From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Mon Sep 27 2004 - 17:27:36 MDT
On Sep 27, 2004, at 10:44 AM, David Picon Alvarez wrote:
>
> majority of cases, be negative. In fact, as politics is conducted more
> and
> more on the basis of rational discourse instead of by authority of a
> few,
> the conscious sphere of the individual becomes more important in
> relation to
> the hard-wired condition-action reflexes you speak of, and wars become,
> where civilization makes politics public, if not inconceivable, at
> least
> unfrequent. Example: would you imagine Germany declaring war on its
> neighbours in the near future because its economy is in bad shape?
While I don't often completely agree with Keith Henson, I do think
it's a huge mistake to say, essentially, "Everything's different
now" too early. Sure, everything's *going* to be different, but
I don't think that group conflict is going to cease as long as
there are groups with comparable power and no higher power to stop
them.
This isn't precisely an argument for a "Sysop", but rather, an
argument that diversification is important. I'm still hold
that nanotech is more benign than SAI, since nanotech implies
the ability to escape the bad effects of itself, while SAI does
not.
-- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com> "And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based." - Terry Pratchett, _Going Postal_
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