From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 09:03:59 MDT
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> On the other hand, should we debate every such disaster in
> particular?
No, given their weekly to daily frequency at this point
that would tend to clutter the list more than it already is.
I would prefer to focus on the significant events. I think the
situation in Russia currently qualifies in that respect.
> The specifics of events like this are lamentable and touch our hearts,
> but that is not in itself a reason (beyond social community) to make
> it an extropian debate subject.
While the debate of ongoing and seemingly irresolvable conflicts
seems pointless (the Israeli-Palestinian situation comes to mind),
the debate of a resolvable conflict seems worthy of discussion.
The resolution in this situation could range from deporting all
Chechnyans, as Stalin did, to simply freeing Chechnya from Russia.
It begs a number of extropic issues that go back at least to the
U.S. civil war -- when does one let "your" people go?
> Yes. It also shows that the threat of supertech terrorism might be
> smaller than the threat of lowtech but well organised terrorism. If
> there are any technological enablers here it is likely better
> communications, which makes coordination easier.
There isn't better communications here. That has existed for decades.
What is here seems to be an increasing core concept that it is
reasonable to sacrifice ones life for a concept. Even if the
Russians pull out of Chechnya -- do you think they will let the
terrorists go free/unpunished? That doesn't fit the Russian mindset
IMO. The terrorists have already killed at least one person.
> Even if the destructive power is constant a slight increase in
> coordination increases the total destructiveness enormously.
I can't believe that the coordination is significantly greater now
than a Roman legion had 2000 years ago. I don't see the Chechnyans
running around like secret service agents with two way communication
capabilities.
If anything the coordination advantages seem to be on the side
of those enforcing the law. What seems to be taking place on
the terrorist side is an increasing willingness to sacrifice oneself.
> It seems likely that improvements are possible, and in the long run
> much of the advantage to terrorist coordination might vanish due to
> transparency or monitoring - if the probability of revealing an
> attack plan per person involved becomes large enough the only
> effective terrorist cells would be extremely small and isolated,
> bringing the problem back to the irrational individual problem
> mentioned earlier.
Yes, but the same transparency and monitoring that can defeat
terrorist organizations seem likely to defeat organizations that
would (legitimately) seek to overthrow an oppressive regime.
It would seem that to preserve our safety and security we may
have to give up our ability to overthrow a government that has
"cooked the books" so to speak. [In the U.S. the memories of
the Nixon era have not completely faded.]
Robert
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