alt Hacker NewsWell what other tools do we have? Waiting for the market to fix things is also destructive and harms orders of magnitude more people than violent direct action does; democracy is wildly ineffective compared to violence even at its most optimistic; what else remains? Fleeing the planet?
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handoflixue • last Monday at 7:40 PM
> Well what other tools do we have?
I'll answer with a quote from the founder of the Rationalist movement, Eliezer:
"How certain do you have to be that your child has terminal cancer, before you start killing puppies? 10% sure? 50% sure? 99.9%? The answer is that it doesn't matter how certain you are, killing puppies doesn't cure cancer."
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Giving this a less glib response: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866 goes in to some detail, but Eliezer has always had a fairly clear call for action, which is international regulation. And in particular, he makes the point that random acts of violence are actively counterproductive to his goal.
We walked out of the Cold War alive. Humanity has faced extinction before, and despite it all, we walked away alive last time. It's not unreasonable to think we can do it again.