If collateral damage has moral equivalence to intentional murder then FDR and Churchill are basically Hitler. Virtually every government that has ever been at war for whatever reason is evil and illegitimate. — BitconnectCarlos

This seemed to merit a re-run. Not that doing so will matter.

they enjoy the pretense of sinlessness. — Ciceronianus the White

In actual real world fact, it is extremely common for Christians to refer to themselves as sinners.

I get that some Christians can be pompously sanctimonious, and agree that is annoying. When my wife and I want to mock insult each other we sometimes say "Have a blessed day!" in a sing song voice, while the receiver scowls in defiance, "No I will not!!" :-)

We're not Christians by the way.

What I'm trying to do is situate your ideas within the broader context. Your intuitions are sound but as this is a philosophy site, it's worth the while to consider the question in that context. — Wayfarer

Ok, no problem. I'm not objecting, and appreciate your knowledge of the broader context, which I largely lack.

That is the kind of approach that characterises non-dualism. It's much more associated with Eastern philosophy than with Western. That sense of non-division or undivideness is the aim of those philosophies. — Wayfarer

I'm vaguely aware of this much. Sometimes people ask me if I'm a Buddhist, and I have to reply that I have no idea. :-)

As you may have already suggested yourself, philosophy may not be the best method for appreciating whatever unity exists, given that philosophy is made of thought, and thought operates by a process of division.

You won the prize but you may not like what for. :lol: — TheMadFool

:-) :-)

Again - not so. I am not licensed to, say, export plutonium, or access the central banking system's computer. There are thousands of things I'm not permitted to do. You're falling into flights of rhetorical fancy. — Wayfarer

Yes, you are not allowed to handle plutonium. Nor am I. But the North Korean psychopaths are. Any power given to the good guys is also given to the bad guys, and probably a bunch of stupid guys too.

Respectfully, you're missing the point, perhaps because I'm making it poorly.

An accelerating knowledge explosion leads to 1) ever more 2) ever larger powers being made available to 3) ever more people at an 4) ever faster pace. That is the nature of acceleration, more and more, faster and faster.

As example, consider the history of computing. A power once available only to experts, now available to pretty much everyone.

What I'm asking you to do is plot the exponential nature of knowledge development against the incremental (at best) nature of human maturity development. Should you graph that relationship
in your intelligent well educated mind, you will see the lines diverge from one another at an ever quickening pace.

That divergence is unsustainable. No one can predict how that will end, only that it sooner or later will.

I really wouldn’t waste too much time stewing over that. — Wayfarer

Not stewing, reporting. It's relevant to the issue of our relationship with science, and scientist's relationship with reason.

I suspect that their Facebook site gets an awful lot of commentary — Wayfarer

It doesn't actually, which I found surprising too. I had the community section of their Facebook page largely to myself for about a month. I spent the whole time talking to myself, there was no engagement from anybody. I did see however that my posts were being moderated, as I suspect all posts were. They approved all my posts, until the day they erased them all.

Christians have hated, killed, and oppressed each other and non-Christians since it was founded, and avarice is more characteristic of Christians than charity. — Ciceronianus the White

Um, sorry, but this is a ridiculously warped, hopelessly simplistic interpretation of Christian culture.

It would be fair to state that such crimes have existed in Christian culture, and to some degree still do, no complaint there. But then such phenomena exist in every culture. So, Christians are human, no surprise in that. More to the point, hate, murder and oppression are not words which accurately describe Christian culture as a whole.

The vast scale of Christianity in particular, and religion in general, make it impossible to describe them with simplistic labels such as good or bad, right or wrong, just or evil etc. Any attempt to do so immediately identifies the speaker as an ideologue, not a person of reason. All the major religions are like reality itself, containers for all that is beautiful and ugly about human beings, but mostly the overwhelming mediocrity almost all of us suffer from.

I would agree that few if any Christians live up to the teachings of Jesus in every regard. Christians are typically entirely willing to agree with this, which is why they are always calling themselves sinners.

Christianity is probably best considered on a moment to moment basis. There are moments when all of us act in a manner that represents Christian ideals, and moments when we don't. Even Hitler loved his dogs.

The best Christians are typically invisible, as they are typically too busy serving to have time for giving sermons.

What's the difference really between someone who takes faer own life and someone who doesn't? — TheMadFool

One is dead, and the other isn't?

Did I win anything?? :-)

Before we go reaching for immortality it would be good if someone would first provide the proof that life is better than death.

My own personal superstition religion, which is proof of nothing, goes like this...

Consider a baby, and a very old person. Both exude some kind of undefinable "specialness". In my personal superstition religion, that's a taste of the "other side" leaking over in to this world around the edges.

Or, if you prefer, consider the act which evolution declares the most important, procreation. At the moment of orgasm everything we consider to be "me" is totally obliterated, and we couldn't be happier about it. Except that, um, we are in that moment in some place beyond mere happiness. In my personal superstition religion this is reality rewarding us for trying to create new life, with a little taste of death.

And anyway, most of us are mostly dead most of the time already. We spend most of our time on this Earth not focused on reality, but on our thoughts about reality, an immeasurably smaller cardboard cutout imitation of the real thing.

It is common to all Christian denominations that God is immanent and yet transcendent. Basically 'immanent' means present, but transcendent means beyond, so it's a paradox, but I think there are parallels in practically all the religions. — Wayfarer

Yes, I hear you, and that seems an accurate description of how Catholics think about this. You would know better than I how other religions regard it.

But you can't equate God with 'things' or 'mere stuff' because then you've simply lost sight of what is being contemplated. — Wayfarer

Well, ok, but that's not what I'm contemplating. What I'm contemplating is a single unified reality, with conceptual boundaries imposed upon it by human minds which operate by a process of division.

As example, we have words "mind" and "body" which conceptually divide the human form in to parts. But, as I'm sure you know, mind and body are so intimately connected that functionally, in the real world, it's more accurate to consider them as one thing.

So, maybe reality itself is not divided in to mind and body but is, like the human form, more accurately described as a single thing.

If what we call intelligence is an integral property of reality just as the laws of physics are, that might explain why creatures as primitive as bacteria can perform the kinds of complex operations described above.

It's a theory, that's all.

To which the obvious answer is ‘yes’. I get that you’re making a polemical point, — Wayfarer

No, apologies, but I'm making a literal point. The obvious answer is no. Human beings can not successfully manage ANY amount of power delivered at ANY rate. Unless you are asserting that human beings are gods, which I know you aren't saying.

This is the simplest thing really.

1) Everyone takes it to be an obvious given that the powers made available to children should be restricted due to their limited maturity, experience and judgement etc.

2) On the day the children turn 18 we then assume that they can successfully manage any amount of power delivered at any rate, and thus embrace the ever accelerating knowledge explosion.

Here's the logic failure. We assume, typically without any questioning, that because adults can handle more than children, therefore they can handle anything.

And what's fascinating is, the best educated, most intelligent and accomplished high ranking leaders of our culture are happy to make this logic error, because they don't recognize it as a logic error.

We pride ourselves on having dethroned the religious clergy. It's time to perform the same operation on the science clergy.

I think the idea behind the widespread distribution of CRISPR is the democratic distribution of the technology. I presume that this is the reasoning behind it. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's it. Well intentioned madness.

I also had a brief look around for info on that, and learned that Jennifer Doudna is widely engaged in discussions of the ethics of the technology. — Wayfarer

Yes, but imho, her thinking is muddled. She continually talks about "effective governance" while at the same time talking about "democratizing CRISPR". These two goals are in direct conflict with each other. The more people who have such tools, the harder such tools will be to govern.

I also am aware that Walter Isaacson’s last book was about her, which I might well buy — Wayfarer

I haven't read the book, so you may be able to further inform us on that. What I could tell from interviews, reviews, videos etc, Isaacson is basically a Doudna cheerleader. At least in all the interviews I watched I never saw him ask an inconvenient question. His job is to sell books. And you can't do that if you can't access the subjects. And you can't access the subjects if you ask too many inconvenient questions.

I asked some inconvenient questions in an appropriate manner in the appropriate place. I was erased.

The basic equation I see is:

1) All these people have good intentions.

2) Many impressive benefits will flow from gene editing technology.

3) None of that is going to matter if we crash the food chain, or otherwise commit fundamental FUBAR with this technology.

It's the scale of such technologies that we should focus on. As the scale of power grows, the room for error shrinks. If we plot that line forward in time, sooner or later we run in to big trouble.

I know you are an anti-science God botherer from previous discussions. — counterpunch

This seems a wildly inaccurate characterization of Wayfayer's writing. You're just sinking your own ship with this kind of talk.

but it's an exagerration to say that it allows people to 'cook up new life forms'. — Wayfarer

It's an exaggeration NOW, as I disclaimed above. Please note that my comments address the direction in which this technology is headed.

And, CRISPR is just a currently discussed example of the overall trend being driven by science. The knowledge explosion is accelerating. What that means is that ever more, ever greater powers will become available to ever more people at an ever faster pace.

Again, the bottom line big picture question we face is....

Can human beings successfully manage ANY amount of power delivered at ANY rate?

If we conclude no, and then observe a near unanimous agreement among experts that science should proceed forward at the fastest rate we can afford....

We arrive at a very different relationship with authority.

Which seems an interesting investigation for philosophers to engage.

SIDEBAR: I recently spent about a month politely presenting a reasoned challenge to where this technology is headed in a series of daily posts on the IGI (Doudna's team) Facebook page. I politely asked the IGI team to engage, and use my posts as an exercise in sharpening their own arguments. They politely declined. A week or so later all of my posts vanished from their Facebook page without warning or explanation.

To put this in context, Doudna claims engagement with the public is very important in almost all her interviews, but her team does not wish to use their social media accounts to socially engage the public.

I have no personal beef with Doudna, as I see her as a person of good intentions. But it's experiences like this that have caused me to coin the term "science clergy".

I really don't think that's true. Can you cite anything in support? — Wayfarer

Are you familiar with CRISPR? You seem very educated, so I thought you might be.

Quick summary for those who need it, CRISPR is new Nobel Prize winning technology whose primary contribution is to make gene editing substantially easier. Jennifer Doudna and her team at IGI...

https://innovativegenomics.org/
https://www.facebook.com/igisci/

...have consistently stated that one of their goals is to "democratize" this technology, that is, make it widely available to all. As example, basic CRISPR kits are already being sold on Amazon.

Her thinking seems to be that:

1) The more people using this technology the more benefits we'll see.

2) Engaging the public in doing science themselves is the best way to educate people out of resistance to science.

To my best understanding, CRISPR is still complicated enough that it's not yet a tool appropriate for the average citizen. However, there are already gene hacking hobbyists showing up on Reddit and other such places.

What I'm pointing to here is the direction gene editing technology is heading. As example, when I was a kid only the largest organizations had computers, which were primitive by today's standards. Fast forward to the current moment, and pretty close to everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket which they use routinely for just about everything.

I'm just reporting it is the specific goal of leading scientists in the field to make gene editing ever easier, and to share this technology with anyone who wants it. And although there is some questioning and concern, generally speaking these experts are being applauded by the wider culture beyond the scientific community.

Doudna recently received the Nobel Prize for her work on CRISPR, so there is extensive media coverage of her work available online, which is why I know about it.

To me, the underlying bigger picture question is....

Can human beings successfully manage ANY amount of power delivered at ANY rate?

Imagine that you teach a six year old child how to ride a bike. Sure, they may fall and scrape their knee, but they get back on the bike, master riding it, and their life is enhanced. A happy story.

Imagine now that you conclude from this success that you should next teach the child how to fly an airplane. Rational?

This is where we are with science today. We've had great success in recent centuries, and have concluded from that that we therefore can manage any amount of knowledge and power delivered at any rate.

Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for making gene editing easier. She wants to "democratize" gene editing by making it available to all. She's being celebrated as a hero. So we can now look forward to a coming world where millions of folks will be cooking up new life forms in their garage workshops, and releasing their creations in to the environment to see what happens.

But Doudna is not the villain here. She's just sincerely serving the widely agreed upon science worshiping cultural consensus within which she resides.

And now, in fairness, a challenge to the Israelis...

The irony here is that while Israelis are among the most intelligent and competent people anywhere in the world, with a sincere longstanding interest in moral questions, they've deliberately chosen to raise their children in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on Earth.

And why is that? Because their ancestors lived on that land 2,000 years ago.

If one moves to the ghetto, and then drive by shootings become a routine part of daily life....

Well...

What did you expect?

Do Israelis truly care about protecting their innocent civilians, their children? If yes, get the hell out of there while there is still time. Or, stay, and stop whining to the rest of us about what tragic victims you are.

Western democracies have evolved past the simplistic authoritarian schemes of the past.

Here in America the top 1% own 40% of the nation's wealth. The aristocracy is alive and well. But they are smarter than they used to be. They don't dominate the culture in the primitive old blunt force method. We can't overthrow the king these days, because few of us really know who the king is.

The irony of this debate is that if Israelis were to take my suggestion, pack up everything and move to America, leaving the Middle East entirely....

Palestine would most likely become just another ruthlessly corrupt Arab dictatorship.

And the outraged leftist moralists would likely have nothing to say about that. We've seen this movie before....

1) Before the American invasion of Iraq the outraged leftist moralists had nothing to say about Saddam's ruthless oppression of Iraqis.

2) During the American invasion the outraged leftist moralists whipped themselves up in to a hysterical frenzy of fantasy moral superiority.

3) After the American invasion the outraged leftist moralists went back to caring not a whit about
the Iraqi people.

That is, the outraged leftist moralists never cared about the Iraqi people, just as now they don't care about the Palestinians. If Israel were to surrender to Hamas, and all Jews left the Middle East, the outraged leftist moralists would fist bump celebrate for 48 hours. And then they would happily walk away and completely ignore whatever psychopathic crimes were inflicted on the Palestinians, just as they now contently ignore the crimes of all the other Arab dictatorships.

As problematic as some of the actions of Israel really have been, they don't begin to even vaguely compare to what's been happening next door in Syria. Let us observe how little the outraged leftist moralists have to say about that.

Where is the thread on this forum which goes on for weeks spewing venom at Assad, or his Russian allies who have spent years now deliberately bombing hospitals and the like? Where is the thread which condemns an Iranian regime which shoots it's own people down in the streets when ever they become inconvenient? The absence of such threads reveals the absence of reason on these topics.

The logic failure being displayed here is comparing Israel to some fantasy ideal which doesn't exist anywhere in the world. A better plan would be to compare Israel to all the other options available in the Middle East.

I wasn't even talking to you, Benkei, — BitconnectCarlos

Seems a good plan to me.

The way I see it, the same human mind machine operating by a process of division also has the capacity to see unity in diversity. — Apollodorus

Do we see unity itself via rationality? Or do we see thoughts about unity?

I've been proposing intelligence is embedded in reality. This idea is a product of thought, and so I'm still conceiving of intelligence as one thing, and reality as another. Has my mind conceptually divided in to two that which is actually really one?

Presumably, we can only talk about reality if there is an intelligence there that enables us to be aware of it and analyze it rationally. — Apollodorus

Well yes, but now we arrive at a problem which Wayfarer may wish to comment on. It's rather difficult to see the unity of all things (should that exist) using a human mind machine which operates by a process of division. Thus, some investigators set aside the analyze rationally method, or downplay it's importance at least.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to use terms like "God" or else we run the risk of the thread being taken over by the materialists/anti-theists and not getting very far. — Apollodorus

Yea, I agree, that could happen. I'm not interested in recycling that debate, I'm just reporting I'm not allergic to the God idea. That said, I'm not allergic to setting such language aside either.

Your genuine concern here is a breath of fresh air in this thread — BitconnectCarlos

Well, you know how it is, here, there, everywhere. Everyone wants to play the blame and shame game, and few are really that interested in the actual subject, whatever it might be.

I played the blame and shame game myself when I told readers of the Jerusalem Post that they were valuing land over their children. I still think that's true, but these days I'm less inclined to yell that which will accomplish nothing.

As you likely know, philosophy forums are primarily about male ego enhancement.

Ok. Can't see how any of this gets you to:

What if we are not the source of intelligence but rather receivers, much as a television reads and interprets a signal from beyond itself? — Tom Storm

Why can bacteria perform actions which if we did them we'd say they are intelligent?

Bacteria can select specific information (virus DNA), store that information, and retrieve that information as needed, in service to a goal of self preservation.

That's pretty intelligent, especially when we consider that half the humans we know can't successfully perform the same operation. :-)

Bacteria For President!!!!

I do not have any answers - and I'm not even sure that this is the right question. — EricH

I can vote for this. We are exploring "a" question, not necessarily a right question.

And that still leaves open the possibility of something or somebody owning or controlling the totality of intelligence — Apollodorus

Yes, agreed. I'm not allergic to the God concept, or however you might describe the "something or somebody".

Does this help? Are we exploring the concept of division? Do "things" exist in the real world? Or is reality a single thing, which is divided conceptually? I seem to be exploring the "reality as single thing" notion.

There's an intriguing parallel to your suggestion in some ancient texts: — Wayfarer

God, according to [the Stoics], "did not make the world as an artisan does his work, but it is by wholly penetrating all matter that He is the demiurge of the universe" — The Logos, New Advent Encyc

Yes, does this idea perhaps transcend the subject/object paradigm you've referred to?

If God penetrates all matter, wouldn't that equal God being another word for matter? God/matter, a single unified phenomena, divided in to conceptual parts by the human mind. Or, for the atheist, we could rebrand this idea as intelligence/matter.

To my very limited understanding, what made Einstein famous was the insight that space and time are not two different phenomena in the real world, but a single phenomena which was conceptually divided in our minds. Thus the term space/time. This phrase seems a kind of bridge between how we experience space and time, and how they really are.

Catholics have a similar concept when they claim that God is everywhere at every scale in all times and places. I've frequently asked them to consider that this might mean that God and reality are two different words for the same thing. However, in my experience they've always wished to maintain a boundary between God and reality. Within their ideology such a division seems essential, because if God is everything everywhere, then there is no place one can be but with God, and thus the idea of earning salvation tends to fall apart.

Except maybe the "earn salvation" idea doesn't fall apart. Maybe earning salvation is not reuniting with God, but instead over coming the illusion that we ever were separate. That's what I hear in the "die to be reborn" advice from Jesus.

That's the miracle in it! Following the Big Bang, the particles formed into atoms and molecules, made stars that later on exploded, creating still more and heavier elements in a cloud of dust that congealed into this celestial ball, billions of years after which we came along. I don't know why or how the universe pulled off the trick of turning mud into vigorous single-celled life, or single celled life into primates with a penchant for proclaiming their preeminence, but it did. — Bitter Crank

Maybe it's not a miracle? Maybe life is following the "laws of intelligence" in the very same way it is following the "laws of physics"? Or maybe the "laws of intelligence" are just an aspect of the "laws of physics" which we don't yet understand?

I don't see any problem with the word "intelligence" as long as it is adequately defined. — Apollodorus

Well, the word "intelligence" typically refers to a property of a separate unique entity. So we use language such as "I am intelligent" and "you are intelligent".

If we are instead receivers of intelligence, and not the owners/creators of intelligence....

If intelligence is like the laws of physics, not a property of this or that thing, but a property of reality itself...

Then we are starting to bend the word "intelligence" way beyond it's normal meaning. We may need another word to describe a um, uh, universal intelligence?

Religious people often solve this problem with the God concept. But this is typically just a replication of the "intelligence as property of a thing" idea, with God being simply a bigger thing, the biggest thing.

What interests me here is considering intelligence as we consider the laws of physics, that is, not the property of any particular thing within reality, but a property of reality itself.

A distinction is routinely made between intelligence guided by intention and planning, such as h. sapiens exhibits, and the instinctive reactions which animate other forms of sentient life. Instinctive reactions can give rise to many amazingly complex behaviours on both the cellular and species level. But I don't think the modern evolutionary synthesis regards this as being the result of intelligence. — Wayfarer

Ok, I hear you in regards to semantics and definitions etc, and agree that what you've expressed is the most common view.

I'm just asking members to reflect on the fact that the behavior seen in bacteria (selecting, storing, and retrieving information for a specific purpose) is labeled intelligence when higher life forms do it. So maybe the distinction you reference merits closer inspection?

I would of course agree that bacteria don't manifest intelligence in the same way that humans do. But this is already accounted for in the theory I'm presenting. Just as there is one law of physics which manifests in an infinite variety of ways in particular situations, the same may be true for intelligence. If we compare life forms to televisions, then some TV sets can display in HD color, while other TV sets can display only in low res black and white. But both sets display the same signal in some manner.

Trees are another example. I recently heard a tree expert on NPR explain how trees can share information about threats, share resources, fight wars, identify their own offspring etc. Trees don't have brains or nervous systems, there is no "me" at the heart of the tree making decisions. But the cooperative and information management behavior observed in trees is labeled intelligence when we do it.

We could respond to such observations by saying such behavior is simply the result of random mutations, natural selection, evolution etc. I'm good with that. I'm just pointing out that this
seemingly purely mechanical process with no mind or intention is producing what we typically
label intelligent behavior across the tree of life from bacteria to humans.

They were your words not mine. — Tom Storm

Yes, agreed. I'm struggling with words like "intelligence" in this thread. And please note, I stated in the OP that these ideas are just what's on my mind. I'm making no claim to "The Truth".

The inquirer can ask the questions to themselves, or in a dialogue, is what i meant. I wasn't asking you to answer them. Good thread. — skyblack

I hear you, and thanks for the thumbs up. Glad you're enjoying the thread.

And that’s because the scientific mindset is dominant in secular culture - this is where science has become today’s religion. Not because it is like religion in substance, but because it occupies the role of ‘arbiter of reality’ in the way that religion did previously. — Wayfarer

Yes, agreed. To call science a religion is to bend the word religion too far. But it seems completely fair to claim our relationship with science is quite similar to the relationship we've long had with religion. I came up with the phrase "science clergy" not to describe scientists so much as our relationship with them. The term applies to scientists too, to the degree they share that relationship.

Dawkins comes to mind here, but there are many examples across the net, in my experience. Dawkins assumes that because he is an expert in some narrow field of technical study, he is also an expert on reason, and religion, and probably many other things. That is, he's not content to just be a great scientist, he apparently wishes to promote himself beyond that to some kind of High Ranking Authority, with a capital "A". That is, much the same role the clergy used to inhabit when they were the only educated people in the culture.

Science does what we ask it to do, it develops new knowledge. So in that sense, "science is a good thing". A tool that works, I don't see a problem here.

Our relationship with science seems something else entirely.

Ok. I see no need or evidence for this. Why go here? — Tom Storm

Check out the above post about bacteria if you want.

So, in that context, the answer to your question, 'what is intelligence?' would be that it is the evolved capacity of intelligent primates, such as ourselves. — Wayfarer

One of the topics that got me going in this direction was a month or so I spent learning about CRISPR, a new technology which makes gene editing easier. Here's the relevant bit...

CRISPR is built upon what bacteria have been doing for many millions of years. Bacteria defend themselves from viruses by grabbing a bit of DNA from the virus and storing it in the bacteria's own DNA. This allows the bacteria to recognize the virus the next time they see it, and provide the appropriate defensive reaction.

Bacteria are selecting particular information, storing it, and then referencing it as needed.

Bacteria.

Jennifer Doudna got the Nobel prize for understanding and leveraging what bacteria have been doing since the dawn of time.

So, the idea that intelligence is the evolved capacity of primates seems a pretty inadequate theory at the moment.

I'm outta gas for today, the dinner table calling my name. Thanks much for all the responses! Looking forward to more tomorrow.

What is it about intelligence that suggests an otherworldly dimension? — Tom Storm

I'm not proposing an otherworldly dimension, but rather the opposite. The theory is that intelligence is built in to the fabric of observable physical reality, in the same way the laws of physics are.

Perhaps it's helpful to observe that while the laws of physics are very real, they don't exist in the sense of having mass, weight, shape or form, location etc. Intelligence might be like that?

Why the need for a 'signal from beyond itself'. — Tom Storm

As I currently understand this theory, the signal is not from beyond itself. If intelligence is a property of physical reality, there is no beyond from which the signal would come. In this theory, the signal is built in to reality itself. In this theory, various "things" within reality can manifest this built in signal to varying degrees. Mozart can manifest symphonies, whereas I just play the harmonica, poorly.

The natural systems that brought about our reality were not, in my opinion, intelligent. — Bitter Crank

And yet those systems created something that would have been labeled very intelligent if we had created it. You know, the glory of the universe is beyond spectacular, we probably have no words which can express it adequately.

While I'm still struggling with what I mean by the word "intelligence" don't we judge that in part by that which is created?

We can entertain theoretical discussions about whether Israel should have been created in the first place, but it's now a country of 9 million and there is no possibility of Israel just packing up and leaving. — BitconnectCarlos

Ok, fair enough, not really arguing with that. But technically at least, I'm unaware of any substantial reasons why Israelis couldn't pack up and leave if they chose to do so. You're right, that won't happen, but the price tag for that choice could turn out to be high.

I get that Israelis want to have their own country, that's very understandable, especially given the history. The problem is, it's a very small country. A very smart country, but still very small, and surrounded by enemies. Israel has to win every single day. Israeli's enemies only need to win once.

I'm not making any moral case here. I'm just trying to do the survival math in a hopefully objective manner.

And, it doesn't really make sense that the Palestinians want their own country either, as it would most likely become just another corrupt Arab dictatorship.

I'm definitely an interested in where you are going, but I could use some help in going there with you. You seem to have summarized years of investigation in to a single paragraph, which is too big a bite for me at present. If it interests you to continue, further explanation, examples, simpler language perhaps, would be read with interest here.