From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Sep 28 2002 - 21:45:18 MDT
Eliezer writes
> If one American city gets nuked - as horrible as that would be - the
> resulting physical damage would not directly stop the Singularity or, in
> all probability, slow it down, unless it was a direct hit on Silicon
> Valley. The tremendous psychic damage to the survivors would slow down
> the Singularity and raise the existential risk level, and the chief reason
> for that is people like Ashcroft.
I understand your logic, and would also have a
"Singularity-based" morality if I thought that
it was truly immanent and benign; after all,
under those circumstances everything would be
so much better that the cost wouldn't matter.
> Without an actual species-killer biovirus or a strategic nuclear arsenal,
> Hussein is not a *direct* threat to the Singularity. He is a threat only
> because of the response he can provoke from people like Ashcroft.
Earlier you had written
> Ashcroft is a threat to a free and open society that is likely to
> play a heavy role in the Singularity and hence the defense of Earth.
> Saddam Hussein is a threat to the world chiefly because of how free and
> open societies respond to him as an irritant. Ashcroft is a direct threat
> to the Singularity;
>From your perspective I would think that Saddam Hussein
would be a larger threat if there is a strong possibility
of an atomic detonation in a big western city because
of the panic that would ensue.
*If* one accepts that John Ashcroft represents a threat
to more than a fringe of present American society, which
I don't think he does due to the checks and balances,
then it still seems a stretch to me to view the oppression
he will cause and has caused as a threat to the Singularity.
Perhaps you could say more.
> > I think that people are feeling that their nation
> > is attacked, and it's those people who support the
> > administration and an effort to get Saddam Hussein
> > first.
>
> So what? Are they right, or wrong, in doing so?
My opinion is that if it is *likely* that Saddam Hussein
has or will have weapons of mass destruction that will
be used by him or fall into the hands of terrorists
who will use them, then the U.S. should attack Iraq
first.
Moreover, I think that anyone is wrong who acknowledges
that there is a better than one chance in five that the
premise of my last sentence is true, and who does not
think Iraq should be invaded.
I will also say that if the probability were shown
to me to be less than one percent, for certain I'd
oppose an attack on Iraq.
Based only on what I intuit, my feeling is that the
chance is about 10 to 30 percent that if Saddam Hussein
acquires WMD they'll be used on western cities.
Lee
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