DISCUSSION 
specifiable features of the behaviour-pattern of a human judge. 
What is doubtful is whether the “judgment” so delivered 
would be (or should be) acceptable by a human community. 
I think it is of the essence of obedience to government that in 
some sense the governor is answerable, even if you can only 
curse him under your breath. 
Comfort: Perhaps we could mechanize the United Nations. 
The trouble about reaching a decision in the United Nations is 
that while we are all willing to subscribe to a written programme 
which lays down such ideals as liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
no country has ever yet lived up to its constitution. If America 
or Russia were as good as their constitutions they would be 
very fine places to live in. It might be possible to persuade 
everybody to agree beforehand on the programming of a 
“United Nations computer”’, but they would not then be able 
to go back on it when their own special case was in dispute, as, 
of course, we always do now. 
MacKay: Until somebody says “We must replace that 
machine geai"i! 
Comfort: ‘There would then be such an outcry that the final 
programme would be altered until some animals were more 
equal than others! 
Haldane: I should like to raise three points. The first 
concerns Coon’s remarks about fear as a basis of religion. I 
think that man under ordinary conditions is not frightened 
enough. A moderate amount of danger, in my opinion, is 
extremely conducive to happiness. I have seldom been as 
happy as I was on a quiet day in the trenches in 1915 witha 
I in 1,000 chance of getting hit. In the absence of obvious 
threats, we build up objects of fear. The question is, whether it 
is better to have hobgoblins, like our Hindu goddess Sitala, the 
smallpox goddess, and Mariamma, the cholera goddess, or 
whether to be afraid of communists or capitalists or whatever 
it may be. It is very fashionable now to be afraid of lethal 
genes for our descendants. We seem to demand some object of 
fear, and the type of object of fear we should prefer to have is a 
question which ought to be discussed. We should realize that 
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