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advancedatheist comments on [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (143)
Toxic religions do exist, and they can become existential threats. Frankly I don't have a problem with stomping on Islam - HARD! - before we see land wars with Muslim armies on the European continent again. I also favor immigration restrictions to keep Muslims out of Western countries.
We really should put more effort into studying and learning from history as a corrective to fantasizing about transhuman futures. The experience of applying prophylaxis to Islam as a nuisance cult could come in handy for dealing with this sort of thing if another dangerous religion emerges in a few centuries.
The country with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia. Followed by India. Go stomp.
Could you at least pretend like you are trying to engage in reasonable debate.
The Indonesian Muslims are for the most part not the ones being problematic. As for India, the Indian Hindus are already (mostly) dealing with the problematic Indian Muslims.
I would think this complaint is better directed at advancedatheist than Lumifer. If advancedatheist had some specific subset of Muslims in mind, they could & should have been more specific than "Islam", "Muslims" and European land wars with unspecified "Muslim armies".
It was pretty clear from context what he meant.
I submit that it wasn't in fact clear that advancedatheist was referring to the specific subset of Islam/Muslims you have in mind, as evidenced by
I also notice advancedatheist didn't respond to Lumifer or NancyLebovitz along the lines of "you're misunderstanding/misrepresenting me, I actually only mean such-and-such a subset of Muslims".
Not with this beginning, I couldn't.
If the point of this comment is that the US, or the west in general, does not have the power to invade these countries, given the political will, then I'd say this is factually wrong.
I believe the primary point was that these aren't the countries where problematic Islamic extremists are apparently centered. But there may be a bit of a deliberate ambiguity on Lumifer's part on what the point was.
I suspect that the point was that the typical Muslim, insofar as there is such a thing, is not an arab. The founder was an arab, the Muslims on American TV are almost all arabs, but in the modern world the two concepts are less related than one might think.
Why on Earth would the West want to invade Indonesia and/or India?
Well, I think advancedatheist wants them to.
It amazes me that people think this scenario of Muslim armies invading and conquering Europe is even slightly realistic. Of course that doesn't mean there won't be terrorism. But military invasions are a complete fantasy. This particular fantasy is something I see frequently among US conservatives.
I think it is worth pointing out that the Islamic State only came to power due to previous Western attempts to "stomp on" Muslim countries--the invasion of Iraq and attempts to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.
The first "invasion" is transformation by differential birth rates. Might have some armies crossing borders after that.
Please think about the practicalities of attacking a billion people (many of whom have armed governments) if you can't manage empathy.
To be fair:
a) If advancedatheist was the leader of the US, and people would follow him, he probably could conquer or kill a billion through technological superiority without too much difficulty. Guerilla warfare might be less of a problem if, after an insurgent attack, all males of fighting age nearby had their first two fingers cut off, to act as both a deterent against future attacks and to stop them pulling triggers. Brutal? Yes, by modern standards, but very civilised compared to say, imperial Japan.
b) Are rationalist consequentialists meant to view empathy as anything other than 'warm fuzzies' which should be endorsed enough to stay sane, but otherwise ignored?
EDIT: Am I trying to say that empathy is wrong, or am I employing the Socratic method? Who knows?
That I would probably describe as a technofetishist fantasy set in some dystopian universe. Do you think it's relevant to reality?
Well, unless any of us have the ability to substantially alter politics, none of this is relevant to reality.
You're conflating whether you have an accurate map and whether you can actually travel.
Well, I would say that if "relevant to reality" means an accurate map of a counterfactual, then yes, my "technofetishist fantasy set in some dystopian universe" is relevant to reality.
LOL. All wrong maps are "accurate maps of a counterfactual" :-D
But not all "accurate maps of a counterfactual" are wrong.
None of them match reality.
I think we've seen some evidence lately that killing is easy, conquest is hard.
In addition to warm fuzzies, empathy is a shorthand for realizing that other people care about their own interests and are more likely to cooperate and less likely to defect if you have some care for their interest.
If we're going into game theory here, then surely what you want to be signalling is not that you will cooperate, but that you will cooperate iff they cooperate?
Of course, ISIS have already defected, but that doesn't generalise to all of the other billion people.
You don't want to have a habit of defecting first, and that's what empathy can protect you from.
How very postrationalist of you :)
That basically assumes war is only about direct fighting strength but not about ideas. In practice winning hearts and minds is important to win wars.
The framing of a cultural war helps organisations like IS immensely in their recruiting efforts. Speaking about how Islam is evil in public in a forum like this has a real effect on the conflict.