From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 05:29:04 MDT
Scott Badger [wbadger@psyberlink.net] wrote:
>Trying to avoid the targets of crazies with mass destruction capabilities
>makes no sense to me. Where exactly would you predict crazies are going to
>strike? They're CRAZY! You'd end up turning into an agoraphobic.
Hardly... there are very few crazies, and they're generally going to strike
at a few big targets. For example, in the movies and books it's usually New
York or Tokyo that people decide to blow up: the lesson being that living
in either will be bad for your health if there are crazies around with
nukes. Similarly freedom fighters and terrorists are likely to attack DC or
some other big Federal government center; the Federal building in Oklahoma
city had been destroyed several times in fiction before it was in fact. The
odds that some crazy will decide to drop a nuke or bioweapon on the
village where I live is almost zero.
> Leave the
> Earth? Temporary solution at best for a long-lived organism.
Excuse me? You really expect me to spend most of a thousand year plus
lifespan on a tiny little speck of dirt out here on the edge of this
galaxy? 99.99999999999999999% of the universe is off-Earth, and any long
lived organism will naturally choose to leave sooner or later. The threat
of crazies will only increase that desire a little.
> Perhaps I'm misreading,
> but it sounds like you're saying, "Just don't be one of the unfortunate
> ones. You can't stop crazies so don't even try. Save your own butt."
You can't, without putting electrodes in everyone's brains, and if you
try that *I'll* do everything I can to destroy you first. You might be
able to delay them a little, but any serious attempt to prevent crazies
will require oppressive measures that will ensure that freedom fighters
do nuke you.
> I don't conceive of
> Transhumanism as being about ME transcending MY limits, but about US
> transcending OUR limits.
I don't get an indefinite lifespan by sacrificing myself for the Extropian
collective; I get an indefinite lifespan by living a long time. Now, sure,
I'd much rather that we did it together than seperately. But I'm not doing
this for your benefit, I'm doing it for mine.
> Your solution hardly reflects any humane concern
> for the safety or welfare of innocent others, perhaps less enlightened or
> informed.
*Shrug* all the information is out there, if people are so ostrich-like
that they prefer not to keep themselves informed about major threats then
that's their problem.
> If we had some ideas about how to minimize the danger, wouldn't
> we be ethically obliged to do something about it instead of just stock up
> on groceries and such?
Like what? I've had discussions about the likely effects of year-2000 bugs
on several mailing lists and been treated like an evil raving survivalist.
They don't want to hear, and certainly don't want to believe that anything
could screw up their nice tidy little lives. Tough luck to them if it does
come out bad; I can't help those who don't want my help.
BTW, one of the things I forgot to include in the list of what I know about
year 2000 bugs as a programmer:
* There are no manual backups for many computer systems.
Just one example: someone checked with a railway in the US because they
assumed the railway could obviously go back to manual switching if the
computer systems go down. But, oops! They took out all the manual switches
in their lines when the computers were installed. So if the computers go
down the trains can't go anywhere unless they lay new track to replace
the switches the computers control.
Mark
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