I think that’s an understatement of the potential danger of rationality in war. Not for the rationalist, mind, but for the enemy of the rationalist.
Most rationality, as elaborated on this site, isn’t about impassively choosing to be a civilian or a soldier. It’s about becoming less vulnerable to flaws in thinking.
And war isn’t just about being shot or not shot with bullets. It’s about being destroyed or not destroyed, through the exploitation of weaknesses. And a great deal of rationality, on this very site, is about how to not be destroyed by our inherent weaknesses.
A rationalist, aware of these vulnerabilities and wishing to destroy a non-rationalist, can directly apply their rationality to produce weapons that exploit the weaknesses of a non-rationalist. Their propaganda, to a non-rationalist, can be dangerous, and the techniques used to craft it nigh-undetectable to the untrained eye. Weapons the enemy doesn’t even know are weapons, until long after they begin murdering themselves because of those weapons.
An easy example would be to start an underground, pacifistic religion in the Barbarian nation. Since the barbarians shoot everyone discovered to profess it, every effort to propagate the faith is directly equivalent to killing the enemy (not just that, but even efforts to promote paranoia about the faith also weaken enemy capability!). And what defense do they have, save for other non-rationalist techniques that dark side rationality is empowered to destroy through clever arguments, created through superior understanding?
And we don’t have to wait for a Perfect Future Rationalist to get those things either. We have those weapons right now.
I think that’s an understatement of the potential danger of rationality in war. Not for the rationalist, mind, but for the enemy of the rationalist.
Most rationality, as elaborated on this site, isn’t about impassively choosing to be a civilian or a soldier. It’s about becoming less vulnerable to flaws in thinking.
And war isn’t just about being shot or not shot with bullets. It’s about being destroyed or not destroyed, through the exploitation of weaknesses. And a great deal of rationality, on this very site, is about how to not be destroyed by our inherent weaknesses.
A rationalist, aware of these vulnerabilities and wishing to destroy a non-rationalist, can directly apply their rationality to produce weapons that exploit the weaknesses of a non-rationalist. Their propaganda, to a non-rationalist, can be dangerous, and the techniques used to craft it nigh-undetectable to the untrained eye. Weapons the enemy doesn’t even know are weapons, until long after they begin murdering themselves because of those weapons.
An easy example would be to start an underground, pacifistic religion in the Barbarian nation. Since the barbarians shoot everyone discovered to profess it, every effort to propagate the faith is directly equivalent to killing the enemy (not just that, but even efforts to promote paranoia about the faith also weaken enemy capability!). And what defense do they have, save for other non-rationalist techniques that dark side rationality is empowered to destroy through clever arguments, created through superior understanding?
And we don’t have to wait for a Perfect Future Rationalist to get those things either. We have those weapons right now.