While conversing with Terra Central, Laurinda thinks:
"The effort you are mobilizing moves softly but is huge. And what if it fails, if the vote does go against your urging? What might you then call upon?" (3, p. 54)
If the global vote goes against Terra Central's proposal to prevent a new Ice Age by recarbonizing Earth, then the artificial intelligences will have to implement the counterproposal of solar mirrors while working flat out to find some other way to counteract the effects of the gas cloud nine thousand years later - the point being that the solar mirrors would be incompatible with the "Massive constructions..." (2, p. 49) that Terra Central currently envisages for dealing with the gas cloud.
In a Student Union meeting that I attended, a leading member argued and voted against a proposed new policy. After losing the vote, he re-addressed the meeting, "Some of us have had our doubts about this policy. Now let's make it work!" Prime Minister David Cameron held a referendum about whether the UK should leave the EU. Expecting a "Stay" result but instead getting "Leave," he resigned as PM. The philosopher, Roger Scruton, commented that a Conservative Prime Minister, having held a referendum, should then have stayed in office to implement the result whether or not it was to his liking.
Terra Central should be able to work in the long term interests of life on Earth and these include enhancement of democratic decision-making processes.
7 comments:
In practice, nobody is going to be enthusiastic about a policy they think is bad, nor can they be trusted to give it everything they have -- even if they -try- honestly to do so.
Hence Cameron's (excellent) decision to resign. He wasn't going to burden the new policy with a leader who didn't believe in it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, despite thinking at first Cameron should have stayed on as PM. I also thought of what might have happened in 1940, after France surrendered to Germany. For a time there was some debate in London over who should succeed Chamberlain as PM, Lord Halifax or Churchill. Even if Halifax continued the war against Germany as PM, I doubt he would have done so with the drive, energy, and determination of Churchill.
And I would still be distrustful of those AIs in GENESIS!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Halifax would have been a disaster -- in some ways, because he had a more accurate appraisal of the situation than Churchill.
Halifax thought keeping on with the war would bankrupt Britain and be the end of the UK as a Great Power. He was right on both counts.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Granting the correctness of Halifax's assessment, it would have been even more of a disaster for the UK to write off Europe, to let Germany dominate and unify Europe under the uniquely evil rule of the Nazis. Confronted by so powerful a rival, Great Britain still would have ended up as no longer a Great Power.
Whether or not Churchill understood that in 1940, his insistence on continuing the war against Hitler at least meant the UK lost its Empire for honorable reasons.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup, but would Churchill have done that if he hadn't been unrealistically optimistic?
In the 1930's, he was known for beating the drum about the menace of Hitler's Germany... but also in his absolute abhorrence of concessions to Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.
The 'problem' of Churchill was that he had a brilliant mind and a lot of historical knowledge, but also was a flaming romantic with a weak sense of the possible. In the 1930's it was widely thought that he had no political future except as a gadfly to be brushed off by more sensible men.
I agree that he was far and away the best choice for PM in 1940, but to put it mildly the circumstances were weird, and when real life gets weird the weird get going.
Note that Chamberlain's faction of the Conservative Party thought that the UK couldn't fight Germany after the fall of France -- but earlier they'd also thought that Britain had no choice but to negotiate with the Indian National Congress.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, Churchill was a romantic--and that appeals to me! It was precisely because of his romantic optimism that he was able to do and accomplish so much. He was a British Theodore Roosevelt.
Gandhi? GANDHI??? I have nothing but contempt for him! He was a mealy mouthed hypocrite whose incompetent dabbling in politics brought nothing but disaster on India. I would sympathize with Churchill's opposition to making concessions of a kind that would end the Raj to Gandhi and the Congress Party.
Gandhi should have been shot as a traitor or exiled to a remote island before he got dangerous!
Ad astra! Sean
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