From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 23:51:33 MDT
Genocide (n): The systematic and planned extermination of an entire
national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
The various defenses of the discussion of genocide are based on arguments
resembing "we must consider all things, even awful things". That is well and
good, but these discussions suck, for a reason to which I will come shortly.
First, though, we really should put the damned issue to bed. So, here is why
genocide is an hopeless solution to pretty much any problem.
To argue about it, I must use a set of values or principles for axioms. I'm
choosing the extropian principles for this purpose, mainly because they are
nice and explicit, and really should resonate with list members.
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Perpetual Progress -- Indiscriminately killing large numbers of sentients
just can't be good for progress; it could only be neutral at best. Taking
away minds can't add. (note: I say *indiscriminate* because choosing
geography, race, politics or ethnicity as a determinant is so crude that I
assert it is equivalent to random selection)
Self-Transformation -- Genocide can't help here, as far as I can see. It
tends to interfere with the self transformation desires of the exterminated,
too (except in the case of the already suicidal I guess).
Practical Optimism -- Genocide is pretty much the opposite of practical
optimism. Indiscriminate extermination (even in the hopes of catching a few
baddies amongst the masses) is more like paranoid pessimism.
Intelligent Technology -- This principle is about using technology in
lateral and creative ways to enhance our goals. Genocide is like killing
germs with a sledgehammer. Painful, doomed to fail, and stupid. I guess it
can involve the use of fairly sophisticated technology, though.
Open Society -- Committing genocide would seem to require a centralisation
of power that is the opposite of this principle. Further, large centralised
action to exterminate others is a large part of what open societies were
created to prevent.
Self-Direction -- Mega murder, hello? When considering the exterminated,
most or all of whom are effectively a random sampling of the set of
sentients (see above), self-direction is being rather rudely interrupted,
excepting again for the suicidal.
Rational Thinking -- Only extremely contrived examples could make genocide
ever look rational. "Thought experiments" like "How about if there were
zillions of insane aliens like the ones from the movie "Aliens" who want to
come and eat us all?". If you look closer, these aren't usually examples of
genocide, they are examples of war; people that attack you are combatants.
Genocide, OTOH, is about indiscriminate large scale slaughter. It implies
massively superior power of the inflictor over the exterminated (of
course!). Any examples purporting to show justifiable genocide must include
this position. Also, inclusion of time travel is a no-no, for obvious
reasons. The position that one genocide might be inflicted to stop another
worse genocide from occuring is possible, but the burden of proof *must* be
on the proposer of genocide; this is not a realm where back of the envelope
calculations can be used for justification. Predicted future genocide just
doesn't rate anywhere near the same as a real, right now, existing kind of
genocide.
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On the whole, I think it's very clear that genocide and extropianism map
over distinct, wildly distant areas of the space of thought. Policy analysis
markets, there's an idea worthy of extropians. Using nuclear weapons? Forget
it.
Compared to genocide, even eugenics looks good. Neither work as solutions to
anything, and they both cause spectacular problems, but at least eugenics is
a little more subtle (like hitting someone with a brick is more subtle than
hitting them with a rock). We reject eugenics fully, so why would we
consider its retarted cousin, genocide?
So why do I think that genocide sucks? It sucks because it's the stupid
person's solution. "Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out" is just dumb. It
violates all our principles, it makes us look *terrible* to outsiders (and
to ourselves!), it solves nothing, it screws up everything. Any organisation
which could commit genocide on others has no individualist ethic and so can
only be enemy number one for extropians.
I think that genocide is probably not defensible in most other consistent
value frameworks either. For instance, take the patently non-extropian (or
at least entirely in conflict with the principles) idea that we maximise
complexity in the universe. It would be extremely difficult to show that
indiscriminate killing of vast numbers of sentients could increase
complexity over the long term, compared to what would have occured in the
absence of the killing (remember to take the social/psychological effects
into account, this is a _complex_ system you are dealing with). However, it
is abundantly clear that genocide will decrease complexity considerably, by
removing large numbers of minds from existence.
This is a stupid email to have to write. Genocide sucks. We have the whole
space of wonderful, complex extropian ideas to play in; can we drop this
moronic crap?
Emlyn
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