From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Tue Sep 18 2001 - 16:11:47 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> Mark Walker wrote:
> >
> > From: "Spike Jones" <spike66@attglobal.net>
> > > > >This post is going to haunt us all - it is in the archives...Damien
> > > > Broderick
> > >
> > I am not so sure. I think if anyone brings this up the "defence" can be that
> > by and large the list did not even give the proposal rational consideration.
>
> That's hardly a defense! Especially to the proposal that "ends justify
> the means" logic is implied by the Extropian Principles! A good defense
> is that the proposal was instantly and rationally refuted (ahem), and that
> the error was shown to be a generic ethical error that had nothing to do
> with the particulars of transhumanism.
>
> -- -- -- -- --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Thank you, Eliezer.
Crimes against Humanity are the worst crimes. Genocide is the worst of those. To
me, the suggestion to even consider engagement in genocide is a crime against
Humanity. This is conceptual vandalism. It tears down our hope that people will
rise above our genetic blood lust and become beings worthy to go to the stars. I
believe that this thread has destroyed our group, we just don't know it yet.
Thankfully, this kind of idea will not be brought to POTUS. He may be dumb as a
fence post, but his is not a monster, and he would never listen to it. If he did,
and I truly thought this country would go that way, I would be on the first
transport to Afghanistan to either act as part of a human shield for the people
there, or to go with them so as to avoid living to see a world without value.
I am quite sure that a very large number of Americans, and Humanists from around
the world, would decide the same way. Did the idiotic analysis proposed take that
into consideration?
A Rabbi I saw on the coverage told a story from the Holocaust about a prisoner in
one of the genocide camps that was seen praying to God and giving thanks. Another
prisoner asked what he could possibly be thanking God for. Referring to the
people who put him there, he said, "I thank God He did not make me one of them."
-Ken
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