From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 19:48:59 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> That is not so. This is cultural relativism at its worse. Many
> of those who support this terrorism despise reason as the tool
> of cultural imperalism. They despise economic freedom and free
> markets at the heart of capitalism as the great evil drawing
> people away from the Truth of their faith. We are attacked very
> much largely as a giant and powerful negation of their set of
> beliefs and their institution in governments.
I really don't think that's what's going on. I think the US is hated
because it acts like the world's only superpower can get away with
anything, bombs everyone in sight at the drop of the pin but screams
bloody murder when anyone dares even think about touching its own sacred
soil, does not even pretend to respect the sovereignty of other nations,
and in general purports to act as the world's police officer while being
completely unaccountable to any other nation and/or the UN. That's how
they see us, and I think they're more or less right.
I also think that the US must, for the sake of the world, go on acting as
the world's police officer; that the US has never stopped caring about
minimizing the fatality count; and that the US has abused its
unaccountability less than any other powerful country or organization in
the history of the world. But even so, if you decide to police the world,
then you have to expect that a certain number of your buildings are going
to get blown up; just as a nation that chooses to establish its eternal
religious homeland on the most fought-over piece of ground on the entire
planet, instead of someplace sensible like Canada, has to expect a few
terrorist attacks.
And there is nothing we can do to stop those terrorist attacks, not if we
send a billion troops and spend a trillion dollars - just as a
nation-state the US chooses to chastise has no realistic way of
counterinvading or even harming us in the slightest. The terrorist
attacks are stupid and futile and harm only the innocent, and there is
nothing we can realistically do to stop them. Bombing some country whose
government has offended us is stupid and futile and harms only the
innocent, and there is nothing they can realistically do to stop us. I
guess it goes to show that you can create symmetry without creating
justice.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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