NancyLebovitz comments on [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat - Less Wrong

-5 Post author: MrMind 25 March 2015 09:37AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 25 March 2015 11:45:47AM 2 points [-]

Do you think that the Islamic State is an entity which will vanish in the future or not?

Nothing lasts forever, though religions (in a fairly general sense) last longer than most things.

To my mind, the interesting question is whether the Islamic State will be gone soonish. In the short run, it's anti-fragile. It feeds on being attacked. On the other hand, it revolts every other institution which has a preference for normal human life.

It's possible that the rest of the world will solve coordination problems so as to destroy IS by military attacks.

I like the idea that it will take inspiration-- the development of a new religion or variant of Islam or alternatively some brilliant satire-- to create something to move people away from IS. It's pretty clear that mere decency isn't motivating enough.

Do you think that their particularly violent brand of jihadism is a worse menace to the sanity waterline than say, other kind of religious movements, past or present?

I have no idea. I wasn't there for the other religions.

Do you buy the idea that fundamentalism can be coupled with technological advancement, so that the future will presents us with Islamic AI's?

I don't think fundamentalists are good at innovation (have I missed something?), but they're at least as good as everyone else at using innovations invented by other people. They may be better at it if they're more motivated.

If there are AIs without a FOOM, there will be Islamic AIs, which is not the same thing as jihadist AIs. I think we can expect AIs from all the major religions and subdivisions of religions. If AIs are cheap (and I haven't seen speculation on what AIs will cost), there will be AIs based on fringe and new religions as well.

Comment author: seer 26 March 2015 09:42:24PM 4 points [-]

I like the idea that it will take inspiration-- the development of a new religion or variant of Islam or alternatively some brilliant satire-- to create something to move people away from IS. It's pretty clear that mere decency isn't motivating enough.

No, the problem is that the West has been slowly rejecting the very concept of decency over the past century.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 March 2015 10:07:28PM 1 point [-]

We are hardly limited to having only one problem.

I'm willing to grant that I've been seeing a slow-moving war on empathy in the West, but I don't think that's the reason Daesh has been influencing people.

Comment author: seer 26 March 2015 10:53:27PM 4 points [-]

That's not what I was talking about. I mean how over the past century anything decent has been rejected as at best bourgeois, and at worst sexist and homophobic.

Comment author: AnthonyC 27 March 2015 01:35:49PM 0 points [-]

I think seer and Nancy are using two different definitions of "decency."

"modesty and propriety" vs. "polite, moral, and honest behavior and attitudes that show respect for other people"

Also, if we take google's usage-over-time statistics, the big drop in usage of the (English) word "decency" happened in the 1800s: http://bit.ly/1D5ZF55

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 March 2015 02:05:21AM 0 points [-]

In that statement, what exactly do you mean by "decent"?

Comment author: seer 27 March 2015 02:14:40AM 4 points [-]

I was using the word because Nancy introduced it into the discussion. From the context, the practical meaning is "decent" as perceived by a more-or-less typical person in most of human history.