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Will_Newsome comments on Modest Superintelligences - Less Wrong
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So in my head I was comparing the Church to, say, communism, which is where I got the "absurdly good" idea. Communists killed roughly 5,000 times as many people as the various Catholic inquisitions. But in retrospect that wasn't a very fair comparison, and so I repent of it. Mea culpa.
If the Catholic Church tried to kill heretics in modern times, it would first have to declare war on the entirety of the United Nations. ...Surely it is clear why this would not accomplish anything useful.
Reservedly but emphatically yes. I suspect the Church's involvement in the Spanish Inquisition, however limited, saved many lives and prevented costly wars.
I'm curious if you've read Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature". A major part of how humans have become less peaceful is that we're less willing to kill over ideas, whether those ideas are religious or ideological in nature.
I haven't read it, but I've seen various discussions about it, and I'm most willing to trust Vladimir_M's opinion on the subject.