RE: ExI principles: people left behind?

From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Jul 16 2003 - 22:48:33 MDT

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    Robert wrote:
    >
    > The numbers speak for themselves -- 10^14 potential human lives
    > per second of delayed interstellar colonization (minimum).
    >
    > So lets see,
    > Afghanistan (pop: 28m), Iraq: (pop: 25m), N. Korea (pop: 22m)
    >
    > So we could eliminate the problems distracting us from making
    > progress at the cost of < 10^8 lives -- compared with 10^14
    > lives *per second* while we keep debating how to resolve the
    > problems...

    A couple of points on this:

    - There's something in ethics I think about not being able to compare
    potential future lives with concrete, current lives. After all, the
    currently living exist; the 10^14 per second are a dubious theoretical
    result.

    - Follow the utilitarian argument through a bit further. *After* these
    countries are nuked, how then does the world look? How does the world
    political situation change? What is the US's position 10 years down the
    track, and how does it compare to now, and to how 10 years down the track
    would most probably have looked, sans nukes? All humanitarian concerns
    aside, this scenario just does not play out at all well.

    Human society is a dynamic fractal masterpiece of incredible complexity.
    Nukes are a sledgehammer writ large. I just can't see how that can work.

    Emlyn



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