Accelerating Future

American Digest, a conservative blog, re-posted the nuclear attack image I posted yesterday, with the title “2008 Election Stakes”, and the subtext “Just in case you thought your taxes were the most important issue”, and the additional comment “HT Accelerating Future, where they seem to believe that donating to the Lifeboat Foundation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative is going to make it all go away.” Here is my response:

Hi,

The Nuclear Threat Initiative is co-chaired by Sam Nunn, an ex-senator who is also on McCain’s shortlist for VP. NTI’s fundraising requests are signed by Nunn.

If Nunn is the choice for VP, you can bet that stopping nuclear terrorism (by securing nuclear materials, not necessarily waging constant wars in the Middle East) will be on the top of the agenda.

In your post here, you dismissingly insinuate that donating to NTI won’t make nuclear terrorism go away. But NTI is the cause championed by Nunn, and the goals (with respect to nuclear terorrism) of NTI and a McCain-Nunn Administration would be quite similar. So you are pooh-poohing a cause that you would enthusiastically support if the very same suggestions were a public part of the McCain campaign.

Maybe you are slightly clouded by overfocusing on Republican-Democrat binary politics? Non-partisan non-profits get things done, too, you know. And the causes of non-profits can become the causes of Presidents, if the non-profits have enough influence. Donating to the NTI could help influence the President — yes, even a Democrat President — to take nuclear risks more seriously.

If you think withdrawing from Iraq automatically means we’re going to get nuked, you’re full of it. Being in Iraq is only boosting terrorist recruitment and shoving a stick into the hornet’s nest.

I am a supporter of fighting against terrorism, but I advocate a more targeted, considerate, and less expensive approach.

I suppose you think Democrats would be soft on terror. Why, then, does Hillary have a hawkish record on foreign policy as a senator, and why did Obama say he’d be willing to order a unilateral strike on terrorists in Pakistan?

I could be wrong in any of my assertions. My point is that you shouldn’t blindly assume, in a political/partisan fashion, that picking the conservative is the safest choice for America. Or that staying in Iraq is essential to stopping nuclear terrorism. All these things have to be continuously debated with an open mind. And it never hurts to donate to an organization with a history of major accomplishments in non-proliferation.

Using an image of a nuclear attack on Manhattan merely to scare up votes is making a complex issue one-dimensional.

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I’m just curious. Here I’m specifically talking about existential risks generally considered to be more than 15 or so years in the future (even though they may in fact be nearer), like self-replicating microbots, recursively self-improving AI, and the like. Do non-immortalists just not look very far ahead, or are they just skeptical that the risks are technologically feasible?

There is somewhat of an overlap between the technologies predicted to lead to radical life extension (nanotech mainly) and the risks themselves, so it would make sense that immortalists are more informed on these technologies, including their risks. But this overlap only goes so far - websites on radical life extension generally address the benefits of medical nanotechnology while largely ignoring the risks. There are also many risks unrelated to life extension: AI, synthetic biology, nanoweapons, etc. So maybe immortalists just care about these risks because they have a much longer expected lifespan and accordingly look further into the future?

The ironic thing is that risks 15+ years away still threaten most of the population today, including all baby boomers. Why is it, on average, that I see more serious attention given to existential risks from the younger (than 40) set than the boomers? (Update: this may be incorrect on my part, based on the bias that my friends tend to be younger, and past involvement with SIAI where many supporters are young. Look at the Lifeboat Foundation donor list and you see many people over 40, plus Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Ray Kurzweil, etc.)

Of particular concern are the older Republicans in the United States, pre-boomers, who advocate the development and potential deployment (against Iran) of nuclear weapons. These people have lived the longest with the threat of nuclear war - why is it that they seem the most hawkish about the deployment of nukes? Don’t they understand that a single use of a nuke would set a precedent for further usage by other countries, and that the expected cost of using conventional firepower is much less, even if thousands of soldiers have to die, because it avoids setting a nuclear precedent?

I wish the US would have a policy where it went into future wars with a declaration not to use nuclear weapons, as long as certain conditions are kept (like no one else jumping in). Maybe the world would feel less like it’s being threatened by the US that way, and we could reduce the justifications used by rogue states to acquire the weapons.

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That’s what the radius of destruction would look like if a 10 kT nuke were detonated on top of my house! Put in your own zip code, and see how bad it would be for you.

I found this page by following a link from NTI, the global security organization founded by Ted Turner. Warren Buffet is another billionaire who supports NTI and encourages his shareholders to read books and watch films about the threat of nuclear terrorism.

You can order a free DVD of Last Best Chance, a film warning against nuclear terrorism, by visiting here.

Another blast calculator can be found at this URL.

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