[xg15]

There was a recent talk from CCC that got a bit deeper into Peter Thiel's "Antichrist" ideology and where it comes from.

The bottom line of that talk seemed even worse: That for some tech leaders, the general wellbeing of the population or "classical" arguments for progress such as improving living conditions and advancing mutual understanding aren't even orthogonal to their goals but are explicit anti-goals: Because a world with too much wellbeing and too little conflict would ostensibly lead to stagnation, loss of freedom and innovation and the state of what Thiel termed the "Antichrist".

Too much conflict is bad as well because it carries the risk of complete destruction, so they'd aim for some kind of ideal level of conflict and suffering in the world, like some sort of twisted inflation target.

[anal_reactor]

Imagine that in ten thousand years aliens actually invade Earth and try to enslave humanity. If we spend this time perfecting the art of war we'll have some chance of survival. If we spend this time just growing tomatoes, no fucking way. So yes, from the perspective of humanity as a whole, it makes sense to say that the perfect amount of war and suffering is non-zero.

> but aliens won't invade Earth

Native Americans thought the same.

[beAbU]

Any alien race that is actually able to travel all the way to earth with the intention of invasion, with enough resources to presumably make the trip back home with all the loot/slaves (why else would they invade?) will be so far beyond our human technical abilities that we stand basically 0 chance of survival.

I think it's absurd to justify killing one another in wars because it might one day save us from some hypothetical invasion.

[anal_reactor]

> will be so far beyond our human technical abilities that we stand basically 0 chance of survival.

Not if we also develop technical abilities before the invasion. Here though you could make an argument that it would be much more effective if we cooperated instead of fighting.

> I think it's absurd to justify killing one another in wars because it might one day save us from some hypothetical invasion.

Well, the modern western moral system holds human life as the highest value. But even nowadays we still have moral systems that place the existence of a group much above the existence of an individual. Imagine that the whole humanity is like an organism - you don't really care about individual cells in your body, do you? A vaccination hurts, but ultimately, it leaves you stronger, right?

I'd say, "let's keep killing each other in wars so that we can maybe defend ourselves in a hypothetical alien invasion" is indeed absurd, but the general idea "wars allow humanity as a whole to practice self-defense" isn't. Europeans didn't die from native American diseases because millions of Europeans had already died in the past from similar diseases, building the collective immunity.

[estimator7292]

I don't think you have any concept of the technologies involved here.

This isn't a case of who has the biggest gun. This is a case of someone has a gun that can wipe out your entire planet and you have a rock.

No, a planetary society cannot stop an invasion once they're in orbit. It simply is not possible, not with any technology we can even imagine.

You very much do not at all understand the argument you're making.

[beAbU]

I hope war reaches you one day, in all it's terrifying glory. The we can circle back to this conversation and reflect on how you feel about contributing to humanity's readiness against that alien invasion.

Humans aren't cells. We are individual sentient beings.

[anal_reactor]

> We are individual sentient beings.

This is exactly what cancerous cells would say if they could.

[Xerox9213]

This is a baffling statement.

[cactacea]

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

[pjdemers]

If the earth is one big tomato garden, maybe aliens will leave us alone. Also, native Americans were very aware that other groups of humans existed beyond their horizon, and some of the those groups were hostile to them. We have zero reason to believe there is anyone out in space hostile to us. In fact, we have plenty of evidence there isn't anyone at all out there.

[collingreen]

Super good point. Only two options with no middle ground and definitely should choose to hurt an unlimited number of people on the off chance of a long future alien invasion and the even longer chance that by going out of our way to hurt people now will somehow actually matter against a spacefaring, almost-certainly-interstellar hostile force.

What nonsense.

[fakedang]

> Imagine that in ten thousand years aliens actually invade Earth and try to enslave humanity.

Insert Mr. Bean highway meme