Re: Human lives: Do the math (was: Impact on history)

From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 22:41:23 MDT


>From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>

>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> Wrote:

> >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.

I think killing 20,000 people (of any nationality) would be overkill and
would cast us as the "bad guys" in this thing in the eyes of the world. I'm
with you John. I don't see us killing any more than a few thousand people,
even if this "war" drags on a few years. Regardless of all the rhetoric I
think we're likely to see a lot more of the surgical types of strikes we saw
in Desert Storm. They may not be *quite* as surgical as we were 10 years
ago, but you're fooling yourself if you expect to see any sort of "carpet
bombing" campaign.

-Zero

"I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking
that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
Has to be." -- George Taylor _Planet of the Apes_ (1968)

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