I know you want to build superintelligence because otherwise someone else will, but the same reasoning was used to justify nuclear weapons, so I suspect we should be looking for other ways to save the world.
Are you arguing that the USA should not have developed nuclear weapons?
Use of nuclear weapons is often credited with shortening the war—and saving many lives—e.g. see here:
Supporters of Truman’s decision to use the bomb argue that it saved hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost in an invasion of mainland Japan. In 1954, Eleanor Roosevelt said that Truman had “made the only decision he could,” and that the bomb’s use was necessary “to avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives.” Others have argued that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary and inherently immoral. Truman himself wrote later in life that, “I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war … I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again.”
Well, that was what in fact happened. But what could have happened was perhaps a nuclear war leading to “significant curtailment of humankind’s potential”.
cousin_it’s point was that perhaps we should not even begin the arms race.
Consider the Terminator scenario where they send the terminator back in time to fix things, but this sending back of the terminator is precisely what provided the past with the technology that will eventually lead to the cataclysm in the first place.
Are you arguing that the USA should not have developed nuclear weapons?
Use of nuclear weapons is often credited with shortening the war—and saving many lives—e.g. see here:
Well, that was what in fact happened. But what could have happened was perhaps a nuclear war leading to “significant curtailment of humankind’s potential”.
cousin_it’s point was that perhaps we should not even begin the arms race.
Consider the Terminator scenario where they send the terminator back in time to fix things, but this sending back of the terminator is precisely what provided the past with the technology that will eventually lead to the cataclysm in the first place.
EDIT: included Terminator scenario