Re: Machiavelli (Was: Iraq)

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jan 25 2003 - 13:10:43 MST


On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 11:12:44AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > Sorry for interrupting the flaming, but I feel a need to defend the
> > honor of Niccolo Machiavelli.
>
> Sorry Anders, but an email message doesn't cut it when it comes
> to "defending honor". Even I has an imperialistic, barbarian
> and uncultured American know that "defending honor" has to involve
> slaps with gloves and eventually either swords or pistols.
>
> I'm sure I can convince Max to put this on the agenda at the next
> Extro conference.

Sounds like a good idea. "The first contestants here at
Extropic Deanimationmatch is Anders Sandberg and Kai Becker,
battling about the virtue of a 16th century political theorist.
After the pause we get the event we have always wanted - Mike,
Samantha, John and all the others from the Gun and Iraq threads
finally settling which strategy for peace is the best. I hear
they have brought in tactical nuclear weapons - let's hope we
are far away enough" :-)

> Raises some interesting questions. Can highly extropic people
> throw spells to cause blades to become embrittled or gunpowder
> to become wet? Or are they simply doomed to hurling comments
> across auditoriums in loud voices?

An extropic duel? Sounds a bit like the mythical duel between
Poseidon and Pallas Athene for the favor of the Athenians.
Poseidon created a well, but unfortunately (since he was a sea
god) it was brackish (according to another story he created the
horse). Athene created the olive tree. The Athenians chose
Athene as a winner (and hence their name). Maybe a real
extropic duel is not so much about destroying the enemy as
out-creating him.

But it could be fun with a no-holds-barred duel where the
participants get the same amount of matter, energy and
information to use in whatever way they can think of against
the enemy.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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