From: Brett Paatsch (bpaatsch@bigpond.net.au)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 02:55:20 MDT
Lee Corbin writes:
> Suppose that I suddenly found myself in the year
> 1936
I hope no injury was caused when you found
yourself. ;-)
> about fifty miles outside Berlin, and I had
> in my hand a remote control switch that would
> detonate a Hiroshima-sized device in the capital
> of Germany, and that I knew that this would
> be my only chance to kill Hitler and his henchmen.
>
> I would scarcely hesitate, even though it would
> mean the immediate deaths of 100,000 people.
> I believe that my knowledge of history makes it
> a good enough gamble, and my conscience would
> allow no other choice. Perhaps the lives of as
> many as 30 million people would be saved by
> my intervention.
>
> I think that quite a few readers of this list would
> concur.
Not without doing considerably more research into
my own family history, work records etc. Then
there is chaos theory and the butterfly effect. In short
I have some concerns that can be summed up with
"the grandfather paradox/effect".
>
> So now let's suppose that it's the year 2065, and
> a historian in what's left of the decimated world
> civilization sadly narrates:
>
> "What I will never understand is how the United
> States---the sole, yes *sole* superpower of the
> early years of this century ---allowed the world-
> wide proliferation of nuclear weapons to proceed.
> Weren't the consequences easily foreseeable?
>
> "It was in 2003 or 2004 at the latest, that the last
> best chance was missed.
To distinguish it from the earlier "best chances", for
'maximum uniqueness' :-)
>After North Korea
> obtained its nuclear weapons, Japan and Taiwan
> had no choice but to join the club. The regime
> change in Seoul in 2009 lit the fuse, of course,
> and we all know what happened.
>
> "Just think: imagine that somehow the U.S. had
> anticipated that by 2050 there were going to be
> six (6) atomic wars, and that hundreds of millions
> of people were going to perish, and civilization
> very nearly along with it. Would anyone have
> been brave enough to have condoned an
> unprovoked attack on North Korea, making it
> perfectly clear that proliferation was *not* going
> to be an option?
Your scenario changes the meaning of the word
bravery. To entertain it one must assume that
consequences are not inevitable so where is the
virtue in bravery?
It also posits that the US "thinks". The US is a
country. Its the President that makes decisions
like that. President Bush "thinks" more than the
US because the US a country does not think at
all. Some is > zero. In the sense of making
*decisions* on go to war or don't go to war.
>
> "Probably at the time, no one could have felt
> confident enough of their logic, not even some
> of the most clear- thinking Extropians in the
> world.
Actually I know one sort of extropian character
who did feel pretty confident of his logic even
*before* North Korea, back when Bush and
Chirac were still jostling over whether Iraq should
be disarmed by force if necessary. This bod posted
(and is therefore placed on the record) certain posts
on game theory, the function of the UN etc in the
naive hope of engaging a few good extropic minds
on the actual problem and thereby ripple effecting
out a solution out in appropriate time. But alas, the few
good minds were not home, or the one extropic type
was ignored or deemd to be off his nut or the problem
was too esoteric or perhaps he was off his nut.
The problem being that the UN had no effective
standard for a go to war no go to war decision and
that Bush was the only one with the power to take
the next extropic step at that time for the UN (but he
didn't have the wit), did not get sufficently well
elucidated. So for want of a nail the shoe was lost.
(BTW: James Joyce was lazy about grammer too).
> And had anyone been able to foretell what is so
> obvious to us today, imagine the defamation that
> they would have had to endure.
>
> "Such an attack would have been almost completely
> without historical precedent, and so necessarily
> would have struck most people at the time as
> supremely evil. But had they only known!"
"Almost completely" on the sliding scale of completely :-)
But then there is this haunting military term "the element
of surprise" that seems to go back to, hmm, shit the
start of recorded military history and tactics. Pre-emption
was such a well used doctrine that at some points in
time a few thoughful bods tried to pre-emp that doctrine
itself and we had a cold war which feature a concept
called mutually assured destruction. The cold war ironically
was considerably safer for many than the warmer earlier
wars where the doctrine of pre-emption was used.
>
> Indeed, as I have said, I personally would not
> recommend that any nation execute an unprovoked
> nuclear attack on any other at this time nor in the
> foreseeable future--- but I admit the possibility that
> I could be dead wrong.
I think your right about that possibility Lee but damn
you *are* very good fun in the way go about it :-)
Regards,
Brett
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