Re: 1e6 advantage to the terrorists

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Sep 29 2001 - 01:42:20 MDT


"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >
> > > Who is a better person to tell? Your congressperson?
> > > It feels safer, but face it, they'll "rat you out" in
> > > a minute when the fbi asks for the source of the info.
> > >
> > > Bill Wattenburg? I was impressed by his website at:
> > > http://www.pushback.com/
> >
> > Frankly, I don't much understand the concern about going public.
> > Let's face it: if one of us is capable of thinking of it, so are
> > hundreds of others, some of whom are bad guys. Perhaps they don't
> > have the means or the will to carry it out, but I'm sure it's in
> > the minds of at least one of them. There are already lots of
> > known methods of doing lots of damage, so exposing one more isn't
> > going to change anything drastically.
> >
> > I would just go straight to the fourth estate: your local news
> > providers, talk shows, etc.
>
> I honestly think this is irresponsible. Terrorists are not as creative as
> Extropians. They may be putting lots of thought into the problem, but it
> will be conventional thought. We should not be lending them our
> creativity.

Well, if you bring an idea into the open then it is more likely
that our creative minds will find a way to guard against that
form of terrorism. If we get afraid to talk about our fearsome
potential threats then we lose some of our collective
intelligence and ability to add to defenses.

I don't think we should let the threat of terrorism cramp
discussions in this place at this level.

- samantha



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