X-Message-Number: 16712
From: 
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:44:03 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #16675 - #16691

It's fairly far off topic, but Lee Corbin writes:

<<  Russians, British, and Americans
 bombed Germany and occupied Europe very heavily, however I don't believe
 there was rational calculations to "killing civilians" over "hitting
 military targets." >>

We did indeed purposely bomb civilian targets as part of the war effort, 
especially to damage the enemy factories and supply lines. There is no clear 
line of target demarcation, and there are no perfect innocents other than 
infants. Most enemy soldiers had no real choice (they were almost as innocent 
as the civilians), and most enemy civilians supported their war (they were 
almost as guilty as the soldiers). It's all quantitative and somewhat 
arbitrary. 

The main question, hardly ever truly addressed by the philosophers, is how to 
arrive at a scientific value system, and most of the traditional criteria are 
irrelevant. Only two things really matter--biology and math.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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