Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> Wrote:
>Would America even consider invading Afghanistan if Afghanistan could turn
>around and invade the US? Of course not.
A keen grasp of the obvious.
>killing a hundred thousand Afghan citizens to prevent ten future terrosist
>attacks costing an average of five thousand American lives apiece would
>be bad mathematics even if it worked.
I think it's wonderful mathematics because I could be one of those
Americans killed and I could not be one of those Afghanis killed and
my life is worth more than anything else in the known universe.
And another thing, who do you think is more likely to advance
the singularity, the average resident of Wall Street or the
average resident of Afghanistan who can not read or write in any
language?
>Killing twenty thousand Afghani as *revenge*
Nobody knows for sure of course but I doubt it will be that high,
I'll bet this will turn out to be the first war where the American
deaths were higher than the enemy's.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:49 MDT