RE: META: Working Towards a Pledge

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 08:23:30 MDT

  • Next message: Alfio Puglisi: "Re: ASTRONOMY: A Quark Star?"

    On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Greg Burch wrote:

    > Well said, Lee! If you care about this list as a forum for continuing
    > discussions of vital ideas and issues, PLEASE read -- and REREAD --
    > Lee's post and make a conscious and continuing effort to adopt Lee's
    > pledge.

    I agree with both Lee and Greg and have tried, at least much of
    the time, to follow similar rules. The exceptions perhaps being
    when I enter "rant mode" and I try to provide notification for that.

    > A personal note. Someone recently asked for a statement by people
    > identified with list governance about their own personal opinions on the
    > war in Iraq. [snip]

    I'll generally agree with Greg. I am not a pro-war person -- having
    nearly been a draft resistor during the Vietnam war. I also do
    not believe much of the justification for the war given by the
    current U.S. administration (pointing to an intelligence system
    manipulation or outright failure -- but after 911 its obvious
    there are possible problems there). But I *do* believe, in
    retrospect, that the war was/is probably very extropic.
    I believe that Tom Friedman (NY Times) and Hillary Clinton have
    both provided good reasons for that perspective, either in columns
    or recent interviews (esp. with Charlie Rose).

    The problem isn't whether Saddam was a dictator. Dictators
    can manage a population quite effectively (and extropically)
    [the movie "Anna and The King" suggests how this may be true
    { and at times be problematic }.]

    The *problem*, pointed out perhaps more in retrospect, was
    that Saddam was a "tyrant". So dealing with Saddam was
    justified on entirely on a moral (and extropic) basis.
    [I'm using a utilitarian analysis perspective here in
    terms of lives preserved, which I know has gotten me
    into trouble before, but this time I think it may be
    correct.] Now, whether the utilitarian analysis plays
    out successfully depends a lot on whether one can get
    at least 4 "tribes" of people who do not generally
    get along with each other to get along. It will be
    interesting to see if that is a problem that can be
    resolved successfully.

    I will freely admit that the U.S. (and the UN) have significant
    problems coming up with solutions to deal with "tyrants".
    Progress for "humanity" (from an extropic perspective) requires
    that that need should be dealt with.

    Robert



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jun 14 2003 - 08:32:40 MDT