From: Michael S. Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Dec 26 2000 - 14:52:34 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> "J. R. Molloy" wrote:
> >
> > I didn't participate in this survey, but I can tell you that when I was 15
> > years old, I fully expected to die in combat someday on some muddy Asian
> > soil. Things have turned out altogether differently than I had expected,
> > and I may owe my life to the atom bomb. Without nuclear weapons, I
> > probably would have been drafted and sent off to war, there to die with
> > millions of others. The bomb made the war cold. Thanks to all the
> > scientists who continue to make total war unthinkable by making possible
> > weapons of mass destruction.
>
> Perhaps you do owe your life to the atom bomb. It is a valid point.
> Nonetheless, calling total war "unthinkable" is not smart. War has not
> been made unthinkable. It has been made more dangerous. It has been made
> less profitable. It has not been made impossible.
So long as the vast majority of people tend to be rational, self
centered, and stubbornly independent most of the time, I think
impossible is a good way to describe things. Making war so expensive a
proposition that there is no market for it makes it statistically as
impossible as another big bang.
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