progression of technologies (almost a satire)

[hellekin]

On 06/28/2015 03:14 PM, dan at geer.org wrote:
>  | 
>  | What is the philosophical basis that sustains the CIA?
> 
> 
> Life is indeed priceless, and the more rare it is the more self
> evident it can only have been the hand of God who created it.
> 
*** Well, that's one way of seeing it, and so far there's no more proof
of the existence of God than its non-existence.  From where we sit, it's
a non-tractable problem.

But if you accept that option as true, then it comes naturally that
you're siding on the wrong side of ethics.  Avoiding the philosophical
debate enables you to not question not only the morality, but also the
very interest of your organization.  If you're indeed accepting a
creationist view of the universe, you might as well want to dismantle
your employer, which is why I'm curious about why you don't, beyond the
paycheck.

Accepting the "priceless" value of life and using the power of
terminating it at various levels (individual, societal), and taking for
premise a continuity from a God to a creation to where we are now seem
to me irrational, illogical, seriously flawed.  If you believe in God,
how do you explain the potential energy still at work in the
individuation of complex life on Earth with regard to determinism?  If
you accept the logical consequences of it, then why are you (as an
organization) working against its natural, God-given resolution?

Avoiding the philosophical debate when your article calls for the
acceptance of the imperative of technological objective superiority with
relation to life questions the very foundation of your rationality.  If
CIA is irrational, then it's important to know, for other rational
people might want to remove this dysfunctional organization from
unaccountable power.

There's no necessity to drift and diffuse the discussion to other topics
that may or may not be related to the fact that, while you're observing
a generalization of the technical means to survey the spectrum beyond
human perceptive capability, you're also calling for the "sabotage" of
the use of it rather than, e.g., legal restraint to it; doing so, you're
calling for the arbitrary limitation of knowledge, and if we assume that
the CIA wants to keep doing its intelligence work, that means an
asymmetry in power; "do what I say, not what I do".

I'm sorry to tell you that I don't consider it an off-topic matter, but
simply a deepening of the consequences of your expressed position, which
in turn calls for understanding your and your organization's motivations
in giving out this information.  Do you really think your readers are
unable to detect the cognitive dissonance in your publicity?

==
hk

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