From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pigdog.org)
Date: Mon Sep 08 1997 - 19:15:34 MDT
Peter McCluskey writes:
> If you are able to imagine value systems sufficiently different
> from our capitalist values, you will probably be able to find
> explanations with more predictive power than "stupidity" for
> starting wars.
I think in the post that you were replying to, I was trying to
broadcast disapproval, so I wasn't particularly concerning
myself with predictive power. As Alan Kay said, the best way
to predict the future is to create it. If it weren't for that
sort of idea, there would be no interesting reasons for
pacifism.
It's hard to do both exhortation and explanation well simultaneously,
and it's interesting that I phrased my exhortation so badly that
you read it as an explanation. Maybe I was being sneaky on some
level I wasn't aware of at the time.
> Try desires for power, fame, pleasing Allah combined with
> indifference towards a long life expectancy (for example, some
> Olympic athletes reportedly say they would take a drug that
> promised them victory even if they expected it to kill them soon
> after).
I can imagine these things, and I can imagine desiring them,
but I'm not boddhisattva enough to be able to avoid
disapproving of those who desire them enough to want to start
wars over them. Perhaps if I were less materialistic, I could
get along well with warmongers and the ideals over which they
fight.
You did put an interesting thought in my head though: an
orthodox Tiplerite jihad, being fought over whether or not
big-endian or little-endian computers tended most to the
greater glory of Infinite Computation. It would be very funny
if it weren't so scary.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ expectation foils perception -pcd
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