike \"Frankenstein\" Davis

if you can't convince me, you're mob meat
posted on 01/22/2002 6:43 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

As long as you believe that your "reasonable method" or "rational process" of resolving dispute is objective, as long as you believe in mathematics itself as an objective map of reality and predictor of the future, there's no discourse:

You have declared a war. You must have your "freedom of action" regardless of the risk of new molecules or new intelligences or combinations of both. You will hide behind such mechanisms as corporate limited liability and corporate personhood to mask your many mistakes. You have usurped the entire biosphere of this planet to turn into a lab for your experiments.

Well, since I believe you have no right to do that, it is a question of how you are opposed.

I have studied the methods of Hitler and Goebbels, as have all modern advertisers and political theorists, and I find them lacking at least in the following: 1. too expensive in terms of life 2. too prone to assign genetics a dominant role in behavior 3. obsessed with irrationalities like race and history. The Nazi critique of legal systems and democracy remains valid to this day: they can and are manipulated to serve values directly against the bodily interests of the so-called citizens. The Nazis showed *how*.

They also showed how to create fusions of myth and mathematics, maintain popularity with the majority while removing minorities/elites from power, build large public infrastructure projects, get the population back to work, etc.. If they weren't partly successful we wouldn't be so scared of them today.

Mussolini's critique and methods were much more effective, in my view, and his picture remains up on many walls in Italy to this day. A prosperous and democratic Italy, for the most part. There's a lot to be gained by looking at the methods of fascists, or the more successful communists like Ho Chi Minh or Mao (whose regimes stand to this day).

So, if you want to call me an "eco-fascist" then go ahead. I won't be offended. However this is a deliberate misrepresentation (of yours) of my overall position. I would only become "fascist" or "totalitarian" when a plurality of scientists outside corporate or military influence claimed that a given "innovation" (e.g. your desalinator molecules, or some UV- or ATP-to-heat converter) represented a bona fide threat to the biosphere. At that point, yes, I'd be willing to participate in an extermination of all researchers involved.

But then, so what? That is exactly the methodology by which atom bombs were confined to a few countries, by which bioweapons are confined today. Assassination of prominent researchers is a time-honored game by now. Why is this different? Hell it goes back to classic times.

If you really believe this Eden is due, and is going to arrive due to your efforts in nanotech, you should be more than willing to die for it, as say Al Qaeda or Japanese kamikaze pilots or even Gandhian reformers in India were willing to die. That is not in question. If you are afraid of me now, imagine how afraid you'll be in ten years...!

What's in question, is willingness to *kill* over it. You intend to do whatever you can do until you are killed - you are convinced of your own ideology of "progress". Fine. I won't argue. I will simply watch what you do, and work on future outcome scenarios, and perhaps you will die by surprise due to some effort on my part, likely a scenario that shows your innovation as high on a list of extremely dangerous alterations to Earth's ecology. There will be no "discussion", no "regulation", and thus no propaganda involved.

That is a far less dangerous approach than trying to justify a mass movement of resistance to scary technologies - since less qualified people will be in charge.

I am anti-ideology. I am willing to work towards whatever biohazard response protocol works to cut the risk of these new toys, and if the people who save the biosphere are hated and hunted, so be it. We are not involved in this for status. Are we?

"If you try to make people think, they will hate you. If you really *make* them think, they will kill you." - Albert Einstein

Personally I like the Aleister Crowley approach to regulation: put booby traps in the instructions so that anyone who follows them is killed by them. I expect you won't really be able to follow atom bomb or nanotech or AI instructions downloaded over the net safely... that will suppress all but the most hidden work.

Removing military budgets by collapsing governments that "invest" in such "research" is another important pillar of "progress" to remove.

Then the universities are vulnerable as the third.

If a so-called "Dark Age" is the price we have to pay to keep the biosphere alive, we will pay it.

You are not offering any viable alternative. You cannot even tell me *why* "e to the power (i times pi), plus one, equals zero", let alone justify your bizarre belief in Schmoos (rather than oh say Gremlins that arise if water falls on the Schmoo). You just have some silly religion that you are using to justify ecologically scary research and vampire-like scenarios of living forever. Well, I don't buy into your ideology of "singularity", which just disempowers thought and critical perspective itself.

Ray Kurzweil at least knows enough to quote The Unabomber and treat his arguments seriously. It remains to be proven that the fellow won't emerge from jail in 20 years like Mandela, his critique shown to be absolutely correct in all particulars.

I don't think you know enough cognitive science to get into the debate about how you know what you know, or why you trust math, or your axioms.

I'll leave it there - go ahead, I've given you plenty to cry wolf about. Call me a "fascist"... which I am, if you are holding a vial of some new life form that is better at energy transfer than cyanophytes. If you've got that, you better also have a much more convincing argument for me not to kill you, than you have presented so far. If you can't convince *me*, a very rational and anti-ideological cognitive scientist and mathematician, you have no chance against the mob.

You = the mob? Right
posted on 01/24/2002 12:33 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

This should be fun ...

>You have declared a war. You must have your "freedom of action" regardless of the risk of new molecules or new intelligences or combinations of both. You will hide behind such mechanisms as corporate limited liability and corporate personhood to mask your many mistakes. You have usurped the entire biosphere of this planet to turn into a lab for your experiments.<

Oh, please. First off, molecular creations are nothing new, and I haven't invented a one of them. Second, that I should hide behind some monolithic corporate umbrella is laughable, since I don't intend to invent new molecules, and have no vision of creating new intelligences; I don't even work for a corporation. For a 'trained scientist' you seem to reach conclusions on little to no evidence. Third, who in the name of all that is good is this 'you' you refer to? I don't remember usurping the biosphere; I'm part of the biosphere: this is irrational. That which is part of nature cannot escape nature. Anything we do will constitute a manifestation of some natural physical process. That we can even destroy the biosphere for all time is the notion of the ignorant. The earth and life in general have resisted ice-ages, massive impacts, poisoned atmospheres, and eons of rain, just to name a few. Anything man does will be a pale shadow.

>The Nazi critique of legal systems and democracy remains valid to this day: they can and are manipulated to serve values directly against the bodily interests of the so-called citizens. The Nazis showed *how*.<

Blah, blah. Every system, by the nature of human systems, manipulates and controls those who seek not to be manipulated and controlled. Even the concept of anarchy as a workable concept requires structure and leadership, however mercurial, if populations wish to survive. There's a reason there aren't large populations without manipulative leadership structures: no one would survive. Even Somalia has warlords.

>...There's a lot to be gained by looking at the methods of fascists, or the more successful communists like Ho Chi Minh or Mao (whose regimes stand to this day).<

Yes, you're quite right: we'll gain the murder of millions and the enslavement of police states. Happy day. And your history is wrong; Mao's regime isn't around anymore. Mao is turning in his grave at the thought of 'nationalist capitalism' gaining so much headway in China. The Chinese communist regime is more an elite political machine than a communist party. Even they admit openly the 'cultural revolution' was little more than a brutal massacre. They only care about regime survival.

>But then, so what? That is exactly the methodology by which atom bombs were confined to a few countries, by which bioweapons are confined today. Assassination of prominent researchers is a time-honored game by now. Why is this different? Hell it goes back to classic times.<

What happened to history being 'irrational'? Anyway, nukes and bioweapons haven't been confined; they simply haven't been used. Most who possess them realize the futility of their application, and the rest simply wish their regimes to survive (e.g. Saddam Hussein). Your analysis, if I can even call it that, is absurd.

>"If you try to make people think, they will hate you. If you really *make* them think, they will kill you." - Albert Einstein<

People like you should never quote a pacifist.

>If a so-called "Dark Age" is the price we have to pay to keep the biosphere alive, we will pay it.<

Why? You still don't seem to understand that you are an individual among many individuals. If your house burns down from a toppled candle and all your family die in it, this tragedy is just as painful and merciless as them being consumed by 'Gray Goo.' Creating a new Dark Age will simply multiply the tragedies faced by us all many times; we'll have done neither the biosphere nor ourselves any good. The biosphere doesn't care and can't be saved or destroyed completely in any event. When the warlords rise from the dust (as they surely will), you'll probably be first on the chopping block.

>Personally I like the Aleister Crowley approach to regulation: put booby traps in the instructions so that anyone who follows them is killed by them. I expect you won't really be able to follow atom bomb or nanotech or AI instructions downloaded over the net safely... that will suppress all but the most hidden work.<

Oh, yes. Of course. Lets let people produce faulty AI, dirty nukes, and rampant uncontrollable nanites. That will solve all our problems. Anyway, the folks who can see through such traps will be the only ones capable of making them work to begin with.

>...You are not offering any viable alternative. You cannot even tell me *why* "e to the power (i times pi), plus one, equals zero", let alone justify your bizarre belief in Schmoos (rather than oh say Gremlins that arise if water falls on the Schmoo). You just have some silly religion that you are using to justify ecologically scary research and vampire-like scenarios of living forever...<

A viable alternative to a 'Dark Age'? Now you're just being silly. And what religion are you spewing about? I never said I wanted to live forever: that's appalling. Schmoos? You are mad aren't you?

>I don't think you know enough cognitive science to get into the debate about how you know what you know, or why you trust math, or your axioms.<

Neither of us have given any reasons why we know what we know. As for cognitive science, you seem to be lacking in that arena. How much else have you assumed about me, a person you don't even know? For example, I never said I trusted math. For a supposed scientist you work a lot on rank speculation and failed ideologies.

>Call me a "fascist"... which I am, if you are holding a vial of some new life form that is better at energy transfer than cyanophytes.<

Your obsession with assumption and speculation has lead you to believe that I have designs on replacing blue-green algae. If there is no leak in the pipe I won't patch it. However, you just might represent a leak.

>If you can't convince *me*, a very rational and anti-ideological cognitive scientist and mathematician, you have no chance against the mob.<

First of all, that you're either rational or anti-ideological is total tripe. Your own statements reveal that you are an irrational neo-Luddite. You give moral substance to inanimate objects in the absence of their use: 'it is invention itself, not the bearing of arms, that is the sin.' If no one 'bears' a gun, it is but so much benign metal. If you represent either the common cognitive scientist or the common mathematician then we won't need nanotech to end life on earth after all. Joy.


And from an earlier message ...

>Since you don't believe in Mutually Assured Destruction, you are not part of my species. It's that simple. You're a parasite on my species, which has already accepted that paradigm.<

I don't believe that fellow had a vial of algae-retiring super-goo in his hand. Sounds like you're a fascist from the start. Fortunately for the rest of us, fascism doesn't work. What you're really saying is 'think like me or die.' You're completely apathetic, aren't you?

All of your arguments thus far have proven weak and ultimately self-destructive: they show you to be the true parasite. You claim the mob would wish me dead, but the very existence you threaten the whole world with is the very existence they wish to escape. I think they'll have your head first.

ID

the biosphere has been destroyed before, and may well be again
posted on 01/24/2002 1:27 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

\"That we can even destroy the biosphere for all time is the notion of the ignorant. \"
<br>
<br>So you don't believe that there is any possibility whatsoever, none, zero, that there is an energy transfer mechanism \"at the bottom\" more efficient than cyanophytes at turning UV light into heat or sugars?
<br>
<br>Cyanophytes destroyed the surface biosphere a billion years ago. A scientist would know that. Or is that \"a notion of the ignorant\"?
<br>The biosphere has been destroyed before, and may well be again. My duty is that of any rational person: to prevent it from happening for seven generations: no more no less.
<br>In pursuit of that duty I will go exactly as far as an Iroquois or Apache would have gone. An historian would know how far that is, and what ills justified their actions.
<br>
<br>An historian would also know that Einstein was not a pacifist. He wrote Roosevelt to urge the creation of the atom bomb to use on the \"evil\" Nazis. That is not a pacifist.
<br>He regretted this action on his deathbed, and even regretted his discovery of relativity, saying \"If only I had known, I would have become a watchmaker.\" Quite famous.
<br>I should be surprised you don't know that, but I'm not.
<br>
<br>You are the one assuming social metaphor and non-empirical data beyond scientific test is playing the decisive role in human decisions:
<br>The massed human desire that is willing to risk destroying the biosphere again (and themselves with it), is irrelevant. Their desires are irrelevant. That is only part of *your* analysis.
<br>I didn't make up the Schmoos - there are morons here on kurzweilai.net that believe that is the maximum danger nanotech can present... astonishing but true. They are on your side.
<br>
<br>The exact same promises were made for electricity, for radio, for television, for nuclear and genetic manipulation, and now for proteomics, nanotech, and \"artificial intelligence\" (really just persuasion technology).
<br>For the exact same reasons: someone wanted to make a living playing with things they couldn't ethically control.
<br>
<br>The so-called \"Luddite\" position is the *only* rational position: conservatism where one's body is at risk. The Precautionary Principle, if you've heard of it, is a popular way to be a Luddite.
<br>
<br>If you are not capable of producing these so-called breakthroughs, then you are only capable of repeating the propaganda of the Singularity Cult. That's your religion: belief in technology as a savior. OK, fine.
<br>
<br>I won't interfere with your freedom of religion. But if it leads you to vote for Texans, the whole world will have to revisit that question.
<br>
<br>The nuclear destruction of the nanotech and oil business in Houston and environs may well do far less ecological damage than letting it proceed...
<br>That is a scientific question, not a political one, although it may of course lead to a variety of political responses, to both prevent and to proceed with that solution.
<br>
<br>Politics is crude: since the vast majority of people argue with inexact metaphor and false media impressions such as your own, there is no time to convince everyone before action is taken.
<br>
<br>Thus: the mob.
<br>
<br>Green politics is less crude since the majority of people involved in it argue with empirical data and accept cross-cultural comparisons to predict social outcomes. If you object to me, try them.
<br>
<br>But you can't scare me, because I know damn well there are more of me than you. And as you say the odds of our finding working solutions are higher than the odds of you doing so. The issue is less a threat from you, and more an empirically competent scientist like us turning coat for money, patriotism, or a blowjob.
<br>
<br>There's only going to be one protocol for exploiting these inventions, and it's not going to be the American capitalist paradigm, nor the American military paradigm. That is not the end of history. Get used to it.
<br>

The biosphere has been damaged before and definately will be again, either way.
posted on 01/25/2002 6:35 PM by nothingnormal@excite.com

>I won't interfere with your freedom of religion. But if it leads you to vote for Texans, the whole world will have to revisit that question.<

Finally, a sense humor. I was beginning to think you were a grim slave to your ideology. Thank god. By the way, I voted for Gore, who happened to get his cash from the same places. You should believe him to be just as dangerous, I should think.

>An historian would also know that Einstein was not a pacifist. He wrote Roosevelt to urge the creation of the atom bomb to use on the \"evil\" Nazis. That is not a pacifist.<

Again another foolish assumption: I'm not an historian. However ...

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
--Albert Einstein
How many will you murder under the 'cloak of war'?

>So you don't believe that there is any possibility whatsoever, none, zero, that there is an energy transfer mechanism "at the bottom" more efficient than cyanophytes at turning UV light into heat or sugars?<

I don't remember saying any such thing.

>Cyanophytes destroyed the surface biosphere a billion years ago. A scientist would know that. Or is that "a notion of the ignorant"? The biosphere has been destroyed before, and may well be again. My duty is that of any rational person: to prevent it from happening for seven generations: no more no less.<

I never said the 'surface' biosphere couldn't be destroyed. I said the biosphere. You're a bad listener, aren't you? Chemosynthetic life will likely survive no matter what we do; in any event, life has a way of producing itself from base elements, especially on earth. Life is part of earth, as surely as mineral and water: it can't be wiped out for good by our efforts anymore than these.

And why do you persist in the baseless supposition that I'm a scientist. I never said such a thing; however, science isn't the sole domain of your white-coated priesthood, who, by the way, are just as prone to assumption, foolishness, and miscalculation as any. You prove my point.

What's this nonsense about seven generations? Do you really think things will be OK after that? 'No more, no less' indeed.

>I didn't make up the Schmoos - there are morons here on kurzweilai.net that believe that is the maximum danger nanotech can present... astonishing but true. They are on your side.<

You're as incapable of describing my side as your are of listening, apparently. I believe nanotech is incredibly dangerous, just as everything else we've produced as a species. However, the difference between nuclear holocaust and rampant assemblers is very small, where our suffering will be concerned. Radiation sickness, consumption by Gray Goo: all the same. Therefore I see little reason to stop nanotech research.

>If you are not capable of producing these so-called breakthroughs, then you are only capable of repeating the propaganda of the Singularity Cult. That's your religion: belief in technology as a savior. OK, fine.<

Yes, it would be fine, if that were my position. I don't believe technology can save us; it simply serves as a holding action against inevitable threats. I simply don't believe you can prevent the juggernaut of technology without doing more harm than good. If I thought you could, I might be on your side. But technology without motive or application is simply rearranged molecules. Your argument that technology without applied free will is anything but this is still irrational.

>The nuclear destruction of the nanotech and oil business in Houston and environs may well do far less ecological damage than letting it proceed...<

You still haven't explained why you believe you have a right to save the biosphere, something which you point out has been destroyed before and yet has bounced back with astonishing diversity. I don't believe you can save anything, much less the earth; it doesn't need saving. You're willing to kill millions for your mad fantasy, so total destruction of life shouldn't be a moral problem for you anyway. Besides, if you return us to a 'Dark Age' then over-hunting and other kinds of environmental manipulation, including the decimation of your precious primates, will increase at an even faster pace. Don't even think you can control that one.

>The issue is less a threat from you, and more an empirically competent scientist like us turning coat for money, patriotism, or a blowjob.<

Or some mad desire for ideological dominance at any cost. It's the half-wise and the half-fools like you who are dangerous: you would use a howitzer to swat a fly, and never mind the wreckage. Anyway, I like blowjobs.

>There's only going to be one protocol for exploiting these inventions, and it's not going to be the American capitalist paradigm, nor the American military paradigm. That is not the end of history. Get used to it.<

Another assumption based on no evidence. I could care less if the American 'paradigm' is used, as long as nut-jobs like you don't kill off half the world in order to change it. Your analysis of my position and the final result of your own lead to the same end: devastation, chaos, a crippled echo-system, and your own ultimate destruction, which you claim to be trying to avert.

By the way: this is less a discussion about science and more about ethics, of which you seem to be totally devoid.

ID

there is no "humanity", only Biosphere, Guild, Tribe, Family, and Body (ape, whale, etc.)
posted on 01/26/2002 5:29 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"You're willing to kill millions for your mad fantasy,"

That would still make me nicer than those developing nanotech weapons or artificial life, which BTW the vast majority of developers oppose.
Those people are willing to sacrifice whole continents of living things to their own mad fantasies. But anyway ethics is relative to bodies not numbers, so forget this, it's not an argument I'll pursue.

"so total destruction of life shouldn't be a moral problem for you anyway."

Here is your most fundamental error: humanism.

Because millions or actually billions of humans could die before I would care very much (as long as it was high-tech-warring humans would died), therefore *YOU* can't see any larger moral frame than humanity.
You can't see how throwing the geeks into a mini-Singularity to die screaming on CNN could inhibit the Singularity Cult.

Well, guess what? You and I are not part of the same species. There is no "we". None.

I have little objection to putting already-existing technologies to ethical purposes. For instance rifles to shoot poachers or nuclear weapons to destroy Houston, Texas. Those are difficult ethical decisions but someone is making them right now.

In each case (shooting the poacher or nuking Houston), an entity or entities are destroyed that represent a positive threat to the surface biosphere.

What gives me the "right" (if such exist) is that I live in this surface biosphere, and happen to like its plants, animals, and climate.

If a state of war already exists between the cyanophyte-based surface biosphere (and I don't believe for one second that you care about chemosynthetic life) and the silicon-based computer life forms like you that type nonsense into screens (as opposed to us apelike critters who use these things only as an ethical obligation to warn robots like you), then I choose the Terran not Cosmist side, as De Garis describes them.

Now, really, we are at a sort of preliminary stage where Terranism is still participating in a political process, say through Green Parties and Green NGOs, but the actions of militants show that there are some who consider this already a low intensity war. Not just The Unabomber (the first of many) but those who free lab animals, wild horses, sabotage bulldozers, spike trees, etc..

Perhaps the techno-geeks are some kind of Virtual Israel and the Terranists are some kind of Physical Palestine. I'll take those odds - with the rise of biowar and the geopolitics of oil, long run, Israel is South Viet Nam is just West Palestine. buh bye. But no need for that distraction.

"Ethics" is the tradeoff of right versus right - it isn't the imposition of inhibitions - that's "morality" - if you can't keep them straight then you can't practice either.

You may find the balance of inhibitions difficult to see but that doesn't mean it's not there. For instance so far eco-"terrorists" protecting other species, have not killed anyone, ever, although they have *been* killed.

Also, you may notice that while Al Qaeda attacked Americans at work or on daytime flights during the week (almost always patronized by business travellers nearly-exclusively - one hijacker was reportedly very upset that a woman and children were on one flight) they did not attack anyone at home.

This in contrast to the US bombing of Afghanistan where quite a few children were killed sleeping in their homes, for the crime of not becoming winter refugees as the US dropped (mostly "dumb") bombs.

So, ethical frames are not something fixed, certainly not fixed to "humanity" which is a myth.

Ideally, to have any positive influence on human behavior and not become pernicious like religions or ideologies, ethical frames should match moral frames: Biosphere (planet), Guild (process), Tribe (seven-generation conservation), Family (two-generation transmission of morality), or Body (like that of apes).
BTW, "seven generations" is the First Nations standard and is physically real because of the ratio between the longest human lifespans and the human reproductive age. Work it out: six generations around a table can make decisions for the seventh. Seven can't, because you can't get that many together.
Five can't, because they are missing their Elders who they probably put in nursing homes. Seven generations is a moral frame: one stock market tick is not, as we see in the Enron debacle.

Your ethical frames do not match anything morally meaningful, you mismatch constantly, so you make the same errors as Robert Frietas or Ralph Merkle or various Texans. You are corrupt and the frames you adopt (Democratic Party for instance, another immoral frame which protects nothing except itself, or "humanity")
One does not deal with such people by argument. One deals with such people with warnings, first, sabotage, second, and execution, third.

If there is a "we" in the sense of sharing a language (one I reject because bots and lawyers and corporations, things without souls or even meaningful bodies, can use language) then "we" are still in the warning phase.

But, right now, there are others moving on to sabotage and execution, and there will be *many* more.

I could also shred your Judeo-Christian "slave ethics" but Nietzsche did that job well enough in 1900. Nuff said.

You really should look very hard at matching up the "we" and "us" in your sentences. English does not force you to. But I will. One way or another.

Re: if you can't convince me, you're mob meat
posted on 01/25/2002 5:16 PM by tomaz@techemail.com

Somebody has nothing sound to say ... you!

- Thomas

Re: if you can't convince me, you're mob meat
posted on 01/25/2002 5:19 PM by tomaz@techemail.com

I mean craig!

- Thomas

Re: Thomas
posted on 01/26/2002 3:28 AM by nothingnormal@excite.com

Silly man, isn't he? But I might be willing to forgive him if he comes up with another good Texan joke ;)

frame your arguments w.r.t. something worth protecting, or shut up
posted on 01/26/2002 5:50 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

I explained the frames which define "sound". If you can't list a competing set of frames ("nation", "race", "party", "company", "the West", "the free world") then you are objectively corrupt. Frankly I can see much stronger connections between those physically-and-emotionally-real frames and my arguments, than any of them and yours.

You are just another geek Cultist. Your arguments are "sound and fury signifying nothing."

I see nothing in them to appeal your sentence to be fed face-first to the Singularity.

Frame your arguments in terms of something you are defending or protecting, or shut up.

If I wanted mindless quacking of unbound variables, I'd be watching CNN at this very moment.

Something worth protecting
posted on 01/26/2002 1:10 PM by nothingnormal@excite.com

Defending? I'm defending my right to live without fools, who don't even understand the consequences of their actions, detonating a nuclear device in the hopelessly insipid view that such an event would actually help his specious cause. Do you even understand what a nuclear weapon does? Do you realize that most nations capable of creating such a device no longer mess around with the 'small potatoes' represented by the Hiroshima incident? Anything you're able to procure wouldn't just destroy Houston, although that would be stupid enough. Have you ever seen someone die of radiation sickness? I doubt it. You have become the very evil you claim to despise. As Oppenheimer would say, you have become 'death, killer of worlds' (the Gitta, from the Hindu Vedas). It is a mark of your arrogance and ignorance that you believe you can save anyone with this policy. You place us in this silly 'geek-cult' in order to set yourself up as superior to us, in order that you may murder without remorse; that you require this device to justify your psychosis only proves your inhumanity and base apathy.

The trouble with you is that human life seems abstract and worthless, while the life of a tree is infinitely more valuable, even though both forms are at best transient. Why is it worth killing us all to save a slime mold when the earth will be stripped clean eventually by the expansion of the sun? Do you plan on saving life from that too? Whose the 'quack' now?

I do believe the world we live in now is better than your dim-witted apocalyptic vision. We may not be perfect, but unlike you we aren't sociopathic murderers in training. And that doesn't 'signify nothing,' unless you believe your own right to live has no value. If that's your view, I'll be happy to oblige. Just turn around ...

ID

Re: Something worth protecting - the pre-sentients (ape, children) from Singularity Cultists.
posted on 01/26/2002 2:51 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"As Oppenheimer would say, you have become 'death, killer of worlds' (the Gitta, from the Hindu Vedas). It is a mark of your arrogance and ignorance that you believe you can save anyone with this policy."

I do not seek to save any *one*, certainly not any hu-man. And it is not policy but rather an art, like surgery, excising a cancer from the biosphere to save the part of it that plays by the rules of the Garden. Nuking a nanotech and military research center would save most of the apes and children (pre-sentients) from your Singularity Cult, at least for a time.

Or merely extend the time available for ethical evolution of those who still have some (shall we say) soul.

And, perhaps, for other Cultists (not quite so geographically concentrated) to devote itself to taking its incompatible attitude off *my* planet. Not yours, Cultist. Mine. To me it is home. To you it is some experimental gray goo plot. Your attitude towards it is the same as Dr. Mengele's towards his patients. It was that attitude which LED your great pacifist, Dr. Einstein, to urge Roosevelt to develop the bomb via Oppenheimer. Perhaps I am Kalki. Perhaps you are. Consider:

You have no "right" to live "free" from "fools". You have rather a duty or covenant to respect life as a process. Which does not include any deliberate extinction of any kind of being native to this Earth.

Your insistence on identifying the hazard as a person or type of person or intent, rather than as a choice to acquire knowledge before wisdom, marks you as among the first victims. It is this attitude that *people* act, rather than *forces* that act *through* people as media, which marks the soul-less or vampiric being. In your diseased vision, technology is "neutral" and *people* are "bad": accordingly any degree of weaponry can and must be acquired *and used*! Infinite escalation.

By contrast what I speak of is infinite justice, although I cannot say for sure how or where it is first to strike.

I did not know either exactly how the 50% risk of "unending acts of "terrorism" that eventually wipe out government itself" would play out either, on August 17 of last year.
(see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biohazard-response/message/12 )

You are wasting your time lecturing me. I am not part of any tactical effort, and I am still working through Green Parties and Greenpeace and other groups slowly awakening to your Cult and the threat it represents.

No, I have not seen the effects of radiation poisoning firsthand. I have however slept in the cold alongside people denied any access to a commons to which they had a birthright, and a treaty right to share in. It is not a much nicer death to die of cold in a city where no one cares about you.

It is no choice of mine which condemns you, Cultist. It is the choice of yours to worship "freedom", "dignity", "intelligence" and other delusions.

You may take your next dollar and spend it on a coffee to alter your nervous system's state, on feeding a hungry human, on saving a Great Ape, or a donation to the Republican Party to save you from "terrists".

It's all up to you.

But don't claim that you don't know what a "terrist" is, or that they do not warn you in advance, or that they follow no fixed ethics.

They do.

We do.

I do.

Do you?

green (horns)
posted on 01/26/2002 3:47 PM by tomaz@techemail.com

A Green cult will decide what's a cult and what isn't?

Interesting. ;)

- Thomas

you have absolutely nothing to gain from the Singularity Cult
posted on 01/26/2002 6:41 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

There are green cults, Green NGOs, and Green Parties, not to mention green movements and Greenpeace.

They are differentiated by different means of doing the same thing: investigating the empirical impacts of human technologies and industries, and minimizing them.

Green Parties are often the most rigorous because they have to convince the public, work within the legal system, and manage a violent state infrastructure (e.g. in Germany where there have been great debates over Green support of the Social Democrats in Bush's Moron Terror).

A group that uses the Precautionary Principle, empirical evidence, and straightforward moral reasoning, without human racism, to make ethical decisions, isn't a cult.
Big-G Green is about consensus methods and scientific ecology and Ten Key Values and other such proven stuff. These are as close to objective as anyone will get in the political sciences between now and your "Singularity", so there is no chance to create any new movement that is more rigorous.

A group that uses blind optimism, "freedom", "dignity", "the US Constitution", "Christian ethics", "Sharia", or other such non-rigorous human-authored crapola, *is* a cult. Read: Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, New Labour, Social Democrats, Al Qaeda, corporations, etc..

So, yes, there is no chance of objectivity if any *non* green entity makes the "cult or not" decision.

That is different from saying that all green entities are rational. Which I didn't say. Quite the opposite:

For each of you, your personal choice is to resist the rational green groups, join the rational green groups, or try to ignore them and do "business as usual".

The third group will get unpleasantly surprised, often and intensely. The first group is insane but is part of the evolutionary process that makes the groups even more rational. The middle group will try to steer the rational greens towards some compromise, just as the public will, but will be changed more by the greens than they will change the greens.
Especially the Greens.

Trying to do nanotech or AI research without carrying a Green Party card may be as suicidal in 2012 North America as trying to do economics without a Communist Party card in the 1938 USSR.

However, by that point the Green Parties will have become infested with compromising cultists and more extreme groups will probably dominate the scene.

Regardless, the ethical speciation will continue, likely to what De Garis calls a "Gigadeath War".

It is as predictable now as static trench warfare in 1910, given the rate of industrial production and machine gun fire, populations of draft age men and distance between the Swiss Alps and the English Channel.

The filth from Houston, Texas are shoving you down the road to a charnel-pit, which hopefully will consume them first.

You still have some chance to resist, but it's diminishing with every single vote for a Republican or Democrat, or their equivalents elsewhere.

By 2012 you won't have any such chance, and the North American continent will be as much of a mess as Europe in the early part of the last century.

Grow up. If you don't like what the Green Party says, join it and fix it. You can't do that to the Republicans or Democrats, because they don't listen to you, they listen to corporate executives and academics and other such biohazards.

There is very limited time to defeat the Cultists. Allying with them only earns you a spot in a mass grave, as many in Manhattan discovered.

You have absolutely nothing to gain from the Singularity Cult, just as you would have had nothing to gain from the Nationality Cults in Europe in 1902.

If you accept their filthy promises, you will die like the filth they are. Better to die as the filth *you* are, pursuing some lower-tech version of happiness.

ethical evolution demands Cultists die while slime molds live
posted on 01/26/2002 4:25 PM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

"Why is it worth killing us all to save a slime mold when the earth will be stripped clean eventually by the expansion of the sun? Do you plan on saving life from that too? Whose the 'quack' now? "

The surest evidence of ulterior motive in argument is the arbitrary shift of space and time frames between subject and object.

When "we" do something to "us" but "we" and "us" are not exactly the same in space and time, it is propaganda not argument, to be answered as I say by warning, sabotage, then execution without further warning.

For this reason a standard time frame is required for any kind of rigorous foresight. You may see the tutorial at http://www.mark-to-future.com if you are unclear on this concept.

The standard time frame is most eloquently stated as the longest sentient lifespan divided by that same species' reproductive age. In humans, that's about seven... as the 90 somethings are dying the teenagers are starting to fall in love.

So any argument beyond seven generations is specious at best - you can't get that many sentients around a table to contemplate such a time span, only invent abstractions to pretend you see something "eternal" or "universal" or whatever.

Consider that sometime between seven generations and the Earth stripped clean by the sun, the various Great Apes would have their shot, maybe a few other species of child-like language capacity and approximately teenage culture capacity.

Whatever else is true, this is certain: *YOU* do not have the right to choose for *THEM*.

As you would do with your Cult experiments, left unimpeded.

*THAT* is worth protecting. Particularly if the Earth can thus reproduce a new inhabited planet, inhabited by a non-locust species. Or perhaps several who have learned to live in harmony without "human racism".

Planet of the Apes is worth replicating. Planet of the Singularity Cult Concentration Camps is not.

That's not a subjective judgement. That's an objective truth.

There is something clearly morally right about caged collared humans sniffing each other curiously, unable to harm their moral superiors the Apes.

And there is something clearly morally wrong about lab-coated humans torturing Apes to death to measure the exact durations of their screaming.

Humans are a transitional species. Even Cultists can see that.

It's "worth" killing all you Cultists to save a slime mold, because a slime mold is a superior organism to Cultists: it takes no more than it needs as it needs it, and it doesn't torture other organisms to death for what amounts to "fun" or "curiosity".

Ethical evolution.

Check it out,
Cultist

Secrets, Secrets, Secrets?
posted on 08/25/2002 2:49 AM by jjaeger@mecfilms.com

>We're here to handle what venture capital doesn't. "Spreading nanotech benefits" means efforts on two fronts: (1) speeding R&D through technical education, and (2) working to reform intellectual property rules, so that publicly-funded research isn't diverted into private monopolies, as now happens with gene research. . . . Thanks to a modest Senior Associate who prefers not to be named here, we have a $35,000 Challenge Grant running through January 2002 --


Why doesn't the Senior Associate want to be named? This sounds inconsistent with the ideal of openness and the idea of funds not being diverted into private monopolies. If this Senior Associate suddenly wanted to donate say a billion dollars, what secrecy would prevail? If we have secrets at the $35,000 level, why am I having a difficulty time believing that we won't have even bigger secrets at higher-dollar levels?

James Jaeger