From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 10:10:10 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 2:18 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: RE: thinking about the unthinkable
At 10:38 PM 7/29/03 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
[lee]>You sound as though *all* genocidal actions can be, or ought to be
[lee]>dismissed, out of hand. Have you read "Ender's Game"?
[Damien]Did you get as far as the end, where the appalling error
resulting in this tragedy was made clear? (That error, emblematic of
certain discussions on this topic, was firstly to overstate the supposed
threat, and secondly to allow a clever child to murder almost all the
members of an entire conscious species while playing what he regarded as
a game).
[Damien]Did you read the sequels, where the sorrowing Ender took as his
vastly extended life's contrition the recovery of that murdered species,
and the personal, detailed expression of grief at the individual deaths
of ordinary humans, as a `Speaker for the Dead'?
<me> Gentlemen; its a book. You can't use Orson Scott Cards
fictional characters as a basis for sound judgements as they
regard to genocide.... Besides, there are so many *real life*
examples to choose from <historical examples>...
omard-out
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