Ep 312 AI Knows How to Stop War (Killing); Women Do Too: A Fool’s Errand

"Anything you can weigh, you can outweigh. The only way to stop killing is to treat non-killing as a floor." For this special 64th birthday episode, Avis explores a powerful, two-part reflection on how we construct non-killing as a non-negotiable rule rather than a calculated trade-off.

First, Avis and Claude discuss war and killing and the question: Why do moral systems fail when harm-avoidance is treated as a "weight" in a sum rather than an absolute "floor"? Thye dive into Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, the mechanics of international law (jus cogens), and the famous "trolley problem" to see why an operational prohibition against killing is both mathematically necessary and entirely possible.

Then, Avis steps back to April 1915, when over a thousand women gathered at The Hague in the middle of World War I. While military leaders calculated the cost of war, women across enemy lines set an absolute floor for peace. We trace their courage, from facing hostility at home and mine-strewn seas to directly confronting heads of state on an impossible "fool's errand."

In This Episode:

• Birthday Intro:Don’t miss Teo’s ultimate birthday promise.
• Part 1: The AI Logic of Non-Killing:Floors vs. weights, why Asimov’s Laws were built to break, and how operational rules hold. (Assisted by Claude)
• Part 2: The Women of 1915:How 150 delegates crossed closed borders during World War I to establish the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). (Assisted by Gemini)

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Podcast Music: ElevenLabs by Avis Kalfsbeek