From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Wed Jul 01 1998 - 19:32:59 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> mark@unicorn.com writes:
>
> > Anders Sandberg [asa@nada.kth.se] wrote:
> > >True. But today a moderately educated crazie can buy enough ammonium
> > >nitrate to blow up a block or two.
> >
> > And the fact that few do is strong evidence that the crazy threat is
> > vastly overstated.
>
> Sigh. You still miss my point: even very rare crazies with
> sufficiently powerful weapons are a problem. It is a simple product:
> population * proportion of crazies using big weapons * tech level =
> amount of damage done. I don't think crazies are a major problem
> today, but they might very well be in the future if the conditions are
> right.
Yes, it all depends on how much the government wants to crack down. If the
population is used to being free, there will come a point where a sufficient
percentage will no longer tolerate the opression. Any revolutionary program
starts with the revolutionary group staging minor harassing attacks, which
escalate goverment oppression in an effort to crack down on the brigands. This
escalation causes grater numbers of people to sympathize and support the
revolutionary cause, leading to more attacks and more government oppression.
There comes a point where either the government or the revolution will commit a
major outrage which will galvanize the public sentiment against it. This is the
deciding event in a revolution, the fulcrum upon which a whole nation can be
turned. In our own Revolutionary War, the events were the Boston Massacre and
the Battles associated with the famous Ride of Paul Revere.
This is how our government was able to use McVeigh's attack in Oklahoma City
against the burgeoning militia movement, and why the weight of evidence
supporting the contention that the government was at the very least aware of the
conspiracy (if not complicit) and let the attack happen seems so credible. If
McVeigh had staged the attack during hours where there would have been no
children in the child care center in the building, and when minimal numbers of
civilian employees were in the building, then the government would have been
hard pressed to make it look like such an outrage, and McVeigh's attack would
have been seen by enough people to be attacking a legitimate military target (as
defined in the Laws of War), that any laws passed by congress or enacted by
presidential fiat to restrict public access to firearms or materials with
explosives potential would have been seen as the most rank government
oppression, and would have escalated the level of conflict. As it is, it has
neatly defused the whole potential for wider conflict.
>
>
> > >Tomorrow he might buy an assembler
> > >kit and release industrial strength disassemblers in the watru
> > >supply.
> >
> > And if you're relying on keeping assemblers out of their hands as a
> > 'defence' you will die when they get one. If, like me, you're building
> > real effective defences you'll live.
>
> Did you read my analysis in my first post in this thread at all? I did
> point out that limiting access to many such technologies is hard or
> impossible. I also pointed out that it isn't given that a defense
> exists against all technologies, although this is still unsettled.
It all depends on how much you want to isolate yourself, and how much you want
to make yourself a target. Granted that as transhumanists, we are all targets of
hate from the fundamentalists and reactionaries of all stripes, which could in
time lead to violence, however, we aren't oppressing anybody, so we do have some
points in our favor.
>
>
> > >I think you miss my point in this thread: there is a real problem is
> > >certain technologies of mass destruction become too available and
> > >there are no good ways of protecting from them or avoiding them.
> >
> > But there are; I've given you the most effective defence against every
> > single one of them: don't be there when it happens. I'm talking about
> > living in reality, Brin and others are playing S&M fantasy games.
>
> In order to convince me that you are really realistic, you better
> convince me that you can get personal off-world capability before the
> risk posed by crazies with big guns becomes severe.
Since the risk by crazies is currently near non-existent (you are more likely to
be hit by a plane falling out of the sky than attacked by a terrorist), and the
only NBC attack by crazies was the sarin attack in Japan several years ago. Show
me a nut with a nuke and I'll be ready to show you off world capability (If its
so easy for him to get a nuke, then it should be just as easy for me to build a
nuclear powered rocket!!!!)
> I'm really trying to clarify the issue, rather than propagate any
> favorite political memes. Let's try to do some risk assessments based
> on facts and reasonable extrapolations.
>
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?
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