From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Nov 28 2001 - 10:04:35 MST
steve wrote:
>
> It's worth thinking about this from the viewpoint of
> realpolitik/raison d'etat. If people attack you you need to know what their
> beef is so you can calculate the relative cost of 1. Killing them, 2. giving
> them what they want 3. giving them some of what they want but making it
> clear that's all they're going to get. If giving your enemy what they want
> is too costly (a threat to some vital interest or the existence of the
> state) then you accept the cost of killing them. If the cost balance works
> out the other way you make a deal - this is what the British government has
> done with IRA/Sinn Fein.
"Realpolitik" is what got us into this mess in the first place.
"Realpolitik" is what people call shortsightedness when they wish to think
of themselves as being clever.
If you give terrorists what they want, you end up with more terrorists.
Appeasement. Danegeld. Basic rule of supply and demand.
You can't calculate for the single, local, present issue, without taking
into account the effect on future issues. "Realpolitik" means not taking
into account what happens on the next pass; the effect that your violation
of principle (for realpolitik is never invoked except where principles are
being violated) will have on future dealings with the other nations who
stood by and watched you betray, meddle, appease, or whatever it is you
were doing under the banner of "realpolitik".
The foundation of ethics is the iterated Prisoner's Dilemna, and those who
wish to try and excuse ethical violations will generally analyze only the
single, local round. They don't argue explicitly that there is just the
single round, rather they simply don't analyze anything else in their
argument.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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