From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 14:37:46 MDT
Brian D Williams wrote:
>From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>>But to engage in *nuclear* retaliation
>>against any group that has not directly used a nuclear weapon
>>risks the survival of human civilization by eroding the principle
>>of DO NOT USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS EXCEPT AGAINST COUNTRIES THAT HAVE
>>DIRECTLY HIT YOU WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, which is a critical
>>principle in international relations.
>
> Yet if Manhattan was nuked, this principal has already been
> violated and lost. So in effect it's currently worthless.
Not at all. If terrorists with access to one or a tiny handful of nukes
engage in the first use of nuclear weapons, this is not the same as the
abandonment of this principle for international relations between
nations that have arsenals of hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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