From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Dec 15 2002 - 19:26:16 MST
spike66 wrote:
> Amara Graps wrote:
>
>> After an Iraqi vice president challenged President Bush
>> to settle his differences with Saddam Hussein in
>> personal combat, more than a few pundits snickered
>> that a duel might be preferable to military mobilization.
>> Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., the head of the Ludwig von
>> Mises Institute, suggested, "Choose your weapons,
>> fellas, and leave the rest of us out of it." " Amara
>
> At one point in history, some conflicts were done
> this way. The biblical story of David and Goliath
> was an example. Opposing armies would line up,
> shout insults at each other, then each side would
> send up its biggest and baddest dude, who would go
> at it mano a mano. The demoralized losing side
> would generally run off with little actual bloodshed.
> Ah, the good old days.
>
> I propose we do likewise today, except with mechanized
> battlebots.
Do George W and Saddam each have to build their own battlebots, no outside
advice allowed? That would be... interesting. I wonder who'd win.
Personally, I think that George W and Saddam should duke it out in piloted
battlemechs, but I wouldn't ask them to build the battlemechs themselves.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:45 MST