From: Martin Moore (lethe07@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jun 16 2002 - 21:54:40 MDT
--- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
wrote:
> If two other sentient
> species were exterminated
> that would be twice as horrible. If given a choice
> between the destruction
> of Earth and the destruction of ten other planets on
> which reside roughly
> equivalent sentient species (with roughly equivalent
> chances at the
> Singularity), I would choose the destruction of
> Earth.
The following is from:
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/pl38/spock.htm
(A Review of Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan"
"the good of the many outweighs the good of the few,
or the one"
It may be dramatic cinema buts it is sickening
philosophy, especially from a character supposedly
driven by rationality. It befits the political climate
of majority rules, of expediency as guide, of
anti-Americanism and anto-individiualism*. If you have
read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand you would have
observed how those in power used the good reputation
of the nation's premier scientist to deceive the
people into accepting an evil government weapon of
suppression, and noted the scientist's sanction of
this deception. In the film the anti-philosophy of mob
rule is slipped in between some of the character
Spock's finest moments, a character admired by many.
Was this deliberate? Probably not, but the effect is
as if it was.
At the end, when Spock asks why he went to such
lengths Kirk smiles and reverses Spock's earlier
quotation;
"The good of the one outweighed the good of the many."
Spock, perhaps cleansed by his bizarre regeneration,
appears to understand.
In his refusal to sacrifice himself or his values for
the sake of another (in this case the government's
notion of good) the character of Kirk has its moment
as a true American hero. You could almost hear him
saying "the public good be damned!"
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