Re: Interspecific War WAS Re: Inadvertent media malevolence

Elizabeth Childs (echilds@linex.com)
Tue, 25 May 1999 09:57:05 -0700

In support of your position, a BBC article about evidence that Neanderthals mated with Cro Magnons:

http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F323000/323657.stm

This supports the theory that Cro Magnons did not drive Neanderthals to extinction, but lived side by side.

Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> "Raymond G. Van De Walker" <rgvandewalker@juno.com> writes:
>
> > On 24 May 1999 17:12:41 +0200 Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> writes:
> > >Our most important objective media-wise
> > >right now is to make transhumanism a respectable perspective, and not
> > >just something that can be dismissed as fringe or unsupported.
> >
> > Just an ignorant question here. Do any of you have specific ideas
> > for preventing an interspecific war of extermination between
> > transhumans of different species, or between humans and transhumans?
>
> Rationality. Why would species A want to get rid of species B (costly
> and dangerous), when they can instead trade or cooperate and both get
> the benefits? I have a half-written paper about this issue, and it
> seems that even wastly different transhuman species or
> humans-transhumans have little to gain by attacking each other due to
> things like the law of comparative advantage, the stability or
> reciprocal cooperation and the likeliehood of having very different
> ecological niches. As long as the number or impact of irrational
> agents is sufficiently low and there are no "dominant technologies"
> that give the wielder total dominance over any non-wielder, this seems
> to be stable.
>
> > It seems to me that the simplest way is to prevent human speciation,
> > but I'm willing to be surprised.
>
> Lack of speciation has never hindred intraspecies wars. But it is
> notable that democracies never seem to go to war against each other.
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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