From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 23 1996 - 18:44:13 MST
> I think the Holocaust was a good example where there was a great number of
> people possessing bad memes which generally made them passive and refuse to
> join together to fight their enemy. The Jewish people were running the
> whole system which made the Germans even angrier because they were doing
> such an efficient job. Bad memes meant demise of a great number of people
> who didn't need to die but chose to.
The Jewish people weren't running a damn thing; they were simply the
default scapegoats and got targeted again. What is this, the Elders of
Zion meme again? And the victims of the Holocaust did not *choose* to
die. If the half-dead (and, far too often, completely dead) debarkees
of the overcrowded, food and waterless death trains all charged at once,
then they *might* have overrun the machine-gun-equipped and well-fed
guards, after which they would have no problem but crossing a hostile
empire full of Nazi tanks in rags after not eating for days. Even if
the Jewish people had all revolted at once and at the first sign of
trouble, they would have been outnumbered and would simply have died.
I am deeply offended by this ill-informed attempt to shift the blame for
the Holocaust onto the Jews. Please 1) retract your statements 2) watch
an actual documentary about the Holocaust or 3) declare yourself an open
anti-Semite.
> The Jimson weed was growing in San Bernodino in California. Teenagers were
> using the hallucinogenic drug so they decided that instead of educating and
> allowing them to make their own choice (not condemn the drug) they decided
> to go around the area in an attempt to chop up every living plant when it's
> indigenous to the area. (An impossible feat). I think they'res something
> wrong with this situation.
Great idea, bad implementation. Should've used biological warfare
instead of hunting them down one by one. Besides, any teenager with a
surviving seed could have restored the species in a few years.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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