On 1/5/2016 6:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 5:10 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 1/1/2016 3:11 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 2:06 AM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/28/2015 5:30 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 6:39 PM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/28/2015 2:53 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 7:01 PM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/27/2015 3:56 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/23/2015 1:12 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 6:31 PM, John Clark
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 Telmo Menezes
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>wrote:
>
>>
and their land is not your land.
>>
I do not have the same faith in
the divine right of inherited
wealth as you do.
>
Nice dodge. Yes, let's put all in the
same bag, Wall Street trust fund kids
and remote tribes wanting to keep
living their way in *the place they
were born in*.
I'm not a big fan of
Wall Street trust fund kids
either, and if one of them owned one of
the 3 places on the planet where a thirty
meter telescope could be built and
refused to let it be used for that
purpose I would be in favor of using the
law of eminent domain to force the brat
to sell it. And by the way, no native
Hawaiian or anybody else was ever born
atop Mauna Kea, there is nothing living
up there except for a few astronomers,
and if native Hawaiians
get there way soon there won't even be
that, they want to remove all telescopes
from the mountain including the world
class ones that have been there for
decades. Why do you defend these people?
I don't defend them. I think they should not
interfere with the construction of the
telescope. All I am saying is that ramming
things down people's throats isn't working
out so well. I am suggesting that something
like the "prime directive" is probably a good
idea. It would be nice to put a telescope in
a certain mountain, but it's not our
mountain, so tough shit.
?? Why isn't it our mountain? The Hawaiians
didn't create it. The ownership of land is a
concept invented and enforced by the U.S. and
Hawaiian state government. There's no
ownership of land apart from the society that
enforces it. In this case the state of Hawaii
owns the land and they approved the use of the
land for astronomy.
This is the usual confusion between lawful and
ethical.
The desire and need to have some control over
one's environment already existed in biological
species much more ancient than the Homo Sapeins.
But among social animals it was joint
ownership...which is exactly the kind of ownership
the government exercises over. The Hawaiians are
like a small fraction of the tribe who wants to
have exclusive control of a part of the joint
territory because they have supernatural myths they
tell about it.
Suppose that centuries from now we are capable of
traveling to inhabited planets in other star systems.
We come across a planet populated by humanoids who are
roughly in the middle ages. They are terribly afraid of
us and regard us as the demons of some ancient prophecy
of their religion. Do we see them as part of our tribe,
take over the planet and impose our values and
technology for the greater good? Or do we try to remain
benevolently distant until they are ready? And if we
chose the first, isn't it true that they were right to
consider us demons to being with?
The ethical choice is number one. And the answer is no.
So you agree with our subjugation if a more advanced
civilization discovers their way to Earth?
I agree with our advancement, yes. Nobody said anything
about "subjugation"...you're trying to move the goal posts.
I would say that you assume that our current culture is so
correct that any advanced civilization would share our values,
but with more advanced tech. It is very hard to see the
limitations of a culture from the inside -- and I do not exclude
myself from this observation, of course.
What if their values were repulsive to you? Would you just trust
that they are more advanced, so they know better?
No; but then I wouldn't recognize them as "more advanced" either.
"Advanced" is ambiguous. You seem to use it sometimes in a
general sense, including ethics, and other times as purely
technological and assuming
Ok, but I do this in the open. What I'm asking is precisely what you
allude to: does technological advancement imply ethical advancement?
John seems to be on the "yes" camp, although it's hard to tell because
he avoids playing along in thought experiments.
What if they are hyper-intelligent social insects,
I don't think that's possible under Darwinian evolution.
This sort of questions is why I like artificial life so much. The idea
of being able to simulate other instances of Darwinism and try to
figure out what the universals are.
In any case, I suspect you're right about social insects -- although
one could imagine higher intelligence emerging in the swarm (a common
trope in sci-fi).
and find our individualism barbaric? What if they don't value
empathy at all?
Then they wouldn't be social, wouldn't have a society, and
wouldn't travel here to conquer us.
Humm... is empathy really needed for collective behavior? Sure, it
might not be a society as we understand it, but it could be some other
form of collaboration dictated by game theory / evolutionary niches.
That's the wrong way to look at the question. Empathy isn't needed for
collective behavior (c.f. ants) but I think it's necessary in the
evolution of collective behavior of an intelligent species.
Educating the American indians wasn't subjugation. The only
subjugation they suffer is being kept in traditional roles on
reservations by their "leaders".
If the education is not desired, then it's subjugation. If they
didn't want you in the land where they and their ancestors lived,
then you took that land by force. I am not saying that this can
be avoided: nature is brutal like that. But pretending that our
motivations are nobler than that of any other species our group
that is just struggling for survival is disingenuous.
See, you've switched the goal posts. This started with
condemnation of the West imposing non-slavery and no-human
sacrifice on the Aztec empire.
Well but that is not really true is it? The western world enslaved the
populations that it found in other continents and it might have
gratuitously tortured them. I hesitate on referencing some texts
because I am not sure about the quality of the sources.
Now you've moved it to saying we're not more noble than them
because we did it for ourselves. We're certainly more ethical by
our standards. You may say that the Aztecs standards are just as
good - but I doubt that you can believe it.
I prefer our standards. Again, this all started because I posited that
"something akin to the prime directive might be a good idea". My
stance is this: looking at our own culture we can see many flaws, and
we can infer that other flaws that we don't see are likely. So it is
wise to be conservative when interfering with other cultures,
especially with their natural development.
But it's part of JKC's point that the Hawiians protesting the telescope
are NOT another culture. They're part of this culture and they're
trying to claim special privileges based on genetics, which in any other
context is called racism.
Notice also that I even express some doubt over my own position from
the beginning. It is John who insists on black/white distinctions, the
sort of: "either you agree with me or you're a barbaric moron".
I do think that it is unwise to shout "imbecils" when you have
conflicts of interest with other societies.
But what about a conflict of facts. In fact there's no spirit on Mauna
Kea. In fact the Sun would rise without the Aztec's killing a prisoner.
Brent
But I do not oppose anyone's right to say what they think. I do not
like it when something that I value highly -- science -- is used to
generate ideological certainties. I feel that comes dangerously close
with dancing with the devil (religious fundamentalism). And I also
have the right to say what I think.
Telmo.
Brent
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