Intelligence: Earth, AI, Jupiter, and Beyond the infinite

[LesterBoffo]

I'm also struck by Nietzsche's witness to the Turin Horse whipping, despite it triggering his mental breakdown, it was a keen look at his shattered view of our tenuous hold on what we perceive as our present civilization, and the foggy remembrance of a past life of a pastoralist or hunter-gatherer. Nietzsche was nothing if not complex. http://www.serenaporrati.com/nietzsche-in-turin.html

[HJ1an]

I'm sorry, but you might have to explain that to me. I'm not getting the reference?

[jwocky]

Lester, please read my post again, this time carefully. This other guy jumped on me because of his view on the nuke drops in WWII. And then he ended up saying the US should have established a sea blockade and starve a hundred million women and children to death instead of killing a million by nukes. Which led me to think, there are different takes on what is ethical behaviour.

The point with intelligence, sentience and humanity is much simpler.

- we claim to be intelligent and still we do all the time stupid things. People knew,t he Titanic was not unsinkable, but they told themselves so often,s he would be, that they believed in this idea at some point. Which was kind of stupid (although there are theories, it was not stupidity but intent, which makes it then kind of a lack in humanity instead of a lack of intelligence).
All too often, intelligence is not used to think things through to the end which makes the stress on "we are intelligent" somewhat a double-edged sowrd because since we believe so much in our intelligence, we forget sometimes to use that intelligence. Which makes it an overrated factor.

- sentience should entail not only self-awareness,s otherwise it would be just a carte blanche for uncontrolled narcissism. A sentient being has, as I understand the term, not only to be sentient about the own existence but also all existence around which entails the idea of responsibility for the own actions as far as they have also impact on others. However, during many times in history, sentience reached for most people only to the point of self-awareness and thus, the mindless push of their own beliefs, their own profit goals, their own ideologies. Sentience was all too often limited to mere egoism. Thus, as the current mindset of mankind appears to me, sentience is overrated because most of mankind hasn't actually reached the point of a credible sentience yet.

- humanity ... oh my ... most people believe, the term includes all that is good in mankind. Well, it doesn't. And we talk about a mankind busy to kill maim and blow up their fellow human beings all the time and while this happens, people wear the term of humanity like a fig leaf. Which makes humanity also a vastly overrated term.

So for my personal use, I stopped to bother with those terms too much. Intelligence, fine, I can do IQ tests too and I use IQs as parts in profiles quite often, but it boils down for me to either I find a solution or not (which would be the limits of my intelligence then). But there is no need for me to assume all mankind is intelligent.
Sentience ... well, I don't need to bother with the big mankind-wide term. I am aware of myself of the people around me and the people I ahve to work with or work against. That is good enough for me and when I step up to put my rear on the line once more for example to find a serial killer or a rapist or whatever kind of creep a case entails ... fine, that is my personal decision. It will not raise or diminish sentience in mankind-wide levels in the first place. Thus, fine, one can claim, I am a sentient being, but seriously you don't want to use a term attached with such a positive notation on some of the people, I study all the time. Really not.
And humanity? Lets be honest here. If I have a gun in my hand and someone would be an imminent danger to for example my wife, this guy is on the road to extinction and that's it. That sounds harsh, but I have no qualms to admit I wouldn't hesitate. Now, to calm down the bleeding hearts here. I don't own a gun, I support the second amendment, but personally, my eyes are too bad to use a gun in the last few years. And then, there are enough other ways to neutralize dangerous people if it comes to that. But the fact stands, if it comes to such a situation, I am personally willing to kill a fellow human being and I am also willing to use an adequate amount of violence in other critical situations. I have done it before and if it comes back to it, I can do it again. So, given I consider myself as violent enough if the need arises and I deal all the time with quite violent people (even nowadays more form a desk), I see not only in the killers I study the worst of humanity. And for a long long time by now, decisions boil down to what has to be done versa some rules that are accepted as consensus. It is a small edge to wander on and on both sides of it lurk things that have nothing to do with humanity as most people would understand it.

[LesterBoffo]

Excuse me?

But I understood pretty well what you were saying, if I may add to your comparative history lesson, we were, leading up to the time of the nuke bombings, dropping thousands of incendiary bombs on Japan with each B-29 sortie, so, and towards July the IJA was considering it's options of a truce along with high level members of the Japanese government, we just sped things up a bit. I still don't agree with the why's of it happening, despite the fact it speculatively shortened our conquest.

I had an Uncle who flew escort over Japan for bombers and towards the Summer of '45 ( his own words..) the defense of Japan through fighters and ground AA activity was getting spotty. There was a worry that taking the homeland would be a bloody fight, it's hard to gauge though how much fight was left when their major cities, homes and factories are all but destroyed.

What I'm saying is that we are still in transition, we call ourselves civilized, and intelligent yet still engage in retributional justice and want revenge, and bloody tyrants to meet ends equivalent or worse to their treatment of their people, but yet we don't want to look too far into our own past and see the same blood-lust, a blood lust still part of the subconscious of our country. As a civilization we've got a ways to go yet, is what I'm saying. Yes your friend you used as an example was kinda dumb in his comment. But I I believe our use of the nuke was more a show of force to the Russians, and upcoming stand-off with the Russians was predicted.

So if this is a lecture to me on using my intelligence so that I may agree with you, no I disagree because I've used my intelligence to come to a different conclusion, and it's pretty consistent with what I know. You exaggerate much with the hundred million comment and I also think you also exaggerate what your friend was implying. A blockade would have caused much privation and turmoil but I think the Japanese people would have forced a change, they weren't all dishonorable savages.

there is also the old Friedrich Nietzsche addage 'He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.'

[KL-666]

With authorities there is always a big propaganda factor. So some reservation about their explanations should be in place.

Before ww2 many countries were sort of befriended with Hitler even though they could know his plans laid out in mein kampf. Some of the dutch royals were even married under the infamous nazi salute.

After the war an explanation was sought and found why it was necessary for so many mothers to loose their soldier boys. The holocaust was a perfect tool for that. Please understand that all the horror of it is true. Yet it is also conveniently used for own purposes by authorities who had no qualms whatsoever about it before the war.

Now we all know the authorities explanation for the Japan nuclear bombings. An explanation not to believe blindly, since it comes from authorities with their own agendas. In that light i find the explanation that it was done to impress the Soviets at least interesting.

Kind regards, Vincent

[jwocky]

Lester, please keep in mind, not everything, I say in GENERAL is especially minted onto LESTER. LESTER doesn't equal GENERAL nor does GENERAL equal LESTER. And if you would have in a discussion about theoretic alternative history made the suggestion to starve the civilian population in Japan to death to make the bomb drops obsolete, I would really scratch my head because that isn't so you as I know you from FG and the forums.

But since everybody hangs not on the nukes instead of the lack of use of intelligence in that example, something about the situation beck then. There were a multitude of reasons (and some are quite wrong but nobody knew that at the time):

- After the invasion of Okinawa, it was clear, the Japanese forces would fight for every inch of the main islands even harder. Projections estimated 1 million US soldiers and about 10 million Japanese would die.

- All projection of a nuclear drop included at the time only the number of direct victims, not subsequent deaths by radioactivity. One has to understand, that the concept of something invisible, untouchable, unsmellable and untastable but nevertheless lethal was a thing, people had to wrap their head around first. Even during the nuclear tests in the early fifties, personal was much too near and protection insufficient because people didn't know better. The first turn in thinking happened actually after they found out, a test at Bikini had left high amounts of radiation in the water. Sure, everything was already somewhere in science books, but the people who made decisions hadn't read those books.

- It wasn't the Japanese Army that sought peace talks, it was actually the tenno. Only the tenno didn't have the actual power, that was since the 1930s in the hands of the army. That is how ther war actually started. The army was determined to fight, we can prove that by their posters announcing the battle death of the 100 million. Or if you like it ore on the ground, Joachim Brennecke, a German maritime writer, describes in "Haie im Paradies" the last weeks from the point of view of German submarine crews who were interned in Japan when Germany surrendered in May 1945 and Japan still fought on. There are talks with Japanese soldiers who were so indoctrinated, they were sure Japan would win in the end and there were observations for example of suicides of Japanese with hand grenades. What was needed was a turn in thinking in Japan. A turn, that made it possible for the tenno to order freedom against the will of the army. To do that, it was the tenno who needed a visible prove to all his population that this war could only end in utter destruction. American intelligence was aware of this situation.

- Japan, unlike Germany, is an Island nation with open water to the East and South. There is no Denmark Strait, no narrow water, easy to block. Thus, any stupid idea of a sea blockade was unrealistic to begin with. In our days, sea blockades, for example around Somalia to get rid of the pirate problem there, failed despite better technology and the fact, that this blockade would have had only a split of the length a blockade of Japanese waters would have. Back then, the Navy was aware of the impossibility, so that was not an option.

- There was a short thought about Russia and actually, as Lester hinted, there was already a beginning awareness that right with the end of the war, a stand-off could take place. Actually, behind the scenes, Churchill had promoted already in February 1945 to use the remaining German armies on the Eastern front as the spearhead and turn against Russia. Independently, several British and American generals had already uttered the idea that it would be the time to strike hard. Most verbal was of course Patton once more, who publicly said, "we would better march with the Germans against Russia". But all those moves were denied by the US government. Already in February 1945, Roosevelt's health was failing and business was run effectively by Truman who became President after Roosevelt's death in April. So Truman was the factor, nobody could get around anymore. Truman dreamed his dream of making WWII the war to end all wars, like Wilson had done in WWI. Truman denied the idea, that there would be any stand-off with Russia. He even ordered after the war, to destroy all the overhang gear instead to mothball it, a decision which would alter kill a lot of American soldiers in Korea due to the lack of heavy gear, but that is another story.
Bottom line is, Truamn didn't believe there was a stand-off. He made still the decision to drop the nukes against his conviction, there would-be a stand-off with Russia. So we can conclude that the man who had the last decision didn't decide to drop nukes to impress Russia. That doesn't exclude the idea, that some in the military woudl see it as a welcome side-effect.

Well, and what happened then? The first nuke was dropped. The tenno tried to order peace against his army, but the army refused. Only after the second bomb was dropped, the tenno came through and could surrender. There are three documents that give away what happened behind the scenes here. A note in the army report about preparing martial law to continue the fight [see Richard B. Frank Downfall, Random House 1999]. on August 7, some Japanese scientists visited Hiroshima and confirmed for the first time, the city had been actually destroyed by a nuclear bomb. But since the Japanese were also aware of the problems of uranium enrichment, Admiral Toyoda estimated, the US could maximal ready two more bombs and thus, there would be more destruction but the war would go on [see again Richard B. Frank]. Toyoda mentioned his estimation also in a radio message to Tokyo which was intercepted and decoded by the Magic codebreakers and therefore, the US military knew already, the Japanese Army and at least part of the Navy had estimated, they could take two more nuclear hits and would be able to continue the war. This intercepted message, also in Richard B. Frank's book is the third one.
Still, the tenno was already talking to the US via some kind of diplomatic underground channels. The fun part is, that in the Magic protocols is another radio message dent from the tenno to another Admiral 18 hours before the second attack on Nagasaki ... which already included the order to Koichi Kido "to quickly control the situation" which he would give allegedly only a day after Nagasaki to Kido. And in Harvey [Robert Harvey American Shogun, Overland PRess 2007], we find the meeting between Hirohito and McArthur and Hirohito told the American General: "The peace party did not prevail until the bombing of Hisroshima created a situation which could be dramatized".
So, seen with the knowledge of the time, it was a trade-off. 80,000 direct victims in Hiroshima, a 100,000 more in Nagasaki against about 10 million Japanese and 1 million American ones. It seemed like a good deal back then.