Re: free speech on the extrope list

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 06:37:53 MDT

  • Next message: Paul Grant: "RE: Radical Suggestions"

    On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Samantha Atkins wrote:

    > Evil triumphs when good people say nothing out of some rather twisted
    > notion of all things being tolerable.

    Yes, and then the question becomes whether sins of commission are
    greater or lesser than sins of omission. I believe that I have
    "walked the talk" in terms of putting oneself (and ones resources)
    on the line with respect to attempting to save human lives.
    Even if my argument that the saving of future human lives
    might be worth the sacrifice of current human lives was
    flawed one could easily get into a discussion of "current"
    human lives. 10^8 human lives is our approximate death
    toll for humanity on a 2 year basis. So in the spirit of not
    "saying nothing" and "tolerating" that situation I will ask
    the rhetorical question "*What* is each of us doing to
    prevent those deaths?"

    It might be interesting from a bioethical standpoint to put
    Truman's justification (using the bomb instead of troops)
    and Hitler's arguments (for eliminating the Jews) side-by-side
    to see where the similarities and dissimilarities are.
    (Presumably both arguments were of the form that more
    "valuable" human lives will be saved if we do "this".)
    It might also be interesting to ask the people of China
    or Korea or Isreal how they feel about whether the use
    of the atomic bomb (or the fire bombing of German or
    Japanese cities) were "justified".

    I believe that "War is Hell". I also believe that most
    people on the list do *not* think we are at war. It
    ranges from everything like saving the Martinots to
    dealing with aging to dealing with amoral AIs.

    So the questions might be of the form "Are we willing
    to be aware?", "Are we willing to take action?" and
    "Are we are willing to sacrifice humanity due to
    personal or moral repugnance?"

    Robert



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