"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> There are a very few people who are down on my list as "hit them as hard
> as you like, you won't accidentally shatter their psyche". Being on that
> list is a deep compliment, and I try very hard to get on others' versions
> of that list.
>
> Samantha Atkins is on the list. She can hold her own - against the entire
> list, if necessary - because, like Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom... and
> myself... and others... she's made a deliberate study of rationality.
> Look to your own mental integrity, not to hers.
If she has, she surely has not displayed it. In her latest 'asshole'
post (I was not aware that frequent use of that word was a sign of a
rational person), she directly ignored my point, as she has in most of
my other posts, primarly, it seems, because she has absolutely no
rational basis to oppose my arguments in those instances but was too
arrogant to admit it.
She may be a great programmer and may be technically astute. However,
when it comes to politics, she seems to have a far harder time
abandoning her anti-American political agenda than I have had resisting
the old 'young republican' memes with my newer libertarian ones.
I admit I pull no punches in my arguments. I frequently have no desire
to 'feel someone elses pain'.
Samantha and others claim that the US needs to start listening to the
rest of the world, and shaping its policy more in line with the way the
rest of the world thinks it should be. Since Samantha opened the
argument to profanity, I shall continue it with a hearty "fuck that".
The US did not get where it is today as the preeminent economic,
military, and cultural power in the world, while concurrently having the
most free society on earth, by doing things the way others thought we
should do them. We did it OUR way, the way we knew in our hearts to be
best, not just for us, but for the world, and as a result, the world has
gotten through the age of nuclear brinksmanship in far better shape than
I'll bet would have occured if any other power had been in our place.
Ideas like individual liberty and democratic/republican values are the
pre-eminent ideas in politics around the world today specifically
because of us. This didn't happen by us letting others tell us how
things should be.
Those around the world who want to start telling us how things should be
done do so specifically because their own power is threatened by our
principles and influence. They are supporting terrorism specifically
because it is the best technique designed to date for getting large
masses of civilians to question their principles, at a cost that is
smaller than most any other.
At the very least, those who want to tell us what to do do so because
they are reacting against the growing influence of American culture
around the world. Whether it is fast food, movies, books, or the
influence of science and technology, the rest of the world is being
bootstrapped at a far faster rate than we have experienced here in the
US, and larger percents of the populations in those countries are
reacting against such bootstrapping.
If you think the luddite movement is bad here in the US and Britain, it
is far worse elsewhere, especially in those societies with a far greater
history of authoritarian societies, governments, and culture,
specifically because technology and American culture in general is a
force for the liberation of the individual from not just government
controls, but social, religious, cultural and memetic controls.
It is only to be expected that the memetic constructs of foreign
cultures are acting to actively resist the memes American culture is
putting out, and they are targeting technology and other networking
mechanisms that penetrate barriers to entry easily.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:16 MDT