From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 13:54:22 MDT
On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Bryan Moss wrote:
[Side note: my response to Bryan is long. In part because
he is making some deep observations. So if you are following
this thread I hope you will "stick with it".]
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> > Now, my proposal was not in any way based on race or culture.
>
> You presented an article on North Korea and concluded on the basis of
> apparent cultural differences that it would be best to destroy them.
I do not believe Bryan that I made that assertion. And if I implied
it I would retract it. If I were arguing on a "cultural" basis
then it might make sense to eliminate North Korea, South Korea,
Japan, China, perhaps Russia, the Middle East... (I would not know
where to stop).
The specific and precise problem with North Korea is that they
are not a member of the international community and do not appear
to want to be other than with respect to how they can black-mail
the members for their direct benefit.
They *also* appear to have a political community (a significant
fraction of 22 million people) who have been brainwashed into
thinking that their system works. [Doesn't matter that their people
are starving to death -- they are a potential nuclear power and
one with the ability to hurl nuclear weapons at "western" nations
(e.g. South Korea or Japan) the impact of which could have serious
economic consequences for the U.S. (even ignoring the impact on
nearby Asian countries). The trickle down effects are more unemployment
in the U.S., less money to combat AIDS in Africa or India, etc.
Please do the comparison -- 22 million lives at risk in North Korea
or hundreds of millions of lives at risk in Africa and other parts
of Asia. Real lives -- people living *now* [so significantly less
present value analysis required].
What I was trying to get at was that (a) these people have *very*
different belief systems (I think Anders saw that). He also pointed
out how there may be deficits in the Extropian Principles that do
not make it clear *how* to deal with such problems (you are talking
about fundamental programming that may be either wrong or highly
biased); and (b) the fact that the costs may be high if we don't
deal with it (whether it be hundreds of millions of lives now or
or 100 trillion lives per second later).
> Your exact question was,
>
> "How do extropians/transhumanists deal with very strong cultures with very
> non-western priorities?"
Yes, this I believe is an accurate statement.
> Your solution was *destroying the culture in question*. That is genocide.
Granted -- given some discussion as to whether a large number
of brain-washed individuals can be legitimately called a "culture".
"Cultures" can evolve -- that does not appear to be the current
situation in North Korea.
> "How does genocide differ from triage?"
Ok, good -- someone engages in the question.
> The argument I put forward in a
> previous post, which you may not have seen, is simply that triage is
> strongly situated, whereas your proposal (genocide) is not.
Reasonable. So the question becomes one of "immediacy" (and/or the
question reverts to the value of various current or future human
lives).
I believe there is probably a complete set of military "action points"
with regard to North Korea. The U.S. is currently inactive in
this area because most if not all of them would probably not
yield pretty results. That has been the case for between one and
four decades.
So the question I propose is "*HOW* much have the U.S. and South
Korea spent over the last 10-40 years "containing" the problem
of North Korea?" And the followup question is "*What* is the
quantity of lives that could have been saved by investing those
resources elsewhere?".
Re: "potential life", "future life" valuations.
Yep, and I was in part posing the problem to see where we could
get with it. Please note that I'm dealing with a complex perspective
which on one side has real down-to-earth impacts on the other side
is a theoretical debate.
> Isn't it always the case that "potential (more) life" is under threat?
Yep, and a recent paper by Steven Dick [USNO] deals with this as
have some posted papers to the list and it is I believe a topic that
Nick Bostrom and Milan Circovic are working on.
> Isn't this situation too vague, too general? Wouldn't we be doing this
> "triage" all the time?
Perhaps. But I suspect with regard to doing "triage" all the time the
answer is "we are". The problem is to acknowledge it and detail what
the best parameters might be.
> Secondly, how do we establish relative value between one life
> and another? This is where I think the real problem lies.
Agreed.
> You're not establishing value between one life and another, you're
> establishing it between life and *more* life.
Yes, it was an abstract proposal.
> To me, this just seems like an awkward way of
> asking, "What is the *absolute* value of human life?" And this is where you
> step outside triage, because there is no situation, there is no relative
> valuation of human life, there's just this un-situated, absolute value.
Yes, as I proposed the problem it could be viewed this way.
The question becomes *how* to turn it into something other than that.
That becomes a question that I do not believe that bioethicists have
dealt with but one that raises many issues. The questions one could
offer to the list involve how do standard bioethical evaluation
considerations compare with "standard" extropic evaluation
considerations.
> So, if we've established that this is *not* triage,
Granted -- but really only because we have some incomplete definitions
with regard to what requires "immediate" attention, what a "culture"
may be, the difficulty with assigning "values" to human lives (both
present and future), etc.
> I agree with you on two points: (1) the question you're asking *is*
> "extropic," inasmuch as extropy seems to embrace an idea of life
> (complexity, extropy) as an absolute Good and strives for its increase and
> proliferation;
That is in part how I view it -- I'm willing to look at interesting
arguments that such a position may be incorrect. Leon Kass presents
some such counterpoints but in my opinion they do not win the debate.
> and (2) simply invoking a base morality in response to the
> question doesn't quite cut it. My own position on this is simply that the
> extropian affirmation of life/complexity/extropy is incoherent.
[snip]
Re. complexity
I would be inclined to agree. Though complexity has reasonably good
definitions from a computer science standpoint. Where it may lack
is in subjective areas with respect to (a) complexity that will
generate further complexity; (b) complexity that may generate more
or less complexity per unit time; (c) complexity that is "good"
(i.e. will not destroy humanity, the universe, etc.);
So I acknowledge your comments for presenting some thought
provoking areas even if you may not have liked my initiating
thoughts.
Robert
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