From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jan 30 2003 - 16:44:34 MST
Seems like an obvious question to me. North Korea and Iraq can't destroy
the world. The US can. North Korea and Iraq have the potential to hurt a
lot of people, maybe even millions if a nuke is used, but they can't blow
up the world, nor destabilize diplomatic relations and international law
all by themselves. Only the US can do that. Even if it's the US doing it
because of a response to North Korea and Iraq, it's still the US doing it.
If North Korea and Iraq are threats to world peace chiefly because of
the response their actions could provoke from the US, then the US would
seem to be the larger threat to world peace. I suppose you could argue
that North Korea and Iraq would be more to blame, but that doesn't make
them larger threats. North Korea and Iraq, by themselves, can at most
destroy a city; they cannot disrupt world peace without the cooperation of
other countries in being disrupted. China, the US, and the FSU are the
chief threats to world peace. North Korea and Iraq aren't in the running.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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