From: I William Wiser (will@wiserlife.com)
Date: Sat Sep 15 2001 - 19:42:14 MDT
Not an altered Koran but a Koran with commentary and
ideas written by the more reasonable and agreeable Islamic scholars.
Basically a book which moves people
closer to truth and good behavior but begins with ideas
and information they will find interesting and useful. Such
a book could be produced and delivered with relatively little expense. It
would be acceptable to almost everyone
and deeply hated by a few.
I generally will not lie to people (except under extreme
duress) but I am not above accepting their premises for
a while and reasoning towards a good solution without
fighting all of their misconceptions. Water is always
true to it's nature but it conforms to containers, rocks,
etc.
I also really like the radio idea. Relatively inexpensive
short wave radios, preset to interesting stations in a
language they understand. Solar powered, maybe windup, rechargeable
batteries. Drop them in with little
(shinny, light catching) parachutes, have them turned
on and tuned to an appropriate channel broadcasting
a good introductory show. Include ear buds for private
listening and a speaker for groups. Pricey idea but cheaper than bombs. No
single message but a way to start listening to many ideas. Control freaks
will hate this idea.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Reason" <reason@exratio.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 1:23 PM
Subject: RE: Another new offensive strategies
>
>
> --> Harvey Newstrom
>
> > John Clark wrote,
> > > Bin Laden is a hero in much of the Islamic world but that's also a
> > > society that disapproves of alcohol and is astronomically puritanical,
> > > so what we need is someone who's good at PhotoShop. What we
> > > need is a picture of Bin Laden drinking a martini with his arm
> > > around a beautiful girl in a bikini, or better yet a gay looking young
> > > man in a Speedo.
> >
> > Spike Jones wrote,
> > > We have really good printing technology. We can print and
> > > bind books for almost nothing. How about if we print truckloads
> > > of korae, except each one with one altered verse? If we get
> > > clever, we could print a million of them, each with a different
> > > altered verse, bind them with pre-aged covers, so they could
> > > not be distinguished easily from the originals without reading
> > > the entire thing, carefully. If those get into circulation, print a
> > > new set with the old altered verse plus an additional altered verse.
> > > In each case these altered verses reverse the meaning of the original.
> > > I figure one cruise missile aimed at scorched and barren desert
> > > would cost about the same as one truckload of korae. spike
> >
> > This is ludicrous. Extropians are believers in TRUTH. Yet every time
we
> > have any sort of threat to our ideals, many people on this list start
> > inventing all sorts of subterfuge and lies. The archives are
> > full of ideas
> > on infiltrating groups, committing crimes and blaming them on
> > someone else,
> > issuing false statements attributed to someone else, starting
> > false rumors, etc.
>
> I agree. You can win with the truth; descent into subterfuge and secrecy
is
> very bad. I see this all the time in business; it's the knee-jerk reaction
> of 90% of execs when in conflict with other companies or when something
goes
> wrong. Must be hardwired into humans somewhere.
>
> But I liked the underlying core of the koran idea, if not them
> implementation. As a culture (and including technology in this
definition),
> US core competency is not in fighting wars [rationale: the US doesn't want
> to, not that it is technically bad at it]. US core competency is in
> spreading the US cultural meme package -- you just have to look at China
to
> see how we're doing at that with a country where we're really trying.
> Whatever anyone says, US companies and interests are fully engaged and
> merged with Chinese companies and interests in my industry (wireless) and
> many others; there is a great exchange of culture, ideas and technologies
> going on right now. Chinese and American businesspeople -- the
politicians
> and influencers and moneymen of tomorrow -- are open and friendly with one
> another.
>
> If you look at where real non-negotiable problems in the world come from,
> they seem to center around isolated countries and regions, those in which
> the citizens cannot be a part of the global flow of knowledge. So taking
the
> book idea, we apply it to an equal mix of : a) educational materials (got
to
> make it easy for people who can read to teach those who can't), b) history
> and cultural works relevant to the region we're dropping them on, c)
> literature from around the world, d) books formed up of translated
newspaper
> digests from around the world.
>
> Then we get on and drop this stuff on a country.
>
> There's all sorts of tech solutions too (which is where we get fanciful):
>
> a) drop handhelds and chips instead of books. Use the simputers developed
> for India; $200 each, rugged and simple.
>
> b) if you're going to invade someplace (which you really shouldn't -- see
> point on core competency above), invade it in a small way to set up and
> protect small distribution centers surrounding those recently-invented
> book-binding devices that can run off books on demand. Propagate the
devices
> and the books they produce.
>
> c) hell, radios would work. Lots and lots of them; the wind-up clockwork
> types.
>
> So anyway, back to the points: books are better than bombs. Isolationism
> breeds worse terrorists. In a small world, the community can't afford to
let
> countries damage their own populations by sitting in the corner and not
> participating. Or forcing them to do the same. Just build a big pipe for
the
> exchange of information between cultures, and let the market and human
> nature do the rest.
>
> Reason
> http://www.exratio.com/
>
>
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