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ciphergoth comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
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Comments (219)
I just had a fun idea: take this premise, and the demonstrated difficulty of improving Africa, and the idea that the development vs. likeliness-to-screw-everybody-over-with-WMDs curve would be an inverted U, and calculate the point at which it would be better to cut off all aid & begin bombing Africa into (or within) the Stone Age.
I think this is voted down unfairly. I read this not as a genuine plea to nuke Africa, but as a Robin Hanson-esque caution against motivated thinking. We'd like aid to Africa to be the Right Thing, and if we're made uncomfortable by the idea that existential risk trumps that, why, here's a good reason why aid to Africa is justified on existential risk grounds! So this is a sort of antidote: if that were your real reason, you'd greet gwern's alternative solution with a great deal more equanimity than you do.
EDIT: I'm obviously super-persuasive, since it's gone from downvoted to upvoted since my comment :-)
Oh, of course not. At least, not until I've crunched some numbers.
Quite right. It's fun to use logical arguments to wind up in a uncomfortable place.
Obviously, if you get the same number of up-votes as the original paradox/comment! ;_;