From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 00:04:24 MDT
> On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
>
> > 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.
> [snip]
>
> Sorry Emlyn, but I have to *most* strongly disagree. Just because a
> discussion "sucks" does not mean that it may be useful to
> engage in it.
It depends on why it sucks.
To summarize the post, I showed that genocide, as a proposed solution to any
problem, was going to be entirely unsatisfactory, based on the extropian
principles. Further, I talked about the damage to this group, both in terms
of cohesion and PR, from its continued discussion. I asserted that it sucked
(to add a bit of heat to the light) based on the preceding.
>
> The Public Broadcasting System of America offered me a good example
> of this last night in a program "Under Orders, Under Fire" which
> included a Harvard Law Professor (Charles Ogletree) grilling
> everyone from military generals to congressmen to leading
> journalists [1].
>
> The premise of the discussion was "A soldier has a duty to serve his
> country, but does that mean following orders no matter what? Should
> a commander counsel - or kill - a deserting soldier? How does a
> soldier protect himself from guerillas disguised as innocent
> civilians?"
>
> Though I do not have a transcript for the program -- the conversation
> did deal with issues of "How many people do you lose?" and "How does
> one lose them?". (Interestingly the series may be over a decade old,
> long before the current environment evolved.)
That's not genocide though, it's about war, something entirely different.
>
> Here are another two definitions of genocide:
> 1. "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political,
> or cultural group" (Merriam-Webster online).
> 2. "the systematic killing of a whole people or nation" [Webster's
> New World Dictionary]
>
> Now, my proposal was not in any way based on race or culture.
> It was based on a clear presentation of the value of current
> vs. future human lives.
Well, it was trading off current vs future human lives, without an explicit
valuation, on an unsupported premise (that destroying countries x, y and z
will increase extropy).
> If that isn't trying to look at things
> from an extropic perspective then I don't know what is.
..
> If we
> discover a NEO is going to strike the Earth in a month and the
> probable death toll will be half of humanity then decisions
> are going to need to be made. "*Who* do we save?" and "*How* do
> we save them?".
Sure, yes, I agree. That's a natural disaster. God's the genocidal maniac in
that story, we're just picking up the pieces as usual.
> And we aren't going to have all this "flak"
> about "genocide".
True, because it's not.
> If anyone on the list thinks that major
> military organizations, the Center for Disease Control, and
> perhaps other security & health related groups have *not*
> thought about scenarios (that might kill large numbers of
> people) and do not have contingency plans for this then
> they are simply being naive.
Fine, but these will likely be in response to desperate situations, where it
is demostrable that the alternative is worse. Unlike your example.
>
> The only thing that I am guilty of might be having the
> audacity to ask the question of "Do the needs of the
> many outweigh the needs of the few?" and ask it in a
> rather controversial way. But it is *not* an unusual
> question (or one that should be discarded from the ExI
> list) as the PBS special I cite above shows. If PBS
> can debate issues like this, then I think we should be
> able to do so as well.
>
> Robert
I don't think it's the same issue. When you discuss such a thing, it must be
in the context that the needs of the many have been clearly identified and
supported. NEO impact, killer disease outbreak vs containment, these are
relatively unambiguous. Blowing up entire countries on suspicion of
harbouring terrorists, that's something else entirely; it's genocide.
btw, I couldn't find anything about the PBS program you linked to; is the
link too old?
Emlyn
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