On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 03:12:55PM +1000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:20 PM 12/09/2001 -0400, Jerry Mitchell wrote:
> >and a culture based on
> >reason.
>
> If only. Nobody I saw held high a copy of Karl Popper or John Stuart Mill.
> What I've watched sprayed across the media has been ceaseless, inanely
> desperate, desperately inane god-invoking, my true God can beat up your
> false God, all the old medieval bullshit. So sad.
Indeed. Much is of course simply due to the emotional distress, which
causes a high level of arousal and hence inhibits creative thinking in
favor of well-rehearsed quick actions - i.e. blasting somebody rather
than taking the time to do a serious, scrupulously fair trial.
Personally I see my role right now as scurrying around trying to protect
the open society from its members: they can do far more damage than the
terrorists ever did in the current culture of hate/fear. Right now a lot
of very dangerous decisions that will have long term effects will be
made, for example in encryption law.
More people really should read Popper and Machiavelli. And we really
need to debug the fight or flight response.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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