From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 17:55:28 MST
Eliezer Yudkowski wrote:
> This isn't helping anyone. In case everyone has forgotten,
> the war ends here. You know the war I'm talking about?
Actually, I am *really* not sure that I do.
It could be "the war" contained in this excellent post:
>> "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>>To: <sl4@sl4.org>
>>Cc: <extropians@extropy.org>; <wta-talk@yahoogroups.com>
>>Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 4:37 PM
>>Subject: The thermodynamic New Year
>>
>> Nature's morality is not our own. "Survival of the fittest"
>> is a misleading name for a war in which even the winners
>> die. Evolution is a poor design method, an incremental
>> accumulation of fortunate accidents. If evolution moves in
>> the direction of greater complexity, then that is only direction,
>> and not purpose. As the price of our existence, evolution has
>> charged a toll measured in the death of billions of sentients
>> and countless quadrillions of nonsentients. The cycle that
>> repeats with each birth and death is a cycle of war.
>>
>> But evolution's endless war is a cycle that moves forward
>> as it turns.Not a traveling vehicle steered by an operator,
>> only a log rolling down a fitness landscape. Direction, but
>> not purpose; a destination, but not a target; nonetheless,
>> the cycle is heading somewhere as it turns.
>>
>> It's heading for the end of the war.
>>
>>One way or the other, it's heading for the end of the war.
Or it could be the one in this less intellectual but I thought still
very human one.
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>> To: <extropians@extropy.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 9:38 AM
>> Subject: War is bad... it's still bad, right?
>>
>>
>> From today's rant in "Bob the Angry Flower":
>>
>>When did people start thinking war was an acceptable
>> tool of policy instead of a *total fucking human disaster*???
>>
>> Y'know, I think he has a point there. It may sound
>> dreadfully banal, but it's still a hell of a strong argument:
>>
>> War is bad.
----------------
(Eliezer continues)
> The one that's been going on for a very, very long time?
So not just 'Iraq' but thermodynamics?
> Stopping that is why we're here, isn't it?
Well if by "here" you mean the actual list as opposed to
something bigger I am almost certain that people come to the
list at different times for different things. It is a place to toss
ideas around some theoretical and some very practical, it is
a means where potential extropes might look to see what those
purporting to be extropes might be discussing and it is also, and
not unimportantly, a social watering hole.
> And it's something we can affect... unlike certain other
> events that will *not* be determined here.
So stopping entropy in the universe we can affect "here"
but current events in the political world we should just take
on faith as beyond our capacity to affect despite the much
lauded leveraging power of Google and that the ExI list
brings together a variety of people with skills, contacts and
experience and almost certainly some shared values from all
around the world?
>
> I call for a three-month ban on the Iraq topic. I've seen
> the Extropians list do so much better than this.
I don't think it is either wise or even particularly clear to ban
discussion on anything that people think you *might* think
to be about the "Iraq topic".
It seems to me that you are proposing banning the topic likely
to be of *greatest* interest and *most* extropic consequence over
exactly that period when it will be of *most* relevance and of
most natural concern to many on the list..
Let us be very very clear here. You are not proposing engaging
further yourself to lift the level of debate, you are not proposing
to just read around a topic that you have posted on yourself in
the past, you are not making some point about more efficient
ways to communicate you are *actually* proposing closing
down for three months what other people want to say *before*
the particular circumstances and ramifications they wish to
discuss have even arisen.
To yield to the temptation to practice this sort of censorship
looks to me like kicking an extropic own-goal. I vote against.
But if you really want to go down the route of censorship and
I *do* note the support for it (and thankfully *some* opposition)
then at least do it properly. Set a time for tallying the votes and
I will abid by the will of the majority.
Who knows, one day it may be handy to fix a time of death.
- Brett Paatsch
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