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