From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 07:19:28 MDT
Of course, any rational person would suggest that if *you* did wake up
in 1936, fifty miles outside of Berline, with a remote control switch
taht
would detonate a Hiroshima-sized device in the capitol of Germany, you
most likely insane @ best; and if not, there is some serious doubt as
to whether or not ur paricular timeline would occur....or even worse, by
detonating ur little device, you would be instigating an even more
costly
timeline (say Adolph manages to catch on how ur device works, or one of
his leutinents)....
Gentlemen, Ladies;
I propose a radical idea - we're all dead (or going to die) anyway; at
least
at the current stage of development in terms of technologies....
So why run around hastening each others pathways to the afterlife (if
there is one),
on the somewhat faulty reasoning that someone else has already hastened
someone elses
pathway to the afterlife.... or worse, probably will hasten someone
elses pathway to the afterlife.
omard-out
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 3:54 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Radical Suggestions
Suppose that I suddenly found myself in the year 1936 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.
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. 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?
"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. 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!"
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.
Lee
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