From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 1 00:06:26 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:06:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it> <49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it> <49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49D2B002.6080108@libero.it> Il 31/03/2009 8.42, Fred C. Moulton ha scritto: > At least one utility is to make sure that anyone who by chance stumbled > onto this exchange would realize that your position is not an Extropian > position and is in fact extremely non-Extropian. I would not want a > reporter on a deadline to be following links or doing some google > searches and to read your posts and mistakenly think that the views you > have stated about France and Muslim expulsion are in any way > representative of Extropian thought. I don't know if it is unextropian to let a death cult to flourish inside your nation, feeding on your works, and letting it to grow stronger until is able to take the power and kill anyone that oppose it. Paraphrasing a Supreme Justice "Extropy is not a death pact". > BillK posted a brief summary of part of the background related to the > situation of Muslims in France. I suggest everyone read it. Seriously > France is not going to expel all of the Muslims for several reasons and > to even suggest that it would be a good idea shows a profound lack of > understanding of international law, international relations, military > affairs, history and other social sciences. The reason I mention > international law first is that understanding the idea of "Crimes > against Humanity" would be a good starting place. Do you think Mr. President Bashir of Sudan (and his friends and co-religionists) will support anything resembling the International Court of Justice? Or will abide to the ruling of the Court? If and when France government will face a Iraq-like Jihad, the other European States will have their muslim's cats to skin. Don't expect them to help the muslims or attack France; probably the opposite will happen. And, probably, the troops we use to stabilize the status quo in Bosnia and Kosovo will not be there. And without Europe, the ICJ is powerless, without legitimacy and without an a house to meet. And, paraphrasing someone else, the "humane way" to solve the situation will be to expel them so they are out of harm way. Like the Germans expelled from the Sudeten after WW2 or the italians expelled from Istria. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 1 00:34:37 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:34:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it> <49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> Il 30/03/2009 14.51, BillK ha scritto: > On 3/30/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > And the resident French people were delighted to accept the > cheap services provided. Not the common French, not the common European. The elites are interested in importing people to lower the labour cost or full fill their political agenda (leftist import people because the new citizen usually are poor and vote for them). The privatize the gains and socialize the costs (welfare, criminality) as usual. > But the foreign workers faced massive discrimination and prejudice > ever since they arrived. The problem is that the North African have a mean 10 point lower IQ than the mean European IQ. So there find that only lower wages jobs are available. The Black African have a worse problem (20 points lower IQ). They will ever form and underclass, because they will ever be less skilled than the locals (or the East Asians). This until they melt with the locals and there will be no visible difference. But until this happen (In a couple of centuries or more) they will feel discriminated. If you add to this an ideology, ISLAM, that teach they are the master religion, they are entitled to rule, the others are enemies and evils, and you have a recipe for civil war, religious killing and more. This is not happening naturally. There is the active meddling of the Islamic nations; there are an increase of imams educated in Saudi Arabia that propagate the worst strain of Islam. Without this, the ethnic Muslims would assimilate with the locals without so many problems because the majority are MINO (Muslim In Name Only). But a little group of criminal and fanatics are able to stop this natural assimilation. Usually the problem is not with the older generation, but with the younger one that is politicized and pampered. > And now live in slum, no-hope housing estates > on the borders of the cities with no hope of ever assimilating. > Naturally they riot and protest from time to time. Then naturally, if the riots will go out of control, someone will seize the opportunity to use overwhelming force to settle the problems and be called "saviour of the country". Historically, when Europeans start to kick asses, the consequences are not pretty for the asses that are kicked. I would prefer another solution, but I don't see anything that is able to change the route to an armed confrontation between Europeans and Muslims. Mirco From moulton at moulton.com Wed Apr 1 02:52:28 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:52:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D2B002.6080108@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it> <49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it> <49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <49D2B002.6080108@libero.it> Message-ID: <1238554348.5478.503.camel@hayek> On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 02:06 +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 31/03/2009 8.42, Fred C. Moulton ha scritto: > > > At least one utility is to make sure that anyone who by chance stumbled > > onto this exchange would realize that your position is not an Extropian > > position and is in fact extremely non-Extropian. I would not want a > > reporter on a deadline to be following links or doing some google > > searches and to read your posts and mistakenly think that the views you > > have stated about France and Muslim expulsion are in any way > > representative of Extropian thought. > > I don't know if it is unextropian to let a death cult to flourish inside > your nation, feeding on your works, and letting it to grow stronger > until is able to take the power and kill anyone that oppose it. First to state the obvious; the issue under discussion is the expulsion of all Muslims from France and to imply that the Muslims in France taken as an aggregate comprise a death cult is a false implication. Not trivially false but profoundly false. Islam is not some monolithic whole. To try to extrapolate from the actions of a few to the larger group is in this case profoundly false. It has no more validity than to say that Christians in the USA are a death cult because of the actions of some in the 1980s and 1990s. > Paraphrasing a Supreme Justice "Extropy is not a death pact". Extropy is not an excuse to post obviously false and misleading crap to the extropy-chat list. This list seems to have the misfortune of having attracted persons who do not hold Extropian values. I won't bother with a reply to the rest of your message because you totally missed the point and I am getting tired of pointing out obvious errors. What I would say to anyone who seriously advocates that France expel all Muslims is that they might want to consider consulting professional psychological help. I am not attempting to diagnose anyone, I do not know if they are seriously delusional, I do not know if they are simply making outrageous statements in order to gain attention, I do not know if they simply enjoy being a pest. Perhaps there is another explanation for them making such posts. It just might be a reason for concern for someone to be advocating an action (involuntary deportation of innocent civilians) which has commonly been considered a Crime against Humanity since the Nuremberg trials. Fred From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 03:03:18 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:03:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> Message-ID: <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> For the record, I am strongly opposed to any violent actions infringing on private property, including expulsions, purges and pogroms of any kind, directed at innocent individuals (i.e. persons who did not perform any violent activities against other innocent people). I would find it odious and revolting if such innocent individuals were harmed under the pretext of being Muslim, foreign, or under any other morally irrelevant tribal label. Rafal PS. To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is being bandied about here. WTF? From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Apr 1 03:20:14 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:20:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.co m> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> At 11:03 PM 3/31/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that >the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is >being bandied about here. WTF? Usually there's nothing more boring than posting "Me, too," but sometimes it's necessary. Me too! Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 04:07:31 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:07:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The sky is falling! In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60903261735m2f8c2279wd804d08538eb96ca@mail.gmail.com> <2ae60d770903271953l79ceb2e5j2cd5962d1dd509ff@mail.gmail.com> <1238392863.5478.122.camel@hayek> <2ae60d770903292354w21c20d42md580d06938aa6018@mail.gmail.com> <8C4E86510A1E4CD1844FA851BE3AF22F@DFC68LF1> <2ae60d770903301404m3640c996xc741b70da1b93629@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903301412j9e882bco830d774356a2696e@mail.gmail.com> <630F851B3E44427E9D4A5E321139D1C9@spike> <2ae60d770903301443o4c33a9adm2e784c1ed2ddc97@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670903312107l14de86abm2be5b9e308df5a07@mail.gmail.com> Chad Robb wrote: Mormons and Catholics tend to have pretty dry services. There is no applause after a performance because it was not intended for approval of the audience but as tribute to God. Its sort of an ordeal of attendance. They go because afterward, they can talk and be like a huge family. Drinking tea or coffee or fruit juice or whatever, eating cookies and donuts, especially things made by members for members. Its a low key party. A Temporary Autonomous Zone of heavily tempered conviviality. >>> The Mormon congregations today tend to nearly tear down the door to get home, after the Sunday services are finished. But I would not quite call it an ordeal of attendance! lol The variety of speakers and topics keeps things generally interesting. In the "old days" the services were broken into two different time periods, but they have been consolidated so people could spend more time with family. It is a three hour time bloc that includes "Sacrament Meeting" where the sacrament is administered and 2-4 members of the ward (congregation) give talks (instead of the Bishop/pastor doing it every time). "Gospel Doctrine" is the Sunday School portion, with a similar program for teens and children. Finally, there is "Priesthood" for the men and "Relief Society" for the women. I wish we had refreshments after the Sunday meetings, but we don't. But there are other gatherings and firesides where people do socialize quite a bit and eat refreshments. What I find interesting is that there is a trend in the Church where during Salt Lake broadcasts for young people they do hip and catchy musical presentations that make me think of Disney's "High School Musical." And a number of years ago an LDS Church president had an opera singer perform in General Conference (usually a pretty staid gathering that happens twice a year). I love your terminology with, "It's a low key party. *A Temporary Autonomous Zone of heavily tempered conviviality." * Do you work in the Pentagon creating project names and acronyms? LOL John * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 05:14:51 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:14:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The sky is falling! In-Reply-To: <2d6187670903312107l14de86abm2be5b9e308df5a07@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60903261735m2f8c2279wd804d08538eb96ca@mail.gmail.com> <1238392863.5478.122.camel@hayek> <2ae60d770903292354w21c20d42md580d06938aa6018@mail.gmail.com> <8C4E86510A1E4CD1844FA851BE3AF22F@DFC68LF1> <2ae60d770903301404m3640c996xc741b70da1b93629@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903301412j9e882bco830d774356a2696e@mail.gmail.com> <630F851B3E44427E9D4A5E321139D1C9@spike> <2ae60d770903301443o4c33a9adm2e784c1ed2ddc97@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670903312107l14de86abm2be5b9e308df5a07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2ae60d770903312214y5fe6d592s19e6fb8efb040708@mail.gmail.com> > A Temporary Autonomous Zone of heavily tempered conviviality. > > Do you work in the Pentagon creating project names and acronyms? LOL You should look into Hakim Bey, a sufi anarchist poet/theorist. He coined the phrase Temporary Autonomous Zone. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Wed Apr 1 05:03:51 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:03:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Maybe rephrase that? Message-ID: <741125.21433.qm@web110403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Well! Sometimes people feel really at home. Kicking people out of some leagues without just facts sucks. Sometimes naming such facts is not true. --- On Tue, 3/31/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > From: Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] To Arms! > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 11:20 PM > At 11:03 PM 3/31/2009 -0400, Rafal > wrote: > > >To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed > off that > >the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being > Muslim is > >being bandied about here. WTF? > > Usually there's nothing more boring than posting "Me, too," > but > sometimes it's necessary. Me too! > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 1 05:43:03 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 01:43:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4D2D8B10AB7A475AB6BDC9CC9F1ECE59@MyComputer> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 11:20 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] To Arms! > At 11:03 PM 3/31/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >>To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that >>the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is >>being bandied about here. WTF? > > Usually there's nothing more boring than posting "Me, too," but > sometimes it's necessary. Me too! > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 1 05:54:45 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 01:54:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] That Baptist is right References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> I often badmouth religion but I must admit that a fundamentalist Baptist church has recently put something on a big billboard outside their church that I agree with 100%: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2009/03/churchsign.jpeg John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 06:11:15 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:11:15 +1100 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/1 Lee Corbin : > A century and a half ago the American Medical Association > began its quest for total control over American medicine. > The first really impressive results were the government > licensing of physicians and the AMA's own control over > the number of doctors. In many jurisdictions it isn't actually illegal to practise medicine without a license, but it is illegal to claim that you are a certified doctor when you aren't. Body piercing is an example of a surgical procedure which is not intrinsically easier or safer than some minor therapeutic surgical procedures and yet is usually performed by people who aren't medically qualified. So the certifying body doesn't actually prevent people from practising medicine, but it has done a really good PR job convincing Government, insurers and patients that only those who have their special certificate are competent. The one area where regulation does prevent anyone who feels like it from practising medicine is prescription drugs. The argument is that they are too dangerous to be used without medical supervision, but in most other areas of life people are allowed to evaluate a risk and exercise their own judgement as to whether to obtain expert help. -- Stathis Papaioannou From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 06:17:06 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:17:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Go home superman! Message-ID: <2ae60d770903312317l47efa79dj111f797fd0fc164b@mail.gmail.com> I think the first jobs to require enhancement will be medical jobs. Brainsurgeons with microsense eyes. That won't be so scary. I don't expect people to lynch doctors. Maybe if a computer programmer can connect his mind to a computer (wireless of course, the Brain-Jack is so Shadowrun) he could put a lot of software technicians out of work but that still wouldn't be so intimidating. Cops and soldiers who can hear your heart through a wall, can smell your skin and identify your trail, can hit a moving target from a mile away, thats the kind of problem people will hold signs outside of bionics labs for. A superior master race is probably long off, even if super enhancements are just a decade off. We'll probably cure all disease before we make the flying car. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 06:18:02 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:18:02 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Economy: "The Big Takeover" In-Reply-To: <49D235BB.2030908@rawbw.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <3FBA6B2EE01E45D1BEBB6B3A05A125BD@spike> <49D235BB.2030908@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/1 Lee Corbin : > True. So many times that I can't count them, I heard > the Democratically controlled congress pronounce one > of Reagan's budgets "dead on arrival". There was no > way that they were going to cut spending. All their > power depends on it. > > Unfortunately, the Republicans are no better. *They* > had complete control of congress early in the Bill > Clinton years and then again under Bush's first term. > So what happened? Well, "There was no way that they > were going to cut spending. All their power depends > on it". But governments obviously do cut spending and/or increase taxes, despite these being unpopular measures, since otherwise they would all be bankrupt. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 1 06:22:38 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 02:22:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> Message-ID: <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> I have just seen a brilliant critique of Darwin Theory of Evolution that was so logical, so devastating, that now the only thing for me to do is become a creationist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch John K Clark From kanzure at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 06:55:46 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 01:55:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Click path length Message-ID: <55ad6af70903312355u7cd81ad2x3d253478452bbf47@mail.gmail.com> There was once a paper published that explored the probability of a group of users following a link on a page, and then the likelihood of continuing on a particular chain of links. Anyway, for a website that does not have many users, it's unlikely that you are going to be able to get the users to where you want to go. However, when you have a ridiculously high volume of traffic, it's like liquid- even the small percentage that does happen to get to where you wanted them to get to, it's still very significant. So, let's look at Google's home page today- eternally restricted to, what, 24 words? There's one particular link in a prominent location to CADIE, this year's April experiment. On the following page there are a total of six links. One leads to youtube- so we're three levels down at the moment. I examined over this page and I immediately saw this user named Tyler Emerson in the subscriptions box, but with the face of Eliezer Yudkowsky (pulled from one of the uploaded videos). Wait, what? Let's see some estimates for the number of page views that the number one site on the web is likely to get in a 24 hour period- 200 million queries per day sometime in 2007; so let's say that 1% of those 200 million queries are typed into the main Google page, and let's also say that of that 1% of the total, only 1% bothers to click on the youtube link. That's still 20,000 exposures, and that's a lower bound on the estimate. How about 10% and then 10%? Those are some pretty big numbers. Though honestly, I do more than 200 queries per day, so if this was the same across the entire population, that's really only a million different people querying (maybe), and only a small percentage is going to be looking at the links, and even less at the resulting links- heck, most people don't even look past the first or second search result (apparently) on the search pages (nobody knows how to use a search engine, as it turns out). Anyway, those are some pretty big numbers when it comes to audiences. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 07:23:17 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:23:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Go home superman! In-Reply-To: <2ae60d770903312317l47efa79dj111f797fd0fc164b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2ae60d770903312317l47efa79dj111f797fd0fc164b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904010023y1571c088y9f37319b12593370@mail.gmail.com> >We'll probably cure all disease before we make the flying car. LOL I only wish! But we will cure all disease before we see a starship in every driveway. John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 07:25:02 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 07:25:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 4/1/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:03 PM 3/31/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > > To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that > > the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is > > being bandied about here. WTF? > > > > Usually there's nothing more boring than posting "Me, too," but sometimes > it's necessary. Me too! > When economic depression hits, xenophobia raises its ugly head. 'These furriners taking our jobs - send them back where they came from!'. (Of course, most were born in that country). Attacking minorities and civil unrest will be one of the unexpected side effects as the depression starts to get worse. Short-term, increasing unemployment hits everybody and falling tax receipts means countries start running budget deficits. But this cannot continue for long without currency collapse. The UK pound has already fallen by about 30% against the euro and dollar. Unfortunately Europe needs immigrants, because the original Europeans have stopped having children and are aging fast. It is the demographic timebomb. Who will be the workers and pay for social security for the aged? The future for those populations who stop having children is a reducing, aging population supported by young workers from immigrant families. BillK From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 07:37:43 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:37:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Go home superman! And flying cars. Message-ID: <2ae60d770904010037s22658419h7fa946a28c898f9a@mail.gmail.com> Chad: We'll probably cure all disease before we make the flying car. John: LOL I only wish! But we will cure all disease before we see a starship in every driveway. I mean, we have flying cars. The Skycar is functional if unavailable to the public. In order to make flying cars viable, we'd need cheap fuel and a convenient way to park. We'll have cars that can safely pilot themselves from a to b before we make them fly. Imagine it, you get in your car and say "The Mall" and it will ask "Which one?" and you say "The closest one." and then you just close your eyes. No need to buckle up. All cars are mandatorily robotic. You can have it drop off the kids at school and come home and you can pilot it while fabulously drunk. Also, there will be no more traffic tickets. You will move according to Traffic Regulation Programs. Then, when we have personalized flightcraft, you just load up the family and say "The Mall." and it will say "Which one?" and you'll say "The nearest in Tokyo". And then you just close your eyes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 08:19:55 2009 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 10:19:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Worshiping that Divine Blowhard. In-Reply-To: <2A682415A493470482BEA0661DEEE237@MyComputer> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <101D88DF5C49447D97D5A3D07C7FB6FB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331014715.0274edd0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331024459.0274d568@satx.rr.com> <4807651DA4BA47E89B7F8D790FAD79CF@MyComputer> <2A682415A493470482BEA0661DEEE237@MyComputer> Message-ID: > by itself how does that generate higher life forms? It doesn't, if you ask me. But the whole Bible machine is supposed to make complex life forms and to produce a substantial pain in the Hell at the same time. The Christ's walk with the cross on his shoulders was nothing, compared to that produced daily in the Hell plant. The amount of future pain inside the Bible story is infinite. The amount of the already endured pain is quite small compared to that. And to the actual pain endured during the Darwinian evolution also. - Thomas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 08:24:50 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 01:24:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Homo Drakensis" Message-ID: <2d6187670904010124u446d9901u25071594da4bb1d1@mail.gmail.com> The Draka are the fictional creations of science fiction author S.M. Stirling. In his Draka series, he made up an alternative history timeline that is among the most revered but also hotly debated. The Draka started out in what we call South Africa, and went on to create a Sparta/Nazi-like society that eventually conquered the world. Through extreme genetic engineering, the Draka recreated themselves to be the living embodiments of their own warped ideals. This is a GURPS player's roleplaying game supplement page about them. I thought this might make interesting food for thought among transhumanists. "Homo Drakensis" is most disturbing in that they control others through pheromones and have brains that have been genetically engineered to take aggression and the need for dominance to great extremes. "Homo Servus" is what is left of "Homo Sapiens Sapiens." They have been crafted to be very compliant and are especially susceptible to Homo Drakensis pheromone influence. The Draka, though very intelligent, lost some of the normal human scientific intuitiveness and creativity due to their extreme brain modifications that enhanced their capacities for combat. And so Homo Servus engineers and scientists are highly prized in keeping technological innovation going. http://members.fortunecity.com/centurion2001/draka.htm Draka timeline... http://www.geocities.com/hentaihelper/postEW.htm John Grigg ** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 08:33:29 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 10:33:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: What can rich nations do, to reduce population growth levels in third world countries. I mean intentionally, as in "we want your country to have a birth rate under 3.1" ? ...we want your population growth under 150.000 new people per year. If you do not we lock down borders and keep every of your citizens locked IN? (containment) The problem is that poor nations, nations with corrupt governments, nations with superstition industries, nations with large criminal networks ... these all work to cultivate a culture of pathetic collectivism. We know these people well - islamic fundamentalists. party fanatics in china. And even in europe some have proven susceptible to this type of behavior - we see simplistic ideologies pop up all the time in aforementioned type of countries - simple peasant world views where problems are addressed with a hoe and a shovel, and where pests are eradicated and burned and predators hunted down by a mob. You might even find expressions of those sentiments here in this thread. We need better education, more employability, people having more free time for selfdevelopment, less dictates of some crazed fanatical ideology such as communism, islamic fundamentalism, fascism, xenophobia, market corporatism, etc. These are all the result of simple, poor people applying a simplistic world view to complex problems. We cannot allow these simplistic retards to breed and overrun us all. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 09:52:04 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 20:52:04 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Economy: "The Big Takeover". In-Reply-To: <2D878C03793347B3A1C4FC8F0A90CCAE@MyComputer> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <3FBA6B2EE01E45D1BEBB6B3A05A125BD@spike> <49D235BB.2030908@rawbw.com> <2D878C03793347B3A1C4FC8F0A90CCAE@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/1 John K Clark : > Anyway, at a time like now the last thing on earth you'd want to do is > balance the budget. Hoover did it and turned a garden variety recession into > a decade long worldwide depression. Yes, but the Keynesian flipside of that would have been to balance the budget or have a surplus in the boom times. If that had been done the current situation might have been averted, or at least been less dire. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 11:56:35 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 13:56:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904010456r599c9db9i39bde87d951f8ad2@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/1 Dagon Gmail : > What can rich nations do, to reduce population growth levels in third world > countries. I am confused. Were it true that Europe needs immigrants rather than children, where would we find them if we persuaded third world countries not to make children either? -- Stefano Vaj From jrd1415 at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 15:01:51 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 09:01:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> Message-ID: Went to check it out. Apparently the video is gone from youtube. If anyone knows differently, please post to the list. Best, Jeff Davis On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 12:22 AM, John K Clark wrote: > I have just seen a brilliant critique of Darwin Theory of Evolution that was > so logical, so devastating, that now the only thing for me to do is become a > creationist: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > > John K Clark > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From eric at m056832107.syzygy.com Wed Apr 1 15:24:30 2009 From: eric at m056832107.syzygy.com (Eric Messick) Date: 1 Apr 2009 15:24:30 -0000 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20090401152430.5.qmail@syzygy.com> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > >Went to check it out. Apparently the video is gone from youtube. > >If anyone knows differently, please post to the list. > >Best, Jeff Davis Just checked, and it's there for me. Scary. >From the text at the end, I'm guessing it's actors reading posts from net discussions. -eric From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 15:55:52 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:55:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > The one area where regulation does prevent anyone who feels like it > from practising medicine is prescription drugs. The argument is that > they are too dangerous to be used without medical supervision This is a legacy of a "nanny-State" mentality where I believe most transhumanists in spite of their possibly different political persuasions might converge towards an abolitionist position. Informed, consenting adults should be allowed to assume whatever substance they like for any purpose whatsoever, including, inter alia, enhancement, self-therapy, alternative-therapy (or other) experimentation, new drug trials, recreational purposes, euthanasia, etc. It would seem obvious by now that the economic and social costs arising from futile and distorsive attempts to enforce the current regime are higher than any perceived, hypothetical advantage thereof. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br Wed Apr 1 15:35:01 2009 From: amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br (Antonio Marcos) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 08:35:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist Message-ID: <145411.90314.qm@web110306.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Most online forums are dominated by "kids" or similar mentality, it would be dishonest, could even backfire, if you use this as an argument against creationism or pro-evolutionism / atheism. As tempting as this may sound =) It does have some entertainment value though, thanks =) Cheers, AM. --- Em qua, 1/4/09, Jeff Davis escreveu: > De: Jeff Davis > Assunto: Re: [ExI] I am now a creationist > Para: "ExI chat list" > Data: Quarta-feira, 1 de Abril de 2009, 12:01 > Went to check it out. > Apparently the video is gone from youtube. > > If anyone knows differently, please post to the list. > > Best, Jeff Davis > > On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 12:22 AM, John K Clark > wrote: > > I have just seen a brilliant critique of Darwin Theory > of Evolution that was > > so logical, so devastating, that now the only thing > for me to do is become a > > creationist: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > > > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Veja quais s?o os assuntos do momento no Yahoo! +Buscados http://br.maisbuscados.yahoo.com From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 16:02:39 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 18:02:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20904010902n13687b3cx2dbb83525623ebd9@mail.gmail.com> April Fools' Day! :-D On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:22 AM, John K Clark wrote: > I have just seen a brilliant critique of Darwin Theory of Evolution that was > so logical, so devastating, that now the only thing for me to do is become a > creationist: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > > John K Clark > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 1 17:42:55 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 13:42:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Economy: "The Big Takeover". References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <3FBA6B2EE01E45D1BEBB6B3A05A125BD@spike> <49D235BB.2030908@rawbw.com> <2D878C03793347B3A1C4FC8F0A90CCAE@MyComputer> Message-ID: "Stathis Papaioannou" > Yes, but the Keynesian flipside of that would have been to balance the > budget or have a surplus in the boom times. If that had been done the > current situation might have been averted That was done during the booming last 3 of the Clinton years, but then Bush took over. John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 00:21:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:21:54 +1100 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/2 Stefano Vaj : > This is a legacy of a "nanny-State" mentality where I believe most > transhumanists in spite of their possibly different political persuasions > might converge towards an abolitionist position. > > Informed, consenting adults should be allowed to assume whatever substance > they like for any purpose whatsoever, including, inter alia, enhancement, > self-therapy, alternative-therapy (or other) experimentation, new drug > trials, recreational purposes, euthanasia, etc. > > It would seem obvious by now that the economic and social costs arising from > futile and distorsive attempts to enforce the current regime are higher than > any perceived, hypothetical advantage thereof. Yes, I would agree with that. One possible problem with free access to drugs would be the acceleration of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which why we have the MRSA problem Lee mentioned. Here a case could be made for restriction in the interests of the public good. -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 09:04:41 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:04:41 +0000 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/2/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Yes, I would agree with that. One possible problem with free access to > drugs would be the acceleration of bacterial resistance to > antibiotics, which why we have the MRSA problem Lee mentioned. Here a > case could be made for restriction in the interests of the public good. > Agreed. The widespread use of antibiotics means that they become useless. This is already a problem in hospitals. And it appears that new antibiotics are difficult to develop and expensive. The two generic problems with free access to drugs are the same as with free access to anything that might be dangerous in the wrong hands. Guns, explosives, poisons, drugs, acids, nuclear technology, nanotechnology, etc. Do you want the bad people to be able to just walk into Walmart and buy them? Do you want the 50% below average intelligence to buy them? Do you want the insane or temporarily depressed people to buy them? Do you want your estranged wife or furious alienated teenagers to buy them? Do you want children to have access to them? (Even if children are banned from buying them, if they are freely available to everyone, then children will get them). So you swap one group of social problems for another group. Which group will end up being overall worse for society? Restrictions causes a known set of problems and protects against another known set of problems. Freedom (or chaos) is a wild venture into the unknown. Best to try it in a small society first. Netherlands experimenting with drugs freedom is a good solution. Let's watch and see what happens. BillK From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 10:08:35 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 12:08:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904010456r599c9db9i39bde87d951f8ad2@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904010456r599c9db9i39bde87d951f8ad2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > I am confused. Were it true that Europe needs immigrants rather than > children, where would we find them if we persuaded third world > countries not to make children either? I seriously do NOT want immigration of poor, undercivilized, undereducated people, most of these prone to backward and sinister superstitions and coming from authoritarian, antidemocratic, patriarchal and reactionary cultures. I personally support the goals of the club of ten million(link) which advocates peacefully reducing the population of the netherlands from 16 million down to 10 million. I do not agree with all assumptions made by this 'club', but I agree with them that "importing chattel slaves' from third world nations to address demographic transitions caused by aging populations to be deeply immoral, for both us western europeans, as well as for the countries of origin. The idea to "make more children" for whatever reason is disingenuous, confusing and deceptive. We need less people, because the world is severely overpopulated. Adding more people to address the effects of having too many people in the first place is like eating more to address the medical emergency caused by morbid obesity. Europe and Japan can be asserted to be headed "in the right direction", even if market fundamentalists see it differently. In my view we need an urgent reassessment of the value of the human being - humans are the norm of what we should regard as valuable - everything else should be secondary. If we create a world where the value of the human is deflated because of too many humans, we are seriously doing things wrong. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 11:17:26 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 13:17:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:04 AM, BillK wrote: > Agreed. The widespread use of antibiotics means that they become > useless. This is already a problem in hospitals. And it appears that > new antibiotics are difficult to develop and expensive. Yes, this might be a problem, even though it is really a small part of the entire scenario. > > The two generic problems with free access to drugs are the same as > with free access to anything that might be dangerous in the wrong > hands. Guns, explosives, poisons, drugs, acids, nuclear technology, > nanotechnology, etc. > Mmhhh, yes, this is an old issue. I am no anarco-capitalist or anarchist of any other persuasion, and have no doubt that *some* regulations may well be unavoidable. Yet, I am istinctively wary of the quick-and-easy solution of defining one's own as the "good hands", and reflexively implementing prohibitionist policies which often end up being a stop-gag measure at best and even more often produce important distorsive and unintended effects, from alcohol to recreational drugs to nuclear weapons. OTOH, my stance in this field was much more limited and qualified: "Informed, consenting adults should be allowed to assume whatever substance they like". You want a letal injection to stop your suffering, fine. You want to take it home in order to administer it to your husband while he is sleeping, well, let's discuss it first. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 11:22:12 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 13:22:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904010456r599c9db9i39bde87d951f8ad2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904020422pe027ee1x8d68732fd625cfb8@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/2 Dagon Gmail > I am confused. Were it true that Europe needs immigrants rather than >> children, where would we find them if we persuaded third world >> countries not to make children either? > > > I seriously do NOT want immigration of poor, undercivilized, undereducated > people, most of these prone to backward and sinister superstitions and > coming > from authoritarian, antidemocratic, patriarchal and reactionary cultures. > > I personally support the goals of the club of ten million(link) which advocates > peacefully reducing the population of the netherlands from 16 million down > to > 10 million. I do not agree with all assumptions made by this 'club', but I > agree > with them that "importing chattel slaves' from third world nations to > address > demographic transitions caused by aging populations to be deeply immoral, > for both us western europeans, as well as for the countries of origin. > Ah, OK, this is perfectly consistent (and I am with you at least on the very last part). In fact, I "rhetorically" superimposed your position to that of BillK mostly to imply that they are contradictory, but I was aware they were taken by two different people... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 12:20:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 23:20:31 +1100 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/2 BillK : > The two generic problems with free access to drugs are the same as > with free access to anything that might be dangerous in the wrong > hands. ?Guns, explosives, poisons, drugs, acids, nuclear technology, > nanotechnology, etc. One difference to consider is that if you misuse drugs, you usually harm only yourself, while if you misuse nuclear weapons, you harm other people as well. In cases where you harm others as a result of drug use, such as with driving while intoxicated or indiscriminate use of antibiotics, it is easier to justify limits on freedom. -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 12:37:29 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 12:37:29 +0000 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/2/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > One difference to consider is that if you misuse drugs, you usually > harm only yourself, while if you misuse nuclear weapons, you harm > other people as well. In cases where you harm others as a result of > drug use, such as with driving while intoxicated or indiscriminate use > of antibiotics, it is easier to justify limits on freedom. > Well, presumably you would not misuse nuclear weapons accidentally, so you should be talking about deliberate misuse of drugs. Like dumping them in the water system, poisoning large groups of people, murder weapons, serial killers, acid-throwing, poison gas release, etc. I'm sure you can think of many more examples. Obviously forbidding easy access to drugs doesn't stop all misuse. But it does stop an alienated teenager putting poisonous drugs in the school water tank. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 13:02:28 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 15:02:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904020602g45da55dey30c01185a80cc224@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > In cases where you harm others as a result of > drug use, such as with driving while intoxicated or indiscriminate use > of antibiotics, it is easier to justify limits on freedom. Korrect. But in fact you need not do that, or at least not in most conceivable scenarios. You do not restrict freedom to get intoxicated, or for that matter to assume a substance that makes you blind, you restrict freedom to drive (if and when you are). -- Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 13:06:56 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 00:06:56 +1100 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 02/04/2009, BillK wrote: > Well, presumably you would not misuse nuclear weapons accidentally, so > you should be talking about deliberate misuse of drugs. > Like dumping them in the water system, poisoning large groups of > people, murder weapons, serial killers, acid-throwing, poison gas > release, etc. I'm sure you can think of many more examples. > > Obviously forbidding easy access to drugs doesn't stop all misuse. But > it does stop an alienated teenager putting poisonous drugs in the > school water tank. That's really not a consideration at all. You can find far more dangerous chemicals than prescription drugs far more easily in a hardware store. There are exceptions, but with most drugs taking even a hundred times the usual dose won't kill you, so it would be very difficult to use them to poison someone without them noticing, let alone a whole water supply. -- Stathis Papaioannou From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 2 15:35:38 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:35:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] free access to drugs (was Re: U.S. Medical Care) In-Reply-To: <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com > References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> > > >The two generic problems with free access to drugs ... > >Mmhhh, yes, this is an old issue. I am no anarco-capitalist Wouldn't that be narco-capitalist? :) From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 15:43:56 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 08:43:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Economy: "The Big Takeover". In-Reply-To: <96CC1FA5-F1CC-42BF-ADA0-1082C08F92A3@mac.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com><49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com><580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com><93632127F9A742F192C5C36DBCA36781@MyComputer> <96CC1FA5-F1CC-42BF-ADA0-1082C08F92A3@mac.com> Message-ID: > On Mar 30, 2009, at 4:15 PM, John K Clark wrote: > > > "BillK" Wrote: > > > >> Why worry about it? You are *never* going to get a free > market where > >> devious wheeler-dealer shyster smart-alec humans are involved. > > > > But you will get perfect government where devious wheeler-dealer > > shyster smart-alec humans are involved. > > > > Good shot! :) Samantha Ja. In a capitalist system, people use their best creative powers to produce wealth. When political power is the new money, people use their creative powers to create political power. Everyone loses. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 15:49:59 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 08:49:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > ...Climate denial isn't a crime > here yet, but you can be ostracized by your friends... Lee > Lee, the ostracizers weren't your friends to start with. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 15:58:57 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 08:58:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news: was RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com><580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com><49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it><49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it><49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek><49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton > > ...I would not want a reporter on a deadline ... to mistakenly think... Fred Fred, your post was actually about something else but your comment caused me to recognize a big advantage to the coming death of print news. The news cycle manipulation and rush to a particular deadline that you describe both go away, being artifacts of print news cycles. Traditionally these have been one issue per day, with special arrangements on weekends. Now, news stories can go up on the site whenever the reporter is satisfied she has the facts, instead of when some arbitrary schedule demands. Rebuttals can be offered quickly on politically opposite news sites. Balanced reporting will be accomplished, and misinformation can be greatly reduced. Trees will be saved too, and the furry little animals that live in them. May we bury the print news quickly, without mourning their passing. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 16:13:48 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:13:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor to go along with the bad economy: was RE: Economy: "The Big Takeover" In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com><580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <3FBA6B2EE01E45D1BEBB6B3A05A125BD@spike> Message-ID: <661DA98819064A1A8F3CD23983085710@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou .... > > Reagan cut taxes but the US budget deficit has been more or > less continuously increasing ever since... > -- > Stathis Papaioannou Ja, we need to cut everywhere. What the US is doing now is sheer madness. spike Here's some humor that has been going around on the web: The economy is so bad: CEO's are now playing miniature golf. Even people who have nothing to do with the Obama administration aren't paying their taxes. Hotwheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM. Obama met with small businesses to discuss the Stimulus Package: GE, Pfeizer and Citigroup. PETA serves chicken wings at their meetings McDonalds is selling the 1/4- ouncer. People in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names. A truck of Americans got caught sneaking into Mexico .... The most highly-paid job is now jury duty. Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting. People in Africa are donating money to Americans. Mothers in Ethiopia are telling their kids, "finish your plate, do you know how many kids are starving in the US ?" Motel Six won't leave the light on. The Mafia is laying off judges. finally, Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. So, the guy that made $50 billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $750 billion disappear. From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 16:37:46 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:37:46 +0000 Subject: [ExI] free access to drugs (was Re: U.S. Medical Care) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 4/2/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > Wouldn't that be narco-capitalist? :) > No. Capitalist is actually a better description. Or, actually more like state capitalism. OTC (Over the Counter) drugs are allowed for treatment of specific short-term illnesses that patients can easily diagnose and treat themselves. There is an ongoing movement to get more and more drugs given OTC status. So the 'freedom' supporters are in line with what is currently happening. Yeehaw!!!! Unfortunately when you look at what is happening in more detail, you find that big pharma is one of the main supporters. Their main objective is increased sales, driven by colourful advertising to as much of the general public as they can persuade to waste money on their products. It's not freedom, - it's more 'con the mugs for as much as you can'. Pharmacists also welcome more OTC drugs as producing more profit for themselves. They already now stock homeopathic remedies and 'natural' remedies on the next counter and much of the public cannot tell the difference. And, guess who the other supporters are? It's the government and health plan companies. Why? Because the more drugs you spend your own money on, the less the government has to pay for through national health schemes. They want to reduce their huge prescription drug costs. Most OTC drugs are not covered by health plans, so the cost is transferred to the general public. So, do you really want to support changes that are supported by big pharma, the government and pharmacist shop chains? Do you think they really have your best interests at heart? BillK From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 17:15:40 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:15:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com><221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer><0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Jeff Davis > Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 8:02 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] I am now a creationist > > Went to check it out. Apparently the video is gone from youtube. > > If anyone knows differently, please post to the list. > > Best, Jeff Davis ....that now the only > thing for me to > > do is become a > > creationist: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > > > > John K Clark It came up twice in a row for me. Do try again. spike From florent.berthet at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 15:18:10 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:18:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> Works fine here (I'm in France). Great one by the way, the ending text killed me... 2009/4/1 Jeff Davis > Went to check it out. Apparently the video is gone from youtube. > > If anyone knows differently, please post to the list. > > Best, Jeff Davis > > On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 12:22 AM, John K Clark wrote: > > I have just seen a brilliant critique of Darwin Theory of Evolution that > was > > so logical, so devastating, that now the only thing for me to do is > become a > > creationist: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8&feature=response_watch > > > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fortean1 at mindspring.com Wed Apr 1 16:18:29 2009 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry Colvin) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 12:18:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Fw: RE: [CommCenter-1] State Dept. history brochure on electronic surveillance Message-ID: <29340125.1238602711194.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net> -----Forwarded Message----- > >Hi Terry, > >Yes, www.coldwar-c4i.net has no connection to any military service, government >agency or other organization. Its purpose is to document Cold War-era >national security infrastructure - physical facilities, systems, procedures, >etc. Most of the content so far relates to U.S. defense, but I'm eager to >include material for any other countries, including Soviet-bloc nations. As >you can see, the collection covers a wide range of topics, reflecting the >diversity of interests among the contributors who provide much of the >content. You'll also note that it's completely disorganized; the site began >as just a place to share pictures and documents among researchers, and >simply grew without much structure - new material is usually just added to >the top unless it belongs under an existing topic. > >I maintain another site, www.long-lines.net, which is devoted to the networks, >equipment and operations of AT&T's former Long Lines Department. This site, >too, has a national-security aspect since AT&T was (and still is) heavily >involved in defense communications. > >If the members wish, I'll be glad to notify this group of any additions to >my sites. In addition, there's a very active list, with over 1,000 members, >devoted to Cold War infrastructure and common-carrier networks of the era. >The URL to join the group or view the archived messages is: > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coldwarcomms . I'm the group owner, so I can >answer questions and assist with any sign-up issues. > >Albert LaFrance > _____ > >From: CommCenter-1 at yahoogroups.com [mailto:CommCenter-1 at yahoogroups.com] On >Behalf Of Terry Colvin >Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 2:44 AM >To: CommCenter-1 at yahoogroups.com >Subject: Re: [CommCenter-1] State Dept. history brochure on electronic >surveillance > >Albert, > >Thank you for providing a link to this brochure. It is representative >of those 16 intelligence agencies within the USG. > >Can you tell me more about the "coldwar-c4i.net"? Is that a separate >list from the c4i list managed by the U.S. Navy Postgraduate School? > >Best, > >Terry Terry W. Colvin Ladphrao (Bangkok), Thailand Pran Buri (Hua Hin), Thailand From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 17:46:48 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 19:46:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: The jury is still out whether or not wife beating is immoral behavior, but your friends seem swayed when they ostracize you. Same with being a racist, a pedophyle, a meth dealer, a murderer, someone who dumps his waste benzene in the sewer, a spreader of viagra spam or any other new and debatable improprieties. There are numerous topics where people disagree whether or not the behavior is a crime, and equally uncountable numbers of people that shrug whatever I think. It will be unresolvable - people are stuck in their grooves and discourse is dead. Not even transhumanists have ideals left, and extropianism has the same polarized bulwark of self-interest, collapse of ideals, belligerence, political obstinacy, arrogance and contempt as any segment of society. Prove me wrong. I can only vouch that I believe the near-collapse of the worlds climate a reality, that humanity is largely responsible, that this damage can be limited, that if we do not, possibly billions are going to die as a direct result before 2100, that the damage can be limited with sound economic choices that work parallel with implementation of non-carbon energy carriers as well as sources, and that people who are now persisting in sincerely denying this process are dupes of media with a vested interest in the industrial/economic status quo. What I believe doesn't matter an inch. Some here would rather see me die from poverty than listen to whatever I have to say. ...and what do you know? I don't give a hoot. I am personally sure of all above and I don't care! I am going to die anyways, probably somewhere between 2025 and 2045, probably of poverty, violent causes, collapse of society, the result of explosively (and corrosively advancing technology) and horrid mismanagement by paranoid elites steering society as surely towards their self-interested holdings as the yawning void ahead. So I couldn't care LESS about what happens to the environment. In fact, I welcome the collapse of the environment, somewhere later this century as it will probably do great in mercifully euthanizing the remaining humans and save them a fate worse than death. I'll croak miserably long before we have a chance to immortalize or upload ourselves (and if not, nobody would go through the effort consider uploading or rejuvenating me in time!). Face it - Humanity is not worth it. I intend to be as nice as can to my fellow humans in the last years of human hegemony on this planet, but if I have some spare CO2 I will take immense joy in dumping it to save me half a euro. So - everyone: we ruined it, we fucked up, party is over, any year in some measure of comfort is a blessing, and a merciful death after is all you can hope for. > > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > > > ...Climate denial isn't a crime > > here yet, but you can be ostracized by your friends... Lee > > Lee, the ostracizers weren't your friends to start with. spike But I'd love to be proven wrong, on any of this. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 2 17:50:15 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:50:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com><221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer><0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> ________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Florent Berthet Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 8:18 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] I am now a creationist Works fine here (I'm in France). ... Welcome Florent. I think you may be the only ExI poster from France. We noticed some time ago the lack of French ExI-ers. Why? We have several from Italy, some from other European nations but so few from France. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 20:20:59 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 22:20:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] free access to drugs (was Re: U.S. Medical Care) In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904021320o6aaebf76gdae0620941c3e2a4@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 6:37 PM, BillK wrote: > So, do you really want to support changes that are supported by big > pharma, the government and pharmacist shop chains? Do you think they > really have your best interests at heart? Mmhhh, let me think of a creative, lateral-thinking, out-of-the-box solution to this angle... What about nationalising the big pharma and the pharmacist shop chains and, at the same time, abolishing the goverment?! This should solve everything for the best, right? ;-D -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 2 20:24:07 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:24:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it> <49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it> <49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49D51EE7.3070904@libero.it> Il 29/03/2009 21.53, Fred C. Moulton ha scritto: > On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 22:58 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> But it's either that or eventually perish. France, for example, >> needs to do what it would instantly have done in any century >> before the 20th, namely expel its Muslim population. It's >> either that or cease eventually to have a modern western >> society at all! >> > > If ever there is created a collection of ridiculous and completely > disgusting statements to have ever been posted to this list then the > above would surely be near the top of the list. > > Expelling the Muslim population would violate long standing principles > of freedom of religion and rule of law and equal protection under the > law. This is an interesting point. 1) Freedom of religion is good only with religions that advocate peace with people with a different religion. I don't believe in freedom of religion for some cannibalistic cult that slay people to eat them. 2) The laws can be changed so they are equal for all but hit their intended targets. For example, forced wedding can be sentenced with life imprisonment. Sexual mutilations can be sentenced with life imprisonment. Any accomplices of these can be sentenced with life imprisonment. Terrorism will be punished with life imprisonment and confiscation of property. All people associating with them can be sentenced for "helping and abetting" or "external association with...". This the civilized way to go. It is this or the uncivilized way we saw in Bosnia (but without the US to save the day for the Muslims). Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 2 20:28:34 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:28:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> Il 01/04/2009 5.03, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > For the record, I am strongly opposed to any violent actions > infringing on private property, including expulsions, purges and > pogroms of any kind, directed at innocent individuals (i.e. persons > who did not perform any violent activities against other innocent > people). I would find it odious and revolting if such innocent > individuals were harmed under the pretext of being Muslim, foreign, or > under any other morally irrelevant tribal label. > > Rafal > > PS. To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that > the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is > being bandied about here. WTF? Nothing prevent them from changing religion (apart the feat to be killed by their "brothers"). But, what about the innocent Nazis individuals killed by the bombardment during WW2? Would you be against this? Even for the individuals involved in building weapons, feeding the soldiers and doing whatever is needed to let the soldiers to combat? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 2 21:58:05 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:58:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> Il 01/04/2009 9.25, BillK ha scritto: > Unfortunately Europe needs immigrants, because the original Europeans > have stopped having children and are aging fast. This is because they are taxed as there is no tomorrow by their governments. Pools show they want more children but feel their are not wealth enough to be able to afford them. > It is the demographic timebomb. > Who will be the workers and pay for social security for the > aged? If you think that the Muslims will pay for the social security of the old kafir, you are deluded. IIRC, in England economists have computed the economics of immigration and have concluded that there is no difference. The Englishmen have gained nothing from the immigration. But, I'm sure, many people have gained from the cheap Labour imported. > The future for those populations who stop having children is a > reducing, aging population supported by young workers from immigrant > families. You are deluding yourself. A large part of these Muslims immigrates is helped from the Social Security, because they are in large part unemployable for any productive job because they are uneducated, low skilled and low IQ. Then you add their religion, that teach them to loathe the different, hate him, exploit him and not help him against other Muslims. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 2 22:57:18 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:57:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> Il 02/04/2009 11.04, BillK ha scritto: > The two generic problems with free access to drugs are the same as > with free access to anything that might be dangerous in the wrong > hands. Guns, explosives, poisons, drugs, acids, nuclear technology, > nanotechnology, etc. > Do you want the bad people to be able to just walk into Walmart and buy them? Why not? If they can, we can also. If they do, we can do, also. Usually they are less than us. > Do you want the 50% below average intelligence to buy them? Why not? They will harm themselves more than they will harm us. For the lucky ones, we can dispose of them after. > Do you want the insane or temporarily depressed people to buy them? They can buy so many things that can harm them and others that is not a problem. No way a depressed or a insane is able to build something very dangerous. The sane are a greater danger than the insane. > Do you want your estranged wife or furious alienated teenagers to buy them? The furious alienated teenagers are for the insane asylums. The estranged wives are dangerous only when they have a lawyer better than your. > Do you want children to have access to them? (Even if children are > banned from buying them, if they are freely available to everyone, > then children will get them). Natural selection is always working. Shit happen, sometimes. > Freedom (or chaos) is a wild venture into the unknown. Best to try it > in a small society first. Netherlands experimenting with drugs freedom > is a good solution. Let's watch and see what happens. After decades we need to see other? It is boring. It didn't happened anything important. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 2 23:30:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:30:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> At 12:57 AM 4/3/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: >>Do you want your estranged wife or furious alienated teenagers to buy them? > >The furious alienated teenagers are for the insane asylums. This is the extropian list, not the fucking Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & Gulags. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri Apr 3 01:33:03 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:33:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Economy: "The Big Takeover". In-Reply-To: <2D878C03793347B3A1C4FC8F0A90CCAE@MyComputer> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com><49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com><580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com><3FBA6B2EE01E45D1BEBB6B3A05A125BD@spike><49D235BB.2030908@rawbw.com> <2D878C03793347B3A1C4FC8F0A90CCAE@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49D5674F.6030601@rawbw.com> John K Clark wrote: > Anyway, at a time like now the last thing on earth you'd want to do is > balance the budget. Hoover did it and turned a garden variety recession > into a decade long worldwide depression. Hoover (and FDR) did turn a garden variety recession into a depression, but they didn't do it by balancing the budget. They did it instead as follows. First, Hoover intimidated companies into not lowering wages and prices. This had never been done before in America, but then America never had anyone so intelligent as Herbert Hoover before. No kidding---high intelligence and its concomitant "can do" attitude is extremely harmful in government officials. This ingeniously precluded a short but very sharp recession such as the country had survived in 1920-21. In fact, during the latter Hoover swore that if he ever became president, no recession of that type would ever be allowed. It is one of the gravest misfortunes of the 20th century that this was one promise that was kept. http://books.google.com/books?id=jA9UAZ2fKeoC&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=%22it+was+clear+that+the+absurd+policy+of+moral+suasion%22&source=bl&ots=oxv4CqsGId&sig=8gWGD3wIpN9lrXS8BEDWCIrZvMo&hl=en&ei=K2bVSau-Eo68tgPXibifCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 > And by the way, I wouldn't take anything you read on that website you > recommended very seriously, it's full of crackpot conspiracy theories; > the man who runs it knows how to type and that's about all I can say. That doesn't surprise me much. In analyzing what happened to the budget deficit between 1980 and 2000---attempting to blame Reagan/BushI for the huge deficits and praise Bill Clinton (solely) for the greatly reduced deficits, it is criminal to ignore the costs of the S&L bailouts. (Which, everyone should know, was caused by two things: (1) the meddling by the Federal government in ridiculously guaranteeing $100,000 safety for every depositor no matter how wily his or her bank/savings&loan got (2) deregulating most of the restraints on those wily and opportunistic wheeler-dealers. Lee P.S. By the way, that quote above from Murray Rothbard is typical of the wonderful eye-opening accounts given in that book "A History of Money and Banking in the United States". From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri Apr 3 01:41:58 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:41:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> Alas, so many emails, and so little time, but I did have to read Rafal's: > For the record, I am strongly opposed to any violent actions > infringing on private property, including expulsions, purges and > pogroms of any kind, directed at innocent individuals (i.e. persons > who did not perform any violent activities against other innocent > people). I would find it odious and revolting if such innocent > individuals were harmed under the pretext of being Muslim, foreign, or > under any other morally irrelevant tribal label. Ah, I regret it too. But not so strongly as you. (I also regret root canal surgery---but consider the alternative to be worse, and far less acceptable.) > Rafal > > PS. To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that > the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is > being bandied about here. WTF? WTF? Very simple. Were you living in France, how would the prospect of you and your children living under Sharia strike you? We in the U.S. are lucky. We're only going to be replaced by the Spanish-speaking, who very cooperatively appear to have no problem with how things are done here north of the border. (Oh, of course, we'll have our Cesar Chavez eventually--- but that will be a long time from now, and besides, what happens to the rich white people at that point will only be what they deserve for having allowed it to happen.) Meanwhile, no Frenchman who values the past or future of his country ought to accede to what is going on. It's simply a question of survival of western institutions *at all* in France, though I agree that the cost (of sacrificing temporarily some principles) is very high. Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 04:15:04 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 14:45:04 +1030 Subject: [ExI] free access to drugs (was Re: U.S. Medical Care) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904022115s46192187ib1598b23dc82d4d1@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/3 Damien Broderick : > >> >> >The two generic problems with free access to drugs ... >> >> Mmhhh, yes, this is an old issue. I am no anarco-capitalist > > Wouldn't that be narco-capitalist? ?:) You're a funny bastard :-) -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 04:18:59 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 00:18:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: I wrote: >> PS. To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that >> the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is >> being bandied about here. WTF? > > WTF? Very simple. Were you living in France, how would > the prospect of you and your children living under Sharia > strike you? ### To repeat "WTF?" - what are you talking about? What is the chain of reasoning that leads you from "I live in France" to "Muslims need to be destroyed"? Do you think that all Muslims are immoral? You are not making any sense, Lee. Spell out in detail how being an innocent, law-abiding Muslim in France justifies being persecuted. And for the sake of completeness, tell me why being Muslim in the US does not justify persecution. Or does it? -------------------------- > Meanwhile, no Frenchman who values the past or future of > his country ought to accede to what is going on. It's > simply a question of survival of western institutions > *at all* in France, though I agree that the cost (of > sacrificing temporarily some principles) is very high. ### Ah, yeah, lets kill or otherwise destroy a million innocent people, since they believe in some mumbo-jumbo. Reminds me of Robert Bradbury's idea of nuking random cities in Afghanistan. You feel some vague sense of discomfort with a group, so let's just kill them all. Brilliant. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 04:25:11 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 00:25:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 4:28 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > > Nothing prevent them from changing religion (apart the feat to be killed by > their "brothers"). ### What is that supposed to mean? ---------------- > > But, what about the innocent Nazis individuals killed by the bombardment > during WW2? Would you be against this? Even for the individuals involved in > building weapons, feeding the soldiers and doing whatever is needed to let > the soldiers to combat? > ### What does being Muslim have to do with being Nazi? It's completely surreal - guys claiming to be libertarian want to indiscriminately destroy millions of people, and coming up with some bullshit analogies to Nazis. Actually, why do I bother - you mentioned Nazis first, so I invoke Godwin's Law. You lost the discussion. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 04:28:57 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 14:58:57 +1030 Subject: [ExI] For Spike: Ant slaves' murderous rebellions Message-ID: <710b78fc0904022128r5296f7c2kbeb37548b34f547f@mail.gmail.com> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/01/ant-slaves-murderous.html Ant slaves' murderous rebellions Cory Doctorow >From last month's journal Evolution, a fascinating tale of slave rebellion among ants kidnapped by other ant species and forced to work for the rival colony. When these youngsters mature, they take on the odour of their abductors and become the servants of the enslaving queen. They take over the jobs of maintaining the colony and caring for its larvae even though they are from another species; they even take part in raids themselves. But like all slave-traders, P.americanus faces rebellions. Some of its victims (ants from the genus Temnothorax) strike back with murderous larvae. Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood... Two-thirds of pupae died before they hatched. The mortality rate was even higher (83%) for pupae containing queens, but very low (3%) for those containing males. The duo saw that the captives were deliberately killing the healthy pupae. In about 30% of cases, as in the photo, the workers would gang up to literally pull the developing ants apart. Another 53% of the pupae were killed by neglect, by workers who moved them out of the nest chamber. These murders were solely the acts of the slaves. No P.americanus worker ever lifted a mandible against its own pupae. Nor are the deaths a reflection of a generally poor standard of care on the part of Temnothorax. In their own colonies, the majority of pupae hatched, with just 3-10% dying before that happened. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 04:43:16 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 15:13:16 +1030 Subject: [ExI] death of print news: was RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904022143t1ba7ab6dv9bcfb0028e027b78@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/3 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton >> >> ...I would not want a reporter on a deadline ... to mistakenly think... > Fred > > > Fred, your post was actually about something else but your comment caused me > to recognize a big advantage to the coming death of print news. ?The news > cycle manipulation and rush to a particular deadline that you describe both > go away, being artifacts of print news cycles. ?Traditionally these have > been one issue per day, with special arrangements on weekends. ?Now, news > stories can go up on the site whenever the reporter is satisfied she has the > facts, instead of when some arbitrary schedule demands. ?Rebuttals can be > offered quickly on politically opposite news sites. ?Balanced reporting will > be accomplished, and misinformation can be greatly reduced. > > Trees will be saved too, and the furry little animals that live in them. > > May we bury the print news quickly, without mourning their passing. > > spike Amen brother! Related: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry?s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry?s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of ?When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.? I think about that conversation a lot these days. The problem newspapers face isn?t that they didn?t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them. As these ideas were articulated, there was intense debate about the merits of various scenarios. Would DRM or walled gardens work better? Shouldn?t we try a carrot-and-stick approach, with education and prosecution? And so on. In all this conversation, there was one scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable, a scenario that didn?t get much discussion in the nation?s newsrooms, for the obvious reason. The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn?t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor would they regard customers as enemies. DRM?s requirement that the attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they want to share it would piss them off. Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven?t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors. When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away. * * * The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ?90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: ?Here?s how we?re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!? The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses. ?The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!? (Financial information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients don?t want to share.) ?Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will work for us!? (Micropayments work only where the provider can avoid competitive business models.) ?The New York Times should charge for content!? (They?ve tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) ?Cook?s Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!? (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for content but for unimpeachability.) ?We?ll form a cartel!? (?and hand a competitive advantage to every ad-supported media firm in the world.) Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ?If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?? To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke. With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves ? the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public ? has stopped being a problem. * * * Elizabeth Eisenstein?s magisterial treatment of Gutenberg?s invention, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, opens with a recounting of her research into the early history of the printing press. She was able to find many descriptions of life in the early 1400s, the era before movable type. Literacy was limited, the Catholic Church was the pan-European political force, Mass was in Latin, and the average book was the Bible. She was also able to find endless descriptions of life in the late 1500s, after Gutenberg?s invention had started to spread. Literacy was on the rise, as were books written in contemporary languages, Copernicus had published his epochal work on astronomy, and Martin Luther?s use of the press to reform the Church was upending both religious and political stability. What Eisenstein focused on, though, was how many historians ignored the transition from one era to the other. To describe the world before or after the spread of print was child?s play; those dates were safely distanced from upheaval. But what was happening in 1500? The hard question Eisenstein?s book asks is ?How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?? Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost literally didn?t know what to think. If you can?t trust Aristotle, who can you trust? During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change ? take a book and shrink it ? was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further. That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn?t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can?t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify. And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won?t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren?t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie. * * * If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other. In a notional town with two perfectly balanced newspapers, one paper would eventually generate some small advantage ? a breaking story, a key interview ? at which point both advertisers and readers would come to prefer it, however slightly. That paper would in turn find it easier to capture the next dollar of advertising, at lower expense, than the competition. This would increase its dominance, which would further deepen those preferences, repeat chorus. The end result is either geographic or demographic segmentation among papers, or one paper holding a monopoly on the local mainstream audience. For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these economics. The expense of printing created an environment where Wal-Mart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn?t because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident. Advertisers had little choice other than to have their money used that way, since they didn?t really have any other vehicle for display ads. The old difficulties and costs of printing forced everyone doing it into a similar set of organizational models; it was this similarity that made us regard Daily Racing Form and L?Osservatore Romano as being in the same business. That the relationship between advertisers, publishers, and journalists has been ratified by a century of cultural practice doesn?t make it any less accidental. The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law firm hiring a secretary, and that kid down the block selling his bike, were all able to use that infrastructure to get out of their old relationship with the publisher, they did. They?d never really signed up to fund the Baghdad bureau anyway. * * * Print media does much of society?s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone ? covering every angle of a huge story ? to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren?t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; ?You?re gonna miss us when we?re gone!? has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs? I don?t know. Nobody knows. We?re collectively living through 1500, when it?s easier to see what?s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can?t predict what will happen. Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The answer you?d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: ?Mailing lists can be powerful tools?, ?Social effects are intertwining with digital networks?, blah blah blah. What no one would have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. In craigslist?s gradual shift from ?interesting if minor? to ?essential and transformative?, there is one possible answer to the question ?If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?? The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did. Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it?s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it?s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it?s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can?t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case. Society doesn?t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That?s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we?re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead. When we shift our attention from ?save newspapers? to ?save society?, the imperative changes from ?preserve the current institutions? to ?do whatever works.? And what works today isn?t the same as what used to work. We don?t know who the Aldus Manutius of the current age is. It could be Craig Newmark, or Caterina Fake. It could be Martin Nisenholtz, or Emily Bell. It could be some 19 year old kid few of us have heard of, working on something we won?t recognize as vital until a decade hence. Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past. For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From moulton at moulton.com Fri Apr 3 04:43:27 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:43:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1238733807.5478.788.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 18:41 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > (Oh, of course, we'll have our Cesar Chavez eventually--- We already had Cesar Chavez; he was born in 1927 and died in 1993. I am not going to bother replying in detail to the rest of your message because it not worth my time at the moment to correct all of your errors. Fred From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 3 04:55:17 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 21:55:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] For Spike: Ant slaves' murderous rebellions In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904022128r5296f7c2kbeb37548b34f547f@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904022128r5296f7c2kbeb37548b34f547f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn > Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:29 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] For Spike: Ant slaves' murderous rebellions > > http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/01/ant-slaves-murderous.html > > Ant slaves' murderous rebellions > Cory Doctorow > > >From last month's journal Evolution, a fascinating tale of slave > rebellion among ants kidnapped by other ant species and > forced to work for the rival colony. ... > Emlyn Coool! Thanks Emlyn. The following paragraphs are taken from the stunning seventh chapter of Darwin's Origin of Species. I am in awe of Darwin and his contemporaries in their thoroughness of observation of ants: http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/chapt er-07.html Slave-making instinct. This remarkable instinct was first discovered in the Formica (Polyerges) rufescens by Pierre Huber, a better observer even than his celebrated father. This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves; without their aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a single year. The males and fertile females do no work. The workers or sterile females, though most energetic and courageous in capturing slaves, do no other work. They are incapable of making their own nests, or of feeding their own larvae. When the old nest is found inconvenient, and they have to migrate, it is the slaves which determine the migration, and actually carry their masters in their jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up thirty of them without a slave, but with plenty of the food which they like best, and with their larvae and pupae to stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they could not even feed themselves, and many perished of hunger. Huber then introduced a single slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors; made some cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights. What can be more extraordinary than these well-ascertained facts? If we had not known of any other slave-making ant, it would have been hopeless to have speculated how so wonderful an instinct could have been perfected. Formica sanguinea was likewise first discovered by P. Huber to be a slave-making ant. This species is found in the southern parts of England, and its habits have been attended to by Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, to whom I am much indebted for information on this and other subjects. Although fully trusting to the statements of Huber and Mr. Smith, I tried to approach the subject in a sceptical frame of mind, as any one may well be excused for doubting the truth of so extraordinary and odious an instinct as that of making slaves. Hence I will give the observations which I have made myself made, in some little detail. I opened fourteen nests of F. sanguinea, and found a few slaves in all. Males and fertile females of the slave-species are found only in their own proper communities, and have never been observed in the nests of F. sanguinea. The slaves are black and not above half the size of their red masters, so that the contrast in their appearance is very great. When the nest is slightly disturbed, the slaves occasionally come out, and like their masters are much agitated and defend their nest: when the nest is much disturbed and the larvae and pupae are exposed, the slaves work energetically with their masters in carrying them away to a place of safety. Hence, it is clear, that the slaves feel quite at home. During the months of June and July, on three successive years, I have watched for many hours several nests in Surrey and Sussex, and never saw a slave either leave or enter a nest. As, during these months, the slaves are very few in number, I thought that they might behave differently when more numerous; but Mr. Smith informs me that he has watched the nests at various hours during May, June and August, both in Surrey and Hampshire, and has never seen the slaves, though present in large numbers in August, either leave or enter the nest. Hence he considers them as strictly household slaves. The masters, on the other hand, may be constantly seen bringing in materials for the nest, and food of all kinds. During the present year, however, in the month of July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir-tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities for observation, in Switzerland the slaves habitually work with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly states, their principal office is to search for aphides. This difference in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in England. One day I fortunately chanced to witness a migration from one nest to another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the masters carefully carrying, as Huber has described, their slaves in their jaws. Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried their dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they were prevented from getting any pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small parcel of the pupae of F. fusca from another nest, and put them down on a bare spot near the place of combat; they were eagerly seized, and carried off by the tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious in their late combat. At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel of the pupae of another species, F. flava, with a few of these little yellow ants still clinging to the fragments of the nest. This species is sometimes, though rarely, made into slaves, as has been described by Mr Smith. Although so small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my surprise an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of the slave-making F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally disturbed both nests, the little ants attacked their big neighbours with surprising courage. Now I was curious to ascertain whether F. sanguinea could distinguish the pupae of F. fusca, which they habitually make into slaves, from those of the little and furious F. flava, which they rarely capture, and it was evident that they did at once distinguish them: for we have seen that they eagerly and instantly seized the pupae of F. fusca, whereas they were much terrified when they came across the pupae, or even the earth from the nest of F. flava, and quickly ran away; but in about a quarter of an hour, shortly after all the little yellow ants had crawled away, they took heart and carried off the pupae. One evening I visited another community of F. sanguinea, and found a number of these ants entering their nest, carrying the dead bodies of F. fusca (showing that it was not a migration) and numerous pupae. I traced the returning file burthened with booty, for about forty yards, to a very thick clump of heath. whence I saw the last individual of F. sanguinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was not able to find the desolated nest in the thick heath. The nest, however, must have been close at hand, for two or three individuals of F. fusca were rushing about in the greatest agitation, and one was perched motionless with its own pupa in its mouth on the top of a spray of heath over its ravaged home... From moulton at moulton.com Fri Apr 3 05:00:06 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:00:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 00:25 -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > It's completely surreal - guys claiming to be libertarian want to > indiscriminately destroy millions of people, and coming up with some > bullshit analogies to Nazis. Neither Lee nor painlord2k are libertarians. There seems to be an ongoing problem with persons calling themselves libertarian or free-market or some similar term when in actuality they are usually uninformed, confused or dishonest. And further what they have posting recently in this thread is not even remotely Extropian. Fred From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 3 05:23:14 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 22:23:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] For Spike: Ant slaves' murderous rebellions In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904022128r5296f7c2kbeb37548b34f547f@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904022128r5296f7c2kbeb37548b34f547f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7FF32804B65C4BB393F9B0F018A65574@spike> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn > Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:29 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] For Spike: Ant slaves' murderous rebellions > > http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/01/ant-slaves-murderous.html > > Ant slaves' murderous rebellions > Cory Doctorow > > >From last month's journal Evolution, a fascinating tale of slave > rebellion among ants kidnapped by other ant species and > forced to work for the rival colony. ... > Emlyn > Emlyn, since I listened to Dawkins reading Darwin about a month ago, I have returned to an idea I worked on about 10 yrs ago, the creation of a special microscope for doing ant observations in the wild. Since I first started looking at CCD array cameras for astronomy about 20 yrs ago, the field has enjoyed a dazzling advancement. Perhaps many of you have seen digital cameras improve greatly over the past couple decades. Likewise, advances in digital CCD arrays have enabled the amateur astronomer to view the heavens in the comfort and warmth of her own home in front of her computer. Here's the idea: create a microscope that will allow me to observe ants under about a 20x magnification with a field of view of perhaps two cm diameter. That part is easy and even commercially available, but what I really want to do is try to fix up some image recognition software so that the computer could count the number and speed of ants passing in each direction. I also want to see if I could observe that phenom that Darwin mentions in chapter 7 of OoS, that of ants masturbating aphids to get their nectar. Well, loosely speaking. Recall last spring I was doing some experiments with goo rings, trying to determine if ants cut off from the ground were falling out of the trees or intentionally leaping. That series of experiments turned out to be inconclusive, as my mate kept interfering by taking away my bridge over the goo every time I went on a business trip. Shamelessly unrepentant is she with whom I celebrated our 25th anniversary last week. I intend to try again in a few weeks when ant season starts up again, and this time I hope to keep my good wife's grubby paws off of my ant experiments. I have another series of experiments I want to do with double straws. The ants are cut off from the ground with a goo ring around the trunk. They are then presented with two soda straws, side by side, leading from the fence to the tree. The outside of the straws are gooed so the ants must go inside the straws. The soda straws are too small for two ants to pass each other inside. So now they can't do much aphid masturbation unless they figure out how to make one straw the in door and the other the out door. If they are smart enough to figure out a short one-way split, then I will have a bunch of new experiments, but actually I doubt they will figure it out. I have seen ant trails hundreds of times, yea thousands, but I don't recall ever seeing the southbound ants split from the northbounders. I have seen ant trails split and rejoin, but all the sub-branches contain both directioners. Anyone seen southbounders split from northbounders? spike From moulton at moulton.com Fri Apr 3 05:30:40 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:30:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news: was RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904022143t1ba7ab6dv9bcfb0028e027b78@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> <710b78fc0904022143t1ba7ab6dv9bcfb0028e027b78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1238736640.5478.824.camel@hayek> Emyln Thanks for forwarding the article. Lots of interesting morsels to consider. Fred On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 15:13 +1030, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/4/3 spike : > > > > > >> ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton > >> > >> ...I would not want a reporter on a deadline ... to mistakenly think... > > Fred > > > > > > Fred, your post was actually about something else but your comment caused me > > to recognize a big advantage to the coming death of print news. The news > > cycle manipulation and rush to a particular deadline that you describe both > > go away, being artifacts of print news cycles. Traditionally these have > > been one issue per day, with special arrangements on weekends. Now, news > > stories can go up on the site whenever the reporter is satisfied she has the > > facts, instead of when some arbitrary schedule demands. Rebuttals can be > > offered quickly on politically opposite news sites. Balanced reporting will > > be accomplished, and misinformation can be greatly reduced. > > > > Trees will be saved too, and the furry little animals that live in them. > > > > May we bury the print news quickly, without mourning their passing. > > > > spike > > Amen brother! > > Related: > http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ > > Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable > > Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating > piracy of Dave Barry?s popular column, which was published by the > Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the > sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including > the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a > 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a > teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, > because he loved Barry?s work so much he wanted everybody to be able > to read it. > > One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy > Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I > remember Thompson saying something to the effect of ?When a 14 year > old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he > hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.? I think > about that conversation a lot these days. > > The problem newspapers face isn?t that they didn?t see the internet > coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that > they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came > up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with > companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service > that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to > educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright > law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. > Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio > and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to > convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable > of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to > achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue > copyright infringers directly, making an example of them. > > As these ideas were articulated, there was intense debate about the > merits of various scenarios. Would DRM or walled gardens work better? > Shouldn?t we try a carrot-and-stick approach, with education and > prosecution? And so on. In all this conversation, there was one > scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable, a scenario that > didn?t get much discussion in the nation?s newsrooms, for the obvious > reason. > > The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to > share content wouldn?t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would > prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and > therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread > use. People would resist being educated to act against their own > desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer > online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain > massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and > software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor > would they regard customers as enemies. DRM?s requirement that the > attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable > flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they > want to share it would piss them off. > > Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary > times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are > seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative > futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven?t > been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the > ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world > was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people > were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people > spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic > micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded > not as charlatans but saviors. > > When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in > an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have > the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact > happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be > ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the > fabulists has different effects on different industries at different > times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most > passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in > which the industry they knew is visibly going away. > > * * * > > The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ?90s is that > they were, at base, all the same plan: ?Here?s how we?re going to > preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect > copies!? The details differed, but the core assumption behind all > imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the > organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for > publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and > only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has > degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by > skeptical responses. > > ?The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!? (Financial > information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients > don?t want to share.) ?Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will > work for us!? (Micropayments work only where the provider can avoid > competitive business models.) ?The New York Times should charge for > content!? (They?ve tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) ?Cook?s > Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!? > (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for > content but for unimpeachability.) ?We?ll form a cartel!? (?and hand a > competitive advantage to every ad-supported media firm in the world.) > > Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving > newspapers demanding to know ?If the old model is broken, what will > work in its place?? To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will > work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the > internet just broke. > > With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for > industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized > for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about > a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves ? > the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something > available to the public ? has stopped being a problem. > > * * * > > Elizabeth Eisenstein?s magisterial treatment of Gutenberg?s invention, > The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, opens with a recounting of > her research into the early history of the printing press. She was > able to find many descriptions of life in the early 1400s, the era > before movable type. Literacy was limited, the Catholic Church was the > pan-European political force, Mass was in Latin, and the average book > was the Bible. She was also able to find endless descriptions of life > in the late 1500s, after Gutenberg?s invention had started to spread. > Literacy was on the rise, as were books written in contemporary > languages, Copernicus had published his epochal work on astronomy, and > Martin Luther?s use of the press to reform the Church was upending > both religious and political stability. > > What Eisenstein focused on, though, was how many historians ignored > the transition from one era to the other. To describe the world before > or after the spread of print was child?s play; those dates were safely > distanced from upheaval. But what was happening in 1500? The hard > question Eisenstein?s book asks is ?How did we get from the world > before the printing press to the world after it? What was the > revolution itself like?? > > Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local > languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? > Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of > Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the > relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith > in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted > while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost > literally didn?t know what to think. If you can?t trust Aristotle, who > can you trust? > > During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only > revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the > Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume > along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change ? take a book > and shrink it ? was in retrospect a key innovation in the > democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more > portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for > all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further. > > That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken > faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any > given experiment isn?t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes > stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can?t predict > what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must > be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the > agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that > whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient > social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly > replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify. > > And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to > replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are > not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that > old systems won?t break before new systems are in place. They are > demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren?t in peril, > that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading > information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. > They are demanding to be lied to. > > There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie. > > * * * > > If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most > salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to > set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, > limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the > press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other. > In a notional town with two perfectly balanced newspapers, one paper > would eventually generate some small advantage ? a breaking story, a > key interview ? at which point both advertisers and readers would come > to prefer it, however slightly. That paper would in turn find it > easier to capture the next dollar of advertising, at lower expense, > than the competition. This would increase its dominance, which would > further deepen those preferences, repeat chorus. The end result is > either geographic or demographic segmentation among papers, or one > paper holding a monopoly on the local mainstream audience. > > For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been > alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these > economics. The expense of printing created an environment where > Wal-Mart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn?t > because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it > about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing > budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident. > Advertisers had little choice other than to have their money used that > way, since they didn?t really have any other vehicle for display ads. > > The old difficulties and costs of printing forced everyone doing it > into a similar set of organizational models; it was this similarity > that made us regard Daily Racing Form and L?Osservatore Romano as > being in the same business. That the relationship between advertisers, > publishers, and journalists has been ratified by a century of cultural > practice doesn?t make it any less accidental. > > The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by > the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then > everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag > dealer, and the law firm hiring a secretary, and that kid down the > block selling his bike, were all able to use that infrastructure to > get out of their old relationship with the publisher, they did. They?d > never really signed up to fund the Baghdad bureau anyway. > > * * * > > Print media does much of society?s heavy journalistic lifting, from > flooding the zone ? covering every angle of a huge story ? to the > daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This > coverage creates benefits even for people who aren?t newspaper > readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone > from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to > bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit > society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at > hand; ?You?re gonna miss us when we?re gone!? has never been much of a > business model. So who covers all that news if some significant > fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs? > > I don?t know. Nobody knows. We?re collectively living through 1500, > when it?s easier to see what?s broken than what will replace it. The > internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than > half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the > developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even > the revolutionaries can?t predict what will happen. > > Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the > potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The > answer you?d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: > ?Mailing lists can be powerful tools?, ?Social effects are > intertwining with digital networks?, blah blah blah. What no one would > have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: > craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of > craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. > Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a > part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments > are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. > > In craigslist?s gradual shift from ?interesting if minor? to > ?essential and transformative?, there is one possible answer to the > question ?If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?? > The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the > time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will > seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo > volumes did. > > Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it?s been Wal-Mart > and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it?s been Richard Mellon Scaife. > Increasingly, it?s you and me, donating our time. The list of models > that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like > ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can?t be expanded to cover any general case, > but then nothing is going to cover the general case. > > Society doesn?t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a > century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen > newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. > That?s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as > it is stopping before our eyes, we?re going to need lots of other ways > to strengthen journalism instead. > > When we shift our attention from ?save newspapers? to ?save society?, > the imperative changes from ?preserve the current institutions? to ?do > whatever works.? And what works today isn?t the same as what used to > work. > > We don?t know who the Aldus Manutius of the current age is. It could > be Craig Newmark, or Caterina Fake. It could be Martin Nisenholtz, or > Emily Bell. It could be some 19 year old kid few of us have heard of, > working on something we won?t recognize as vital until a decade hence. > Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism > is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in > a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the > past. > > For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping > special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as > researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship > or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will > rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these > models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are > now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the > collection of new experiments that do work might give us the > journalism we need. > > From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 3 06:01:09 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 23:01:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news: was RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <1238736640.5478.824.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek><49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek><5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike><710b78fc0904022143t1ba7ab6dv9bcfb0028e027b78@mail.gmail.com> <1238736640.5478.824.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7BC97C96C9D74CBFB53B4C97840CB9B5@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton ... > > Emyln > > Thanks for forwarding the article. > > Lots of interesting morsels to consider. > > Fred > > On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 15:13 +1030, Emlyn wrote: > > 2009/4/3 spike : > > > > > > > > >> ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton > > >> > > >> ...I would not want a reporter on a deadline ... to > mistakenly think... > > > Fred Ja, the article mentions specifically Knight Ridder, which once published our local paper the San Jose Merky News. Knight Ridder was bought by McClatchy in March 2006, in a stunning example of bad corporate decision making. Four years ago today, McClatchy stock was worth 74 dollars a share. Today it closed at 69 cents. A share of newspaper stock is now worth less than a single daily issue of the newspaper. CraigsList provides free sales ads. Community online bulletin boards have obviated much of the local content. CNN and Fox cover the national and world headlines. We can even get comics, sudoku and daily crosswords online, and I don't have a birdcage, so I really don't know why we still need to spill all that messy ink and slay perfectly healthy trees in which countless ants are otherwise cheerfully masturbating aphids. spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 06:32:41 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 17:02:41 +1030 Subject: [ExI] death of print news: was RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7BC97C96C9D74CBFB53B4C97840CB9B5@spike> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> <710b78fc0904022143t1ba7ab6dv9bcfb0028e027b78@mail.gmail.com> <1238736640.5478.824.camel@hayek> <7BC97C96C9D74CBFB53B4C97840CB9B5@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904022332r1f61d23bqe400a88ddc06a16a@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/3 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton > ... >> >> Emyln >> >> Thanks for forwarding the article. >> >> Lots of interesting morsels to consider. >> >> Fred >> >> On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 15:13 +1030, Emlyn wrote: >> > 2009/4/3 spike : >> > > >> > > >> > >> ...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton >> > >> >> > >> ...I would not want a reporter on a deadline ... to >> mistakenly think... >> > > Fred > > > Ja, the article mentions specifically Knight Ridder, which once published > our local paper the San Jose Merky News. ?Knight Ridder was bought by > McClatchy in March 2006, in a stunning example of bad corporate decision > making. ?Four years ago today, McClatchy stock was worth 74 dollars a share. > Today it closed at 69 cents. ?A share of newspaper stock is now worth less > than a single daily issue of the newspaper. > > CraigsList provides free sales ads. ?Community online bulletin boards have > obviated much of the local content. ?CNN and Fox cover the national and > world headlines. ?We can even get comics, sudoku and daily crosswords > online, and I don't have a birdcage, so I really don't know why we still > need to spill all that messy ink and slay perfectly healthy trees in which > countless ants are otherwise cheerfully masturbating aphids. > > spike In my latest book package from Amazon (arrived last night, excellent!), was Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody". Really a very good book so far, my only quibble being that he moves quite slowly (but then if you haven't been keeping up with this stuff, that's probably an asset). Most salient point so far: Transaction costs for forming groups are dropping / have dropped to zero, thus the raison d'etre for forming hierarchical organizations is undermined. On a masturbation related tangent: I have an annual singing engagement doing the easter services for a local Anglican church (read C of E or maybe Episcopalians in the US??). At a rehearsal last night the regular choristers were discussing a recent sermon that the priest delivered for lent, something about the "pleasure principle" (???), and that they are allowed to enjoy orgasms and to masturbate. Now you have to realize that this is no young hipster set, more the hip replacement set, so apparently this was quite embarrassing for the congregation, and is regarded as somewhat scandalous. It certainly made an impact; the story goes that at tea after the service, an elderly woman told people that her husband was away because he was being masturbated under anaesthetic (rather than "manipulated" under anaesthetic, which means something else I think). I think this says it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifgHHhw_6g8 -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From dagonweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 07:54:10 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 09:54:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > > WTF? Very simple. Were you living in France, how would >> > the prospect of you and your children living under Sharia > strike you? > Under no circumstances, nowhere in Europe (except in a few places in ghettoes) does the Sharia gained a toehold in Europe. The idea is ludicrous and it can not be interpreted in any way other than being yet another construct in the flame war between american imperial hegemonists on the right end of the spectrum, and multiculturalist pluriformists on the other end. I favor neither side, and the only way anyone can win in this insane struggle is to look very cautiously at what both sides say and completely sterilize yourself of all talking points bannered along by either side. Give it a try - See this as a straightforward roleplaying exploration ... inventory what (mostly american) anti-islam xenophobes, pro-globalist, pro-corporatists have to say. Then chart what the greens, equally progress xenophobe, anticorporatists have to say. Then square off arguments and escape the Divide And Rule mechanic being leveraged into your brain. This is a stalemate. Neither side, engineered lunatic left or engineered lunatic right, can win this culture war. You as an individual can only win by stepping away from this false dichotomy and select in precise detail what is relevant for you, as an individual, and persistently mocking what is not. Do not make the system shoehorn you into the red or blue mold. And I assert a BIG feature of the shoe horn is xenophobic hysteria of islam. I mean, come on, islam. I see these people scurry about every day, and they are pathetic superstitionalist. They can as much wage a revolt and take over the legal system as manage a network of dairy factories in their homeland. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 10:03:13 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 12:03:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:58 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 01/04/2009 9.25, BillK ha scritto: > >> Unfortunately Europe needs immigrants, because the original Europeans >> have stopped having children and are aging fast. >> > > This is because they are taxed as there is no tomorrow by their > governments. Pools show they want more children but feel their are not > wealth enough to be able to afford them. That is an interesting angle, on which I personally know very little. In the seventies, European countries with very high level of taxation, namely social democratic Scandinavia, used to have the lowest demographic pressure, even in comparison with much poorer areas, such as southern Italy or Greece, but this was usually attributed to cultural reasons. OTOH, apparently the trend was substantially reversed around the end of the last century, to the point that girls in their early twenties were around with babies in a cart and a couple of further children by hand. This may or may not have corresponded to some political or tax changes in that time. But it is also true that substantial pro-birth welfare policies were enacted... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 12:00:56 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 12:00:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/3/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > In the seventies, European countries with very high level of taxation, > namely social democratic Scandinavia, used to have the lowest demographic > pressure, even in comparison with much poorer areas, such as southern Italy > or Greece, but this was usually attributed to cultural reasons. > > OTOH, apparently the trend was substantially reversed around the end of the > last century, to the point that girls in their early twenties were around > with babies in a cart and a couple of further children by hand. This may or > may not have corresponded to some political or tax changes in that time. But > it is also true that substantial pro-birth welfare policies were enacted... > It is generally true of all first world countries that they have birth rates below replacement level. This seems to follow the empowerment of women, who choose to have careers rather than have children. You can see the effect happening in second and third world countries statistics as they develop. The latest stats are here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html Norway, Denmark and Sweden are still below the replacement level of 2.1. Namely, 1.78, 1.74, 1.67. Note that these are overall statistics. The USA has a higher figure (than Europe) of 2.05. But hidden inside this figure is young immigrant families having more children than the older US residents. There are very many Hispanics in the US southern states. This same distortion is hidden within European figures. The UK has a birth rate of 1.66. But the young immigrant families are increasing at a faster rate than the original residents. This characteristic of immigrant families having larger families is expected to reduce within a few generations as they become more adjusted to their new country, adopt a similar lifestyle and their female children start to expect the same rights as other women in the country. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 12:44:37 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 23:44:37 +1100 Subject: [ExI] free access to drugs (was Re: U.S. Medical Care) In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904020417o8072de9v11eb29b28346365f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402103408.026f9510@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/3 BillK : > OTC (Over the Counter) drugs are allowed for treatment of specific > short-term illnesses that patients can easily diagnose and treat > themselves. There is an ongoing movement to get more and more drugs > given OTC status. So the 'freedom' supporters are in line with what is > currently happening. ?Yeehaw!!!! > > Unfortunately when you look at what is happening in more detail, you > find that big pharma is one of the main supporters. Their main > objective is increased sales, driven by colourful advertising to as > much of the general public as they can persuade to waste money on > their products. It's not freedom, - it's more 'con the mugs for as > much as you can'. > > Pharmacists also welcome more OTC drugs as producing more profit for > themselves. They already now stock homeopathic remedies and 'natural' > remedies on the next counter and much of the public cannot tell the > difference. > > And, guess who the other supporters are? It's the government and > health plan companies. Why? Because the more drugs you spend your own > money on, the less the government has to pay for through national > health schemes. They want to reduce their huge prescription drug > costs. Most OTC drugs are not covered by health plans, so the cost is > transferred to the general public. > > So, do you really want to support changes that are supported by big > pharma, the government and pharmacist shop chains? Do you think they > really have your best interests at heart? You could make a similar argument about the food industry pushing their wares without regard for consumers' welfare. We would probably be a lot healthier if food could only be dispensed if prescribed by a dietitian, but people won't stand for this because it infringes on their freedom. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 14:14:34 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 16:14:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904030714r79bb129do8fa19bebc597c544@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 2:00 PM, BillK wrote: > Norway, Denmark and Sweden are still below the replacement level of 2.1. > Namely, 1.78, 1.74, 1.67. Yes. But I was speaking just of comparative trends, and even though I cannot point to some source from the top of my head, I believe to remember that such rates are both improved in comparison with the past, and better in comparison with other areas. Or at least their acceleration. > > Note that these are overall statistic > This characteristic of immigrant families having larger families is > expected to reduce within a few generations as they become more > adjusted to their new country, adopt a similar lifestyle and their > female children start to expect the same rights as other women in the > country. > ... which, according to the idea of immigration as a necessary resource to fight demographic decline, would require additional imports of human cattle, making in the process permanent the lack of "integration" thereof and the externalisation of the involved social costs by the businesses possibly employing them. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From florent.berthet at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 10:15:21 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 12:15:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> Well, the main reason I can think of why there are so few french Exl-ers is because french people suck at english. It's actually pretty impressive how much shitty a mentality we can have here. About the english language, I had already noticed the following in junior high school : if you try to talk english with a good accent, most of the time you will be laughed at, even in english class (yes, really.). In the other and, one reason why there definitely SHOULD be a lot of french Exl-ers is because France is one of the least religious countries in the World (at the 8th position). But in the same time, the culture here is more oriented toward litterature than science. And by litterature, I mean french litterature, of course. We can still feel some kind of pride in our philosophers and authors of the past centuries (which weren't that good in average, but well...). For example, during all my schooling, I've always been given boring classic french books to read. Nothing recent, nothing coming from other countries, nothing even remotely related to science. No wonder then that so few frenchies are : ? open to other cultures and movements (e.g. the transhumanist one) ? interested in science and the future of our kind ("Isaac Asi-what?!") And indeed, the only french group related to those topics I could find on Facebook, called "La singularit? technologique Fr", has only 42 members... This is a real pain, and since this is mostly due to the formal education, I don't think this is going to change by itself unless the education policy is modified. Unfortunately, this probably won't happen tomorrow. Laurent Lafforgue, a french mathematician who received the Fields Medal was, during some time, a member of the "Education High Council". He has quickly been forced to resign from it because he was highly critical about what they were doing to our educational system. He wrote a book on this issue in which he explains that these folks really seem to be willing to destroy the logic and curiosity of the children. For example, some private (and more independant) schools do WAY better than the public schools just by using a different pedagogy. But the gov. douches just do the exact opposite of what is widely known as the best methods. So, this may explain that. 2009/4/2 spike > > > > ________________________________ > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Florent > Berthet > Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 8:18 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] I am now a creationist > > > Works fine here (I'm in France). > > ... > > > Welcome Florent. I think you may be the only ExI poster from France. We > noticed some time ago the lack of French ExI-ers. Why? We have several > from Italy, some from other European nations but so few from France. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 3 18:37:39 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:37:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49C8B19B.8090002@rawbw.com> <580930c20903240353i1853640ake3d9a6294d2baff6@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49D65773.20705@libero.it> Il 03/04/2009 1.30, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 12:57 AM 4/3/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: > >>> Do you want your estranged wife or furious alienated teenagers to buy >>> them? >> The furious alienated teenagers are for the insane asylums. > This is the extropian list, not the fucking Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & > Gulags. Where and what you do with furious alienated students? or any furious alienated humans? I found these as possible significant of the "alienated" word. > alienate - estrange: arouse hostility or indifference in where there had formerly been love, affection, or friendliness; "She alienated her friends when she ... > alienation - separation resulting from hostility > alienate - make withdrawn or isolated or emotionally dissociated; "the boring work alienated his employees" I remember that an "alienist" is another way to call a Psychiatrist. And usually "an alienate" is intended as "a mentally disturbed person". Maybe you think I advocated to put him/her inside an asylum forever, but I'm not doing this. I only advocate to do it for the limited time needed to make him/her calm and not dangerous for him/herself and others and, maybe, help him/her to not feel alienated. What is wrong with this? Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 18:58:04 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 20:58:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > This is the extropian list, not the fucking Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & > Gulags. Tut, tut, let's not bad-mouth or discriminate the peculiar, albeit unhortodox, orientations of sovietic psychiatric researchers... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 20:07:52 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 22:07:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904031307r6a22cee2h9fcfe28b9c92714b@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/3 Florent Berthet : > Well, the main reason I can think of why there are so few french Exl-ers is > because french people suck at english. This may well be a reason. Another one that has probably played a role is that France has a somewhat "independent" transhumanist or posthumanist tradition which was not a direct offspring of the US movement and is only vaguely connected to the same, mostly by third-party commentators. See, e.g, http://www.lesmutants.com, Charles Campetier (Avec les robots, par d?l? le bien et le mal, full-text Web version), Yves Christen (*Les ann?es Faust, ou La science face au vieillissement*), R?mi Sussan (*Les utopies posthumaines : Contre-culture, cyberculture, culture du chaos *), and Guillaume Faye (above all *Pour en finir avec le nihilisme. Heidegger et la question de la technique*, full-text Web version). -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 3 20:15:12 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 13:15:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com><49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com><580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com><49D542CE.6090501@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Damien Broderick > wrote: > > This is the extropian list, not the fucking Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & Gulags. I never knew the commie psych reseachers had a special fucking department. How does one get signed up for that? {8^D Point well taken however. All posters, please read your stuff twice before posting. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 3 21:40:32 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:40:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> At 01:15 PM 4/3/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > > This is the extropian list, not the fucking Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & >Gulags. > >Point well taken however. All posters, please read your stuff twice before >posting. Mirco's statement wasn't an accidental slip of the keyboard; he later repeated his sentiment. But perhaps it's a language problem, since "alienated" in English usage means disaffected with one's situation or culture, not "requiring treatment by an alienist". Still, this is pretty damned creepy: "Maybe you think I advocated to put him/her inside an asylum forever, but I'm not doing this. I only advocate to do it for the limited time needed to make him/her calm and not dangerous for him/herself and others and, maybe, help him/her to not feel alienated." For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to Nurse Ratched.# Damien Broderick #ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/ From florent.berthet at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 22:10:09 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 00:10:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <580930c20904031307r6a22cee2h9fcfe28b9c92714b@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904031307r6a22cee2h9fcfe28b9c92714b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904031510h719fa848i149fc81582bfab33@mail.gmail.com> Agreed. Though, even if we managed to get together all the french transhumanists regardless of their kinds or traditions, we would hardly get close to the proportion of transhumanists there are in the US. But anyway, these ideas deserve to get much more attention, in all the countries. That's why I'm pretty sure now that what we really need is a great transhuman utopian movie, where things actually GO well, and about which people would think "Wow, if only we could have that!". Then, it could only be a matter of time before some rich folks start to fund things like the Singularity Institute and other AGI related projects. Because now, obviously, they are not moved by these ideas. It seems like we can't convince rich guys to give money using clever arguments. And since they don't think that funding an AGI project will make them earn money, the only way to make them give anyway is to use feelings. Indeed, they may see the act of giving money as charity. But you don't manage charity with arguments, you manage it with tears, whether they are tears of sadness, or tears of hope. You don't make people give money to the starving children by saying "thousands of them die each day". You make them give money by showing them a picture of ONE starving little girl. That's the way it is. We have to use the power of pictures. This would be the most effective way to expand this movement around the world. Florent Berthet 2009/4/3 Stefano Vaj > 2009/4/3 Florent Berthet : > > Well, the main reason I can think of why there are so few french Exl-ers > is > > because french people suck at english. > > This may well be a reason. Another one that has probably played a role is > that France has a somewhat "independent" transhumanist or posthumanist > tradition which was not a direct offspring of the US movement and is only > vaguely connected to the same, mostly by third-party commentators. > > See, e.g, http://www.lesmutants.com, Charles Campetier (Avec les robots, > par d?l? le bien et le mal, > full-text Web version), Yves Christen (*Les ann?es Faust, ou La science > face au vieillissement*), > R?mi Sussan (*Les utopies posthumaines : Contre-culture, cyberculture, > culture du chaos > *), and Guillaume Faye (above all *Pour en finir avec le nihilisme. > Heidegger et la question de la technique*, > full-text Web version). > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 22:42:51 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 00:42:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904031510h719fa848i149fc81582bfab33@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904031307r6a22cee2h9fcfe28b9c92714b@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904031510h719fa848i149fc81582bfab33@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904031542l336d2e6bie4b34c9e24f27452@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/4 Florent Berthet > Though, even if we managed to get together all the french transhumanists > regardless of their kinds or traditions, we would hardly get close to the > proportion of transhumanists there are in the US. > Yes. Or perhaps we should say California... :-) Speaking of France, I wonder whether some tighter connections could be established with the anti-neoluddite areas of posthumanist academia, say, ? la Lyotard... See, e.g., Posthumanism (Readers in Cultural Criticism) by Neil Badmington. In the meantime, I took the courage to subscribe, at least as an observer - it is really uncomfortable to type in French with an Italian keyboard -, to the French transhumanist mailing list. Are you there? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Fri Apr 3 23:34:19 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:34:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Interview with William Haseltine Message-ID: <200904040001.n34018Ns011715@andromeda.ziaspace.com> The Thought Leader Interview: William Haseltine By Ann Graham strategy+business, Spring 2009 http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/09109?gko=de4db-1876-27600497 My review: When you hear the terms ?biotechnology? and ?genomics?, you probably think first of medical applications. In fact, investment money will flow more strongly toward other uses?-such as energy, agriculture, and materials science?-according to entrepreneur-scientist William Haseltine. Haseltine knows whereof he speakers, his claims to fame including the founding of Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGSI), one of the first biopharmaceutical companies to patent human genomic sequences for medical use. He was also a part of the team that led the way in uncovering the mechanisms by which HIV attacks the human immune system; and he coined the term regenerative medicine to describe the use of natural human substances, such as genes, proteins, and stem cells, to regenerate diseased or damaged human tissue. In this fascinating interview, Haseltine talks about carbon-neutral energy farms, microbial manufacturing, regenerative medicine, pharmaceutical productivity, and benefits of biotech for the world?s poor. Synthetic (or constructive) biology can accelerate the natural processes by which new molecules are constructed, allow us to essentially farm energy. By combining several biotechnologies, ?we could remove carbon from the air, turn it into a fuel, use that fuel, and return the carbon to the atmosphere so the whole process is carbon-neutral with respect to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.? Recognizing some of the possibilities, some oil companies are now calling themselves energy companies. Constructive biology will also have major implications for the materials sector. New manufacturing processes will be microbial rather than using standard chemical vats. Haseltine also explains the connection between nanotechnology and biotechnology and the implications for food production. Haseltine is surprisingly reserved on the potential for genetics in predictive medicine. He sees genetic inheritance as being ?a very minor aspect of genomics.? Far more promising is what he calls ?the ultimate personalization of medicine?-using your cells to build new, healthier organs.? Regenerative medicine combined with material science is also beginning to develop and replace organs and tissues. Turning to the past performance of the pharmaceutical industry, Haseltine says ?R&D expenses in the pharmaceutical industry have gone up 20-fold in the last 20 years? even as ?productivity has decreased by about a factor of 10.? This makes it ?probably the biggest productivity collapse the world has ever seen.? The problem lies less in the science, which is advancing remarkably fast, and more in structural problems?-especially the excessive size of the companies involved. The marketing people who often lead these companies fall prey to what he calls the reverse Cinderella syndrome?-taking a small foot and putting it into a big shoe. Rather than trying to do everything on a huge scale, he suggests creating ?virtual? pharmaceutical company structures, where numerous small companies have access to capital and scientists who understand the medical needs?a model more like cosmetics. Links to related articles and topics: http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO41091121136 Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 00:09:44 2009 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 16:09:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9b9887c80904031709n6b462445jf0fb9773c54d27d1@mail.gmail.com> the solar minimum is a religious event here in berkeley on the north marina yet it is science! smile, ilsa The Science at NASA site works best with JavaScript enabled in your browser. For instructions, click here [image: NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science at NASA Web Site] [image: Follow this link to skip to the main content] + NASA Home + Search NASA Web + Pagina en Espa?ol + Contact NASA [image: Search Site via Google] [image: Go] [image: HOME] [image: SATELLITE TRACKING] [image: ABOUT] [image: MAILING LISTS] [image: STORY ARCHIVES] [image: OTHER LANGUAGES] [image: FEATURE] Deep Solar Minimum 04.01.2009 * * + Play Audio| + Download Audio| + Email to a friend | + Join mailing list *April 1, 2009:* The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower. 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87%). It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. [image: see caption] *Above:* The sunspot cycle from 1995 to the present. The jagged curve traces actual sunspot counts. Smooth curves are fits to the data and one forecaster's predictions of future activity. Credit: David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC. [more ] Quiet suns come along every 11 years or so. It's a natural part of the sunspot cycle, discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in the mid-1800s. Sunspots are planet-sized islands of magnetism on the surface of the sun; they are sources of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and intense UV radiation. Plotting sunspot counts, Schwabe saw that peaks of solar activity were always followed by valleys of relative calm?a clockwork pattern that has held true for more than 200 years: plot . The current solar minimum is part of that pattern. In fact, it's right on time. "We're due for a bit of quiet?and here it is," says Pesnell. Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery But is it supposed to be *this* quiet? In 2008, the sun set the following records: *A 50-year low in solar wind pressure:* Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s?the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth. *A 12-year low in solar "irradiance": *Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun's brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other significant side-effects: Earth's upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less "puffed up." Satellites in low Earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag, extending their operational lifetimes. Unfortunately, space junk also remains longer in Earth orbit, increasing hazards to spacecraft and satellites. [image: see caption] *Above:* Space-age measurements of the total solar irradiance (brightness summed across all wavelengths). This plot, which comes from researcher C. Fr?hlich, was shown by Dean Pesnell at the Fall 2008 AGU meeting during a lecture entitled "What is Solar Minimum and Why Should We Care?" *A 55-year low in solar radio emissions:* After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun's brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest "radio sun" since 1955: plot. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun's global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood. All these lows have sparked a debate about whether the ongoing minimum is "weird", "extreme" or just an overdue "market correction" following a string of unusually intense solar maxima. "Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high," notes Hathaway. "Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We're just not used to this kind of deep calm." Deep calm was fairly common a hundred years ago. The solar minima of 1901 and 1913, for instance, were even longer than the one we're experiencing now. To match those minima in terms of depth and longevity, the current minimum will have to last at least another year. [image: see caption]In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. "For the first time in history, we're getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like." A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, Hinode, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn't exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected. *Above:* An artist's concept of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Bristling with advanced sensors, "SDO" is slated to launch later this year--perfect timing to study the ongoing solar minimum. [more ] Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. Pesnell has surveyed the scientific literature and prepared a "piano plot" showing the range of predictions. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle. Pesnell believes sunspot counts will pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013. But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates. SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIEND Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science at NASA *more information* Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low-- (Science at NASA ) Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age-- (Science at NASA ) NASA Heliophysics Science Mission Directorate Explore the Entire Region of the Sun's Influence with NASA's Heliophysics Virtual Observatories Space weather resources: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory , Spaceweather.com *NASA's Future:* US Space Exploration Policy [image: USAGov] + Freedom of Information Act + Budgets, Strategic Plans and Accountability Reports + The President?s Management Agenda + Privacy Policy and Important Notices + Inspector General Hotline + Equal Employment Opportunity Data Posted Pursuant to the No Fear Act + Information-Dissemination Priorities and Inventories + USA.gov - Your First Click to the US Government + ExpectMore - A Program Which Determines Whether Government Programs Are Effective [image: NASA] Curator: Bryan Walls Last Updated: June 9, 2005 + Contact NASA Ilsa Bartlett Institute for Rewiring the System 2951 Derby Street #139 Berkeley, CA 94705 www.hotlux.com/angel.htm www.grassroutestravel.com "Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person." -John Coltrane 2009/4/3 Florent Berthet > Well, the main reason I can think of why there are so few french Exl-ers is > because french people suck at english. It's actually pretty impressive how > much shitty a mentality we can have here. About the english language, I had > already noticed the following in junior high school : if you try to talk > english with a good accent, most of the time you will be laughed at, even in > english class (yes, really.). > > In the other and, one reason why there definitely SHOULD be a lot of french > Exl-ers is because France is one of the least religious countries in the > World (at the 8th position). > > But in the same time, the culture here is more oriented toward litterature > than science. And by litterature, I mean french litterature, of course. We > can still feel some kind of pride in our philosophers and authors of the > past centuries (which weren't that good in average, but well...). For > example, during all my schooling, I've always been given boring classic > french books to read. Nothing recent, nothing coming from other countries, > nothing even remotely related to science. No wonder then that so few > frenchies are : > > ? open to other cultures and movements (e.g. the transhumanist one) > ? interested in science and the future of our kind ("Isaac Asi-what?!") > > And indeed, the only french group related to those topics I could find on > Facebook, called "La singularit? technologique Fr", has only 42 members... > > This is a real pain, and since this is mostly due to the formal education, > I don't think this is going to change by itself unless the education policy > is modified. Unfortunately, this probably won't happen tomorrow. Laurent > Lafforgue, a french mathematician who received the Fields Medal was, during > some time, a member of the "Education High Council". He has quickly been > forced to resign from it because he was highly critical about what they were > doing to our educational system. He wrote a book on this issue in which he > explains that these folks really seem to be willing to destroy the logic and > curiosity of the children. For example, some private (and more independant) > schools do WAY better than the public schools just by using a different > pedagogy. But the gov. douches just do the exact opposite of what is widely > known as the best methods. > > So, this may explain that. > > > > > 2009/4/2 spike > > >> >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Florent >> Berthet >> Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 8:18 AM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] I am now a creationist >> >> >> Works fine here (I'm in France). >> >> ... >> >> >> Welcome Florent. I think you may be the only ExI poster from France. We >> noticed some time ago the lack of French ExI-ers. Why? We have several >> from Italy, some from other European nations but so few from France. >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat Apr 4 00:47:56 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 17:47:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Edgar Allan Poe animation etc. In-Reply-To: <580930c20904031542l336d2e6bie4b34c9e24f27452@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com><221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer><0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer><6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com><4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike><6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com><580930c20904031307r6a22cee2h9fcfe28b9c92714b@mail.gmail.com><6d342ad70904031510h719fa848i149fc81582bfab33@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904031542l336d2e6bie4b34c9e24f27452@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <113B79DB3D5D44ABAE46EEAE5A442B99@GinaSony> Dear friends, I have a new update at our health blog, including a link to my new Edgar Allan Poe animation and photographs of us. Click here to read it: http://ginamiller.blogspot.com/2009/04/refrigeration-and-edgar-allan-poe.html I also have a fabric creation up on my craft blog if you are interested in the crafty: Click here to see it: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/fabric-edgar-allan-poe-and-alan-alda.html Best wishes to all, Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 03:37:27 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 14:37:27 +1100 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49D65773.20705@libero.it> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <49D65773.20705@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/4 painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Maybe you think I advocated to put him/her inside an asylum forever, but I'm > not doing this. > I only advocate to do it for the limited time needed to make him/her calm > and not dangerous for him/herself and others and, maybe, help him/her to not > feel alienated. > > What is wrong with this? In most jurisdictions only people with treatable mental illnesses are allowed to be involuntarily admitted to involuntarily admitted to psychiatric institutions. Treatable mental illnesses include major depression and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia: you give them drugs or ECT, they get better. This is still a controversial area in psychiatry but people with personality traits that the rest of society might consider deviant are not classified in the same way. Biological treatments make no difference to them, and if they break the law they are held responsible for their actions and dealt with in the criminal justice system. This distinction will be thrown into disarray when we have a better understanding of the brain and how to manipulate it, but it's the situation as it stands at present. -- Stathis Papaioannou From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 04:46:49 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 21:46:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Spirituality of Sex Message-ID: <2d6187670904032146g140b2075va9ba154d2deaff60@mail.gmail.com> I thought this might be interesting food for thought around here... http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-spirituality-of-sex.html John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 05:23:34 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 22:23:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gratitude Message-ID: <2ae60d770904032223x5a39e6bas4af1d5eb3a065b76@mail.gmail.com> I wanted to thank the posters of the Sex-spirituality article, the creationist rants, and the On a Boat song featuring T Pain. Positive reinforcement. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 08:12:09 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:12:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> Rafal writes > On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > I [Rafal] wrote: >>> PS. To make myself more clear, I am actually fucking pissed off that >>> the idea of kicking people out of their homes for being Muslim is >>> being bandied about here. WTF? >> >> WTF? Very simple. Were you living in France, how would >> the prospect of you and your children living under Sharia >> strike you? > > ### To repeat "WTF?" - what are you talking about? That hardly merits a response. So I'll skip it and get to the substance: > What is the chain of reasoning that leads you from > "I live in France" to "Muslims need to be destroyed"? Exaggerating what someone has said is really beneath you. Even Painlord was at pains, I saw, to point out that no people need be destroyed, that, indeed, in high likelihood (in his view) taking this action now would ultimately save people from being destroyed. But that's his argument, and so let's not defocus on that back to this: > Do you think that all Muslims are immoral? Certainly not! What a crazy idea. This is a very bad indication that you feel compelled to go so far. They're no different from anyone else. It's very difficult to find examples of large groups of people that are systematically better or more moral than other groups, especially when disparities in wealth and tech progress are controlled for. > You are not making any sense, Lee. Spell out in detail how being an > innocent, law-abiding Muslim in France justifies being persecuted. I myself took pains to *explain* that this did *not* justified persecuting anyone. "What justified Americans persecuting Englishmen by going to war against them in 1812" is just as misguided a question as yours. Since when do all actions need to be justified? Why don't your word choices clash with your knowledge of PCR? Rounding up and deporting some enormous class of people because they look at the world entirely differently than you do---and ultimately destroy institutions that took hundreds of years to develop---is not unreasonable at all. Need I repeat the obvious? At thankfully rare times either individually or collectively it becomes necessary to act in violation of a lesser principle in order to save a greater. Now I do realize that anyone could say that about anything---yet I shouldn't need to go into detail about how different France will be under Sharia. Unfortunately, we evidently *do* need to go into detail (and so I apologize a bit for the previous paragraph). Under the Caliphate of Paris a lot *worse* things will happen than mere deportation of a recently immigrated foreign group that for over a thousand years France has been at odds with. (Think of perpetual enslavement of women, just for starters.) Charles Martel, though turning in his grave, might on reflection be not too disappointed: he could say, "Hey, well, what I did and my descendants did lasted almost twelve-hundred years! Not bad. Could have been a lot worse. Still, it's sad to see that finally France succumbs to the Muslim threat." (Yes, for you pedants out there, I know that France is really only eight hundred or so years old.) > And for the sake of completeness, tell me why being > Muslim in the US does not justify persecution. Or does it? America? You want to compare America to a real country like the France, or, to be more precise, like the France that used to be? Ha! The U.S. is a very recent "country" which indeed was a real nation for a while, but it was always a land of immigrants, and always rather diverse to boot. (Not that this last did not cause an inordinate amount of bloodshed and to this day imposes enormous costs in lack of trust and so on.) Which group would someone start with if you tried to reduce the U.S. to a "loyal only" portion? The whole onion (which is a union only in the loosest sense) would just disappear, layer by layer. Of course, if tomorrow 200 of Osama Bin Laden's henchmen showed up in shopping malls with Uzis and killed ten thousand people, the Americans would very likely intern everyone from the middle east. That's what they do, e.g. fly off the handle, go ballistic. It's an American specialty. Naturally oh! the hand-wringing! oh! the remorse! oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth. And I would just say what Frederick the Great said when he heard about how upset Maria Teresa of Austria was about the partitioning of Poland: "She wept, but she took". >> Meanwhile, no Frenchman who values the past or future of >> his country ought to accede to what is going on. It's >> simply a question of survival of western institutions >> *at all* in France, though I agree that the cost (of >> sacrificing temporarily some principles) is very high. > > ### Ah, yeah, lets kill or otherwise destroy a million innocent > people, since they believe in some mumbo-jumbo. Reminds me of Robert > Bradbury's idea of nuking random cities in Afghanistan. You feel some > vague sense of discomfort with a group, so let's just kill them all. > Brilliant. Me? I *never* said kill 'em all. You must have me confused with the great Robert B. (I must post something about that, I'm really sad I was off the list when that happened.) No, the worst I've done along those lines is to claim that France could have a 4-million man army ("lev?e en masse"--- they're actually quite used to the idea), and threaten to use it, and hint that atomic weaponry lay even behind *that* threat. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 08:40:37 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:40:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49D71D05.2070708@rawbw.com> spike wrote: >> ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin >> >> ...Climate denial isn't a crime >> here yet, but you can be ostracized by your friends... Lee > > Lee, the ostracizers weren't your friends to start with. spike Right. But the people who matter do have many such friends. Example: those who work in climate science have to watch what they say. And if ostracism weren't bad enough, try getting government funding to prove that climate change *isn't* happening. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 08:47:48 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:47:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news In-Reply-To: <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com><580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com><49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it><49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it><49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek><49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> Message-ID: <49D71EB4.6050603@rawbw.com> spike wrote: > ...caused me > to recognize a big advantage to the coming death of print news. The news > cycle manipulation and rush to a particular deadline that you describe both > go away, being artifacts of print news cycles. Traditionally these have > been one issue per day, with special arrangements on weekends. Now, news > stories can go up on the site whenever the reporter is satisfied she has the > facts, instead of when some arbitrary schedule demands. Rebuttals can be > offered quickly on politically opposite news sites. Balanced reporting will > be accomplished, and misinformation can be greatly reduced. Yes, but I think that there is a cost you're not taking into account. > Trees will be saved too, and the furry little animals that live in them. Literal Lee replies: "No, more trees will grow to replace those cut down, and in the bargain there'll be fewer forest fires." > May we bury the print news quickly, without mourning their passing. Here is the problem. Let me take you back to ancient Rome, where, if you wanted to see Cicero, you had to go downtown and to his office, where you could schedule an appointment with his secretary. Rome, where Latin-speaking parrots were all the rage... Rome, a country fully yin so many striking ways as civilized as our own society. Mr Julius Caesar was in the habit (necessary, it turns out for any successful politician then) of simply bribing *everyone* in sight to get what he wanted, and to threaten and intimidate everyone else. And there was no way to raise a public outcry. But by 1700, one had to begin to worry about the newspapers. For everyone, you see, (or rather everyone who mattered) read the same papers. Wrongdoing could easily and often did come to public notice. Oh, sure, your Federalist papers and my Republican papers would lie and defame like crazy, but the discriminating reader really could find out that Hamilton, say, was a bastard, (back in the days when that was a bad thing). We may end up losing public accountability once people are glued only into their own information channels in an infinite sea of information. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 09:04:59 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:04:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49D722BB.6030709@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > The jury is still out whether or not wife beating is immoral behavior, Well, *we* should vociferously agree that it is. (I.e., that we disapprove so strongly that arrest warrants will be issued against the perpetrators and they'll be tried and probably found guilty. > and equally uncountable numbers of people that shrug [off] > whatever I think. Well, that's life, when you're not a celebrity. > It will be unresolvable - people are stuck in their grooves > and discourse is dead. Not even transhumanists have ideals left, Don't give up so soon on that one! I sense that plenty of people here still have ideals, or at least deeply divided about what principles to embrace. You and I simply need to help them and each other find the best ones. > and extropianism has the same polarized bulwark of > self-interest, collapse of ideals, belligerence, political > obstinacy, arrogance and contempt as any segment of society. > > Prove me wrong. Consider the gang segment of society, whose members regularly exert violence upon each other, and (this year? or just preceding years?) have recently set a new record in the California city of Oakland for homicide. > I can only vouch that I believe the near-collapse of > the worlds climate a reality, that humanity > is largely responsible, Yes, but you don't *know* this for a fact. Take me, for instance. I think that there is a 50% chance that the singularity will go very bad for humanity and that we'll be snuffed out. But I don't know it. I worry every day about The Big One (that's California- speak for the Mother of All EarthQuakes). I used to worry every day about Osama or his friends firing off a nuke in some big U.S. city and the economic consequences, but I'm busy, and now only worry about that every other day. Your worries about "possibly billions > going to die as a direct result before 2100, you see, merely parallel my own worries---and my new found daily worry (since October) about the economy. But I don't *know* any of those things are really going to happen, or to be so bad if they do. Cheer up! Things could be worse. In fact, they always have been. > What I believe doesn't matter an inch. Some here would rather see me die > from poverty than listen to whatever I have to say. Sniff. Well, count me among those who would rather listen to what you have to say than see you die from poverty. > ...and what do you know? I don't give a hoot. I am personally sure of > all above and I don't care! That's funny. It really didn't sound like it. Are you sure you aren't just trying to make the best of a bad situation and confabulating to yourself? That's like the venture capitalist talking to all his friend around a conference table and snorting, "Well, I don't care what *any* of you think! Me and my money, we're out of here!", when the truth is that he does care very much what they think. (Often I hear my left hemisphere muttering, "Oh, well, it doesn't really matter", and I know that it's lying.) > I am going to die anyways, probably somewhere between 2025 and 2045, > probably of poverty, True, *if* the economy collapses, if a gamma ray burst hits us, if the singularity doesn't go right, if the climate change people have actually understated the problem, then we're doomed. But that's then and this is now. You should sign up for cryonics, and keep your chin up. Who knows? It might indeed all work out! > So I couldn't care LESS about what > happens to the environment. > > In fact, I welcome the collapse of the environment, > somewhere later this century... I don't believe you, and neither should you. > Face it - Humanity is not worth it. Oh, come now. As compared to what? Is *all* joy from your life vanished? Are there no songs? Are there no amusing stories? Isn't it at least interesting to watch the train wreck of the economy? Ha! I'll bet you have some secret pleasures you look forward to and want to keep looking forward to. Lee > So - everyone: we ruined it, we fucked up, > party is over, any year in > some measure of comfort is a blessing, and a merciful death after is all > you can hope for. > > > > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > > > ...Climate denial isn't a crime > > here yet, but you can be ostracized by your friends... Lee > > Lee, the ostracizers weren't your friends to start with. spike > > But I'd love to be proven wrong, on any of this. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 09:07:49 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:07:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D51EE7.3070904@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it> <49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it> <49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D51EE7.3070904@libero.it> Message-ID: <49D72365.6050008@rawbw.com> painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > 1) Freedom of religion is good only with religions that advocate peace > with people with a different religion. I don't believe in freedom of > religion for some cannibalistic cult that slay people to eat them. That's not *typical* Muslim behavior, is it? Make sure not to weaken your case by exaggeration. Let's let our adversaries continue to make that error! > 2) The laws can be changed so they are equal for all but hit their > intended targets. For example, forced wedding can be sentenced with life > imprisonment. Sexual mutilations can be sentenced with life > imprisonment. Any accomplices of these can be sentenced with life > imprisonment. Terrorism will be punished with life imprisonment and > confiscation of property. All people associating with them can be > sentenced for "helping and abetting" or "external association with...". > > This the civilized way to go. Absolutely. What exceeds the silliness and cowardliness of the sniveling European governments who are now afraid to penalize Muslims for crimes that anyone else would be sentenced for? Lee > It is this or the uncivilized way we saw in Bosnia (but without the US > to save the day for the Muslims). > > Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 09:10:48 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:10:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> Message-ID: <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 01/04/2009 9.25, BillK ha scritto: > >> Unfortunately Europe needs immigrants, because the original Europeans >> have stopped having children and are aging fast. > > This is because they are taxed as there is no tomorrow by their > governments. Pools show they want more children but feel their are not > wealth enough to be able to afford them. Hmm. You could be right. Thanks for pointing it out. I did hear that the Russians actually did greatly improve their birth rate for a while by promising economic incentives. But after a lot of children were conceived, the government let slip that these incentives actually weren't *quite* as promised. A huge lot of abortions immediately took place. Yes, it would be just like the west to tax itself to death. Lee >> It is the demographic timebomb. > >> Who will be the workers and pay for social security for the >> aged? > > If you think that the Muslims will pay for the social security of the > old kafir, you are deluded. > IIRC, in England economists have computed the economics of immigration > and have concluded that there is no difference. The Englishmen have > gained nothing from the immigration. But, I'm sure, many people have > gained from the cheap Labour imported. > >> The future for those populations who stop having children is a >> reducing, aging population supported by young workers from immigrant >> families. > > You are deluding yourself. A large part of these Muslims immigrates is > helped from the Social Security, because they are in large part > unemployable for any productive job because they are uneducated, low > skilled and low IQ. Then you add their religion, that teach them to > loathe the different, hate him, exploit him and not help him against > other Muslims. > > Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 09:16:38 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:16:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <1238733807.5478.788.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <1238733807.5478.788.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49D72576.5020608@rawbw.com> Fred writes > On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 18:41 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> (Oh, of course, we'll have our Cesar Chavez eventually--- > > We already had Cesar Chavez; he was born in 1927 and died in 1993. Oops, I meant Hugo of course. Thanks for the correction. > I am not going to bother replying in detail to the rest of your message > because it not worth my time at the moment to correct all of your errors. You're very welcome. Thanks for the kind thoughts. Lee From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 09:24:45 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 09:24:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Spirituality of Sex In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904032146g140b2075va9ba154d2deaff60@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904032146g140b2075va9ba154d2deaff60@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/4/09, John Grigg wrote: > I thought this might be interesting food for thought around here... > http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-spirituality-of-sex.html > That's a new one! "Sorry, not tonight dear. I don't feel spiritual enough". ;) BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 4 09:26:31 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:26:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Reward Offered. In-Reply-To: <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> Fred C. Moulton wrote: > Neither Lee nor painlord2k are libertarians. The arbiter of definitions has spoken. All are to remain silent. > There seems to be an ongoing problem with persons calling themselves > libertarian or free-market or some similar term when in actuality they > are usually uninformed, confused or dishonest. Especially we who are uninformed, confused or dishonest. > And further what they have posting recently in this thread is not even > remotely Extropian. Again, you *know* what these terms mean, and it is for the rest of us just to accept, I suppose. Whatever happened to *reasoned* discourse? Well, I guess, apart from some posters it is alive and well, so I shouldn't complain. But I will. I'm serious about this. $100 to the person who finds the *most* egregious example of any posting I've ever made on this list (from 1996 to today) where I called someone uninformed or dishonest. Fifty dollars to second place! Since clearly I've *implied* that people are often less than honest with others (and even with themselves, as I did with Dagon tonight), this is not an idle offer. Someone has to win, someone will win. My point will only be that *whatever* you find, it won't be anything like what Fred has unleashed above. Lee From eschatoon at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 09:31:19 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 11:31:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904040231w51209d31g1cc4158b84c7bfcd@mail.gmail.com> I think the mini saga started with proposed deletion of the mind uploading article on Wikipedia (now saved thanks to all those who took the time to defend it) and the article on the Wired blog are doing a lot of good for spreading transhumanist ideas. I am sure many thousands (at least) of people, who had never heard of mind uploading before, have some familiarity with the mind uploading concept now -- and some of them probably like it. Thanks to all bioluddite losers and idiots for advertising our ideas! Let's not be scared of making them angry at us -- they produce the best PR for us when they are angry. Appeasing them is useless and boring, while provoking them is productive and fun. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From florent.berthet at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 09:37:48 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 11:37:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <9b9887c80904031709n6b462445jf0fb9773c54d27d1@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> <9b9887c80904031709n6b462445jf0fb9773c54d27d1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904040237tb294627v9e5a2919ecacc9cf@mail.gmail.com> "In the meantime, I took the courage to subscribe, at least as an observer - it is really uncomfortable to type in French with an Italian keyboard -, to the French transhumanist mailing list. Are you there?" I've read it sometimes, but there wasn't anything really interesting by the time, and it's a little silent (less than 50 people). However that could change, so I've just subscribed. How is it in Italy? (or in other countries, if other non-americans are reading this ?) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 10:18:14 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 12:18:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > > Unfortunately Europe needs immigrants, because the original Europeans >>> have stopped having children and are aging fast. >>> >> >> This is because they are taxed as there is no tomorrow by their >> governments. > > Polls show they want more children but feel their are not wealth enough to >> be able to afford them. >> > > Hmm. You could be right. Thanks for pointing it out. I did > hear that the Russians actually did greatly improve their > birth rate for a while by promising economic incentives. > But after a lot of children were conceived, the government > let slip that these incentives actually weren't *quite* as > promised. A huge lot of abortions immediately took place. > > Yes, it would be just like the west to tax itself to death. 1. All of those "anti big gov/pro big market" people, do you have the nerve to face the difference between the amount of tax citizens will have to pay for (a) all the welfare and development aid and subsidies and left wing pet projects and (b) the recent bailout? - and don't backpeddle or dance populist river chorus lines by claiming the current governments in the US is left-wing or socialist. It is not. My guess is the ratio of 20 years of left-oriented programs and right-oriented bailouts of the last two years is 1:10 or more. 2. I want the population of Europe to be stabilized at the current levels, but I'd prefer it to go down by about a third. And I realize this is only possible by keeping the value of having an income squared against work high - in fact I think incomes can go up if we get rid of forms of slavery. If things go right this will be bloody necessary - my expectation is populations in EU, Japan, Australia and maybe even US (after all, it'll be a third world nation like brasil soon)* will start going up fast again*, somewhere early 20s, as firm treatments against aging start trickling down to consumers. Only a small amount of functional aging treatment or rejuvenation or increase in functional health will kick population growths up by percentage points. Those will be old people, and hopefully they will have old minds and ripe investment portfolios BUT suddenly younger bodies. If that trend holds, we will also see women in their 80s and 90s having babies again, because they have bodies of women in their 20s to 30s, around, ohh, say 2050. Personally I prefer population growth by people not dying that by adding non-educated young kids. (The latter is very worrysome, because a very small percentage of people in the middle eastis causing an endemic population growth rate, by holding a wife (or several wives) home as breeding slave. GIve those people access to the same treatments and the population rate in places will go dramatically, since the men will grow older, stay fertile longer, have bigger swarms of offspring, and have the opportunity to replace a "wife attrition" by getting fresh breeding slaves. Watch for countries with a median age under 30- those are the ones where people will be dying and trying to emigrate from in a few years.) ...And no I do NOT want immigration, not even from americans feeling the collapse of the union and the civil war. I do not trust big american populations anymore - some might be under the influence of sinister religions or "militant foxists". (*I want those people registered, known by Interpol and marked for being unable to enter Europe, for anything. They might be up to something*) 3. Russian population growth, even after the "nashi" lebensborn-light project, is still flat out negative. Only full dictatorial force or big loads of money can reduce or increase population growth rates. I am virulently against dishing out communal money for parents having babies. 4. I think people have babies, not because its a conscious, rational decission, but because of instincts and culture. I am blankly for doing whatever it takes to make sure that as few possible human being at the age of 18 can function productively, adaopted, as rational as possible and independently in society. I am for "FREE" variants of market-based eugenetics to make that possible. I would have gladly been the subject of a number of key genetic treatments before my birth - it would have saved society a lot of money and me a lot of misery. Society should demand parents pay for these necessary treatments or selection process for their offspring. Parents shoud be held accountable if they intentionally breed to have a child that will need societal care, extra medical care and money to live. I am not against not giving invalids disability, but I am against people with disabilities being born in the first place. 5. The west taxes itself to death? Surely you jest. If you want higher birth rates (and this goes for the US and for Europe, and especially for Japan) make sure people have at most 8 hour workdays, any overtime is paid 200 or more percent, and everyone gets, by default, a 3 day weekend. Right now people dont have children because they don't have the time to emotionally bond with them and care for them. Worse, people in the turd world dont have children because they are scared shitless to grow old and die uncared for, or they have children as men appear to be losers without at least several sons. I bet that an extra day a week of freedom is good for an additional .5% population growth rate in all modern societies. Those that can't sit still that day, start a company. Better - add a basic income for everyone. No questions asked, ever citizen gets a basic income. This will refugee immigration damn hard if you are unschooled - you can never hope to compete with an average citizen in such a society and only if you are a highly trained professional you can. The freedom to work minimal hours will also make parenting - and study - easier. A fair basic income would be good to get those with disabilities to do at least some work, which mostly doesn't make any sense now, especially where I live. It would save FORTUNES on social programs which you dont have to pay because there is that basic income - the latter would also be good for another .5% population growth. As in - "I dont need to work overtime, I'd rather stay home in bed with the wife and socialize". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 11:04:30 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 13:04:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: <49D722BB.6030709@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> <49D722BB.6030709@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/4 Lee Corbin Did you notice that there are in fact people who debate issues *seriously* asserting these things? A whole school of largely conservatives or libertarians would literally risk the danger of climatic collapse, mostly because they do not want governmental restrictions. It gives me the same feeling as the pope preaching against use of condoms. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 11:08:05 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 22:08:05 +1100 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/3 painlord2k at libero.it : > You are deluding yourself. A large part of these Muslims immigrates is > helped from the Social Security, because they are in large part unemployable > for any productive job because they are uneducated, low skilled and low IQ. > Then you add their religion, that teach them to loathe the different, hate > him, exploit him and not help him against other Muslims. Do you actually know any Muslims? -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 11:10:46 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 11:10:46 +0000 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Reward Offered. In-Reply-To: <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/4/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > I'm serious about this. $100 to the person who finds the > *most* egregious example of any posting I've ever made > on this list (from 1996 to today) where I called someone > uninformed or dishonest. Fifty dollars to second place! > > Since clearly I've *implied* that people are often less > than honest with others (and even with themselves, as I > did with Dagon tonight), this is not an idle offer. > Someone has to win, someone will win. > > My point will only be that *whatever* you find, it won't > be anything like what Fred has unleashed above. > ?If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him? Cardinal Richelieu (French Minister and Cardinal. 1585-1642) ------------ Now, if we only had archives going back to 1996 with a good search facility that could pick out individual messages............................. BillK ;) From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 11:20:19 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 13:20:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gratitude In-Reply-To: <2ae60d770904032223x5a39e6bas4af1d5eb3a065b76@mail.gmail.com> References: <2ae60d770904032223x5a39e6bas4af1d5eb3a065b76@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > I wanted to thank the posters of the Sex-spirituality article, the > creationist rants, and the On a Boat song featuring T Pain. I am taking a liking for youtube mashups. Some cause me immense amusement. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfadLhw14l8 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJQy2BkJ-o - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYrSDXqwV1g - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBDuSa-4EN4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UKbdFKnHO0 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JO2gNPoIMA - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMhnFoq0TpE&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viuGhdeLXHo&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRHfd9Yto0A - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNWCclOqUHw&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nQhBHtop-E&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA9lYAo3bak&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHL0k-p5HCc&feature=related - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhE85pyIRhU - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQunWXkeVKU&feature=related I am not a fan of much of this music, but hey, I like forms of sacrilege. Remarkably enough some sound better then both original source tracks, even when those were historic. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 4 16:01:38 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 09:01:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news In-Reply-To: <49D71EB4.6050603@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com><580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com><49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it><49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it><49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek><49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek><5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> <49D71EB4.6050603@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <9378CFD598514174B5DFD3DCB081CCD6@spike> > Subject: Re: [ExI] death of print news > > spike wrote: > > > ...caused me to recognize a big advantage to the coming death of print > news...Balanced reporting will > be accomplished, and misinformation can be greatly reduced. > > Yes, but I think that there is a cost you're not taking into account. .... > > We may end up losing public accountability once people are > glued only into their own information channels in an infinite > sea of information... Lee Interesting take, Lee. It looks to me as tho it would create exactly the opposite effect. The coming age of exploding news channels, we get a plethora of amateur reporters. An example is the YouTube phenom; a specific example is the reporting of a 17 yr old girl from Afghanistan being flogged for refusing to marry the local warlord. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crfs8YsZPGE Stuff like this has been going on since forever, but suddenly in the past five years, it is all as close as your keyboard. Cell phone cameras catch it all, anywhere on the globe it occurs. Another example: instead of reading about former Illinois governor Blago in the papers, accepting whatever they choose to tell us, anyone can google the actual conversation transcript or even the audio if one is sufficiently curious. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1321610,blagojevich-calls-oba ma-expletive-120908.article It looks to me as tho we are truly entering a time which we talked about a lot here about 10 years ago: the dramatically increase in the transparency of government and society. We have the potential of weeding out government corruption. Granted the recent trend has been for society to become appallingly more tolerant of government corruption. We have a long string of federal government appointees who are tax cheaters for instance, including the head of the treasury. They somehow manage to be affirmed anyway. spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 16:58:46 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 10:58:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with this picture Message-ID: I'm subscribed to Drexler's "Next Big Future". http://nextbigfuture.com/ Today it had a series of articles re ice on Mars. Interesting. Exciting. The photo of the impact crater with the ice dispersed around it was taken in Nov 2008. Five months ago. Annoying, that delay in getting the news out. But anyway,... So I read the bullets and the blurbs and then I clicked the "update" link: University researchers discovers liquid saltwater on Mars http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-04-02/u-professor-discovers-liquid-salt-water-mars and began reading. Everything was good for a while, but then... Best, Jeff Davis "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Groucho Marx From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Apr 4 17:18:09 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 13:18:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia Message-ID: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: [Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness." But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the vitalist view. It then says: "The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the soul. John K Clark From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 4 17:45:49 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 10:45:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John K Clark > Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia ... > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list > believe in the vitalist view. ... > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list > believe in the soul. > > John K Clark Evidence please John? You may be right, but how did you reach that conclusion? I recently wrote a paper for the theology educators in which I argue that transhumanism is a logical deductive conclusion for those who reject the vitalist view and those who do not accept the notion of a separately animate soul. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 18:26:04 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 18:26:04 +0000 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with this picture In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/4/09, Jeff Davis wrote: > I'm subscribed to Drexler's "Next Big Future". > http://nextbigfuture.com/ > So am I. It's a great resource. But I don't think Drexler has anything to do with it. It is mostly written by Brian Wang. Quote: Nextbigfuture is the Lifeboat Foundation Technology Research News Website. I couldn't find Drexler on the Lifeboat Foundation either. BillK From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 19:38:30 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 21:38:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/4 John K Clark > I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on > mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things > that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: > > [Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and > consciousness." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > vitalist view. > > It then says: > > "The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many > philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > soul. Whereas on rationalist moments (and I say rationalist, not rational) i know there is no sensible, sustainable alternative to a world without vitalist or spiritual energies, and matter being a mechanical process. But it is so hard to sustain this insight in moments of emotion and unease. When faced with the dark of night, the hour of the wolf, when sleeplessness overwhelms me, when I note down important ideas in my book at 3 AM, the other reality is very compelling and I cannot ignore the slide show on the inside of my mind. That's why I agree - most people and many transhumanists will be vulnerable to this compulsive urge - the urge to protect simple, linear puppeteers when things move or happen of their own accord. We are not yet accustomed to inner workings, mechanical causes and programs. It's been only a few decades, give it time to trickle down. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Apr 4 20:17:37 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:17:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> At 09:38 PM 4/4/2009 +0200, Dagon wrote: >on rationalist moments (and I say rationalist, not rational) i know >there is no sensible, >sustainable alternative to a world without vitalist or spiritual >energies, and matter being a >mechanical process. I recall John Clark's claim that "free will" is an illusion based on the fact that we are blind to our own workings until we see the result, which seems correct to me. I'm not sure if the following is a good analogy (I don't mean homology), but even a totally deterministic, matter&energy computer can deliver the next largest prime number (an abstraction) without *anyone* having in advance any detailed idea what it will be. Brains in bodies do something similar all the time, although other people can sometimes make shrewd guesses at what each of us will do in a situation where a given choice remains far more uncertain to the actor. As I wrote many years ago in THEORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: "Our scientific worldview places us, at bottom, in a universe of non-local quantum fields, whose gravitational ensembles are constrained by the highly counter-intuitive principles of relativity theory. Is this a `materialistic' account? Clearly it is; or if it isn't, then no materialistic account can any longer stand." Damien Broderick From ismirth at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 20:44:31 2009 From: ismirth at gmail.com (Isabelle Hakala) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 16:44:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... I would want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, oh... say a decade, without any outside influences, and me still living in the outside world, and then compare notes with my uploaded self. What had each of us learned different? Did we still agree on things? What had changed? Etc. For me that would be an important step in feeling like it would be worth-while to do it again at the 'end' of my life so as to preserve myself, and then live on from there. It would answer a lot of questions for me. I believe in something one might consider to be a 'soul', and it doesn't bother me to think that a simulacrum of myself might be running around someplace that may or may not have my 'soul' attached to it as well. Either it would have a part of my soul attached to it, which would be fine, or it wouldn't and then it wouldn't make any difference at all. If this experiment were run, one would be able to see if the simulacrum finds life on the 'inside' as satisfying as the person on the outside does. Just a thought:) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Isabelle Hakala "Any person who says 'it can't be done' shouldn't be interrupting the people getting it done." "Do every single thing in life with love in your heart." On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 1:18 PM, John K Clark wrote: > I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on > mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things > that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: > > [Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and > consciousness." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > vitalist view. > > It then says: > > "The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many > philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > soul. > > John K Clark > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 21:08:28 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:08:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49D7CC4C.1070601@libero.it> Il 03/04/2009 23.40, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 01:15 PM 4/3/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > Mirco's statement wasn't an accidental slip of the keyboard; Are you from the Dep. of Mind Reading of the ACLU? > he later repeated his sentiment. But perhaps it's a language problem, since > "alienated" in English usage means disaffected with one's situation or > culture, not "requiring treatment by an alienist". Still, this is pretty > damned creepy: Well, we were writing about "furious alienated teenagers" [F.A.T.] putting their hands on dangerous stuff with the intent to damage others they feel alienated from. Note that the teenagers is furious AND alienated not only alienated. Also, for me, "teenagers" is usually an under age under the authority of his parents. If we assume the intentions are true and we know the intentions, what do we do? Do we prohibit the selling of the "dangerous stuff" ? Do we let the FAT obtain the stuff and using it and land in jail it after? Do we let the FAT obtain the stuff and using it and hand him a "we understand your feeling" card and let him walk away? Do we help him before he damage others and himself forever? If he have not a mental condition I agree an asylum is not for him. A jail could be better. Or a foster family. Some people have the need of psychiatric help only one time in their lives. > "Maybe you think I advocated to put him/her inside an asylum forever, > but I'm not doing this. > I only advocate to do it for the limited time needed to make him/her > calm and not dangerous for him/herself and others and, maybe, help > him/her to not feel alienated." > For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I > gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to > Nurse Ratched.# I had to do a search for understanding what you intended. I never watched the show from start to end, but is interesting how people base their feeling on fiction and not on reality. And then, they twist also the fiction to signify what they want. The protagonist is admitted in the asylum because he want to be there and he gamed the system to be sent there so he avoided the jail. So he went there against the will of the system. Then, instead to play the good patient he started to behave like a real lunatic with poor self control (remember that the nurses and the doctors in story don't see what you see, only what they see). But it is more dangerous to trick a surgeon that you need a heart transplant than trick a psychiatrist that you need a few droplets of aloperidol. I'm sure they were tricked in believing him a psychiatric patient only because he was played by Jack Nicholson and the director tell them to do so. I'm the first to complain when people unfit is brought to my ward instead of a jail or instead to their home or a shelter for homeless or a hospice for elder or a correctional institute for young offenders. I'm there for caring for the real psychotics not for the rejected of the society. I know my limits, I know I have not the resources, the tools and the skills needed to help them all. And taking care of so different people would be impossible because too often they need contrasting things. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 21:27:36 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:27:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904040237tb294627v9e5a2919ecacc9cf@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> <9b9887c80904031709n6b462445jf0fb9773c54d27d1@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904040237tb294627v9e5a2919ecacc9cf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D7D0C8.8030003@libero.it> Il 04/04/2009 11.37, Florent Berthet ha scritto: > "In the meantime, I took the courage to subscribe, at least as an > observer - it is really uncomfortable to type in French with an Italian > keyboard -, to the French transhumanist mailing list. Are you there?" > > I've read it sometimes, but there wasn't anything really interesting by > the time, and it's a little silent (less than 50 people). However that > could change, so I've just subscribed. > > How is it in Italy? (or in other countries, if other non-americans are > reading this ?) We have two mailing list (the AIT and the NTI) after the scission. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Apr 4 21:27:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:27:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49D7CC4C.1070601@libero.it> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D7CC4C.1070601@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090404162327.0239a340@satx.rr.com> At 11:08 PM 4/4/2009 +0200, painlord2k wrote: >Are you from the Dep. of Mind Reading of the ACLU? No, but one of my friends ran the Dept. of Mind Reading for the CIA and US military. (Detailed in my book OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE.) >>For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I >>gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to >>Nurse Ratched.# > >I had to do a search for understanding what you intended. What a stroke of luck, then, that I provided a direct url to the movie (although Ken Kesey's famous novel was more interesting).# Damien Broderick # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 21:39:07 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:39:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> Il 03/04/2009 12.03, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > This is because they are taxed as there is no tomorrow by their > governments. Pools show they want more children but feel their are > not wealth enough to be able to afford them. > That is an interesting angle, on which I personally know very little. > In the seventies, European countries with very high level of taxation, > namely social democratic Scandinavia, used to have the lowest > demographic pressure, even in comparison with much poorer areas, such as > southern Italy or Greece, but this was usually attributed to cultural > reasons. The interesting part is that Italy and Spain have lower fertilities than the North Europe, when they were used to have hogher. Another more interesting point is that Morocco had a sudden fall of its fertility in the '70, when they needed to finance the war in the West Sahara and raised the taxes to the current levels. Iran have the same level of fertility as Italy, and the women are not so much empowered as in Italy or the US. This is, probably, also a function of the urbanization of large part of the population. More people live in city house, less space they have to raise their children. I could be wrong, but if the law mandated the construction of four bedrooms only apartments we would have much higher fertility. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 4 22:00:25 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 15:00:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ants again Message-ID: Earlier I had described an ant experiment, the double straw, which I am now pretty sure will fail even before I try it. Ants and humans are two species that have externalized a great deal of knowledge, humans with our libraries and internet, ants with their mysterious chemical repertoire of instincts so eloquently described by Darwin in chapter 7 of OoS. As a preliminary step to the double straw, we could set up the double hole experiment in which the ants are allowed to set up their aphid farms in the tree using a paper bridge over the goo. The bridge has goo barriers with two adjacent holes large enough for one ant to pass easily but not large enough for two to squeeze by each other. The holes would be about two mm diameter and about four mm center to center. The experiment is to see if the ants can figure out a way to make one hole the in and the other one the out. The holes are circumscribed by a goo ring so the ants cannot go around the holes. It's thru the holes or no access to the aphids. Anyone wish to speculate on whether the ants will split their lines and form two one-way holes, thereby reaching their aphids relatively impeded, or whether they will get in each other's way in both holes. Do state your reasoning. Humanity is in so many ways analogous to the ants, where a little more profound insight could make the whole process work better. I hope the ants figure out how to make one in-door and one out-door, but I fear they will not do it. See sketch below: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Outlook.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 57687 bytes Desc: not available URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 22:20:35 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:20:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49D7DD33.8000701@libero.it> Il 04/04/2009 12.18, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > Yes, it would be just like the west to tax itself to death. It is like self canibalization. > 1. All of those "anti big gov/pro big market" people, do you have the > nerve to face the difference between the > amount of tax citizens will have to pay for (a) all the welfare and > development aid and subsidies and left wing > pet projects and (b) the recent bailout? - and don't backpeddle or > dance populist river chorus lines by claiming > the current governments in the US is left-wing or socialist. It is not. > My guess is the ratio of 20 years of left-oriented programs and > right-oriented bailouts of the last two years is 1:10 > or more. Left wing it is, socialist (in the Misesian sense) it is. Under Bush it was a bit less socialist and not so left wing. But the "No Child left behind" is and was a socialist plan. Pro market people (there is no "big market" or "small market" only "market") are and were against the bailout, the FED (and other central banks) meddling with interest rates and the money. What you see now is the left (and a part of the right big spender) to do corporate welfare as they were used to do people welfare. > 2. I want the population of Europe to be stabilized at the current > levels, but I'd prefer it to go down by about a > third. I agree, if you are in the third that go down and I'm in the third that stay up. > Personally I prefer population growth by people not dying that by adding > non-educated young kids. > (The latter is very worrysome, because a very small percentage of people > in the middle east > is > causing an > endemic population growth rate, by holding a wife (or several wives) > home as breeding slave. GIve those people > access to the same treatments and the population rate in places will go > dramatically, since the men will > grow older, stay fertile longer, have bigger swarms of offspring, and > have the opportunity to replace a > "wife attrition" by getting fresh breeding slaves. Watch for countries > with a median age under 30 > > - those are > the ones where people will be dying and trying to emigrate from in a few > years.) This is because the welfare state need to be scrapped off. You take out the welfare state and parasites will not be able to afford children and only productive people will be able to afford them and will them. But, also many of these countries (like Saudi Arabia) have a falling fertility, because too much breeding have doubled the population, where the oil revenues are the same. So income was halved. For example, in the '70, the personal income in Saudi Arabia where a bit less than Italy and now it is about half of Italy. When the oil revenues will start to fall, their fertility will fall again under replacement as the land will not be able to sustain the current number of inhabitants. Money and free time will not work alone and if they are given as a gift from the government (Saudi Arabia show this). Mirco From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 22:22:59 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 00:22:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> Message-ID: > > The interesting part is that Italy and Spain have lower fertilities than > the North Europe, when they were used to have hogher. > > Another more interesting point is that Morocco had a sudden fall of its > fertility in the '70, when they needed to finance the war in the West Sahara > and raised the taxes to the current levels. > > Iran have the same level of fertility as Italy, and the women are not so > much empowered as in Italy or the US. > > This is, probably, also a function of the urbanization of large part of the > population. More people live in city house, less space they have to raise > their children. I could be wrong, but if the law mandated the construction > of four bedrooms only apartments we would have much higher fertility. Whereas a high fertility rates are bad, right? I thought that had been established .... ..unless you regard human beings as a means to an end'. (links) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 22:26:13 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 00:26:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/4 Isabelle Hakala > One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... I would > want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, oh... say a > decade, without any outside influences, and me still living in the outside > world, and then compare notes with my uploaded self. What had each of us > learned different? Did we still agree on things? What had changed? Etc. For > me that would be an important step in feeling like it would be worth-while > to do it again at the 'end' of my life so as to preserve myself, and then > live on from there. It would answer a lot of questions for me. I believe in > something one might consider to be a 'soul', and it doesn't bother me to > think that a simulacrum of myself might be running around someplace that may > or may not have my 'soul' attached to it as well. Either it would have a > part of my soul attached to it, which would be fine, or it wouldn't and then > it wouldn't make any difference at all. > > If this experiment were run, one would be able to see if the simulacrum > finds life on the 'inside' as satisfying as the person on the outside does. > > Just a thought:) It would be more prudent (and productive? not sure..) to link the two minds, one organic substrate, the other processor substrate, and let them work on problems within the confines of a single consciousness or ego. Would go well, until one would file for divorce I suppose. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 4 22:39:16 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 15:39:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ants again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2d6187670904041539t5e01b371u583c839f57c43896@mail.gmail.com> I would think the ants would rise to the challenge by using chemical messengers. John P.S. I love the illustrations! We need more Extropian list posters to provide artwork to demonstrate their points. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 22:54:43 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:54:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> Message-ID: <49D7E533.9070605@libero.it> Il 04/04/2009 13.08, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/3 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> You are deluding yourself. A large part of these Muslims immigrates is >> helped from the Social Security, because they are in large part unemployable >> for any productive job because they are uneducated, low skilled and low IQ. >> Then you add their religion, that teach them to loathe the different, hate >> him, exploit him and not help him against other Muslims. > > Do you actually know any Muslims? A few directly and I know someone married with a Copt from Egypt. And, for sure, their opinion is worse than mine. I also understood that many of the immigrants are from the higher strata of the original population, so there are much more smart people than in their country. I also know that many Muslims are normal people, unable or unwilling to take any stand against the violent Muslims. Dante's Inferno describe them (and many others like them) out of the real Inferno, with the angel that taken no stand for or against God when Satan rebelled. They are the one that follow only the self interest and never, ever, take any stand for anything because they lack any moral courage to act. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy/Inferno/Canto_III > And he to me: "This miserable mode > Maintain the melancholy souls of those > Who lived withouten infamy or praise. ...... > No fame of them the world permits to be; > Misericord and Justice both disdain them. > Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass." Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 4 23:00:01 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:00:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> Message-ID: <49D7E671.6070807@libero.it> Il 05/04/2009 0.22, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > The interesting part is that Italy and Spain have lower fertilities > than the North Europe, when they were used to have hogher. > > Another more interesting point is that Morocco had a sudden fall of > its fertility in the '70, when they needed to finance the war in the > West Sahara and raised the taxes to the current levels. > > Iran have the same level of fertility as Italy, and the women are > not so much empowered as in Italy or the US. > > This is, probably, also a function of the urbanization of large part > of the population. More people live in city house, less space they > have to raise their children. I could be wrong, but if the law > mandated the construction of four bedrooms only apartments we would > have much higher fertility. > > > Whereas a high fertility rates are bad, right? Not always. High fertility rates for the more productive people is good. Lower fertility rates for the less productive people is good. If the resources are plenty, more people is better for all. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 4 23:26:09 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 16:26:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ants again In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904041539t5e01b371u583c839f57c43896@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904041539t5e01b371u583c839f57c43896@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3E5D14CE7BB944D4AA35BA2827102649@spike> ________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg ... Subject: Re: [ExI] ants again I would think the ants would rise to the challenge by using chemical messengers. John John part of the exercise is to explain your reasoning, and if so, I might get some insights regarding how to improve or sharpen the experiment. I can give you a line of reasoning that counterindicates your speculation however. The ants have only a few chemical signals, and only a few but very well developed instincts. Like their cousins the sphex wasp, they have very little or no actual reasoning capacity, only the ability to follow ancient instinctal procedures that arose by happenstance as described in chapter 7 of Darwin's OoS. We can learn from the ants, but they cannot or do not learn from us. P.S. I love the illustrations! We need more Extropian list posters to provide artwork to demonstrate their points. You are too kind Johnny. If you want to post sketches, you can make the sketch on microsloth powerpoint, then select-all on that slide, then select group, then control c to copy, then go to your message, click inside and hit control v to paste. If the sketch is really busy it might be too big for the server, in which case the filter will send it directly to moderator in-box and I will approve it on thru, assuming it is nothing pornographic. Here's a kick. Consider the above paragraph. If we thawed someone who was frozen 25 yrs ago, she would have not the foggiest clue what the heck I was blathering about, yet I suspect no one here is puzzled by that paragraph. If it is pornographic I will save it for review. Daily, for the foreseeable future. More often if necessary. spike From Travis.Porco at ucsf.edu Sat Apr 4 23:02:13 2009 From: Travis.Porco at ucsf.edu (Travis Porco) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:02:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D7E533.9070605@libero.it> Message-ID: Copts are Christian, not Muslim. --tcp From: "painlord2k at libero.it" Reply-To: ExI chat list Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 00:54:43 +0200 To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] To Arms! Il 04/04/2009 13.08, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/3 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> You are deluding yourself. A large part of these Muslims immigrates is >> helped from the Social Security, because they are in large part unemployable >> for any productive job because they are uneducated, low skilled and low IQ. >> Then you add their religion, that teach them to loathe the different, hate >> him, exploit him and not help him against other Muslims. > > Do you actually know any Muslims? A few directly and I know someone married with a Copt from Egypt. And, for sure, their opinion is worse than mine. I also understood that many of the immigrants are from the higher strata of the original population, so there are much more smart people than in their country. I also know that many Muslims are normal people, unable or unwilling to take any stand against the violent Muslims. Dante's Inferno describe them (and many others like them) out of the real Inferno, with the angel that taken no stand for or against God when Satan rebelled. They are the one that follow only the self interest and never, ever, take any stand for anything because they lack any moral courage to act. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy/Inferno/Canto_III > And he to me: "This miserable mode > Maintain the melancholy souls of those > Who lived withouten infamy or praise. ...... > No fame of them the world permits to be; > Misericord and Justice both disdain them. > Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass." Mirco _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 00:20:55 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 17:20:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2ae60d770904041720k2b349831l63ea88a9a81a689b@mail.gmail.com> The Mind or Soul is a byproduct of senses interacting with a body. This triggers a memory, that sends you spiraling into a train of free associations, that tickles, that turns you on and so on. You could give a machine a camera, a kinetic sensor, microphones... The medium would be pretty alien. I guess someone could get used to it but sensing through a camera would be as different from seeing as recording infromation through a microphone is from hearing. I mean, part of perception is filtration of extraneous data. It seems a lot to wrap my mind around. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 00:37:18 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 17:37:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I am now a creationist In-Reply-To: <49D7D0C8.8030003@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <221FEA71916F40CB9068B9E7C5F4131B@MyComputer> <0C1224A0C3AE4937B8D1B952AD790756@MyComputer> <6d342ad70904010818l457e24a1o3895ce3b7b860d28@mail.gmail.com> <4650F1196DF441B1B54DB4C6A1A29734@spike> <6d342ad70904030315hbc0efbv4890b53e59a2af96@mail.gmail.com> <9b9887c80904031709n6b462445jf0fb9773c54d27d1@mail.gmail.com><6d342ad70904040237tb294627v9e5a2919ecacc9cf@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D0C8.8030003@libero.it> Message-ID: <1B6575D4769B42F5882F9C4E8E3733AF@spike> Here's an excellent ten minute presentation of the basics of evolution for your creationist friends: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 01:35:40 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:35:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism isn't the problem---Libertarians are Message-ID: <49D80AEC.9030804@rawbw.com> I'm as much a conservative as a libertarian. Here is why: Few libertarians fully appreciate how difficult it is for a civilization to rise to the point that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the legal right to peacefully assemble, and the legal right to say anything that one pleases are at all possible. Yes, I mean *possible*---capable of being instituted at all. It tooks many hundreds of years, chiefly in England and the American colonies, but throughout much of western Europe for the necessary preconditions to evolve. Even the finest libertarians that I know, e.g. Rafal S., seem to think that the exalted liberties we so celebrate on this list and thousands like it can operate in a vacuum. Put these people down in Tokagawa Japan, Hammerabi's Babylon, or Cicero's Rome, and they'd instantly try to persuade the ruler or rules of the incomparable virtues of libertarianism. Of course, any ruler foolish enough to listen to them would be instantly deposed. (This actually was Cicero's mistake: he didn't realize that the ancient Rome he loved was already dead, and that the Republican values he cherished were not any longer feasible. He should have supported Caesar, a good dictator, rather than oppose him.) Even today we have many areas, e.g. most parts of Africa, all of Russia, inner cities in America, and so on, which have not yet risen culturally to the level where real liberty is possible. Yes, I mean *possible*. To people living in inner cities, for example, it feels like there is a power vacuum, and only the advent of the local gangs fills that vacuum and restores some kind of order. In those locales, the American constitutional order feels weak and hardly present at all. Other countries, like Iraq and Turkey, are clearly borderline cases that could go either way with regards as to whether they're ready. We don't know if Iraqis can survive as a democracy---and the smart, cynical money is doubtful. The flaw is not in libertarianism, but in naive libertarians who believe that the principles of liberty can unthinkingly be applied in all its glorious abstract terms regardless of context. So in many cases, they end up reflexively supporting policies that in the long run simply cut their own throats. And my throat too, unfortunately. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 02:24:30 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 12:24:30 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/5 Isabelle Hakala : > One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... I would > want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, oh... say a > decade, without any outside influences, and me still living in the outside > world, and then compare notes with my uploaded self. What had each of us > learned different? Did we still agree on things? What had changed? Etc. For > me that would be an important step in feeling like it would be worth-while > to do it again at the 'end' of my life so as to preserve myself, and then > live on from there. It would answer a lot of questions for me. I believe in > something one might consider to be a 'soul', and it doesn't bother me to > think that a simulacrum of myself might be running around someplace that may > or may not have my 'soul' attached to it as well. Either it would have a > part of my soul attached to it, which would be fine, or it wouldn't and then > it wouldn't make any difference at all. > > If this experiment were run, one would be able to see if the simulacrum > finds life on the 'inside' as satisfying as the person on the outside does. It wouldn't be a fair comparison unless the upload were crippled so that it was as limited as the biological. One of the main advantages of an upload is that it would be easier change and improve it. At the very least, you would want to ensure that it wasn't unhappy. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 04:34:04 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 22:34:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with this picture In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 12:26 PM, BillK wrote: > But I don't think Drexler has anything to do with it. > > It is mostly written by Brian Wang. Whoops! My bad. Best, Jeff Davis From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Apr 5 05:05:29 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 00:05:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ants again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B5452B8502140A2A7619341DC0EEEF0@DFC68LF1> Thanks for this refreshing and post Spike. Good to read something other than the arms, punishment and creationist posts! Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 5:00 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] ants again Earlier I had described an ant experiment, the double straw, which I am now pretty sure will fail even before I try it. Ants and humans are two species that have externalized a great deal of knowledge, humans with our libraries and internet, ants with their mysterious chemical repertoire of instincts so eloquently described by Darwin in chapter 7 of OoS. As a preliminary step to the double straw, we could set up the double hole experiment in which the ants are allowed to set up their aphid farms in the tree using a paper bridge over the goo. The bridge has goo barriers with two adjacent holes large enough for one ant to pass easily but not large enough for two to squeeze by each other. The holes would be about two mm diameter and about four mm center to center. The experiment is to see if the ants can figure out a way to make one hole the in and the other one the out. The holes are circumscribed by a goo ring so the ants cannot go around the holes. It's thru the holes or no access to the aphids. Anyone wish to speculate on whether the ants will split their lines and form two one-way holes, thereby reaching their aphids relatively impeded, or whether they will get in each other's way in both holes. Do state your reasoning. Humanity is in so many ways analogous to the ants, where a little more profound insight could make the whole process work better. I hope the ants figure out how to make one in-door and one out-door, but I fear they will not do it. See sketch below: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Outlook.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 57687 bytes Desc: not available URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Apr 5 05:01:24 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 00:01:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com><7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <29B7FF6FF1204A47B481B6EC8523FE99@DFC68LF1> Lee, could you please cut down on the high volume of posts to the list. Thank you, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 05:36:23 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 23:36:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with this picture In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: But my misattribution of "The Next Big Future" to Drexler was just a garden-variety "Whoops!" on my part, and not what I was aiming at when I asked, "what is wrong with this picture?". jeff davis On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 10:34 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 12:26 PM, BillK wrote: >> But I don't think Drexler has anything to do with it. >> >> It is mostly written by Brian Wang. > > Whoops! ? My bad. > > Best, Jeff Davis > From moulton at moulton.com Sun Apr 5 05:59:56 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:59:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Reward Offered. In-Reply-To: <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 02:26 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > Fred C. Moulton wrote: > > > Neither Lee nor painlord2k are libertarians. > > The arbiter of definitions has spoken. All are to remain > silent. Well I never said "All are to remain silent" and I never implied it. Thus it appears to be yet another piece of failed rhetoric. ... > > > And further what they have posting recently in this thread is not even > > remotely Extropian. > > Again, you *know* what these terms mean, and it is for > the rest of us just to accept, I suppose. I suggest that each individual on this list who uses the term "Extropian" to think long and hard about this. Do you really want to be associated with the term "Extropian" if the term "Extropian" can be be seen as compatible with advocating that innocent Muslims should be expelled from France? I am not. I do not want the term "Extropian" twisted until it includes something like expelling the innocent Muslims from France. And remember that deportation of innocent civilians has been considered a Crime Against Humanity since the Nuremberg Trials. So Extropians; do you embrace the idea that advocating a Crime against Humanity is compatible with the Extropian principles or do you reject it or do you just not care? Fred From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 06:54:33 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 08:54:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Reward Offered. In-Reply-To: <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> Message-ID: > > I suggest that each individual on this list who uses the term > "Extropian" to think long and hard about this. Do you really want to be > associated with the term "Extropian" if the term "Extropian" can be be > seen as compatible with advocating that innocent Muslims should be > expelled from France? I am not. I do not want the term "Extropian" > twisted until it includes something like expelling the innocent Muslims > from France. And remember that deportation of innocent civilians has > been considered a Crime Against Humanity since the Nuremberg Trials. So > Extropians; do you embrace the idea that advocating a Crime against > Humanity is compatible with the Extropian principles or do you reject it > or do you just not care? There is a war going on, and not even Extropianism, which should have been the new enlightenment, has succeeded in not getting infected by the most loathsome human tendencies. But whats worse is - yes, I can envision mass forced deportations of muslims from Europe. Yes I can see populist regimes emerging (and there is a remote but real chance one of these gains a majority vote in dutch parliament by 2011) that can step away from existing treaties and deport "non-integrated" foreigners, forcing them out. I don't like Wilders, largely because his other views are intolerable, but I can see where his views on islam come from. I have more 'faith' in humanity than Geert does, but I am no enthusiast of islam either. But I despise judeo-christianity just as much, and I can't consistently want to banish that segment of society either. So I guess we are stuck with complexity and uncertainty in this world, and the question is how to deal with these - with confidence or with fear. And I see things being contemplated that have been unthinkable for several decades. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 07:10:01 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 09:10:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <2ae60d770904041720k2b349831l63ea88a9a81a689b@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> <2ae60d770904041720k2b349831l63ea88a9a81a689b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > The Mind or Soul is a byproduct of senses interacting with a body. > This triggers a memory, that sends you spiraling into a train of free associations, that tickles, that turns you on and so on. > You could give a machine a camera, a kinetic sensor, microphones... > The medium would be pretty alien. I guess someone could get used to it but sensing through a camera would be as different from seeing as recording infromation through a microphone is from hearing. I mean, part of perception is filtration of extraneous data. > There are three potential different entities at play here - 1 - tools. A hammer. A camera. Binoculars. 2 - cognitive tools. A calculator. An automated personal secretary. 3 - cognition. (??) The third category of entities is integrated in the human mind. Is a brain pacemaker (for instance an iplant ) a 2nd or 3rd category entity? I'd say 2nd. Not even augmented reality is a third category. Imagine a mind inside your mind that interprets your desires and needs, and makes wise, fast, prudent, proactive and intelligent choices based on them. For instance, you were hungry but had exceeded your daily calorie intake (damn you B&J!!), and the device would put out an order for a dish of tomato slices, celery stalks and carrots. In that case I can postulate a fourth and a fifth type - 3 - cognition augmenters (cybernanny, thinkingspeedboost, synthmem) 4- cognition boosters (???) 5 - superintelligence Of five I can also say one thing, and I would like people to respond to that asserting "*superintelligence in the above hierarchy is often seen as a single linear curve upward. What if variants of making a mind superintelligent instead were the slow and arduous result of many hundreds of type 4 and 5 enhancements accumulating*?" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 08:24:48 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:24:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury Message-ID: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> L'Affaire Bradbury, or how the Extropians Drove Out One of their most Insightful, Technically Sophisticated, and Bold Thinkers. Alas, I was not on the list when it happened, and so have only second hand knowledge. These are just impressions that I've gathered. Corrections welcomed. Some time, surely between 2001 and 2005, the at-the-time well-known Extropian pundit Robert Bradbury offered a modest proposal concerning American and Western difficulties in Afghanistan, only, unlike Swift whose own modest proposal was entirely satirical, this was made quite seriously. It was to carpet bomb all of Afghanistan (or perhaps just the mountainous parts inaccssible to conventional conquest), and to do so with nuclear weapons, in order to destroy all resistance past the point of merely driving them into the stone age, but to crush Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and all their allies. The U.S. was still recovering from the 9-11 shock, and the anger of a wronged nation was still in the saddle (as evolution is so wont to equip survival-oriented entities). If you feel a profound revulsion towards that wanton slaughter of tribal people, and your every instinct warns against the taking of such extreme steps, what is the proper reaction? What should people have said? Sadly, most reading this know the answers to those questions, but they cannot admit it to themselves. The answer are *not* to engage in personal attack, vilification, statements of outrage, heartfelt depictions of how "disgusted", how "revolted", and even, tellingly, how sublimely embarrassed to even be on the same list one is. While one may not be able to *help* feeling this way or that, and most probably has utterly no desire to cease feeling that way, surely I don't need to remind you that these do not constitute arguments. This is *not* the stuff of rational discourse. And since when has the Extropian list ceased having rational, polite, and temperate logical discussion? Well, perhaps since Robert Bradbury felt compelled to depart, never to return except for a very occasional post here and there. It's sad that I have to say this, but *please* don't imagine for a moment that I embrace in any way his extreme suggestion. Yet I *must* say that, for Voltaire's principle that "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", while familiar, is hardly practiced a whole lot here. Really sad. It baffles me that this simple idea is so beyond so many people's behavioral repertoire. The worst part is that when people resort to name-calling, personal defamation, obloquy, and emotional brow-beating, it's most often in part out of FEAR. They fear that rational argument may not go their way. They value, in decreasing order, 1. prevailing in an argument, especially anything touching on values 2. prevailing with reason 3. finding and speaking the truth Now none of us can claim that he or she always puts number three first, but if we find that we are engaging in sheer calumny, or merely expressing our feelings and loathings, then for sure you know we are elevating our desire to prevail over everything else, including both rationality and a desire to get at the truth. For it's also true that the real reason to engage in such remarks is censure! To publicly proclaim one's own infinite disgust or revulsion at something that has been said, or to chime in with meaningless "me too" posts when most people are already on your side, is to in effect express a wish for censure. It's the mob psychology at work: "We don't like that, and you should shut the fuck up!", with a barely concealed "or else". The shunning instinct, alas, is as old as man. Well, it sure worked for (or rather against) Robert Bradbury. You shut him up but good. Happy? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 09:03:21 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:03:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? Message-ID: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> If I write about actions that France could and should take to survive, I'll definitely leave gaping a class of people I perhaps should refer to as extreme individualists. These, or at least the subset of them of immediate concern, are people who may hold dear any number of high principles long revered in western civilization; yet who do not and perhaps cannot identify with the institutions and peoples who gave rise to those principles---and, see below, cannot perceive ambient threats to those principles of an existential nature. The capacity for patriotism is the most salient example. To a Roman, it was inconceivable that Rome per se was not reified or should not be reified. Their patriotism was instinctive and unquestioned to a degree extremely hard for a modern westerner to appreciate. Some 19th century American Indians would do better, especially all those tribes whose very definition of "human being" amounted exactly to inclusion in their own tribe. To an extreme individualist, or even what I'll call an abstract libertarian, groups such as "Romans", the "French people" and "France" are pointless and rather dangerous ideals (or themselves abstractions) and need to be comprehensively replaced by non-historically and non-developmentally based transitory groupings, (i.e. today's "us group") if any groupings at all are admissible. The statement "France should expel its Muslim residents" provokes not merely emotional disgust (and often uncontrolled vituperation), and not only judgments that violates enshrined principles of citizens' legal rights, but harks back to a misunderstood (or rather never understood or appreciated) tribalism. It even borders, it seems, on being incomprehensible, when one focuses on the (false) idea that only individuals really exist and only what happens to them as individuals really matters. So here is an imaginary dialog between a Right hemisphere and a Left hemisphere wherein the judgmental and form apparent to the first clash with the iterative and rational proceedings of the second. If you would like to personify the exchange, remembering that it is entirely imaginary, recall R for Rafal and L for Lee, and contrast the skepticism, repudiation, and revulsion of the right hemisphere R with the orderly, confabulatory (in the sense of creation), rigid, progressive, logical step-by-step relentless proceedings of L, the left hemisphere: L: In order to itself to survive, but perhaps equally importantly for its western traditions and the bulk of its egalitarian and freedom loving traditions and institutions to survive, France must expel its Muslim inhabitants. R: WTF? WTF! Have you entirely driven from your mind the social costs inflicted on individuals, the deep violations of individual freedoms, and (least of all) the sheer cost of such a step? L: "What the France?" What the France! Calm down, and I'll tell you what the France. When a body is diseased, those portions of the body fostering and providing shelter for the disease must be excised, regardless of the integrity of the body as a whole. R: "France", a body? Clearly your logical confabulations (in the creative sense) have gone off the deep end. The analogy fills me with the greatest disgust and brings uppermost to mind the question of what has happened to your skeptical powers of good judgment. L: Enough of impressions, mine and yours. Let's be logical. According to the demographers, in thirty years or so France's Muslim infection will have made them a majority of the nation's people, and they have never in modern history become a majority without doing immense violence to nearly all traditions held dear in the west. So if you proceed to just stand by and idly watch this happen, then in one *great* fell swoop you'll have all those liberties you so loudly defend, all those freedoms you take for granted, and all those principles held dear by France for over two hundred years cast into the wind. R: That is mere logical extrapolation. We don't know that any of that will take place. When we weigh those remote (in time, at least) possibilities with what happens to real people in the hear and now, then the judgment must come down on the side of doing no harm (or the lesser harm) in the here and now. L: Do you dismiss out of hand the developments of which I warn? Do you think that these have zero probability? R: It doesn't matter. What is important is a principled adherence to our cherished principles at all times, regardless of risk. The end never justifies the means, and history shows that all of the "actions en masse" from the Northern invasion of the seceding and freedom loving South, to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, to the internment of the west coast Japanese, and many more in all lands and among all peoples are sooner or later regretted. L: They are regretted, it is true, but only by those who enjoy the luxury of being the products of those actions and who would not be here in a lot of the cases were not those stark actions taken! What you propose is *not* an ESS, and it flies in the face of your antecedents who made your policies and probably your very existence possible. You are a free-loader. You rid free on the hard decisions made hundreds of years ago by your cultural or literal ancestors, who revolted against a thorough tyranny, even though it meant expediently killing people and breaking things, who could find within themselves a strong unified civic group consciousness, who could rise as a until and repel foreign invasion, or even the invasions of neighboring tribes, as well as, when it was absolutely necessary, engaging in vigilante justice. You sit quite self-satisfied on top of long standing western traditions of tolerance (well, at least up to people making heretical suggestions!), personal liberty, and operation of institutions such as the free market without ever bothering yourself as to their provisionality and contingency. You act if these can only falter from within, by lack of scruple in particular cases, and are never at risk from global, environmental, ambient cultural change. By your stance, oblivious to fundamental and creeping cultural change, you in effect fail to defend the very conditions that make possible these principles to which you are (and I am) so wedded. Reply to that, if you will, and---if somehow you can--- please try to keep the dialog focused on the analytic and non-emotional, as understandably hard as that may be for your right hemisphere in this kind of discussion. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 09:11:13 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:11:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D22C32.3010401@rawbw.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 01:15 PM 4/3/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > [Damien wrote] >> >> This is the extropian list, not the fucking >> >> Dept. of Soviet Psychiatry & Gulags. >> >> Point well taken however. All posters, please read your stuff twice >> before posting. That wasn't the problem here. > Mirco's statement wasn't an accidental slip of the keyboard; he later > repeated his sentiment. But perhaps it's a language problem, Ya think? You give and gave absolutely *no* indication that you were trying to read the *meaning* behind his words. > since "alienated" in English usage means disaffected with > one's situation or culture, not "requiring treatment by > an alienist". Still, this is pretty damned creepy: Ah, I perhaps too charitably try to read the best meaning into others' statements. (Well---I do confess that I have occasionally jumped on a word---the temptation for all of us is obvious---but please, when it's someone else's second language, let's go an extra distance with the principle of charity. > "Maybe you think I advocated to put him/her inside an asylum forever, > but I'm not doing this. > I only advocate to do it for the limited time needed to make him/her > calm and not dangerous for him/herself and others and, maybe, help > him/her to not feel alienated." Note the word "calm". We all know that the violent or dangerous are institutionalized, and perhaps necessarily so (in want of sending them to jail). Clearly there is *some* set of conditions that you and Mirco would agree called for action to be taken. Wouldn't it be more productive to investigate what that common set of conditions is, or at least ask for clarification before blasting away? Lee > For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I > gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to > Nurse Ratched.# > > Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 09:16:02 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 09:16:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/5/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > They fear that rational argument may not go their way. They > value, in decreasing order, > > 1. prevailing in an argument, especially anything > touching on values > 2. prevailing with reason > 3. finding and speaking the truth > > Now none of us can claim that he or she always puts number three > first, but if we find that we are engaging in sheer calumny, > or merely expressing our feelings and loathings, then for > sure you know we are elevating our desire to prevail over > everything else, including both rationality and a desire to > get at the truth. > The error in your modest proposal is that rationality isn't the whole picture. There are more important things than being rational. (Don't tell the Bayesians) ;) If you are discussing whether 2 + 2 = 4, then fine, be as rational as you like. But if you are discussing religion or politics (the big no-nos), then you have to bring real practical considerations in the discussions. Crimes against humanity invalidate the most logical of reasoning. Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you are rational and logically correct, you still lose the discussion. One can think of situations where logical analysis might recommend the enslavement of women, or the forced labor of children, or slavery of the unemployed, etc. etc. might produce better results in some areas. But these arguments lose because they are trumped by 'That's no way to treat human beings!'. Rationality is pretty much useless in matters of human relationships, on the small and large scale. BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 09:23:11 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:23:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation (was Re: To Arms!) In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > [Lee wrote] > > Hmm. You could be right. Thanks for pointing it out. I did > > hear that the Russians actually did greatly improve their > > birth rate for a while by promising economic incentives. > > But after a lot of children were conceived, the government > > let slip that these incentives actually weren't *quite* as > > promised. A huge lot of abortions immediately took place. > > > > Yes, it would be just like the west to tax itself to death. > > 1. All of those "anti big gov/pro big market" people, Yes? Present. > do you have the nerve to face the difference between the > amount of tax citizens will have to pay for (a) all the > welfare and development aid and subsidies and left wing > pet projects Hideously wasteful, incentive weakening, and wealth destroying. > and (b) the recent bailout? Hideously wasteful, incentive weakening, and wealth destroying. What difference? Many, many of us "anti big gov" people are pro-market, but that *hardly* means we favor bailouts! > - and don't backpeddle or dance populist river chorus lines by claiming > the current governments in the US is left-wing or socialist. It is not. Well, as numerous posters have pointed out, it's definitely *not* a model of low-regulated free market! > My guess is the ratio of 20 years of left-oriented programs and > right-oriented bailouts of the last two years is 1:10 or more. What do you mean? I, for one, believe that if you took all the money wasted on the War on Poverty, all the billions and billions paid each year to unmarried women for having children, and all the enormous incentive-destroying welfare and superfluous unemployment payments, it might very well match the incredible agricultural subsidies and other corporate/government colluding corruption for sheer outlay. > 2. I want the population of Europe to be stabilized at the current > levels, but I'd prefer it to go down by about a third. Nah. The entire problem is that all you people have been fed a line about the world being over populated. I would suggest consulting the work of the late Julian Simon, who argued so effectively that we are notoriously *underpopulated*, except in certain poor countries like India or China. The decline demographic numbers is a prime cause of the economic malaise affecting the west. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 5 09:35:50 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:35:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] death of print news In-Reply-To: <9378CFD598514174B5DFD3DCB081CCD6@spike> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com><580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com><49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49C8CD5D.1080004@libero.it><49C9C2BD.9010907@rawbw.com> <49CAB1C7.5020601@libero.it><49CB0E1C.3060201@rawbw.com><49CC6DB5.1010501@rawbw.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek><49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek><5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> <49D71EB4.6050603@rawbw.com> <9378CFD598514174B5DFD3DCB081CCD6@spike> Message-ID: <49D87B76.3080705@rawbw.com> spike wrote: >> We may end up losing public accountability once people are >> glued only into their own information channels in an infinite >> sea of information... Lee > > Interesting take, Lee. It looks to me as tho it would create exactly the > opposite effect. The coming age of exploding news channels, we get a > plethora of amateur reporters. An example is the YouTube phenom; a specific > example is the reporting of a 17 yr old girl from Afghanistan being flogged > for refusing to marry the local warlord... > > Another example: instead of reading about former Illinois governor Blago in > the papers, accepting whatever they choose to tell us, anyone can google the > actual conversation transcript or even the audio if one is sufficiently > curious. > > It looks to me as tho we are truly entering a time which we talked about a > lot here about 10 years ago: the dramatically increase in the transparency > of government and society... I hope you're right. It's just hard for me to visualize how ---when people are no longer watching the same few accounts--- any sort of constructive public consensus will form. YouTube---like television---caters to the non-reasoning and non-logical parts of our brain. We're overwhelmed by the tragedy afflicting a single dramatic incident visually related, and become more immune to the more abstract stats. The best example, of course, is the common person's belief that the world is becoming more violent. Well, for most, *seeing* is believing, whereas belief ought to be formed from ratiocination at least as much, if not more. Pinker is great on this: Notice he's not one of those apes who thinks he's the greatest standup comic since Jack Benny, and who actually speaks from, yes, gasp!, a podium! Now how uncool is that?? But just *listen* to those fast, marvelous facts and analyses reel off his tongue! http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html Contrast it---if you can tolerate it after Pinker---this lame, slow-thinking, slow-talking, showy, phony, Robert Wright talk: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_wright_on_optimism.html Lee > We have the potential of weeding out government > corruption. Granted the recent trend has been for society to become > appallingly more tolerant of government corruption. We have a long string > of federal government appointees who are tax cheaters for instance, > including the head of the treasury. They somehow manage to be affirmed > anyway. > > spike From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 09:50:04 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:50:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] death of print news In-Reply-To: <49D87B76.3080705@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <1238403273.5478.194.camel@hayek> <49D19D24.8040908@rawbw.com> <1238481751.5478.363.camel@hayek> <5FDD658A194945048670AC13E5009B09@spike> <49D71EB4.6050603@rawbw.com> <9378CFD598514174B5DFD3DCB081CCD6@spike> <49D87B76.3080705@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904050250y289248a4kfde3c58458028b40@mail.gmail.com> I don't think so. Even with millions of online news sources, the vast majority will have a very limited audience and only a few will become _very_ popular. Our own blogs are not and will probably never be influential, but BoingBoing and DailyKos are. They are the new printing press. On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > spike wrote: > >>> We may end up losing public accountability once people are glued only >>> into their own information channels in an infinite sea of information... -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 09:57:41 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:57:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> Many Muslim residents of France are citizens -- on which legal basis could, or should, be expelled? There is no defendable legal basis of course. There is only one precedent in the modern history of Europe for expelling and abusing citizens based on their religion and ethnic origin, and I hope we have learned the lesson and don't wish to repeat it. Might is usually right -- but it creates very dangerous precedents. If Muslim citizens of France become a majority in the next decades, _they_ may decide to expel non-Muslims on the basis of might is right. G. On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > The statement "France should expel its Muslim residents" > provokes not merely emotional disgust (and often > uncontrolled vituperation), and not only judgments > that violates enshrined principles of citizens' legal > rights, but harks back to a misunderstood (or rather > never understood or appreciated) tribalism. It even > borders, it seems, on being incomprehensib -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From alito at organicrobot.com Sun Apr 5 10:20:16 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:20:16 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ants again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1238926816.32175.23.camel@localhost> On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 15:00 -0700, spike wrote: > > As a preliminary step to the double straw, we could set up the double > hole experiment in which the ants are allowed to set up their aphid > farms in the tree using a paper bridge over the goo. The bridge > has goo barriers with two adjacent holes large enough for one ant to > pass easily but not large enough for two to squeeze by each other. > The holes would be about two mm diameter and about four mm center to > center. The experiment is to see if the ants can figure out a way to > make one hole the in and the other one the out. The holes are > circumscribed by a goo ring so the ants cannot go around the holes. > It's thru the holes or no access to the aphids. > > Anyone wish to speculate on whether the ants will split their lines > and form two one-way holes, thereby reaching their aphids relatively > impeded, or whether they will get in each other's way in both holes. > Do state your reasoning. I know little of the organic variety of ants, but if I was to set up a run of ant colony optimisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization) with those parameters, I'd be quite dissapointed if the virtual version of the dumb beasts didn't find the optimised path. Are the stochastic parameters in the organic variety really that low that you wouldn't get enough of them going through the second straw often enough to cause the stabilisation of the second path? What about the chemical signals they use, don't they diffuse even those measly 2mm? If neither, how long would it take you to evolve those organic robots to have the creative capabilities of their virtual brethren? From aleksei at iki.fi Sun Apr 5 10:49:45 2009 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:49:45 +0300 Subject: [ExI] rationality Message-ID: <1db0b2da0904050349t3c2ad362h1b633cbf9b8552c0@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 12:16 PM, BillK wrote: > On 4/5/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> ?They fear that rational argument may not go their way. They >> ?value, in decreasing order, >> >> ? ? ?1. prevailing in an argument, especially anything >> ? ? ? ? touching on values >> ? ? ?2. prevailing with reason >> ? ? ?3. finding and speaking the truth >> >> ?Now none of us can claim that he or she always puts number three >> ?first, but if we find that we are engaging in sheer calumny, >> ?or merely expressing our feelings and loathings, then for >> ?sure you know we are elevating our desire to prevail over >> ?everything else, including both rationality and a desire to >> ?get at the truth. > > The error in your modest proposal is that rationality isn't the whole picture. > There are more important things than being rational. > (Don't tell the Bayesians) ?;) > > If you are discussing whether 2 + 2 = 4, then fine, be as rational as you like. > > But if you are discussing religion or politics (the big no-nos), then > you have to bring real practical considerations in the discussions. > Crimes against humanity invalidate the most logical of reasoning. > Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you are rational and logically > correct, you still lose the discussion. > > One can think of situations where logical analysis might recommend the > enslavement of women, or the forced labor of children, or slavery of > the unemployed, etc. etc. might produce better results in some areas. > But these arguments lose because they are trumped by 'That's no way to > treat human beings!'. > > Rationality is pretty much useless in matters of human relationships, > on the small and large scale. Strange that you speak of rationality as if it required one to always speak the truth. If speaking the truth leads to getting burned at the stake, the smart person shuts up, and I for one don't consider that choice to be irrational. According to Wikipedia, "a rational agent is specifically defined as an agent which always chooses the action which maximises its expected performance, given all of the knowledge it currently possesses." For most goal systems, getting burned at the stake doesn't maximize one's performance. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 11:03:12 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:03:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation (was Re: To Arms!) In-Reply-To: <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > > The decline demographic numbers is a prime cause of the > economic malaise affecting the west. > Lee > And I call that counter-productive if not completely dangerous bunk. I say that if one person uses x material resources, energy at a certain standard of living, 100 persons will use far more than 100x in resources. My assertion is that overpopulation is a MAJOR drain on efficiency, resources, energy, not even considering the cheapening of human value, the stress caused by increased societal pressure, exploitation, collapse of individual meaning and worth, bastards playing members of society against each other and insurmountable congestion in nearly every bit of infrastructure you can imagine at peak use and the same gathering dust when they are not used. I say that overpopulation is the single most biggest tragedy humanity suffers right now, and the only people benefiting from this are the remorseless bastards who exploit their fellow humans, by gaming this tragedy like sharks. Unfortunately, all this cant be solved. - A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay, John F. Rohe; Rhodes & Easton, Traverse City, MI 49684, ISBN 1-890394-00-9, (192p, $19). Also available from Amazon.com. Malthus suggested there might be an inverse relationship between the quantity and the quality of human life. Approximately one billion people now go to bed hungry every night. Rohe revisits principles found controversial in 1798 in identifying a root cause of our unrest. - A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations , Clive Pointing; St. Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-06987-1 (432p, $24), Penguin USA (Paper) ISBN: 0-140-17660-8 ($15), (EGJ review). - An Essay on Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus; Prometheus, ISBN 1573922552 (paperback), ($9). The original 1798 essay on population. - [image: Excellent] Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge , Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil; W.W. Norton, 1999, Worldwatch Institute , ISBN 0393319067, ($13). Also available from Amazon.com. Examines the stakes involved in potentially adding another 3.3 billion people to the world population over the next fifty years. - Beyond Malthus: Population and Power, Neil W. Chamberlain; (out of print), (1970). - Beyond Malthus: Sixteen Dimensions of the Population Problem, 1998, Worldwatch Institute ($5). An excellent and easily-read introductory paperback. - [image: Excellent] Beyond the Limits, Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers; 1992, Chelsea Green, ISBN 0-930031-55-5 (hard cover) (300p, $19.95), ISBN 0930031628(paperback) ($15), (EGJ review ). The authors contend that the global industrial system has already overshot some of the earth's vital ecological limits, and could collapse by the mid-21st century unless we commit to sweeping changes now. The first two chapters present an excellent discussion on *exponential growth*. - Cheerfully Childless - The Humor Book for Those Who Hesitate to Procreate, Eller Metter & Loretta Gomez; Baker & Taylor and Quality Books, 2002, ISBN 0-9711627-0-0 - Curbing Population Growth, An Insider's Perspective on the Population Movement , Oscar Harkavy; Plenum Press, 1995, ISBN 0-306-45050-X, (249p). An excellent reference book, describing the history of population-oriented organizations and their funders. - Dynamics of Values in Fertility Change, Richard Leete (Ed.); Oxford Univ Press, 1999, ISBN 0198294395, (360p, $85). - Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship, Isaac Asimov, (out of print). - [image: Excellent] Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Humane Future, W. Hollingsworth; 1996, Seven Locks Press, 800.354.5348, ISBN 0-929-765-42-7, ($17.95), (review). Also available from Amazon.com. Unlike most books, it rightly sees overpopulation as a threat to the human spirit as well as to our physical well-being. - *Extinction or Survival*, M.J. Turner; 1996, Ardmore Publishing, 875 Ardmore Dr., RR2, Sidney BC, Canada, V8L 5G2, ISBN 0-9680850-0-8, ($24.95). Carefully researched, this book deals with the real problems of overpopulation and the resulting excessive environmental exploitation, showing how the carrying capacity of Planet Earth is being seriously eroded. - *How Does Congress Approach Population and Family Planning Issues: Results of Qualitative Interviews with Legislative Directors*, Sally Patterson, David M. Adamson; Rand Corporation , 1999, ISBN 0833027042, (49p, $8). Congressional opinions on population issues are highly polarized. About 90% of Congress consistently votes either for or against population-related legislation. Thus the remaining 10 percent is likely to determine the fate of such issues. Researchers interviewed a sample of legislative directors in this category. Most felt that the U.S. should continue to play a leading role internationally, but several noted that their bosses favor more multilateral approaches. A majority felt that world population growth is a problem but is not urgent. Nearly unanimous support was expressed for U.S. support of voluntary family planning if it excludes abortion. Congress would benefit from more factual information on population issues. - Intended Consequences : Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America, Donald T. Critchlow; Oxford Univ Press, 1999, ISBN 0195046579, (320p, $9). Contains 13 essays by well-known feminist scholars and activists on the major global issues relevant to the environment, development, and population. The authors discuss issues of racism, paternalism, and scapegoating. Also discussed are reproductive technology, the impact of population growth on the environment, effects of militarism and consumption, and social justice movements. - [image: Excellent] How Many People Can the World Support?, Joel E. Cohen; Norton, New York, 1995, ISBN 0393314952, ($13). A well-documented and referenced book on the history of human population growth, and past and current attempt to project human carrying capacity of the planet. A definitive work on the population problem. - [image: Excellent] Juggernaut, Growth on a Finite Planet, Lindsey Grant; 1996, Seven Locks Press, ISBN 0-929765-51-6 (paperback) (363p). An informative and fascinating book which compellingly presents the social, political, and economic implications of continued population growth. One of the best synopsis of the population problem. - [image: Excellent] Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos, Garrett Hardin. Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-19-507811-X. (339p, $25), (EGJ review). Wonderfully rich in clear logic, original ideas and insights. - Malthusian Worlds: Us Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis , Ronald Walter Greene; Harpercollins, 1999, ISBN 0813390737, ($65). - Maybe One : A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families , Bill McKibben; Simon & Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0684852810, (256p, $17). The growing population of the U.S. is a significant threat to world sustainability because of high U.S. consumption levels. McKibben discusses the concept of having only one child, on a personal level and from the perspective of impact on the ecosphere. - Our Crowded Planet, Fairfield Osborn; Greenwood Publishing Group, 1983, ISBN 0313226393, (240p, $60). A splendid document of contemporary civilization not because it solves the problem of overpopulation but because it brings into focus the immediacy of the problem as an individual, national, and international concern. This book includes essays by major figures in the arts and sciences, including Marston Bates, Henry Steele Commager, F. Fraser Darling, Charles G. Darwin (grandson of *The Origin of Species* Darwin), Julian Huxley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Arnold Toynbee, Solly Zuckerman, and Paul B. Sears. - Our Plundered Planet, Fairfield Osborn; Little Brown, 1948, (out of print). The author calculates Earth's carrying capacity at less than 2 billion (p. 37). An early warning on the population/resource/environment crisis. This book focused on renewable resources but added overpopulation to the equation. Osborn saw the nation's forests, grasslands, and water resources as threatened. "The tide of the earth's population is rising, the reservoir of the earth's living resources is falling," the author wrote. "There is only one solution: Man must recognize the necessity of cooperating with nature." Fairfield Osborn was a distinguished author, naturalist, and conservationist. He was president of the New York Zoological Society and chairman of the Conservation Foundation. - [image: Excellent] Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change , William R. Catton, Jr.; University of Illinois Press, 1980, ISBN 0-252-00818-9 (hard cover), (270p, $30), ISBN 0-252-00988-6 (paperback). An important book - well written with a rich bibliography. - Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species , A. McMichael; Cambridge Univ. Press,1993, ISBN 0521558719 ($12). This eloquent and alarming book examines the likely impact on human health of the ongoing degradation of the planet's ecosystems. - Population and Politics Since 1750, William H. McNeill, University Press of Virginia, 1990, ISBN 0-8139-1257-1, (71p). In this brief discussion, the author ponders the question: is demography the engine that drives history? - Population, Environment and Development: Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Population, Environment and Development, U.N., United Nations Publications, 1994, ISBN 9211512654, ($30). Reports on the Expert Group meeting in 1992, recommending integrating environmental and population issues into planning and policy making. - Population, Evolution, and Birth Control, A Collage of Controversial Ideas , Ed. Garret Hardin; W.H. Freeman, 1964, ISBN 0716706709, (381p). An engrossing collection of articles, reviews, and criticisms reflecting all shades of opinion on what is perhaps the most important social problem facing mankind. - Population Fallacies, Jack Parsons; Elek/Pemberton, London, 1977, ISBN 0301740313 (286p, out of print), (review ). Under the three basic categories of Common Sense, Scientific, and Economic Fallacies, the discussion ranges over such topics as the use of statistics, foretelling the future, military power, migration, manpower, economic development, space travel, the myth of the large happy family and the limits to growth. Each fallacy is clearly stated, solidly documented, thoroughly analyzed and finally dismissed. - Population Geography: Problems, Concepts, and Prospects, Gary L. Peters, Robert P. Larkin; Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1999, ISBN 0787256722, ($47). This textbook is an introduction to population geography, and covers theories of population growth, demographic data and processes, population distribution and composition, and the environment and food supply. Tables, maps, and data are provided. - Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and the Environment: Seeking a Common Vision for a Troubled World, D. Richard Searle, Rick Searle; Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995, ISBN 1550580647, ($14). - Population Handbook - A Quick Guide for Journalists, Teachers, etc., 70-page booklet, ISBN 0-917136-09-8. It contains definitions and features "Calculating the TFR", "How Life TablesWork", etc. - Population, A Lively Introduction, McFalls; Population Reference Bureau , 1991, ISBN 9992437618, ($9). - [image: Excellent] Population: an Introduction to Concepts and Issues, John R. Weeks; Wadsworth, 1992, ISBN 0534553052 (hardcover) ISBN 0-534-17346-2. (579p, $88.00), (EGJ review). A college textbook and a good introduction to population issues, including terms and definitions. - *Population and Environment: a Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies*, Human Sciences Press, 212.620.8000. This journal deals with both issues in a comprehensive and integrated manner. - Population and the World Bank: Adapting to Change, World Bank, 1999, ISBN 0821344404, ($22), (abstract). The global demographic situation has changed dramatically since the World Bank started population work three decades ago. This publication discusses how to apply the Bank's Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) Sector Strategy of 1997 to the Bank's work on population and reproductive health. - Population Politics: the Choices that Shape our Future, Virginia Abernethy; 1993, Plenum Publishing, ISBN 0-306-44461-5, (350p, $27). Also available from Amazon.com. (Review, titled Why Do Women Have Babies , Robert A. McConnell). A provocative book that raises disturbing questions about demographic and immigration policies and their implications for the future of the world. A splendid critique of how U.S. foreign aid and liberal immigration policy result in population growth in the U.S. and abroad. - *Population, Resources and the Environment: The Critical Challenges*, United Nations Population Fund, 1991, ISBN 0-89714-101-6. (154p, $25), (EGJ review ). - *Road to Survival*, William Vogt; Sloane, 1948, (review). Another of the classic "early warnings," like Osborn's book, but much starker - in Vogt's view, the United States in 1948 at 147 million was already overpopulated, and its self-indulgent materialism doomed it to eventual extinction. - The American Dream: Can It Survive the 21st Century? , Joseph L. Daleiden; Prometheus Books, 1999, ISBN 157392265X. (550 p., $25). An ambitious and comprehensive book, offering well though-out solutions to complex problems. Ed Levy states in a review that: "Daleiden's basic message, then, is that today's acts are destroying tomorrow, and that we are stealing, not just borrowing, from the future and that we must accept the possibility of disasters if we are to prevent them. ...An additional value of the book is the validity of its arguments: e.g., the deft debunking of the 'demographic transition' theory (with the addition that even if it were true, it would be too late, because of doubling time, to matter when it kicked in)." - The Challenge of Man's Future, Harrison Scott Brown; Viking, 1953, ISBN 0813300339. A classic early warning on impending population and resource problems. - The Fear of Population Decline, Micheal S. Teitelbaum; ISBN 0126851905, (out of print). - The Future of Population: Predictions, John I. Clarke; Orion, 1999, ISBN 0297819232, ($4). - The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia, Garrett Hardin; Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-512274-7, (153p, $16). (excerpts and review). With clear logic and imaginative insight, Garret Hardin has again given us a strong helping hand in the unending task of overcoming denial of the tough issues in population, economics, and ethics. - The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich; ISBN 0891908617, ($22). (PBS review), (excerpts ). This book looks at the ideas of one scientist whose theories link overpopulation to a broad range of global problems (somewhat outdated - instead see *The Population Explosion* below). - [image: Excellent] The Population Explosion, Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich; Simon and Schuster, 1990, ISBN 0-671-68984-3. (320p, $19), (EGJ reviewadditional review ), and (excerpts). A classic work, this superb, closely reasoned, and fact-filled book should do much to clear the way for badly needed political action. - The Stork and the Plow, Paul and Anne Ehrlich; Putnam, 1995, ISBN 0-399-14074-3, (384p, $15), ( excerpts ). Humanity and agricultural fertility are on a collision course; the stork is threatening to overtake the plow. Yet the very existence of this dilemma is largely unappreciated by the general public as well as politically- and ecologically-oriented pundits. - The Third Revolution: Environment, Population and a Sustainable World, Paul Harrison, I.B. Tauris; in association with the World Wide Fund for Nature, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0140146598. (359 p, $12.00). An excellent introduction; (EGJ review). - [image: Excellent] World Population, Leon F. Bouvier, Jane T. Bertrand; Seven Locks Press, 1999, ISBN: 0929765664, (203 p, $13). "Readable, insightful, scholarly, and objective. Whatever your view on population growth, few disagree that it presents the future with some major challenges. An important book about a fast developing, worldwide problem." -- Richard D. Lamm. "Bouvier and Bertrand's new book offers a measured and informed appraisal - for those who would prefer to actually understand." -- Michael S. Teitelbaum. - [image: Excellent] World Population Growth, George E. Immerwahr; Peanut Butter Publishing, 226 2nd Ave. West, Seattle, WA 98119, 206.281.5965, ISBN 0-89716-552-7 (184p, $12). This excellent book explains population growth in clear, concise terms and contains an excellent demographic appendix. The author, a demographer with extensive overseas exposure to the population issue, states that population problems are colossal but not hopeless and is chiefly concerned for the world's children. *If you have trouble finding this book, contact Suggestions and EcoFuture .* Books on Overpopulation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 11:08:33 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:08:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] rationality In-Reply-To: <1db0b2da0904050349t3c2ad362h1b633cbf9b8552c0@mail.gmail.com> References: <1db0b2da0904050349t3c2ad362h1b633cbf9b8552c0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/5 Aleksei Riikonen : > Strange that you speak of rationality as if it required one to always > speak the truth. > > If speaking the truth leads to getting burned at the stake, the smart > person shuts up, and I for one don't consider that choice to be > irrational. > > According to Wikipedia, "a rational agent is specifically defined as > an agent which always chooses the action which maximises its expected > performance, given all of the knowledge it currently possesses." For > most goal systems, getting burned at the stake doesn't maximize one's > performance. By that definition, a rational agent could be amoral or outright evil. I think that was the point BillK was making. You could keep the definition and make moral behaviour a part of the goal system, in which case being burned at the stake might be the way to go if you really believe that honesty is the best policy. But then someone will turn around and say that such a belief is "irrational", which is just another way of saying that he doesn't agree with it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 11:09:49 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:09:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to Nurse Ratched.# > Damien Broderick Well, for his sake, I hope someone doesn't collect his opinions, articles and views, prints them, binds them in a convenient folder, and sends copies of this folder to several such institutions in his region of italy, as well as to several newspapers, offices of Italian socialists and communists, and other media organizations, with his name, address and photograph. Such an act would likely could him his job, and worse. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: bad nurse.gif Type: image/gif Size: 49484 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 11:10:30 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:10:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Spirituality of Sex In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904032146g140b2075va9ba154d2deaff60@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904032146g140b2075va9ba154d2deaff60@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904050410o7f312d10u69147c96a3a105db@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/4 John Grigg > I thought this might be interesting food for thought around here... > > http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-spirituality-of-sex.html > > Can't say that I like much the ideology therein... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 11:20:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:20:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation (was Re: To Arms!) In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/5 Dagon Gmail : > And I call that counter-productive if not completely dangerous bunk. I say > that > if one person uses x material resources, energy at a certain standard of > living, > 100 persons will use far more than 100x in resources. My assertion is that > overpopulation is a MAJOR drain on efficiency, resources, energy, not even > considering the cheapening of human value, the stress caused by increased > societal pressure, exploitation, collapse of individual meaning and worth, > bastards playing members of society against each other and insurmountable > congestion in nearly every bit of infrastructure you can imagine at peak use > and the same gathering dust when they are not used. > > I say that overpopulation is the single most biggest tragedy humanity > suffers > right now, and the only people benefiting from this are the remorseless > bastards > who exploit their fellow humans, by gaming this tragedy like sharks. As well as considering the number of people, we should also consider their size: "To illustrate the impact of larger human size, assume that we have a world population of 6 billion people with an average weight for men and women of 140 pounds. The amount of living substance or biomass of these billions of people is 840 billion pounds. Let's keep this population fixed over the next 25 years, but allow people to increase their weight to 175 pounds. The resulting biomass increases from 840 billion pounds to more than 1 trillion pounds--an increase equivalent to a 25% growth in the population with its attendant increased energy and resource needs. In summary, bigger people require: * More food and water, fertilizers and pesticides. * More land for farms, homes, factories, and shopping malls, thus encroaching on habitats of endangered species. * More medicines, which are prescribed on the basis of weight. * More energy for heating and cooling of buildings, transportation, home appliances, manufacturing, food production and delivery, and waste disposal. * More resources for materials to make almost everything, from jewelry and clothing to cars and houses. Airplanes, theaters, and sports stadiums may have a slightly different problem: Bigger patrons mean fewer seats can be built, bringing in less revenue from tickets." http://www.allbusiness.com/professional-scientific/scientific-research/485099-1.html -- Stathis Papaioannou From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 12:18:54 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 05:18:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Message-ID: <2d6187670904050518k33c08408g771968692c9e8044@mail.gmail.com> Lee Corbin wrote: I totally agree with you! Conditions in the big cities should *never* have been allowed to get out of hand. The corruption should never have been tolerated, (e.g. Chicago 1850-present). As soon as recognizable underclasses begin to form, they ought to have been either massively deported, or subjected to resettlement on reservations, where they'd be compelled to go back to agriculture or any kind of honest toil in order to survive. >> Lee, is this really you? Or do you have a teenager in your home who is impersonating you??? you continue: But it's either that or eventually perish. France, for example, needs to do what it would instantly have done in any century before the 20th, namely expel its Muslim population. It's either that or cease eventually to have a modern western society at all! >> I will agree that France and other European nations have a major challenge on their hands in dealing with their Muslim populations, who have religious and political views that may at times be a real threat to Western culture and government. But I think the answer is in governments strictly enforcing the laws of the land, and if they have a problem with this due to a lack of backbone than that is their problem. But doing a mass deportation of everyone who is Muslim, just for being Muslim, goes totally against Western laws and ideals. Your line of thinking might eventually begin to coincide with a certain WWI corporal from Austria who in time became quite the spellbinding orator... Dagon Gmail wrote: ...And no I do NOT want immigration, not even from americans feeling the collapse of the union and the civil war. I do not trust big american populations anymore - some might be under the influence of sinister religions or "militant foxists". (*I want those people registered, known by Interpol and marked for being unable to enter Europe, for anything. They might be up to something*) >> Dagon, what has gotten into you?? First Lee, and now you with the extremist ideas! "Muslims, Americans and _________ (whoever else you don't like), Oh, My!!!" Lee, I can envision you starting up a "transhumanist" organization to save the world from whatever evil hordes you see as the next big threat, no matter the ethical cost. But perhaps you should consult with Pat Buchanan or even David Duke first... John : ( -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnh at vt11.net Sun Apr 5 12:52:55 2009 From: jnh at vt11.net (Jordan Hazen) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 08:52:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090405125255.GG35780@vt11.net> On Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 04:44:31PM -0400, Isabelle Hakala wrote: > One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... > I would want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, > oh... say a decade, without any outside influences, and me still > living in the outside world, and then compare notes with my uploaded > self. Could you elaborate on "without any outside influences?" Hopefully this doesn't mean keeping the upload isolated from the world? I'd think that such an extended period of sensory deprivation would be extremely unhealthy, perhaps even a recipe for insanity-- at the least, very stunted development-- especially considering how much longer a decade might seem to a mind running on faster hardware. After perhaps a few {minutes|hours|days} of introspection and reliving memories, I'd be poking about desperately for a "hibernation mode" toggle... If you mean only to avoid all contact between your biological and uploaded selves, that may not be realistic either. If nothing else, the upload would be tempted by curiosity to follow you around on the 'net. -- Jordan. From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Apr 5 13:38:45 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 08:38:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: (RE: To Arms! Reward Offered.) In-Reply-To: <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek><49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it><7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com><1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> Message-ID: Friends, Please take this discussion and thread off list now. Thank you, Natasha Natasha Vita-More From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 13:57:28 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 15:57:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904050518k33c08408g771968692c9e8044@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904050518k33c08408g771968692c9e8044@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > *Dagon, what has gotten into you?? First Lee, and now you with the > extremist ideas! "Muslims, Americans and _________ (whoever else you don't > like), Oh, My!!!" * Listen, I am a European, and were I ever to want to go to the US, I have to fill in questionnaires, airline companies give credit card information, email and background history to US authorities. My sexual history is checked and if I lie about being a pervert I can be arrested. But being a pervert, I cant get in to the US. Plus, I have an arrest record for being involved with far left political activism - yet another reason to be ever disallowed access into the US. This is the result of a certain political establishment I won't repeat. I am very sorry, I have very cautious ideas towards far right extremists that dwell like a parasytical population in the gut of the US. I consider these people a serious terrorism hazard and would vote for not allowing them into Europe, not for a vacation, not for business and not as refugees. I am sure that would not include anyone on this list. However - I repeat that I do see an increasing likelyhood that the US will enter a state of severe instability. I pity the people having to live through that, and it will surely cause spinoff in the rest of the world. I do think Europe may need to look at what is happening in terms of radicalization. The lunatic climate debate is already spreading here. ProLife activism is spreading here. Westboro tried staging a protest here. Anti-Muslim propagandists are seperating reason from debate and polarizing both sides - not for the benefits of enlightenment, but largely because of petrochemical interests. The signs on the wall is clear - if shit starts happening in the US, I propose a big fat firewall and a diplomatic thank you very much against getting involved on any level. *** As for Muslims - i see muslims every day. I know arabic words. I eat islamic food on a regular basis. I. I have read the Quran. I am not favoring apartheid at all. I favor a solution that will make everyone happiest possible, as rich as possible, as free as possible. But - years ago I also walked into a moskh, talked to the people there. I posted on forums. And the end conclusion was that orthodox religious Islam, as an entity, is extremely closed to everything I stand for, and would outlaw or persecute more than half the things I hold dear. The bearded men I spoke to - .... *shudders*. These are not human beings anymore. In essence - I DO NOT vote anti-Islam. I will NOT vote pro-wilders. But I will seriously vote pro-freedom, pro-diversity, pro-hedonism and pro-progress. And that means that I inhabit a political spectrum not represented by any political party here in the netherlands (maybe d66 a bit) and out of dread for losing what little I have I vote SP . You want a full list of other groups that terrify the shit out of me? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 14:38:34 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 07:38:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ants again In-Reply-To: <4B5452B8502140A2A7619341DC0EEEF0@DFC68LF1> References: <4B5452B8502140A2A7619341DC0EEEF0@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <153504C8D75E477EB7FC0EF274FE01F8@spike> ....On Behalf Of Natasha Vita-More .... Subject: Re: [ExI] ants again Thanks for this refreshing and post Spike. Good to read something other than the arms, punishment and creationist posts! Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More Thanks Natasha. The ant experiment is kinda sorta about arms, punishment and creationism, in a very indirect way. What the experiment asks is if ants can go deep within and come up with just a little more collective insight to solve an intractible problem with an elegant alternative method, taking the nontraditional and anti-instinctive path. If the ants can do it, humans can do it. spike From xuenay at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 14:59:34 2009 From: xuenay at gmail.com (Kaj Sotala) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 17:59:34 +0300 Subject: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism Message-ID: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> Originally posted at http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318060.html : A colleague's posting on the Finnish Transhumanist Association's mailing list made me think about a phenomenon I've observed both in myself and several others, but never thought about so explicitly. I call it the Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism. The excitement phase is when you first stumble across concepts such as transhumanism, radical life extension, and superintelligent AI. This is when you subscribe to transhumanist mailing lists, join your local WTA/H+ chapter, and start trying to spread the word to everybody you know. You'll probably spend hundreds of hours reading different kinds of transhumanist materials. This phase typically lasts for several years. In the disillusionment phase, you start to realize that while you still agree with the fundamental transhumanist philosophy, most of what you are doing is rather pointless. You can have all the discussions you want, but by themselves, those discussions aren't going to bring all those amazing technologies here. You learn to ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time. Having gotten over your initial future shock, you may start to wonder why having a specific name like transhumanism is necessary in the first place - people have been taking advantage of new technologies for several thousands of years. After all, you don't have a specific "cellphonist" label for people using cell phones, either. You'll slowly start losing interest in activities that are specifically termed as transhumanist. In the reorientation cycle you have two alternatives. Some people renounce transhumanism entirely, finding the label pointless and mostly a magnet for people with a tendency towards future hype and techno-optimism. Others (like me) simply realize that bringing forth the movement's goals requires a very different kind of effort than debating other transhumanists on closed mailing lists. An effort like engaging with the large audience in a more effective manner, or getting an education in a technology-related field and becoming involved in the actual research yourself. In either case, you're likely to unsubscribe the mailing lists or at least start paying them much less attention than before. If you still identify as a transhumanist, your interest in the online communities wanes because you're too busy actually working for the cause. (Alternatively, you've realized how much work this would be and have stopped even trying.) This shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm saying the online h+ community is unnecessary, and that people ought to just skip to the last phase. The first step of the cycle is a very useful ingredient for giving one a strong motivation to keep working for the cause in one's later life, even when they're no longer following the lists. One might think that this cycle isn't really specific to transhumanism, and that a more general form of it ought to apply to all communities. While I have no doubt that it probably does apply to other communities as well, I find that the transhumanist cause is somewhat rare in that it is so technology-dependant. Hobby communities are built around a certain interest, and for those you don't need much more than the community - having gathered a bunch of RPG or BDSM enthusiasts, you can then go enjoy the activity in question together with them. For purely political movements, you can make progress with a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people aren't really going to care about the social implications of a technology before they can be convinced that the technology in question is actually going to become real soon. And even if everybody did agree that radical life extension, say, is a good thing, that wouldn't really matter for as long as you didn't have life extension available. You'd need to actually get involved with things that actually brought life extension forward, instead of just twiddling your thumbs in the general transhumanist community. This makes the transhumanist community very different from most other kinds of communities. From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 5 15:15:07 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:15:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: Me: >> But of course nearly everyone, even most people >> on this list believe in the vitalist view. [.] But of course >> nearly everyone, even most people on this list >> believe in the soul. "spike" > Evidence please John? The evidence can be found in the Extropian archives going back to the mid 90's, and probably earlier. > You may be right, but how did you reach that conclusion? I come to that conclusion after debating the matter of uploading for well over 15 years; in all that time almost nobody agrees with me. I maintain that there is simply no way I could be wrong about it UNLESS the basic premise I build everything on is wrong, UNLESS it turns out that there really is some truth to vitalism and the soul after all. People wail "but that upload just wouldn't be me" but when asked exactly why it wouldn't be you the response I get is always the same; I receive paragraphs and paragraphs of verbiage, but every single one of the grand sounding pseudo-scientific phrases in them turn out to be nothing but euphemisms for the soul or plaintive cries that silicon could never hope to equal meat, it just couldn't. I don't want to insult people by saying that they are too cowardly to follow an idea as far as it will go regardless of whatever strange destination it leads to, so I can only conclude that most on this list disagree with my basic premise and believe in the ideas behind vitalism and the soul, even if they don't like the particular words very much. And it's not just Extropians, my premise is too shocking for Shock Level Four also. Sorry if I sound a bit cranky, but that's the way I see it. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 5 15:30:51 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:30:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Isabelle Hakala To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 4:44 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... I would want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, oh... say a decade, without any outside influences, and me still living in the outside world, and then compare notes with my uploaded self. What had each of us learned different? Did we still agree on things? What had changed? Etc. For me that would be an important step in feeling like it would be worth-while to do it again at the 'end' of my life so as to preserve myself, and then live on from there. It would answer a lot of questions for me. I believe in something one might consider to be a 'soul', and it doesn't bother me to think that a simulacrum of myself might be running around someplace that may or may not have my 'soul' attached to it as well. Either it would have a part of my soul attached to it, which would be fine, or it wouldn't and then it wouldn't make any difference at all. If this experiment were run, one would be able to see if the simulacrum finds life on the 'inside' as satisfying as the person on the outside does. Just a thought:) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Isabelle Hakala "Any person who says 'it can't be done' shouldn't be interrupting the people getting it done." "Do every single thing in life with love in your heart." On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 1:18 PM, John K Clark wrote: I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: [Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness." But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the vitalist view. It then says: "The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the soul. John K Clark _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 5 15:33:52 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:33:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5EDB6CB08EAE4E2BA4284DCD6C987090@MyComputer> Isabelle Hakala > I would want to upload my mind, and let that > 'simulation' run for, oh... say a decade, > without any outside influences NO outside influences? How hideously evil! Your poor upload can't see, hear, feel, taste or smell. I imagine it would take far less than a decade for it to become suicidal, perhaps homicidal as well. John K Clark From florent.berthet at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 15:42:55 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 17:42:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism In-Reply-To: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> References: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904050842x51d69232w825c0c6005a44088@mail.gmail.com> Very true. We have to be effective. Maybe we should focus on discussions about what we can do and how we can do it? So I'm asking everybody : according to you, what are the most important things you want to see achieved, and what are your plans to get them done ? My idea, as I spoke about in the "I am now a creationist" thread, is to make "a great transhuman utopian movie, where things actually GO well, and about which people would think "Wow, if only we could have that!". Then, it could only be a matter of time before some rich folks start to fund things like the Singularity Institute and other AGI related projects. Because now, obviously, they are not moved by these ideas. It seems like we can't convince rich guys to give money using clever arguments. And since they don't think that funding an AGI project will make them earn money, the only way to make them give anyway is to use feelings. Indeed, they may see the act of giving money as charity. But you don't manage charity with arguments, you manage it with tears, whether they are tears of sadness, or tears of hope. You don't make people give money to the starving children by saying "thousands of them die each day". You make them give money by showing them a picture of ONE starving little girl. That's the way it is. We have to use the power of pictures. This would be the most effective way to expand this movement around the world." It will take several years and a massive amount of work and money, but I'm currently on it. Anyway that's my project. What's yours ? - Florent Berthet 2009/4/5 Kaj Sotala > Originally posted at http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318060.html : > > A colleague's posting on the Finnish Transhumanist Association's > mailing list made me think about a phenomenon I've observed both in > myself and several others, but never thought about so explicitly. I > call it the Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online > transhumanism. > > The excitement phase is when you first stumble across concepts such as > transhumanism, radical life extension, and superintelligent AI. This > is when you subscribe to transhumanist mailing lists, join your local > WTA/H+ chapter, and start trying to spread the word to everybody you > know. You'll probably spend hundreds of hours reading different kinds > of transhumanist materials. This phase typically lasts for several > years. > > In the disillusionment phase, you start to realize that while you > still agree with the fundamental transhumanist philosophy, most of > what you are doing is rather pointless. You can have all the > discussions you want, but by themselves, those discussions aren't > going to bring all those amazing technologies here. You learn to > ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows > up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same > arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time. Having > gotten over your initial future shock, you may start to wonder why > having a specific name like transhumanism is necessary in the first > place - people have been taking advantage of new technologies for > several thousands of years. After all, you don't have a specific > "cellphonist" label for people using cell phones, either. You'll > slowly start losing interest in activities that are specifically > termed as transhumanist. > > In the reorientation cycle you have two alternatives. Some people > renounce transhumanism entirely, finding the label pointless and > mostly a magnet for people with a tendency towards future hype and > techno-optimism. Others (like me) simply realize that bringing forth > the movement's goals requires a very different kind of effort than > debating other transhumanists on closed mailing lists. An effort like > engaging with the large audience in a more effective manner, or > getting an education in a technology-related field and becoming > involved in the actual research yourself. In either case, you're > likely to unsubscribe the mailing lists or at least start paying them > much less attention than before. If you still identify as a > transhumanist, your interest in the online communities wanes because > you're too busy actually working for the cause. (Alternatively, you've > realized how much work this would be and have stopped even trying.) > > This shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm saying the online h+ > community is unnecessary, and that people ought to just skip to the > last phase. The first step of the cycle is a very useful ingredient > for giving one a strong motivation to keep working for the cause in > one's later life, even when they're no longer following the lists. > > One might think that this cycle isn't really specific to > transhumanism, and that a more general form of it ought to apply to > all communities. While I have no doubt that it probably does apply to > other communities as well, I find that the transhumanist cause is > somewhat rare in that it is so technology-dependant. Hobby communities > are built around a certain interest, and for those you don't need much > more than the community - having gathered a bunch of RPG or BDSM > enthusiasts, you can then go enjoy the activity in question together > with them. For purely political movements, you can make progress with > a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and > recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is > certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people > aren't really going to care about the social implications of a > technology before they can be convinced that the technology in > question is actually going to become real soon. And even if everybody > did agree that radical life extension, say, is a good thing, that > wouldn't really matter for as long as you didn't have life extension > available. You'd need to actually get involved with things that > actually brought life extension forward, instead of just twiddling > your thumbs in the general transhumanist community. This makes the > transhumanist community very different from most other kinds of > communities. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 15:59:54 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 08:59:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kill thread: RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904050518k33c08408g771968692c9e8044@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <57FF76E87E2D4D3793DEA82CFD57CB31@spike> ________________________________ ...Dagon Gmail: ...My sexual history is checked and if I lie about being a pervert I can be arrested... G, if I claim to be a pervert but I am lying and really I am not, how could they ever prove it? My friends, do read over all the nonsense that we have posted recently regarding real and fundamental problems facing humanity, and notice there are no particularly insightful solutions, nothing, in all those wasted bits. We are like the ants running up and down the tree with two clogged holes being the only passage. The north bounders concerning themselves only with how to give the south bounders a mandible sandwich, and vice versa, neither of which actually solves the overall problem. Humanity is currently faced with some overwhelming structural problems. We have a fundamental divide in values: one portion of our species considers men and women as equals, the other not. One segment of humanity feels free to criticize anyone's religion, another segment considers blammisphy as equal to (or worse than) murder. With our current level of human insight, these are intractible problems, but note that everything that has been presented here so far will not solve the problem at all. Deport-em-all doesn't actually solve the problem, in fact it might make it worse. Forming a single world government doesn't solve the problem either, for the fundamental difference in basic values still exists and a unified government might make it far worse. These kinds of solutions, which I am seeing presented here (of all places), are no better than solutions we might see posted at Mensa, or the Daily Koz. Let us not lower ourselves to their level please. I ask that everyone step back and think for at least one week before posting anything else on these topics, and when that week is over, look at the problem globally and think like an ant colony presented with two small passages to your aphids, but several orders of magnitude smarter. Find better ways than have been ever presented before. Go deep within, way deep, and think about the fundamental problem before proposing something that has been suggested a million times elsewhere but won't work. In the mean time, do let us consider the To Arms thread as killed. I expect a few more posts to filter thru today before this one is read, but do let's let it go for now, think harder and better, and then be real extropians, shall we? spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 16:26:47 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 09:26:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation (was Re: To Arms!) In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > 2009/4/5 Dagon Gmail : >... > > > > I say that overpopulation is the single most biggest tragedy humanity suffers right now... Sure but take a step back and look at it this way. Whenever people utter this meme, what they really mean is something more like "It's not so much that there are too many people like me, too many extropians, too many Mensans, too many rich people, it's that there are way too many [fill in the blank] and they are breeding like alley cats." The fundamental problem is that [blank] is saying the same thing about you. Both want to limit or preferably eliminate the other guy, like the northbound ants vs the southbound ants fighting over access holes. Allow me to propose a new and different way to view the problem, a way we discussed in the forum about twelve years ago. Imagine a bar graph with number of people on the vertical and value of their skill set on the horizontal, a log-log scale. With technological increase, we can build machines capable of building machines, so factory workers become less valuable. With computers, some knowledge workers become more valuble, but most become less valuable. Over time we see that an ever greater portion of humankind have ever smaller value to society. As the rich get richer, the poor breed faster. We see these trends accelerating today. Extrapolations welcome, answer like a real extropian please. When in doubt visit the extropian principles site: http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm In fact, do read over that document in any case. We should all review it occasionally just to make sure we are in the right internet neighborhood. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 16:51:39 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 09:51:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John K Clark > ... > > People wail "but that upload just wouldn't be me" but when > asked exactly why it wouldn't be you the response I get is > always the same; I receive paragraphs and paragraphs of > verbiage, but every single one of the grand sounding > pseudo-scientific phrases in them turn out to be nothing but > euphemisms for the soul or plaintive cries that silicon could > never hope to equal meat, it just couldn't. > ... > > And it's not just Extropians, my premise is too shocking for > Shock Level Four also. Sorry if I sound a bit cranky, but > that's the way I see it. > > John K Clark OK but your contention surprises me. Guess I never really do follow the endless identity threads very carefully. I have always assumed that if we know enough about a carbon atom, we can write a computer simulation of one, and if we know enough about neurons, axons and dendrites we can simulate a brain cell in software, and if we can simulate a brain cell using the carbon atom sims, and we can sim 100 billion of them working together using the brain cell sims, and if so, 100 billion brains working together and if so, that meta-sim is not only us but better than we are, a superset of us. This superset is desperately needed, for humanity seems to be at a critical historical choke point, presented with two small holes over which we fight for access, like the ants, instead of finding a meta-solution. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 5 17:19:11 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:19:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: "spike" >I have always assumed that if we know enough about a carbon atom, we can >write a computer simulation of one, and if we know enough about neurons, >axons and dendrites we can simulate a brain cell in software, and if we can >simulate a brain cell using the carbon atom sims, and we can sim >100 billion of them working together using the brain cell sims, and if so, >100 billion brains working together and if so, that meta-sim is not only us >but better than we are, a superset of us. If you could find no reason not to walk into a chamber that will make a copy of your body and then instantly destroy the original then you are one of the very very few that agree with me. Perhaps there are more, but they sure haven't spoken up much in the last 15 years. John K Clark From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Apr 5 17:22:03 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:22:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <5EDB6CB08EAE4E2BA4284DCD6C987090@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> <5EDB6CB08EAE4E2BA4284DCD6C987090@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49D8E8BB.2000801@comcast.net> Isabelle, I'm in John's camp on this one also. I see Isolation / loneliness is an absolute logically necessary truth. Any sufficiently intelligent being must recognize this and become 'sad' in some way if there is any kind of isolation, and hope to, or work to eliminate such evil that is isolation with faith that such should and can be eliminated for all. Brent John K Clark wrote: > Isabelle Hakala > >> I would want to upload my mind, and let that >> 'simulation' run for, oh... say a decade, >> without any outside influences > > NO outside influences? How hideously evil! Your poor upload can't see, > hear, > feel, taste or smell. I imagine it would take far less than a decade > for it > to become suicidal, perhaps homicidal as well. > > John K Clark > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 5 17:31:15 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:31:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <959F667BF8BD40C28C62E2C3E25C9B00@MyComputer> Dagon Gmail > i know there is no sensible, sustainable alternative to a world without > vitalist or spiritual energies, and matter being a mechanical process. But > it is so hard to sustain this insight in moments of emotion and unease. > When faced with the dark of night, the hour of the wolf, when > sleeplessness overwhelms me But I'm not talking about the creepy irrational feeling any of us could have when we hear a strange sound in the middle of the night; I'm talking about a sober rational debate with somebody in bright daylight. It is my experience that even with atheists who swear up and down that they are strict materialists it is absurdly easy to peel back a few layers in their arguments to expose the vitalism lurking below. John K Clark From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 17:38:09 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 19:38:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] punishment In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49C6C825.7030507@rawbw.com> <580930c20903230521r7e2bb5d4nd31ae09946b21ff0@mail.gmail.com> <49C895CC.3000102@rawbw.com> <49D1BD47.3070106@rawbw.com> <49D722BB.6030709@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904051038t7386f749uc86dc0b45b2672e3@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/4 Dagon Gmail >A whole school of largely conservatives or libertarians would literally risk the danger > of climatic collapse, mostly because they do not want governmental restrictions. I for one would be inclined to accept some restrictions on my carbon emissions if the alternative is having four chances out of five of being killed in the next ten years out of their climatic and climactic consequences, but don't we all believe that compromises that make life not worth living should not be accepted? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 5 17:43:31 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:43:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090405123207.024c0a18@satx.rr.com> JKC wrote: and later: >If you could find no reason not to walk into a chamber that will make a copy >of your body and then instantly destroy the original then you are one of the >very very few that agree with me. And for all that time I've remained dumbfounded that you can't see that these are two entirely independent and different propositions, John. Almost nobody here, I expect, will claim that minds can run only inside live flesh. There is no demonstrable reason for thinking that a suitable silicon (or platinum-iridium positronium) substrate couldn't emulate a mind. Going from that near-truism to your suicidal proposition is a complete non-sequitur that ignores *point of view*. But as Kaj said just now, `[Long-time transhumanists] learn to ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time.' Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 5 18:05:08 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:05:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49D8F2D4.6030403@libero.it> Il 05/04/2009 1.02, Travis Porco ha scritto: > Copts are Christian, not Muslim. --tcp This is because they have an opinion worse than mine about Muslims. Maybe living in a Muslim dominated society as a Christian or a Jews or a Hindu or anyone else help to form this type of opinion. Mirco From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Apr 5 18:21:48 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:21:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49D8F6BC.1010207@comcast.net> John and Spike, There is no longer any need to digest over 15 years of extropy archives to know concisely and quantitatively what we all believe at this very moment (and if any of us have converted from one camp or another, and for what reasons). John, your thinking that 'almost everyone on this list' believes in 'vitalism and the soul' is obviously completely wrong. What lots of transhumanists do believe, or at least those willing and able to declare such, is now concisely and quantitatively specified in this topic on theories of the Mind: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88 You can see precisely what theories are well accepted, and how well accepted. You can see this for the general population with the default canonizer, or you can select the Transhumanists canonizer to see what Transhumanists believe and how this compares. You can do the same for Mormons, PhDs, and so on. From the POV of the most well accepted scientific theory camp which I am in along with many leading theoreticians like Johm Smythies and Steven Lehar, and many more (many are transhumanists): http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 As is stated therein, you and Spike are simply missing the important difference between the phenomenal and the behavioral. When you say: "if we know enough about a carbon atom, we can write a computer simulation of one," this is all true, but you are missing the most important point that just because something is 'behaving' like something else, it is in no way fundamentally and phenomenally like it. Sure, a one and a zero can behave like, or abstractly represent red vs green. But, from a consciousness perspective, this is to completely miss what is phenomenally important about red vs green and the difference between them, and all this has to do with the well accepted idea around the so called 'hard problem' which you seem to completely, dismiss, ignore, and are ignorant of. And to jump to the assumption that just because someone believes that matter has both behavioral and (soon to be effable) phenomenal properties, as concisely described in this camp: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/2 is just plain ignorant and mistaken. Saying such clearly reveals your complete ignorance of any of what these world leading theoreticians are talking about in their now concisely stated and quantitatively represented camps. Upward, Brent Allsop spike wrote: > > > >> ...On Behalf Of John K Clark >> ... >> >> People wail "but that upload just wouldn't be me" but when >> asked exactly why it wouldn't be you the response I get is >> always the same; I receive paragraphs and paragraphs of >> verbiage, but every single one of the grand sounding >> pseudo-scientific phrases in them turn out to be nothing but >> euphemisms for the soul or plaintive cries that silicon could >> never hope to equal meat, it just couldn't. >> ... >> >> And it's not just Extropians, my premise is too shocking for >> Shock Level Four also. Sorry if I sound a bit cranky, but >> that's the way I see it. >> >> John K Clark >> > > > OK but your contention surprises me. Guess I never really do follow the > endless identity threads very carefully. I have always assumed that if we > know enough about a carbon atom, we can write a computer simulation of one, > and if we know enough about neurons, axons and dendrites we can simulate a > brain cell in software, and if we can simulate a brain cell using the carbon > atom sims, and we can sim 100 billion of them working together using the > brain cell sims, and if so, 100 billion brains working together and if so, > that meta-sim is not only us but better than we are, a superset of us. This > superset is desperately needed, for humanity seems to be at a critical > historical choke point, presented with two small holes over which we fight > for access, like the ants, instead of finding a meta-solution. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 18:31:52 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:31:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! Reward Offered. In-Reply-To: <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904051131p73f008afp92c43b4e94261f7c@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Fred C. Moulton wrote: > >> Neither Lee nor painlord2k are libertarians. > > The arbiter of definitions has spoken. All are to remain > silent. Definitions are in fact elusive. In Europe, many of those who consider themselves "conservative-libertarians" hate my guts - and the feeling is often reciprocal. This is way less the case with the US variety. Even when I do not agree with them, I respect their willingness to defy and demystify the dominant "political correctness". Something which any true-and-trusted, so-called "conservative-libertarian" would rarely do in my country, conformity with the mainstream and intolerance of deviation therefrom being major values in the same camp. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 18:41:00 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:41:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Cosmic Engineers] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904040231w51209d31g1cc4158b84c7bfcd@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90904040231w51209d31g1cc4158b84c7bfcd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904051141x1fcd11d7oc3e255b9ec26d125@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stefano Vaj Date: Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 8:37 PM Subject: Re: [Cosmic Engineers] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia To: cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Thanks to all bioluddite losers and idiots for advertising our ideas! > Let's not be scared of making them angry at us -- they produce the > best PR for us when they are angry. Appeasing them is useless and > boring, while provoking them is productive and fun. As you know only too well, I need no persuading in this respect. Definitely nothing wrong IMHO in engaging in battles to defend frankly our own ideas in their unadulterated form . The important thing is to win as many as possible of them. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 18:22:23 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:22:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D8F2D4.6030403@libero.it> References: <49D8F2D4.6030403@libero.it> Message-ID: > ... painlord2k at libero.it > Subject: Re: [ExI] To Arms! ... > > Copts are Christian, not Muslim. --tcp > > This is because they have an opinion worse than mine about Muslims. ... Thanks, pain. To Arms! is a slain thread for now. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 19:02:44 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 12:02:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <49D8F6BC.1010207@comcast.net> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <49D8F6BC.1010207@comcast.net> Message-ID: <62D38A83B8B846609BE11FBAC8127807@spike> > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Brent Allsop ... >...When you say: "if we know enough about a carbon > atom, we can write a computer simulation of one," this is all > true, but you are missing the most important point that just > because something is 'behaving' like something else, it is in > no way fundamentally and phenomenally like it... Brent Allsop Perhaps so. I have little interest in it for I have no cognitive dissonance in regards to that particular question. I argue only that there is a finite amount of information in an atom, consequently it is theoretically possible to simulate it, and if so, to simulate them in arbitrary quantities. At that time, if the sim is sufficiently high fidelity, the sim will be indistinguishable from the person, qualia and all. I have seen your qualia posts over the years Brent, and I am thankful you are with us. You and I first met at Extro 5 if you recall. You have particular insights on the topic of qualia that I confess I haven't followed closely, but this is OK, for eventually we will have a test that will answer fundamental questions. May we both live to see that, in the flesh, so I can compare me to me directly. You and I have no fundamental disagreement really. I am saying only that theory has taken us as far as theory can. We need an actual experiment to advance further at this point. Code jockeys among us, do your magic! spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 19:06:17 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:06:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism In-Reply-To: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> References: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904051206y11817c6cnc6ccf1e9f98f46b7@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Kaj Sotala wrote: > Originally posted at http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318060.html : Very interesting point. > For purely political movements, you can make progress with > a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and > recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is > certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people > aren't really going to care about the social implications of a > technology before they can be convinced that the technology in > question is actually going to become real soon. In fact, my view is that organised transhumanism is emphatically *not* about transhumanism-relevant technologies - which OTOH may well be brought forward in practical terms by people who are not transhumanist in the least, more or less how the opinion of physicists on nuclear weapons was not so crucial in their development. It is about transhumanist *worldview* and *politics*, which concern the cultural and societal requirements for such technologies and/or any posthuman change to be discussed, researched, developed, allowed and applied in the first place and what kind of effort should be deployed to those ends. In fact, from such a point of view, a promethean societal orientation is desirable per se, irrespective of what and when it can deliver in any specific area. This is why we should engage less in starry-eyed prophesising, or in debating how to manage post-singularity worlds, and much more in the fight to change legislation, public invesment policies, existing value systems/priorities/mentalities, etc. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 19:13:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:13:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904051213l2fb91cd2se59fec9d9e513b98@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 11:39 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > This is, probably, also a function of the urbanization of large part of the > population. More people live in city house, less space they have to raise > their children. I could be wrong, but if the law mandated the construction > of four bedrooms only apartments we would have much higher fertility. In fact, there might actually be an ethological/territorial angle. This would also justify why Russians, who are in the progress of facing a dramatic urbanisation, are not performing so well. -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 5 19:33:57 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 12:33:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] urbanization, was: RE: To Arms! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904051213l2fb91cd2se59fec9d9e513b98@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com><49D534ED.7010609@libero.it><580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com><49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> <580930c20904051213l2fb91cd2se59fec9d9e513b98@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > Subject: Re: [ExI] To Arms! > ... > > In fact, there might actually be an ethological/territorial angle. > This would also justify why Russians, who are in the progress > of facing a dramatic urbanisation, are not performing so well. > > -- > Stefano Vaj Hi Stefano, the To Arms! thread is slain, but I changed your subject line. Do feel free to continue posting on urbanization under this thread, and let's all keep it smart. spike From jadams.neuro at yahoo.com Sun Apr 5 19:30:52 2009 From: jadams.neuro at yahoo.com (Jimmy Adams) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 12:30:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism Message-ID: <588208.56578.qm@web57404.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Hi This is my first post here, it has been interesting to read the emails. A couple of years ago I wrote a screenplay'>http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/21stcenturykids.html">screenplay based on Shannon Vyff's book "21st Century Kids" It is a story that has transhumanic themes written for children. There was no interest for it in Hollywood. I found a director who had a degree from UCLA Film School and owns a Production company in Estonia, but he wants cash to make the film. Nobody wants to buy the script or put it on "option". It is a fun story that has aliens, cryonics, uploaded dolphins, uploaded humans and a space adventure. Natasha's PRIMO Posthuman is also a character in the script. Read it and see what you think. If you know anybody who won the lottery or has a few extra 100 million dollars (special effects aren't cheap, and this screenplay has a lot of them!) let us know. Shannon's kids are the right age to star in the movie now. :) 21st Century Kids screenplay: WGAE Registration code #VQEA1BD9428; July 2007 Please tell us more about your project. Do you have a screenplay? Take Care Jimmy ________________________________ From: Florent Berthet To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, April 5, 2009 10:42:55 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism Very true. We have to be effective. Maybe we should focus on discussions about what we can do and how we can do it? So I'm asking everybody : according to you, what are the most important things you want to see achieved, and what are your plans to get them done ? My idea, as I spoke about in the "I am now a creationist" thread, is to make "a great transhuman utopian movie, where things actually GO well, and about which people would think "Wow, if only we could have that!". Then, it could only be a matter of time before some rich folks start to fund things like the Singularity Institute and other AGI related projects. Because now, obviously, they are not moved by these ideas. It seems like we can't convince rich guys to give money using clever arguments. And since they don't think that funding an AGI project will make them earn money, the only way to make them give anyway is to use feelings. Indeed, they may see the act of giving money as charity. But you don't manage charity with arguments, you manage it with tears, whether they are tears of sadness, or tears of hope. You don't make people give money to the starving children by saying "thousands of them die each day". You make them give money by showing them a picture of ONE starving little girl. That's the way it is. We have to use the power of pictures. This would be the most effective way to expand this movement around the world." It will take several years and a massive amount of work and money, but I'm currently on it. Anyway that's my project. What's yours ? - Florent Berthet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 22:54:22 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 18:54:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904051554j4521b7f0td4afae6e98079b55@mail.gmail.com> Lee, the notion that the world can be improved by carpet bombing Afghanistan is so stupid it can be rejected without spending the 30 minutes or so needed to properly write up an analytical post. You don't need any emotions to be involved. It's a pity that Robert, who is a nice guy, suffered from some logical malfunction that produced this idiocy. Rafal From florent.berthet at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 23:30:30 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 01:30:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism In-Reply-To: <588208.56578.qm@web57404.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <588208.56578.qm@web57404.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904051630o7335931cv11a2e63d4185134e@mail.gmail.com> Hi Jimmy, I've just read your amazon review of Shannon's book, and I'll soon check the script, it seems interesting. About the movie, when you say there was no interest for it in Hollywood, what were the reasons exactly ? What kind of audience are you looking at ? Those issues are important because I think we need something that can be seen as the next Matrix in terms of success. By the way, I find it pretty impressive and encouraging how big was that success given the topics involved. I don't think I would have bet on it at first (sure, there was the Keanu Reeves card, but still...). As for my personal screenplay, I have the overall picture and I'm now getting into the details. The story takes place in the near future (around fifty years from now, definitely less than a hundred years), in a recently created virtual world where the humans can upload themselves and live ? la Egan's Permutation City, but with real mind-blowing epic fun. I will try to make it clear that it's actually a trully possible future by making people understand during the beginning that some years in the past, a team of scientists succeeded in making an AGI, which quickly managed to get the interest and sympathy of the people by being really smart, funny, and by being a great advisor on every subject. Then this AGI gained more political influence, and eventually, since she was so popular, some governments were forced to apply what she was proposing. Year after year, people could see the great improvements taking place all over the world, and finally, one day she introduced the virtual world with a speech along those lines: "During the past years, you have been giving me your trust. You allowed me to help you by all the necessary means, and together we have been able to get rid of most of the major world issues. But this is nothing compared to what I can offer you today. Let's try something : just imagine the best thing that could happen in your life. Go on, try it, even the craziest thing you can think of. Done ? Good. Well I can assure you that whatever that is, I have *way* better for you. Welcome to your new home." So that is basically the starting point and it shouldn't take more than a tenth of the movie's duration. For the rest, it's pretty tricky do make a fiction where nothing is going wrong or where there isn't any real threat involved, but it's not at all unsolvable. Indeed, for once we can use an environment where there aren't any limits. We can literally make the best action scenes ever because, well, screw the laws of physics! Same thing with the mystery or weirdness of the events, the beauty of the sets, or anything that can shape the story. The only limit is the imagination, and it will also be a key point within the movie itself. The guideline is about a young guy that will wake up in that world (for a very valid reason...), not knowing where he is, and discovering the life in there. In particular, he will discover the Games (yes, with a capital G.), and how pretty much everything will be about them from now on. The games, like I said, will take place in a context of infinite possibilities, which will permit some never saw before kinds of stuff. The kinds there were in Tron but a lot more complex and fun, and not only based on techno-creepy environments. Every part of them must be highly attractive. After all, the aim is to make people really really want that future. After having finished the screenplay (it's far from being done), and given the nature of most of the scenes, a finely detailed storyboard will be the least I can do to hope making a big director go woo-hoo. That's why the time and efforts needed are huge, but so could be the potential results. Florent Berthet 2009/4/5 Jimmy Adams > Hi > This is my first post here, it has been interesting to read the emails. A > couple of years ago I wrote a > screenplay'>http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/21stcenturykids.html">screenplaybased on Shannon Vyff's book "21st Century Kids" It is a story that has > transhumanic themes written for children. There was no interest for it in > Hollywood. I found a director who had a degree from UCLA Film School and > owns a Production company in Estonia, but he wants cash to make the film. > Nobody wants to buy the script or put it on "option". It is a fun story that > has aliens, cryonics, uploaded dolphins, uploaded humans and a space > adventure. Natasha's PRIMO Posthuman is also a character in the script. Read > it and see what you think. If you know anybody who won the lottery or has a > few extra 100 million dollars (special effects aren't cheap, and this > screenplay has a lot of them!) let us know. Shannon's kids are the right age > to star in the movie now. :) > > 21st Century Kids screenplay: WGAE Registration code #VQEA1BD9428; July > 2007 > > Please tell us more about your project. Do you have a screenplay? > > Take Care > Jimmy > ------------------------------ > *From:* Florent Berthet > *To:* ExI chat list > *Sent:* Sunday, April 5, 2009 10:42:55 AM > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of > online transhumanism > > Very true. We have to be effective. Maybe we should focus on discussions > about what we can do and how we can do it? > So I'm asking everybody : according to you, what are the most important > things you want to see achieved, and what are your plans to get them done ? > > My idea, as I spoke about in the "I am now a creationist" thread, is to > make "a great transhuman utopian movie, where things actually GO well, and > about which people would think "Wow, if only we could have that!". Then, it > could only be a matter of time before some rich folks start to fund things > like the Singularity Institute and other AGI related projects. Because now, > obviously, they are not moved by these ideas. It seems like we can't > convince rich guys to give money using clever arguments. And since they > don't think that funding an AGI project will make them earn money, the only > way to make them give anyway is to use feelings. Indeed, they may see the > act of giving money as charity. But you don't manage charity with arguments, > you manage it with tears, whether they are tears of sadness, or tears of > hope. You don't make people give money to the starving children by saying > "thousands of them die each day". You make them give money by showing them a > picture of ONE starving little girl. That's the way it is. We have to use > the power of pictures. This would be the most effective way to expand this > movement around the world." > > It will take several years and a massive amount of work and money, but I'm > currently on it. > > Anyway that's my project. What's yours ? > > > - Florent Berthet > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 23:56:24 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 19:56:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904051656o17b1bd14s3ae291305751de3e@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 5:03 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: recall R for Rafal and L for Lee, and contrast > the skepticism, repudiation, and revulsion of the right > hemisphere R with the orderly, confabulatory (in the > sense of creation), rigid, progressive, logical step-by-step > relentless proceedings of L, the left hemisphere: ### Me the right hemisphere? Jeez. It's not moral indignation that makes me oppose your notions (although that I feel too), it's the conclusion that your recipe is abominably, how should I say it, errr... mistaken on factual grounds. -------------------- > > R: ? "France", a body? Clearly your logical confabulations > ? ? (in the creative sense) have gone off the deep end. > ? ? The analogy fills me with the greatest disgust and > ? ? brings uppermost to mind the question of what has > ? ? happened to your skeptical powers of good judgment. ### Not disgust, Lee, and not logical. If you were logical, you wouldn't be generating this stuff. ---------------- > > R: ? That is mere logical extrapolation. We don't know > ? ? that any of that will take place. When we weigh those > ? ? remote (in time, at least) possibilities with what > ? ? happens to real people in the hear and now, then the > ? ? judgment must come down on the side of doing no harm > ? ? (or the lesser harm) in the here and now. ### Ah, yeah, you remembered I am a physician. And yes, of course you need to discount future events and predictions, especially based on highly uncertain models, compared to the present. ----------------------------- > > L: ? Do you dismiss out of hand the developments of which > ? ? I warn? Do you think that these have zero probability? ### You mean Muslims reaching majority status in France in 30 years? According to http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/our-man-in-paris-france-will-never-be-a-muslim-state-568594.html, this is indeed zero probability, given that Muslims are about 6-8 % of the group below 25 year old, and would have to breed much much more than they do now to generate the majority. Give me reliable data saying otherwise. Then convince me that the vast majority of French Muslims wish to institute Sharia. Then show that the only way of preventing this is by indiscriminate destruction of Muslims, rather than e.g. by declaring limits on the number of children a citizen may have, and ruthlessly taxing or sterilizing all overbreeders irrespective of faith (still a stupid idea, IMO, but it would prevent rapid changes in the demographic makeup of the country). Finally, you would need to convince me somehow that the French culture is so freaking valuable that killing a million or two of innocent (i.e. non-violent) people is a good price to keep it around. That's all you need to have me join your camp. ------------------- > > R: ? It doesn't matter. What is important is a principled > ? ? adherence to our cherished principles at all times, > ? ? regardless of risk. ### The whole point of my cherished principles is that they are the least risky (AFAIK), compared to the stupid flailing about that constitutes the life politic. ------------------ > > ? ? What you propose is *not* an ESS, and it flies in > ? ? the face of your antecedents who made your policies > ? ? and probably your very existence possible. ### You mean, my modest proposal to be nice to nice people, including nice Muslims, is *not* an ESS? -------------------- > > ? ? You are a free-loader. ### Yeah, sure. ------------------- > > ? ? Reply to that, if you will, and---if somehow you can--- > ? ? please try to keep the dialog focused on the analytic > ? ? and non-emotional, as understandably hard as that may be > ? ? for your right hemisphere in this kind of discussion. > ### Lee, you base your thinking on factual errors, believe preposterous predictions, you show a lazy unwillingness to consider non-violent or less violent solutions, and you have some funny values, too. Fine. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that I am emotional. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 00:06:29 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:06:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Rounding up and deporting some enormous class of people > because they look at the world entirely differently > than you do---and ultimately destroy institutions that > took hundreds of years to develop---is not unreasonable > at all. ### On the contrary, it's unreasonable to the point of being stupid. The only justification for a deportation is when a very large fraction of the population in question is violent, and there are no means of reliably separating the violent ones from the peaceful ones. Rafal From aleksei at iki.fi Mon Apr 6 00:25:16 2009 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 03:25:16 +0300 Subject: [ExI] plans for a transhuman utopian movie Message-ID: <1db0b2da0904051725w1ac04c24wd21aac3c72cd82aa@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/5 Florent Berthet : > [...] to make "a great transhuman utopian movie, where > things actually GO well, and about which people would > think "Wow, if only we could have that!". I think there's a good chance to get a good transhuman utopian movie done at some point. Kurzweil is already making a movie or two with pretty much this idea, though I fear they will suck (just an unfounded prejudice of mine). And this I actually see as the most probable failure scenario for getting a good transhuman utopian Matrix-level-blockbuster done: too many impatiently done sucky movies trying to be that successful movie, making everybody (especially Hollywood big shots) laugh at the idea for a long time. So I hope that people proceed with their movie plans with a rather perfectionist frame of mind, are patient (and don't invest too much of their ego in the project), and don't jump at the first probably low-quality opportunity to get their big idea out to theaters. Getting someone like Iain M. Banks involved in writing the movie would be a dream, btw. > Then, it could only be a matter of time before some rich folks start > to fund things like the Singularity Institute and other AGI related > projects. Because now, obviously, they are not moved by these > ideas. It seems like we can't convince rich guys to give money > using clever arguments. Some smart rich guys have been rather successfully convinced. See e.g. Peter Thiel < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel >. I don't see the SIAI as being seriously strapped for cash, and am not sure what they'd actually do if they got substantially more. Instead of money, the limiting resource seems to be finding more sufficiently smart, rational and motivated people. (Or perhaps I just don't understand SIAI's situation very well.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 01:01:09 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:01:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism In-Reply-To: <49D90861.60304@boone.net> References: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> <49D90861.60304@boone.net> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904051801i40504fb7y10615e37030aa5a6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Ralph wrote: > Kaj, > ? A big part of the problem in this dichotomy between the Useless > Enthusiasts and the Serious(ly Remote) Professionals is that Transhumanism > as it is frequently conceived often relies on the final completion of a > single, radical technology that Changes Everything. The implications of > having this or that particular, fully realized technology are (rightly) > perceived as so dramatic that to some degree almost everything else becomes > irrelevant once the Ultimate Technology arrives on the scene. > > Unfortunately, this leads to professionals intensely (and perhaps rightly) > focused on completely the technology they perceive as the tipping point, and > enthusiasts talking incessantly about changes they feel powerless to > achieve, but which more than a few find reasons to believe they will somehow > dominate despite their complete disassociation from the actual research and > the institutions doing it (because they will be "first adopters" or what > have you). > > So most of us are, whether professionals or non-professionals, left waiting > breathlessly on the closing of the Final Circuit in an AI godling, or the > First Upload, or the True Assembler. And in the meantime, the True Believers > can seem like a particularly odd, post-modern cult (if a well-educated one), > whose more extreme members seem to be rocking back and forth repeating the > technobabble equivalent of "The /Paingod/! He /Rises/! /He *Rises*/!" I don't know to what extent that is true. At its core, transhumanism is about personal self-improvement re: overcoming limitations and such. When I started out reading about transhumanism, I found that many of the ideas and search queries brought back material that I found useful. But, essentially I was a useless enthusiast. Arguably, I (and many others) are still completely useless, but on the other hand there does seem to be a difference between those who believe/act in the self-improvement aspects-- even with questionable biases in objective evaluation functions- and those who aren't willing to start off on those particular journies. How much of an ethusiast can you be when when it comes to transhumanism when you ignore the self-improvement aspects? - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 6 02:34:24 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 19:34:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To Arms! In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com><7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com><49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki ... > > On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > > > Rounding up and deporting some enormous class of people > because they > > look at the world entirely differently than you do... > > ### On the contrary, it's unreasonable to the point of being stupid. ... > > Rafal Gentlemen please, we have slain this thread. Do let us leave it in the grave, shall we? spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 04:20:56 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:20:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Israel/Germany/Japan, as compared to France Message-ID: <2d6187670904052120x71971281yd5950d576ac3c0d0@mail.gmail.com> I think to gain perspective we need to see how various nations deal with their challenges... France- They have a large Muslim population that has not assimilated well (many of these people are the children of immigrants and were born in France, they have embraced Islamic fundamentalism to find meaning in sometimes very unpleasant lives) and are at least perceived as a possible long-term threat to the culture and body politic. Foreign immigrants make up about 9% of the population. Germany- They allowed in many Turks who are seen generally as model guest workers but who have faced poverty and mistreatment. They are now offering language and citizenship classes, and recently reversed a law that barred the children of foreigners born in Germany from becoming German citizens. The idea behind these efforts is to cause a melting pot effect to kick in. Many non-Muslim Germans are very concerned about Muslims and the building of Mosques. Foreign immigrants make up about 8% of the population. Japan- They are known for being somewhat xenophobic and look to improved automation and robotics to deal with a low birthrate, rather than allowing in large numbers of immigrants. Even a program trying to repatriate Japanese born and raised in nations like Peru and Brazil did not work too well. A long-standing challenge for them has been dealing with their Korean minority. Israel- They have a problem with their Muslim population that puts the problems of France to shame. Jewish Israeli politicians and intelligentsia fear that Muslim citizens over time will accomplish with big families & voting power what no amount of fighting and killing on their part could accomplish; the takeover of Israel. Arabs make up roughly 20% of Israel's population. If there is any nation that may seriously consider taking extreme measures to head off the founding group losing their grip on power, it will probably be Israel. They are a very small (though powerful) nation that is surrounded by potential enemies. My question is, why has France been having a much harder time dealing with their immigrants as compared to Germany? Or am I mistaken regarding this assumption? What can we learn from Japan's attempt at using technology to find solutions? And should the Jewish Israeli majority really be concerned about their growing Arab population? John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 04:33:03 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 00:33:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> Damien Broderick: >all that time I've remained dumbfounded > that you can't see that these are two entirely > independent and different propositions, John. I know you disagree with me and you are hardly alone. It's been going on far too long for me to be dumbfounded anymore, but I am saddened by the persistence of superstition. > There is no demonstrable reason for thinking > that a suitable silicon (or platinum-iridium positronium) > substrate couldn't emulate a mind. That is obviously true. > Going from that near-truism to your suicidal > proposition is a complete > non-sequitur that ignores *point of view*. That is obviously false, UNLESS my basic premise is untrue. Talking as if there were two different points of view among beings with identical memories, constructed with identical instructions and using atoms the scientific method cannot distinguish between might make some sense; provided the soul existed. It's complete gibberish otherwise. As I said vitalism is always there just under the surface. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 04:55:28 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 00:55:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com><5EDB6CB08EAE4E2BA4284DCD6C987090@MyComputer> <49D8E8BB.2000801@comcast.net> Message-ID: <0CC73485B8EC4235930C6E8E3411D1C5@MyComputer> Brent Allsop: > John, your thinking that 'almost everyone on this list' believes in > 'vitalism and the soul' is obviously completely wrong. I am quite certain I am not wrong; your very post confirms it. > you are missing the most important point that just because something is > 'behaving' like something else, it is in no way fundamentally and > phenomenally like it. I'll tell you one thing, I certainly won't have to look very far to find an example of a profoundly anti-scientific statement made by someone who claims not to believe in the soul or vitalism. It behaves like bread and wine but really it's the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Yep vitalism just under the surface. > all this has to do with the well accepted idea around the so called 'hard > problem' which you seem to completely, dismiss It's so hard that not only don't we know the answer we don't even know the question. John K Clark From moulton at moulton.com Mon Apr 6 05:50:25 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:50:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 19:34 -0700, spike wrote: > > Gentlemen please, we have slain this thread. Do let us leave it in the > grave, shall we? Spike Can I suggest instead of saying "Gentlemen" that you may want to use "Gentlepersons" since persons is gender inclusive or perhaps "Gentlebeings" or "Gentleentities". Also let me observe that just saying that you want to slay the thread might not get the results you want. As we have seen the same issues have a tendency keep coming back often with a different Subject line. Fred From jadams.neuro at yahoo.com Mon Apr 6 04:36:28 2009 From: jadams.neuro at yahoo.com (Jimmy Adams) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:36:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Transhuman screenplays In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904051630o7335931cv11a2e63d4185134e@mail.gmail.com> References: <588208.56578.qm@web57404.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <6d342ad70904051630o7335931cv11a2e63d4185134e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <528276.59731.qm@web57415.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Hi I'd changed the subject title. The Link didn't work right in my last email. I tried the 21st Century Kids Screen Play If that doesn't work, then cut and paste: http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/21stcenturykids.html Yahoo doesn't let me preview the email before sending it, so I can't correct any mistakes; primitive software, so last century! ;) I'll try to answer the questions below... ________________________________ From: Florent Berthet To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, April 5, 2009 6:30:30 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism Florent: Hi Jimmy, I've just read your amazon review of Shannon's book, and I'll soon check the script, it seems interesting. About the movie, when you say there was no interest for it in Hollywood, what were the reasons exactly ? What kind of audience are you looking at ? Jimmy: The type of audience is for children to open their minds about new ways of thinking, and understanding the future. It is to be fun and educational, it will be cool to live in the future! Why Hollywood doesn't like it? It's educational. Hollywood is for entertainment, they don't care about teaching new ideas or new points of view. They want something to make a fast buck. They are not in the education business, they are in the entertainment business. They want fast action scenes, blow something up, the more violence the better. They want people to buy tickets, not educate them. Florent: Those issues are important because I think we need something that can be seen as the next Matrix in terms of success. By the way, I find it pretty impressive and encouraging how big was that success given the topics involved. I don't think I would have bet on it at first (sure, there was the Keanu Reeves card, but still...). Jimmy: The Matrix movies were about violence first, lots of guns, action, and destoying things. It wasn't about transhumanism in the sense of living forever, or making the world better, or living in peace. It was about violence for the fun of it, and that sold tickets. (and teach children that it is O.K. to be violent) Florent: As for my personal screenplay, I have the overall picture and I'm now getting into the details. The story takes place in the near future (around fifty years from now, definitely less than a hundred years), in a recently created virtual world where the humans can upload themselves and live ? la Egan's Permutation City, but with real mind-blowing epic fun. I will try to make it clear that it's actually a trully possible future by making people understand during the beginning that some years in the past, a team of scientists succeeded in making an AGI, which quickly managed to get the interest and sympathy of the people by being really smart, funny, and by being a great advisor on every subject. Then this AGI gained more political influence, and eventually, since she was so popular, some governments were forced to apply what she was proposing. Year after year, people could see the great improvements taking place all over the world, and finally, one day she introduced the virtual world with a speech along those lines: "During the past years, you have been giving me your trust. You allowed me to help you by all the necessary means, and together we have been able to get rid of most of the major world issues. But this is nothing compared to what I can offer you today. Let's try something : just imagine the best thing that could happen in your life. Go on, try it, even the craziest thing you can think of. Done ? Good. Well I can assure you that whatever that is, I have *way* better for you. Welcome to your new home." Jimmy: This sounds like the central computer in the movie "I Robot" Victoria (?) "We will help you humans (by force, since humans can't help themselves) Florent: So that is basically the starting point and it shouldn't take more than a tenth of the movie's duration. For the rest, it's pretty tricky do make a fiction where nothing is going wrong or where there isn't any real threat involved, but it's not at all unsolvable. Indeed, for once we can use an environment where there aren't any limits. We can literally make the best action scenes ever because, well, screw the laws of physics! Same thing with the mystery or weirdness of the events, the beauty of the sets, or anything that can shape the story. The only limit is the imagination, and it will also be a key point within the movie itself. Jimmy: "screw the laws of physics!" is part of the problem with movies, spaceships that make a sound in space (no sounds in space), Time travel, (there is no past nor future to go to, only the now), Parallel Dimensions (No rich me, no dead me, no heaven, no hell,..there is only one me and there is only one you, lets just deal with that and maybe people will stop killing each other, since there is no other copies of themselves.). Science Fiction uses these tools but wouldn't it be better to write science fiction on the hard realities.(even 21st Century Kids uses time travel). But if I were to write something I would use only hard science, to teach that a lot can be done with this universe. Lots of people seem to believe what they see, and if they are shown only science mysticism, they can't understand realism. But realism doesn't sell movie tickets. (or can it?) Florent: The guideline is about a young guy that will wake up in that world (for a very valid reason...), not knowing where he is, and discovering the life in there. In particular, he will discover the Games (yes, with a capital G.), and how pretty much everything will be about them from now on. The games, like I said, will take place in a context of infinite possibilities, which will permit some never saw before kinds of stuff. The kinds there were in Tron but a lot more complex and fun, and not only based on techno-creepy environments. Every part of them must be highly attractive. After all, the aim is to make people really really want that future. Jimmy: "Make people really want that future" of Games? I don't like or care for computer games, or most games in real life. OK, I like sailing and chess, but that is about it. You want to force people to like baseball, football, fotbal (soccer) and other sports? What about freedom of choice? There are 16 different types of personalities, not every one is an alpha male, or a hunter. A simulation would have to have something to match all the different types of personalities. Personally I don't want to come back (after cryonics) in a simulation. I want a biological ageless body in the real world. But that is my choice, and if you want to come back in a simulation that is your choice; the red pill, or the blue pill, but everyone should have the right to chose. Maybe the guy in your movie choose the simulation world but notices that the real world is trying to unplug the simulation world and becomes the hero in the simulation world by making a friend in the real world to help them out? Just an idea. Florent: After having finished the screenplay (it's far from being done), and given the nature of most of the scenes, a finely detailed storyboard will be the least I can do to hope making a big director go woo-hoo. That's why the time and efforts needed are huge, but so could be the potential results. Jimmy: Good luck, Larry and Andy Wachowski, used very detailed storyboards to sell their story. They also had a "name" in the comic book world. Florent Berthet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 06:07:04 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 23:07:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] In-Reply-To: <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> Message-ID: http://fora.tv/2009/03/24/Ask_a_Scientist_Sex_and_War#chapter_03 From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 6 06:14:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:14:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] In-Reply-To: <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090406011318.022dc4d8@satx.rr.com> At 10:50 PM 4/5/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: >On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 19:34 -0700, spike wrote: > > > > Gentlemen please, we have slain this thread. Do let us leave it in the > > grave, shall we? > >Can I suggest instead of saying "Gentlemen" that you may want to use >"Gentlepersons" Yes, as a general rule, but note that Spike was specifically addressing (and mildly chiding) Lee and Rafal, who are indeed gentlecritters but also gentlemen. Damien From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 6 06:16:24 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 23:16:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] In-Reply-To: <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com><49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it><7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com><49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com><7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com><49D71659.80201@rawbw.com><7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> Message-ID: >...On Behalf Of > Fred C. Moulton > Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] > > > On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 19:34 -0700, spike wrote: > > > > Gentlemen please, we have slain this thread. Do let us leave it in > > the grave, shall we? > > Spike > > Can I suggest instead of saying "Gentlemen" that you may want > to use "Gentlepersons" since persons is gender inclusive or > perhaps "Gentlebeings" or "Gentleentities"... True. I would go for the really inclusive term gentlelifeforms, but since we may be simulated beings at this moment, even this could be considered presumptuous. The prefix "gentle" owes its etymology not to a particular behavior, but rather towards the tradition of land ownership, and the inherent defacto ownership of the human that worked that land, from which we derive the term "genteel." The term is more about socio-economic class than nonvoilence. In modern times we have an ever growing awareness of any reference to slavery, so we must strike the gentle from gentle lifeforms. > Also let me observe that just saying that you want to slay > the thread might not get the results you want. As we have > seen the same issues have a tendency keep coming back often > with a different Subject line. Fred This I have noticed too Fred. We are forced to recognize there is a delicate topic here that plenty of posters to this forum are eager to discuss. Very well. I do ask everyone here to think carefully, consider the feelings of the readers, be conscious of the fact that your words can be seen by anyone forever. Be like the ants with the two-hole problem: step back, recognize there may be a better way so that everyone wins. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 07:15:39 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 17:15:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/6 John K Clark : >> Going from that near-truism to your suicidal proposition is a complete >> non-sequitur that ignores *point of view*. > > That is obviously false, UNLESS my basic premise is untrue. Talking as if > there were two different points of view among beings with identical > memories, constructed with identical instructions and using atoms the > scientific method cannot distinguish between might make some sense; > provided the soul existed. It's complete gibberish otherwise. Most on this list agree with your premises but the conclusion that one's consciousness will necessarily transfer into the copy isn't obvious. And belief in a soul does not make a difference to the basic argument, since it could be argued that even if God miraculously duplicated your soul in the copy this *still* wouldn't result in consciousness being transferred. -- Stathis Papaioannou From moulton at moulton.com Mon Apr 6 08:41:08 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:41:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Israel/Germany/Japan, as compared to France In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904052120x71971281yd5950d576ac3c0d0@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904052120x71971281yd5950d576ac3c0d0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239007268.5478.1334.camel@hayek> On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 21:20 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > I think to gain perspective we need to see how various nations deal > with their challenges... The questions you raise are likely not going to get answered here. The questions are best answered in multiple book length discussions and not in an email list. Be very careful of everything you read on this list or anywhere else. It is important to remember that persons in any country or any religion are not a monolithic whole so we need to be careful to avoid over generalization. About France: For those really interested in France a good place to start is with the French invasion of the Algerian region of Africa and French colonialism in general. Then look at the social situation in France particularly in the suburbs with largely non-European populations. Looking at this will lead to an examination of economic considerations particularly the role of Unions, employment laws and customs, the lack of mobility in job market and similar factors. The extent to which racism plays a role has been mentioned in the news and should also be something to be investigated. Now at this point there likely some fool with fingers poised over their keyboard ready to make some implication about "how some people blame everything on racism" so I will state that "I do not blame everything on racism". I should not even have to add this disclaimer but considering some of the rhetorical crap that has recently appeared I am just being safe. About Japan: Japan is very complex issue. However I was pleased to see the progress in Japan in robotics. In 2006 I saw a live demonstration of the Asimo and was impressed, not overwhelmed but impressed. Now the news of the HRP-4C robot shows that progress is being made: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/16/japans-hrp-4c-fashion-model-robot-unveiled-already-harassed/ Take a look. 1. About Israel I doubt you will get any good discussion of this topic here. So if you are really interested I suggest looking at variety of sources both historical and contemporary. And do not just rely on sources from the USA. For example look at http://english.aljazeera.net/ and compare it to other news outlets such as news outlets in Europe. And part of the answer depends on what you mean by Israel since Israel is occupying areas where it controls the border and thus there are reports of supplies having cost and availability problems due to the border controls. In many respects Israel and the occupied territories are in a similar situation as South Africa under apartheid. > And should the Jewish Israeli majority really be concerned about > their growing Arab population? I suggest you look at all of the people in Israel and all of the territory occupied and all of the people exiled in refuge camps and then consider that if you treat a bunch of people as if they were second class for year after year they might become resentful. The conduct of some of the IDF in Gaza recently is an example. You may want to look at a variety of sites on some of this background for example Amnesty International if you read Hebrew you can go here: http://www.amnesty.org.il/ Can not read Hebrew (neither can I) so try: http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/israel-and-occupied-territories And then compare what you read there with other sources. Fred > John > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From florent.berthet at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 09:01:21 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:01:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Transhuman screenplays In-Reply-To: <528276.59731.qm@web57415.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <588208.56578.qm@web57404.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <6d342ad70904051630o7335931cv11a2e63d4185134e@mail.gmail.com> <528276.59731.qm@web57415.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904060201x175f7969m7344c910f9cc4088@mail.gmail.com> I'll answer to Aleksei Riikonen here and then to Jimmy in order to keep only one movie thread. Aleksei : I agree with you. From what I have read I'm not really sure about Kurzweil's movie, but I hope I'm wrong. It's true also that a bad transhumanist movie would be not only useless but also harmful, and I won't do anything unless I'm sure that it will be great (for example, I won't choose a mid-level director just because no big one accepted the project). I'll use all the necessary time. About rich guys giving money, you said "Some smart rich guys have been rather successfully convinced. See e.g. Peter Thiel. I don't see the SIAI as being seriously strapped for cash, and am not sure whatthey'd actually do if they got substantially more" Peter Thiel is actually the only one who made a substantial donation with $ 250 000, all the others gave $ 100 000 and less. In total, I'm not even sure they reached the million. This is far from sufficient if you want to hire the top computer and cognitive scientists in the world for several years - and unfortunately that's what it takes when you're aiming at creating an AGI. Thiel is a smart guy but it's kinda odd he doesn't give more given his wealth. Same observation for Kurzweil and Martine Rothblatt (who is also making a movie I'm not sure about...). I guess they are reasoning too much as mere entrepreneurs on these issues. Jimmy: "This sounds like the central computer in the movie "I Robot" Victoria (?) "We will help you humans (by force, since humans can't help themselves)" I will do everything I can to make the AGI really seem reliable and trustworthy, like there's no way it's going to raise an army of robots or destroy the planet... I know that's what happens 99% of the time in the movies with AIs but we must get this idea out of people's head. Often, when you talk about mind uploading to non-totally geek guys, they are like "wow hold on! imagine if the computer takes control of your mind or something!". I'm really not sure they would have such an automatic defensive reaction if there weren't all those spooky movies such as Terminator, AI, 2001, Matrix, and so on. We have to break this meme. ""screw the laws of physics!" is part of the problem with movies" Agreed. I meant that it would be the case but only in the virtual world, in which you would be able to go on the moon directly by JUMPING on it, if you want to... But the real world of the movie wouldn't break any law of any kind. Like I said, it must seem to be a totally possible future. So there will not even be any time travel. ""Make people really want that future" of Games? I don't like or care for computer games, or most games in real life. OK, I like sailing and chess, but that is about it. " Yes. Actually there won't be only games. I've not talked about that but it will be shown that you can do whatever you want, sailing and chess included. Some parts of the movie take place in paradisiac lands where you can just chill out. I'm very aware that not everybody is a total computer geek, and we have to make the biggest impact among the biggest number of people. "Personally I don't want to come back (after cryonics) in a simulation. I want a biological ageless body in the real world. But that is my choice, and if you want to come back in a simulation that is your choice; the red pill, or the blue pill, but everyone should have the right to chose." People will have the right to choose. The most important thing being to make them NOT freak out, everything must be as reassuring as possible. About your unplugging idea, I think this would actually happen if uploading was real. Religious or bioluddites radical groups may very well want to shut down everything. That's something that I've already thought about but I'm not sure I will use that, though that will definitely be talked about in the explanation scenes of the beginning. Do not hesitate to share ideas if you have some others. Florent Berthet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Mon Apr 6 10:04:21 2009 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:04:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> Lee: > It was to carpet bomb all of Afghanistan (or perhaps just > the mountainous parts inaccssible to conventional conquest), > and to do so with nuclear weapons, in order to destroy all > resistance past the point of merely driving them into the > stone age, but to crush Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and > all their allies. Was it? As far as I remember it was to nuke Mecca, or the black stone, or something like that. So something different. Not sure to remember well though. s. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 10:55:44 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:55:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The polticial spectrum about French immigration [was: What the France!?] Message-ID: <580930c20904060355l5f01164cm6439b4c7066c80ae@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Many Muslim residents of France are citizens -- on which legal basis > could, or should, be expelled? > > There is no defendable legal basis of course. There is only one > precedent in the modern history of Europe for expelling and abusing > citizens based on their religion and ethnic origin, and I hope we have > learned the lesson and don't wish to repeat it. Actually, what a some Frenchmen, including a few Jews, have in mind is more similar to the expulsion of Algerians of French ethnicity (including third-generation residents) when the country achieved independence, that of German-speaking... majorities from East Prussia (namely from Gdansk/Danzig and Kaliningrad/Koenigsberg) after the end of WWII, of, going backward in time, the Spanish Reconquista. For instance, Guillaume Faye thinks, or used to think, along lines very similar to those of Mirco and Lee on this subject, as it is made clear in * Arch?ofuturisme* and in *La colonisation de l'Europe. Discours vrai sur l'immigration et l'Islam*, the full text of the latter being online here(however, in a text , "La solution de Prom?th?e", which in its Italian version become the afterword to one of my books, he asks rhetorically whether such scenario would really have still sense in a post-singularity, or even a merely transhumanist, society). The official ideology of the French government, however, can better be defined as "authoritarian integrationism", that is "Integrate! Or else". Muslim immigrants are in principle forced to conform entirely to a social, political and legal system that is theoretically and allegedly "abstract" and "impartial", but in fact accomodates the christian and jewish beliefs, ethics, worship, language, mentalities, customs and habits (including their secularised forms) and not so well their Islamic equivalents. This on the line of a tradition of a very high centralisation of power, coming down through Louis XIV the Sun King, Robespierre and De Gaulle, which was employed first to crush without pity any temptation by French provinces to protect a modicum of cultural identity and self-government, then as the French colonialistic policy. Where the English colonists and administrators were inclined to keep in place a kind of social and cultural apartheid in Africa and Asia, the Frenchmen did their best to assimilate natives, imposing in full French law and customs even in affairs of no relevance to the colonial administration or to the the interest of metropolitan France, as was the case for the school system (a common joke still exists in France about the Senegal primary-school children forced by their schoolmasters' whip to chant all together by heart "Ils ?taient grands, ils ?taient blonds, nos ancetres, les Gaulois": they were big, they were blond, our ancestors, the Gauls). Thus, Mr. Sarkozy as a minister had no qualms whatsoever in dealing with the ethnical unrest in the Paris outer ring as if the latter were a war zone in a foreign country, probably sealing its future presidency in the process. Needless to say, this form of "forced assimilation" may well involve a suspension, or at least an open domestication, of the democratic process in all instances where muslims become a majority or would otherwise obtain a political clout. Lastly, a third position is that of much of the French Left and of the French so-called Nouvelle Droite, which can be called "multiculturalism". The general idea here is that muslims should be allowed to regulate their affairs as they see it best, even when such regulations would collide with French laws and traditions (say, chadors, poligamy, school system and programmes, sexual mutilations, sha'riah tribunals, Islamic banking, multilinguism, etc.), but at the same time they should be barred from imposing their views and ways of life on the citizens of a "French ethnicity". This would restore the early-middle ages system where the law governing the life of an individual did not depend on the territory the individual concerned lived in, but on the community he belonged to (the former Roman citizens', a given barbaric tribe, etc.). Many immigrants "officially" support the third solution. In fact, many of them may instead see it just as a temporary solution in view of a future fondamentalist takeover on the basis of sheer numbers; or at the opposite cherish the relative anarchy where they are escape to an extent from ordinary French rules and at the same time are not really subject to the possibly harsher rules that would be imposed on them were a "multicultural" system really implemented. All in all, none of those "solutions" has any chance of working at all unless the flow of new immigrants is first slowed down. To say the least, because latent or not-so-latent conflicts already exist that are not between muslims and "ethnical French", but amongst the immigrant communities themselves (which are far from being religiously or ethnically or linguistically homogenous), and because a growing mass of illegal immigrants is obviously not very prone to expulsion, assimilation or even self-government on the French territory, as it effectively escapes the controls that all such policies would require in the first place. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 11:47:49 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 13:47:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A small suggestion [was Re: To Arms!] In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904051706n494913cexb4b8ed72331a5d2b@mail.gmail.com> <1238997025.5478.1232.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <580930c20904060447l2249209fnfc1ee99457166d11@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 8:16 AM, spike wrote: >so we must strike the gentle from gentle lifeforms. Indeed. We should perhaps conclude that "Hey, whatever you are" might be the most polite and politically correct way to address the subscribers to this list as a whole. A small step for this list, a big step for the final success of a truly transhumanist netiquette. Even though our impact on the public opinion is not what we could hope for, things are really growing by leaps and bounds on other fronts. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 12:02:16 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:02:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > And belief in a soul does not make a difference to the basic > argument, since it could be argued that even if God miraculously > duplicated your soul in the copy this *still* wouldn't result in > consciousness being transferred. I do not want to beat a dead horse, but what is really the point of going on debating for the umpteenth time whether "consciousness" is "transferred" or not by a given process when the very *existence* of such a thing remains to be defined and demonstrated in the first place? As mentioned another time, it is highly probable that any such process will be considered as providing "continuity" to the identity of the individual concerned whenever this will end up being the dominant social perception. In such circumstances, while it will remains impossible to persuade those who choose to think otherwise, the opposite view will quickly become a marginal, somewhat lunatic belief, adversely affecting the everyday life of those who will actually act in accord with their ideas on the subject. -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Apr 6 13:16:30 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 08:16:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Extropy List and Rules Message-ID: Shall we return this list to the mind-blowing, insightful, outrageous, critical, humous, amazing and high-minded discussions about the state of the world and the future? This list sets the reputation of its members, Extropy, and transhumanism in general. Here is the rules as stated by Extropy Institute. We no longer have the team of moderators (LATTE) but we do have moderators and who mind the rules: "EXTROPY-CHAT" LIST AGREEMENT: We have a few rules about how you interact with the list. 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Name: atte2dfb.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 13:19:32 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 23:19:32 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/6 Stefano Vaj : > On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> And belief in a soul does not make a difference to the basic >> argument, since it could be argued that even if God miraculously >> duplicated your soul in the copy this *still* wouldn't result in >> consciousness being transferred. > > I do not want to beat a dead horse, but what is really the point of > going on debating for the umpteenth time whether "consciousness" is > "transferred" or not by a given process when the very *existence* of > such a thing remains to be defined and demonstrated in the first > place? > > As mentioned another time, it is highly probable that any such process > will be considered as providing "continuity" to the identity of the > individual concerned whenever this will end up being the dominant > social perception. > > In such circumstances, while it will remains impossible to persuade > those who choose to think otherwise, the opposite view will quickly > become a marginal, somewhat lunatic belief, adversely affecting the > everyday life of those who will actually act in accord with their > ideas on the subject. I should have gone further to say that not only will some claim "it won't really be me" if the soul is magically duplicated, they will claim the same thing even if the consciousness (whatever that may or may not be) is magically duplicated. The point I am making is that it isn't a belief in vitalism, souls or even consciousness that leads to this position. There are people on this list who are 100% materialist and still say "it won't really be me". -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 13:56:08 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 23:26:08 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/5 John K Clark : > I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on > mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things > that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: > > [Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > vitalist view. > > It then says: > > "The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many > philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." > > But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the > soul. > > John K Clark > I will just say quietly at the bottom of this thread that I do in fact agree with you, although it has taken me many years to get to this point, and I don't quite know what to make of it. For me, the inescapable answer to the "but it's not me" objection is "well then, show us this me". It's just not possible; whatever you point at that might be you leads to absurdity. We're not dual beings, natural and supernatural, because consciousness affects the mind; we talk about it. It's all natural. It either bleeds in or it is entirely disconnected and thus sliced away with Occam's razor. No middle ground. We're not "the process", because there just isn't any process; what is it to be a process? Is it still a process if it is run on a time sharing machine? How about if you get one tick of run time per century? Where is your consciousness in between ticks? What about if you are moved around in memory from tick to tick, or to a different machine, or duplicated? We're not "the pattern", because how can you be data? With the right transform, the right decoding, every piece of data is every other piece. Are we some platonic object, more akin to a triangle than anything else? How does that even make sense? Or, does a lookup table that acts exactly like me qualify as me, and if not, why not? The trouble this leads "me" to, is that there is no interpretation of what "I" am that leaves "me" with any definition of "me". Just a lot of processing and data and meat with delusions of grandeur. And so, in the uploading/teleporting/what-have-you debate, "I" find that "I" wouldn't be scared of walking into that uploading machine. Rather, "I" wonder why? What on earth am "I" working so hard to preserve in the first place? So many meaningless eddies in the flow? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 15:44:13 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:44:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> Message-ID: <09F334BD2F7842E09EB9FD34DFCECD91@MyComputer> "Stathis Papaioannou" > Most on this list agree with your premises Oh they say they do, they even believe they do. But the thing is that vitalism is like the air; it's so ubiquitous that most people never notice it, especially in themselves. > but the conclusion that one's consciousness will necessarily transfer into > the copy isn't obvious. Few things could be more obvious, provided you take seriously the idea that vitalism and the soul are total crap and follow that premise to its logical conclusion. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 16:09:10 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:09:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> "Stefano Vaj" > the very *existence* of such a thing [consciousness] remains to be defined > and demonstrated in the first place? I wish I understood why people feel compelled to say silly things like that. There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. Yes it's true that a good definition of consciousness is probably imposable, but that is a small loss. And as for another demonstration of consciousness to prove its existence, well obviously that is completely redundant. > what is really the point of going on debating for the umpteenth time The point is that the thing you want more to happen than anything else in the whole wide world is for your consciousness to continue, even though you believe it doesn't exist. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 16:11:42 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:11:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stathis Papaioannou" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia > 2009/4/6 Stefano Vaj : >> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Stathis Papaioannou >> wrote: >>> And belief in a soul does not make a difference to the basic >>> argument, since it could be argued that even if God miraculously >>> duplicated your soul in the copy this *still* wouldn't result in >>> consciousness being transferred. >> >> I do not want to beat a dead horse, but what is really the point of >> going on debating for the umpteenth time whether "consciousness" is >> "transferred" or not by a given process when the very *existence* of >> such a thing remains to be defined and demonstrated in the first >> place? >> >> As mentioned another time, it is highly probable that any such process >> will be considered as providing "continuity" to the identity of the >> individual concerned whenever this will end up being the dominant >> social perception. >> >> In such circumstances, while it will remains impossible to persuade >> those who choose to think otherwise, the opposite view will quickly >> become a marginal, somewhat lunatic belief, adversely affecting the >> everyday life of those who will actually act in accord with their >> ideas on the subject. > > I should have gone further to say that not only will some claim "it > won't really be me" if the soul is magically duplicated, they will > claim the same thing even if the consciousness (whatever that may or > may not be) is magically duplicated. The point I am making is that it > isn't a belief in vitalism, souls or even consciousness that leads to > this position. There are people on this list who are 100% materialist > and still say "it won't really be me". > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 16:19:55 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:19:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Stathis Papaioannou" > not only will some claim "it won't really be me" if the soul is magically > duplicated, they will claim the same thing even if the consciousness > (whatever that may or may not be) is magically duplicated. Then I am not me, whatever the hell that means. Some people on this list have some silly ideas, but not THAT silly. > The point I am making is that it isn't a belief in vitalism, souls or even > consciousness that leads to this position. There are people on this list > who are 100% materialist and still say "it won't really be me". If they are 100% materialist and believe that then they are also 100% illogical. John K Clark From ain_ani at yahoo.com Mon Apr 6 16:12:28 2009 From: ain_ani at yahoo.com (Michael Miller) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 09:12:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <192601.80084.qm@web31501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Emlyn said: For me, the inescapable answer to the "but it's not me" objection is "well then, show us this me". It's just not possible; whatever you point at that might be you leads to absurdity. -- Emlyn - the reason people will not accept this is because what we mean by the word 'me' can never refer to something outside of oneself. The word necessarily encompasses a sense of interiority. Anything which one can point to and say "that" cannot, logically, be "me". This is the only reason, and it's not because of a belief in some metaphysical self, it's because our conventions about the word don't allow us to use it in reference to something oneself does not inhabit. The self can be referred to in the third person is not the self, our grammar of thought doesn't work in that way. Of course, the flipside to this is that we do not have the same conventions regarding 'you', 'she' or 'he'. Therefore, it is perfectly permissible (and comprehensible) to say, "that (simulation) is her in exactly the same way that this (body) is her". But a "that" can never be "me"...it will only ever be a that, he or she. (Or you). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 17:04:08 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 17:04:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 4/6/09, John K Clark wrote: > I wish I understood why people feel compelled to say silly things like > that. There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. > Yes it's true that a good definition of consciousness is probably > imposable, but that is a small loss. And as for another demonstration of > consciousness to prove its existence, well obviously that is completely redundant. > John I know it is one of your favorite words, but, imposable means - Capable of being imposed or laid on. Perhaps you mean impossible? (As Google asks, if you search on 'imposable'). Unlike 'consciousness' which has a plethora of definitions. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 17:15:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:15:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20904061015y60d4a255md0addb8d6ae0b6fa@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 6:09 PM, John K Clark wrote: > I wish I understood why people feel compelled to say silly things like that. Why, obviously you have to study evolutionary psychology or NLP more in depth to deal with this difficult issue. :-) More seriously, I obviously do not deny the operational usefulness of concepts such as consciousness or personality - which we are relatively ready to recognise even to things such as legal entities . Simply, we should realise that they are *constructs*, not "essences" which can be investigated or discussed per se. > There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. How would you know? Exceptions keep popping in my head... :-) > The point is that the thing you want more to happen than anything else in > the whole wide world is for your consciousness to continue, Yes. And you know the reason is of that? Ask yourself a few question, before rushing to "obvious" answers... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 18:25:00 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:25:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Extropy List and Rules In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2009/4/6 Natasha Vita-More : > Shall we return this list to the mind-blowing,?insightful, outrageous, > critical, humous, amazing and high-minded discussions about the state of the > world and the future?? This list sets the reputation of its members, > Extropy, and transhumanism in general. I find there to be so little response to my posts, especially the technical ones, that I am considering searching for another list. Anyone interested in a space anchor? (A variant use of gravity gradient.) Keith From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 18:31:27 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 13:31:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Extropy List and Rules In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <55ad6af70904061131p359a7379y32e28bc68a0ad3da@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > 2009/4/6 Natasha Vita-More : >> Shall we return this list to the mind-blowing,?insightful, outrageous, >> critical, humous, amazing and high-minded discussions about the state of the >> world and the future?? This list sets the reputation of its members, >> Extropy, and transhumanism in general. > > I find there to be so little response to my posts, especially the > technical ones, that I am considering searching for another list. I've previously recommended the open manufacturing list for engineering and manufacturing. http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing There's also a list for the colonization of Mars that Google helped deploy last year around April: http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle Other lists: http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html I would also consider posting to the arocket list on the exrocketry server if you want to talk with the NewSpace guys- Armadillo Aerospace, Masten, XCOR, the works. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 6 18:53:59 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:53:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.co m> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> At 11:26 PM 4/6/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >"I" find that "I" >wouldn't be scared of walking into that uploading machine. Rather, "I" >wonder why? What on earth am "I" working so hard to preserve in the >first place? So many meaningless eddies in the flow? "Meaningless" is a clue. Meaning implies a purpose chosen (or recognized) by an entity using what Dennett and others call "the Intentional Stance." If that entity *comprises* eddies in a flow, then the eddies are not meaningless; they are the very basis of meaning. Why am "I" working hard to preserve it? Because "I" am a device built with that powerful drive, to preserve the ensemble of matter that in principle passes along a bundle of its own gadgets with how-2-build-and-operate-a-me-like-thing instructions or hardware . And some of those gadgets are memetic rather than genetic. And so on. Natural selection builds devices like us to have conscious awareness (as John Clark keeps insisting, whether he'd put it this way or not, and I don't hear anyone disagreeing)--that is, to function from an Intentional Stance. This is not an accident or a drill. The rest of the argument is just filling in the dots. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 19:36:50 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 21:36:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904061236w6d08a34cn4c0e33acf2ae8eeb@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Why am "I" working hard to preserve it? Because "I" am a device built with > that powerful drive, to preserve the ensemble of matter that in principle > passes along a bundle of its own gadgets with > how-2-build-and-operate-a-me-like-thing instructions or hardware . And some > of those gadgets are memetic rather than genetic. And so on. Natural > selection builds devices like us to have conscious awareness (as John Clark > keeps insisting, whether he'd put it this way or not, and I don't hear > anyone disagreeing)--that is, to function from an Intentional Stance. This > is not an accident or a drill. > > The rest of the argument is just filling in the dots. Oh, wow, has somebody started speaking in Italian suddenly, that I am not feeling such an Alien anymore in such discussion? :-))) -- Stefano Vaj From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 19:45:51 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:45:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904061245i4a4df0e5pdb1e35627e3d2caf@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:09 AM, John K Clark wrote: > "Stefano Vaj" >> the very *existence* of such a thing [consciousness] remains to be defined >> and demonstrated in the first place? > > I wish I understood why people feel compelled to say silly things like that. > There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. > Yes it's true that a good definition of consciousness is probably imposable, > but that is a small loss. And as for another demonstration of consciousness > to prove its existence, well obviously that is completely redundant. There is a difference between "thinking", the thing that brains do, and the folksonomy references to this thingy called 'consciousness'. Originally you started this thread asking about why people still cling to souls, spirits, consciousness, etc. I submit that it's entirely possible that everyone is very deeply confused about these terms. ;-) I (think I) like thinking, but I don't think it's the same thing as consciousness. (Hah! Throw that into your zen kettle and cook it.) >> what is really the point of going on debating for the umpteenth time > > The point is that the thing you want more to happen than anything else in > the whole wide world is for your consciousness to continue, even though > you believe it doesn't exist. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 6 19:50:36 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 15:50:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer><580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com><1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> <580930c20904061015y60d4a255md0addb8d6ae0b6fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Stefano Vaj" > I obviously do not deny the operational usefulness of concepts such as > consciousness or personality - which we are relatively ready to recognise > even to things such as legal entities . Simply, we should realise that > they are *constructs*, not "essences" which can be investigated or > discussed per se. Part of that you got right, intelligence is certainly a construct, and although I can't prove it with mathematical precision I am absolutely certain consciousness is too. In fact, not only am I absolutely certain I'm probably correct too. However the other part you got exactly backwards. An essence is the point where you stop asking "what is this made of?" so there is little that can be said about an essence. The soul is an essence, that's one reason the soul is crap. A construct on the other hand is made of parts so there is lots you can say about it and lots of investigations into it that actually lead somewhere. ME: >> There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. You: > How would you know? Exceptions keep popping in my head I should have said not one person this side of a Looney Bin. John K Clark From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 6 21:24:44 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:24:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer><580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <1B5B227DD1664928BDB3E80A943F57BA@MyComputer> Message-ID: <928CF5FDFA1C4279ABCD3749449D8CF8@spike> > ...On Behalf Of > John K Clark .... > There is not one person on planet Earth who thinks he does not think. .... > John K Clark Hey, I don't think I think. I think I don't think. I could be wrong of course, but I don't think I think. {8^D I can easily imagine a simulated process with a better soul than mine. I already see software doing some really cool stuff, appearing to make decisions, such as one's oppoenent in a battle sim. I know it is all programmed in, but it sure creates the appearance the opponent is scared, angry, panicked, aggressive, all the stuff that we misguided humans think we are doing when we think we think. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Apr 6 21:38:51 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:38:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Key Issues of Life Extension In-Reply-To: <580930c20904061236w6d08a34cn4c0e33acf2ae8eeb@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904061236w6d08a34cn4c0e33acf2ae8eeb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090406173851.jc8x94mc5c0ss48o@webmail.natasha.cc> In your view, what do you think are the current 5 (or more) key issues concerning living indefinitely? These issues can be located in any field and relate to biology, engineering, technology, science, business, economics, environment, politics, etc. Thanks, Natasha From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 22:53:53 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 16:53:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Is this an April Fool's hoax? was What's wrong with this picture? Message-ID: I offered this up sans substantive clues so you could have some fun with it. But no one seemed interested. So here it is again, with spoilers below. Go to the website and check it out, or read the spoilers and then check it out. Your call. http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-04-02/u-professor-discovers-liquid-salt-water-mars * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ************************************* In the middle of the piece, we find the comment: "When Phoenix returned to Earth Nov. 10, 2008, researchers analyzed the soil collected from the lander." But I'm sure no Mars mission has returned any samples to Earth. I then went to the top of the Michigan Daily web page and saw that the article was dated April 1st. I have not even checked the Phoenix mission website to confirm. Maybe I should do that before I embarrass myself (again). Naaaaaah. Best, Jeff Davis From sparge at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 23:31:39 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:31:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is this an April Fool's hoax? was What's wrong with this picture? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/10/phoenix-team-divided-are-the-mars-liquid-water-observations-a-matter-of-belief/ -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 6 23:55:56 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:55:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Is this an April Fool's hoax? was What's wrong with this picture? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090406184846.02473588@satx.rr.com> At 04:53 PM 4/6/2009 -0600, Jeff D wrote: >In the middle of the piece, we find the comment: > >"When Phoenix returned to Earth Nov. 10, 2008, researchers analyzed >the soil collected from the lander." > >But I'm sure no Mars mission has returned any samples to Earth. I >then went to the top of the Michigan Daily web page and saw that the >article was dated April 1st. I assumed this was a journalistic error or confusion (of which the world has more than it has journalistic facts). And the Michigan Daily is run by kids. Even supposedly groan-up papers make the most astounding blunders on every page. In the Philadelphia Inquirer recently, an interview with the science fiction genius Samuel R. Delany was replete with clangers, and one I liked especially was: <"His range of characters was unprecedented," said Philadelphia sci-fi and fantasy writer Michael Swankier, author of The Dragons of Babel. > Swankier. Dogawmighty. I wonder what Michael Swanwick thought of that. Damien Broderick From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 23:58:20 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:58:20 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/7 John K Clark : > "Stathis Papaioannou" > >> not only will some claim "it won't really be me" if the soul is magically >> duplicated, they will claim the same thing even if the consciousness >> (whatever that may or may not be) is magically duplicated. > > Then I am not me, whatever the hell that means. Some people on this list > have some silly ideas, but not THAT silly. Perhaps we could ask the list: is there anyone who would ordinarily refuse destructive teleportation but would accept if guaranteed that their soul/ consciousness/ precious bodily fluids would be duplicated? -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 01:41:11 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 11:11:11 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904061841m4e61d2e8qb224147febd667b1@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/7 Damien Broderick : > At 11:26 PM 4/6/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > >> "I" find that "I" >> wouldn't be scared of walking into that uploading machine. Rather, "I" >> wonder why? What on earth am "I" working so hard to preserve in the >> first place? So many meaningless eddies in the flow? > > "Meaningless" is a clue. Meaning implies a purpose chosen (or recognized) by > an entity using what Dennett and others call "the Intentional Stance." If > that entity *comprises* eddies in a flow, then the eddies are not > meaningless; they are the very basis of meaning. Well, that little bit of poetry was sloppy, and I knew it was when I wrote it, so apologies. I had just a few paragraphs earlier discounted the idea that we are the eddies; it is the same concept as us being the process. That we are the "live" sequence of computation doesn't make sense to me because, fundamentally, computation is in the eye of the beholder. One man's computation is another's jostling of atoms, the grinding out of the great state machine of the universe for ever increasing values of t. > > Why am "I" working hard to preserve it? Because "I" am a device built with > that powerful drive, to preserve the ensemble of matter that in principle > passes along a bundle of its own gadgets with > how-2-build-and-operate-a-me-like-thing instructions or hardware . And some > of those gadgets are memetic rather than genetic. And so on. Natural > selection builds devices like us to have conscious awareness (as John Clark > keeps insisting, whether he'd put it this way or not, and I don't hear > anyone disagreeing)--that is, to function from an Intentional Stance. This > is not an accident or a drill. > > The rest of the argument is just filling in the dots. > > Damien Broderick I don't buy the argument from natural selection completely. I can't help seeing it as an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. The intentional stance, a component of ourselves, is no more sacred than any other part. In a transhumanist forum, it should be as highly suspect as all the other accidents of evolution that we happen to find ourselves blessed/saddled with. The more I read of modern neuroscience (which isn't much, but some), the more of an impression I get that we, mentally, are made of a whole lot of fairly distinct and in many cases autonomous modules, with some kind of process sitting over the top of (or in fact to the side of) this unruly mob, whose job is to take the decisions made by the other pieces and concoct a plausible intentional stream to explain these actions (to "me", whatever that is). It's more like a sophisticated PR department than a control mechanism; rationalization after the fact rather rational process. I think of this like the government department in "Yes, Minister"; "I" am the minister, the modules and so on doing the real work (or lack thereof) are the department, going on with how they do things mostly regardless of any sense of control I might have, and in between us is Sir Humphrey, managing the flow of communication, convincing me that the ongoing actions of the department were my ideas in the first place, and congratulating me on my wisdom. So from what seems like a more external, objective point of view, we're just complex machines with ideas above our station. Our much cherished first person consciousness looks a lot like so much bullshit, really. The problem we have with uploading and so forth is not one of function (clearly the upload/copy will be identically as functional), it's a problem with maintaining the illusion of identity. So we tend to be happy with suggestions like "let's just upload one neuron at a time". It's just a destructive upload performed in an overly complex way, not to actually preserve our identity (because, let's face it, we don't even know what that is; are you the same person every morning when you wake from sleep?), but to preserve the illusion of identity (if I'm awake the whole time, and there's no logical discontinuity of consciousness, then that seems ok). The very intractability of the consciousness debate says one thing to me; that we are asking the wrong questions. That our premises are so off target that they are not even wrong, just orthogonal across multiple dimensions to anything real. Evolution produced a species that continues, in a very particular environment. We already know that our built-in intuitions about how the physical world works are spectacularly wrong (see Richard Dawkins' discussions of Middle World). I suspect that extends to consciousness and identity. I don't think we get to go much further in our understanding of and interaction with the physical world, without losing our intuitive sense of what it is to be ourselves. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 02:36:52 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:36:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <09F334BD2F7842E09EB9FD34DFCECD91@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <09F334BD2F7842E09EB9FD34DFCECD91@MyComputer> Message-ID: <62c14240904061936y71d61398j176e56cc9c35fbd7@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:44 AM, John K Clark wrote: > "Stathis Papaioannou" >> Most on this list agree with your premises > > Oh they say they do, they even believe they do. But the thing is that > vitalism is like the air; it's so ubiquitous that most people never notice > it, especially in themselves. Most John K Clark emails make sweeping generalities about "most people" and have a tone suggesting that this same majority is certainly comprised of fools and idiots. The interesting thing is that I am really never sure if the majority is or should be inclusive of the author with whom I agree. :) 'Just an observation. I'm confident this will in no way upset your consistent style. From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 02:49:45 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:49:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > Perhaps we could ask the list: is there anyone who would ordinarily > refuse destructive teleportation but would accept if guaranteed that > their soul/ consciousness/ precious bodily fluids would be duplicated? > Well, I don't really have anywhere useful to teleport "to" at the moment, but if there is some kind of compensation backing that guarantee... Then I might be tempted to teleport to anywhere, then try to collect the compensation when I later claim that my "qualia feels all wrong" because I know for sure there's no way to disprove my claim. But on the grounds of honesty, I have to admit that I'm ambivalent regarding teleportation. By the time we have the technology so it would matter, we'll also have either ReallyGood drugs / effective mind reprogramming so any nagging guilt I might feel can also be simply excised. From brent.allsop at comcast.net Tue Apr 7 03:57:35 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:57:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> Ask everyone what they think. Great idea Stathis. That is precisely the purpose of this topic at canonizer.com: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/48 (Also, joining the yes camp (or any supporting sub camp) gets you one vote with the Transhumanist canonizer. I trust the moral judgment of such people much more than no people.) And nobody has to guess when merging all the similar responses e-mailed, and nobody has to tally them all up. And when anyone converts to another camp, everyone will see it instantly. And we won't have to keep asking such questions, and re answering the question for everyone over and over again add infinitum. Wouldn't it be great to know concisely, quantitatively, what all transhumanists think, and also what everyone else thinks, and why? I think such knowledge would have a profound effect on the world for good, and would allow us to much more powerfully propagate such good memes. As you can see, so far there are 5 people unanimously in the Yes camp. And two of these people are in a supporting sub camp that recognize that there is more to 'uploading' than just a disconected, abstracted system that only abstractly behaves like the original, and is not phenomenally like the original. Mike, when you say you'd just employ drugs to erase some bad memory or whatever, to me such is just as bad as the response I get from people that believe some of their loved ones will go to hell. I ask them if they will be happy in heaven knowing their brother is in hell. Often times they reply with something like: 'God will just make us forget them'. Yea right. In other words, such imaginings are logically impossible for any sufficiently advanced / intelligent being. The theories described in the consciousness is representational and real camp (http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6) predict that there will be effing uploading / transporting techniques that will completely eliminate any and all of these problems, easily, obviously, scientifically with no worries at all for anyone. A short fictionalized account / falsifiable prediction of how this will be done and what it can be phenomenally like is contained in two short chapters of a story starting here: http://home.comcast.net/~brent.allsop/1229.htm#_Toc22030742 As always, I'd love to know, concisely and quantitatively what everyone thinks, especially if such a story converts anyone to a different camp. Upward, Brent Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> Perhaps we could ask the list: is there anyone who would ordinarily >> refuse destructive teleportation but would accept if guaranteed that >> their soul/ consciousness/ precious bodily fluids would be duplicated? >> >> > > Well, I don't really have anywhere useful to teleport "to" at the > moment, but if there is some kind of compensation backing that > guarantee... Then I might be tempted to teleport to anywhere, then > try to collect the compensation when I later claim that my "qualia > feels all wrong" because I know for sure there's no way to disprove my > claim. > > But on the grounds of honesty, I have to admit that I'm ambivalent > regarding teleportation. By the time we have the technology so it > would matter, we'll also have either ReallyGood drugs / effective mind > reprogramming so any nagging guilt I might feel can also be simply > excised. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 7 04:31:51 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:31:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer><09F334BD2F7842E09EB9FD34DFCECD91@MyComputer> <62c14240904061936y71d61398j176e56cc9c35fbd7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7FEEAA1FF8514B8FB8E986E0D897F38E@MyComputer> "Mike Dougherty" > Most John K Clark emails make sweeping generalities And everybody knows that all sweeping generalities are false, every single one of them! John K Clark From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 04:39:39 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 14:09:39 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904062139x59cb6da1qe2c9d8c6766d3507@mail.gmail.com> This "consciousness is real" thing isn't logically consistent. It seems like you think that you can upload someone into "abstract" software and they'll be just like you but not conscious. Call that intelligence Brent* . If I ask Brent* "Are you conscious?", what does he reply? Does he say "Yes", "No", "Not Sure", something else? A faithful upload would say "Yes" (and I believe Brent* would because I think you are a truthful person). So what on earth goes through his software mind, that he answers yes to this question? Does he think he's conscious but he's not? If this is the case, how can you tell that you are not right now actually Brent* ? 2009/4/7 Brent Allsop : > > Ask everyone what they think. ?Great idea Stathis. ?That is precisely the > purpose of this topic at canonizer.com: > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/48 > > (Also, joining the yes camp (or any supporting sub camp) gets you one vote > with the Transhumanist canonizer. ?I trust the moral judgment of such people > ?much more than no people.) ?And nobody ?has to guess when merging all the > similar responses e-mailed, and nobody has to tally them all up. ?And when > anyone converts to another camp, everyone will ?see it instantly. ?And we > won't have to keep asking such questions, and re answering the question for > everyone over and over again add infinitum. ?Wouldn't it be great to know > concisely, quantitatively, what all transhumanists think, and also what > everyone else thinks, and why? ?I think such knowledge would have a profound > effect on the world for good, and would allow us to much more powerfully > propagate such good memes. > > As you can see, so far there are 5 people unanimously in the Yes camp. ?And > two of these people are in a supporting sub camp that recognize that there > is more to 'uploading' than just a disconected, abstracted system that only > abstractly behaves like the original, and is not phenomenally like the > original. > > > Mike, when you say you'd just employ drugs to ?erase some bad memory or > whatever, to me such is just as bad as the response I get from people that > believe some of their loved ones will go to hell. ?I ask them if they will > be happy in heaven knowing their brother is in hell. ?Often times they reply > with something like: 'God will just make us forget them'. ?Yea right. ?In > other words, such imaginings are logically impossible for any sufficiently > advanced / intelligent being. > > The theories described in the consciousness is representational and real > camp (http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6) predict that there will be effing > uploading / transporting techniques that will completely eliminate any and > all of these problems, easily, obviously, scientifically with no worries at > all for anyone. ?A short fictionalized account / falsifiable prediction of > how this will be done and what it can be phenomenally like is contained in > two short chapters of a story starting here: > > http://home.comcast.net/~brent.allsop/1229.htm#_Toc22030742 > > As always, I'd love to know, concisely and quantitatively what everyone > thinks, especially if such a story converts anyone to a different camp. > > Upward, > > Brent > > > > Mike Dougherty wrote: >> >> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Stathis Papaioannou >> wrote: >> >>> >>> Perhaps we could ask the list: is there anyone who would ordinarily >>> refuse destructive teleportation but would accept if guaranteed that >>> their soul/ consciousness/ precious bodily fluids would be duplicated? >>> >>> >> >> Well, I don't really have anywhere useful to teleport "to" at the >> moment, but if there is some kind of compensation backing that >> guarantee... ?Then I might be tempted to teleport to anywhere, then >> try to collect the compensation when I later claim that my "qualia >> feels all wrong" because I know for sure there's no way to disprove my >> claim. >> >> But on the grounds of honesty, I have to admit that I'm ambivalent >> regarding teleportation. ?By the time we have the technology so it >> would matter, we'll also have either ReallyGood drugs / effective mind >> reprogramming so any nagging guilt I might feel can also be simply >> excised. >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 7 05:02:03 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 01:02:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> Message-ID: <067C1A943CEF487FBD1B5EE82567E91B@MyComputer> "Brent Allsop" > Wouldn't it be great to know concisely, quantitatively, what all > transhumanists think, and also what everyone else thinks, and why? That is what's so pathetic about your canonizer, the idea that what they write on it definitely settles the matter of what someone thinks about a matter. Everybody on this list will say they don't believe in vitalism and I am sure they will say the same on your canonizer. I don't think they're lying, I think they sincerely believe vitalism is wrong; but when you start to examine their ideas in detail and debate with them it very soon becomes apparent that they are wrong about what they think. The fact of the matter is that although they don't know it they passionately believe in vitalism; they must if there is any hope for their arguments to make the slightest bit of sense. John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 05:22:54 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:22:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] WWRD? (What will Russia do?) In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> Message-ID: <49DAE32E.7010005@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > I thought that had been established... > > ..unless you regard human beings as a means to an end > '. Very interesting. It proves that Russia is still a strong nation (on the assumption that Nashi is representative). Perhaps some of you have seen the very nice documentary "The Singing Revolution", which showed how Estonians managed to preserve some of their nationalism and patriotism in spite of Soviet domination all the way from 1940 or so through 1990 or so. It interests me that the Soviets felt too weak (or too reluctant for some other reason) to really crack down and deport the leading million or so Estonians into the vastness of central Russia. (They'd moved millions of people around near the end of World War II to suit themselves.) See the documentary, one question came over and over to me: Will the Russians return? Already Estonia is 40% Russian or something like that. My answer was (arrived at an hour or so after seeing the documentary) that we live in a new age, and that the Russian people themselves could no longer feel proud about subduing a weak little neighbor like Estonia. After all, they'd had plenty of excuses in the days of Stalin: "We're doing them a favor, we're spreading international communism". But what now? Now it would be raw power. Yet a friend later told me that I was being naive. "The Russian people will actually be proud of such a move, and will once again exult in Russia's strength." I would love to hear opinions. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 05:25:29 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:25:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] excess posting In-Reply-To: <29B7FF6FF1204A47B481B6EC8523FE99@DFC68LF1> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com><1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D56966.1000601@rawbw.com><7641ddc60904022118p27730463o3b5645c255b461e1@mail.gmail.com> <49D71659.80201@rawbw.com> <29B7FF6FF1204A47B481B6EC8523FE99@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <49DAE3C9.2050208@rawbw.com> Hi Natasha, *One* day or so I did post a lot. Please rate me on posts per week! Lee Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Lee, could you please cut down on the high volume of posts to the list. > > Thank you, > > Natasha > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 05:42:11 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:42:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49CF0DFF.8070602@rawbw.com> <1238356432.8163.2557.camel@hayek> <49D04B6D.2080809@rawbw.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> Fred wrote: >>> And further what they have posting recently in this thread is not even >>> remotely Extropian. >> >> Again, you *know* what these terms mean, and it is for >> the rest of us just to accept, I suppose. > > I suggest that each individual on this list who uses the term > "Extropian" to think long and hard about this. Do you really want to be > associated with the term "Extropian" if the term "Extropian" can be be > seen as compatible with advocating that innocent Muslims should be > expelled from France? I am not. To be associated with (i.e. on the same list as) someone who advocates a certain position. Oh, the horror! Oh, the shame. Indeed, how do you live with yourself? It must be hell. I've never in my life seen anyone so concerned and so scared of what other people *might* think about things that he himself not only didn't say, but argued (sort of, loosely speaking), er, even denounced! How damned weird. The instinct to suppress unwelcome opinions has rarely ever shown itself here in such strength. Okay, out of total sympathy for your predicament and all the others who are *so* sensitive about how guilt by association may work against them, and so as to save you such utter and complete anguish, embarrassment, and shame, I will shut up about what France will do. Hmm. No, never mind. I won't. > I do not want the term "Extropian" twisted until it > includes something like expelling the innocent Muslims > from France. Oh, good God. Of all the silly worries. Your "concern" seems most likely only a cover for the deep discomfort that these heretical ideas are causing you, and more than anything, you seem to just want to shut your eyes and shut your mind to these disagreeable thoughts. I'll bet that your ancestors reacted extremely harshly and in *precisely* the same manner to all the heretic Darwin's extraordinarily disagreeable and upsetting ideas. And I will also bet that they (or, if your particular ones do not happen to be guilty of this charge) or others living at the time reacted in exactly the same non-intellectual and emotional terms, failing to engage in a rational exchange of ideas and failing totally to produce any *argument*. > And remember that deportation of innocent civilians has > been considered a Crime Against Humanity since the Nuremberg > Trials. So Extropians; do you embrace the idea that > advocating a Crime against Humanity is compatible with > the Extropian principles or do you reject it > or do you just not care? What? You want more to join you into a deafening chorus to GET LEE TO SHUT THE HELL UP? Why is that SO incredibly important to you? I have my own ideas (e.g. perhaps it is out of a very deep fear that you might actually *lose* an idea-based exchange), but I shouldn't speculate. Well---I've just now got to this email, and there are plenty more to read (you wrote the above a few days ago). So it will be very interesting if you own "Call to Arms" raises other angry voices of denunciation (all, naturally, quite free from *rational* argument as to why my suggestion to France doesn't lead in the long run to the best solution). Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 05:58:17 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:58:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DAEB79.1040404@rawbw.com> Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Many Muslim residents of France are citizens -- on which legal basis > could, or should, be expelled? > > There is no defensible legal basis of course. There is only one > precedent in the modern history of Europe for expelling and abusing > citizens based on their religion and ethnic origin, and I hope we have > learned the lesson and don't wish to repeat it. Ah! What a welcome relief! An actual *argument*, composed of rational sentences, one right after the other. Thanks, Giulio! I totally concede that there is no legal basis in any established *western* nation for mass deportations. (The U.S. did manage to deport numerous criminals in the old days, and I assume that the new laws that were passed to make this possible didn't conflict very much with existing ones.) > Might is usually right -- but it creates very dangerous > precedents. I also had previously conceded the risks involved in such a move. To me, it's a balancing of risks, that's all. > If Muslim citizens of France become a majority in the next > decades,_they_ may decide to expel non-Muslims on the > basis of might is right. You seem to have joined my side of the debate! Look at the logic here: I am advocating a move that would completely *nullify* the possibility that you bring up, namely that a Muslim majority may act in an unprecedented way against the non-Muslims. Unprecedented, that is, in a western nation! So you seem to be arguing that if the French were to come *close* to expelling them, or if they were to talk about it too much, then this would only increase the chances of them being on the receiving end in the future. What's a *logical* analogy? It's like, say, for a small tribe of American Indians to fail to go kill a murderer among them because (1) murder is wrong (2) if we do kill the murderer, then that will only encourage him to do more killing. Well. Okay, I admitted an improvement. Let me try again: It's like arguing (1) for us to go kill someone is wrong (2) if we debate whether or not to go kill Long Knife then that will only make him angry, and so (3) more people---namely us---will die when Long Knife and his growing sons get capable of taking us all out. Of course, no American Indian tribe who reasoned like that would have survived long, having been replaced by vigorous homicidal maniacs long ago. At one point or another, many tribal members strove towards, or stumbled onto an ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategy). And in such a circumstance, Long Knife would know that his days were numbered. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 06:00:12 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 16:00:12 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <067C1A943CEF487FBD1B5EE82567E91B@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> <067C1A943CEF487FBD1B5EE82567E91B@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/7 John K Clark : > "Brent Allsop" > >> Wouldn't it be great to know concisely, quantitatively, what all >> transhumanists think, and also what everyone else thinks, and why? > > That is what's so pathetic about your canonizer, the idea that what they > write on it definitely settles the matter of what someone thinks about a > matter. Everybody on this list will say they don't believe in vitalism and I > am sure they will say the same on your canonizer. I don't think they're > lying, I think they sincerely believe vitalism is wrong; but when you start > to examine their ideas in detail and debate with them it very soon becomes > apparent that they are wrong about what they think. The fact of the matter > is that although they don't know it they passionately believe in vitalism; > they must if there is any hope for their arguments to make the slightest bit > of sense. You haven't explained how vitalism or dualism would add anything new to the claim that "it's not really me" when one already agrees that the copy will be *exactly* like me, from materialist considerations alone. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jrd1415 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 06:08:11 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:08:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> Message-ID: Here, from the archives, is the post that starts it all. http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-June/007050.html Best, jeff davis On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:04 AM, scerir wrote: > Lee: >> It was to carpet bomb all of Afghanistan (or perhaps just >> the mountainous parts inaccssible to conventional conquest), >> and to do so with nuclear weapons, in order to destroy all >> resistance past the point of merely driving them into the >> stone age, but to crush Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and >> all their allies. > > Was it? As far as I remember it was to nuke Mecca, or the > black stone, or something like that. So something different. > Not sure to remember well though. > s. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 06:11:09 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:11:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DAEE7D.8020702@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > > The decline demographic numbers is a prime cause of the > > economic malaise affecting the west. > > ---Lee > > And I call that counter-productive if not completely dangerous > bunk. I say that if one person uses x material resources, > energy at a certain standard of living, 100 persons will use > far more than 100x in resources. You would have a *chance* to be right (though I would still suspect not) if technology were not constantly improving. Mass numbers assist technological breakthroughs because of the higher numbers of geniuses and others who contribute mightily to the advances. An American farmer today can grow five or six times the amount of food that he could in the 1950s on a single acre of land (or something like that). If you read about it, you'll be utterly impressed with the results of the green revolution. So your statement above just seems quite wrong, in principle as well as in particular. > My assertion is that overpopulation is a MAJOR drain on efficiency, > resources, energy, not even considering the cheapening of > human value, the stress caused by increased societal pressure, > exploitation, collapse of individual meaning and worth, Haven't quite got to the upcoming verb in that sentence, but I think that all that is poppycock (my own contribution to the standard of list argument here lately). What you write only describes the backward countries, who, usually because of corruption and the unequal distribution of capitalism, have yet to embrace sufficient technology to raise their standards of living---which has the exact *opposite* effect of what you state. Namely, increased standards of living *increase* efficiencies, decrease stresses in living, *decrease* exploitation, loss of human values, collapse of inidividual meaning and so on. That's easy to see, because it is precisely in the most technologically advanced nations that the social trends are the best. Unless you want to resort to the old discredited Comintern line that the west is only achieving these unprecedented levels of prosperity by exploiting all the third world basket cases, which is palpably untrue. I do thank you for your impressive list of references. I'm pretty sure that it would be almost impossible for me to find an equally long list supporting my views, because your view is a la mode, so to speak. For every book pointing out the errors of the left/green coalition, there are five repeating the same claims. In that regard, it's just like global warming. Reciting *more* references to your cause doesn't cause you to win rational debates. Lee > bastards playing members of society against each other and insurmountable > congestion in nearly every bit of infrastructure you can imagine at peak use > and the same gathering dust when they are not used. > > I say that overpopulation is the single most biggest tragedy humanity > suffers > right now, and the only people benefiting from this are the remorseless > bastards > who exploit their fellow humans, by gaming this tragedy like sharks. > > Unfortunately, all this cant be solved. > > * A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay > , John F. Rohe; > Rhodes & Easton, Traverse City, MI 49684, ISBN 1-890394-00-9, > (192p, $19). Also available from Amazon.com > . > Malthus suggested there might be an inverse relationship between > the quantity and the quality of human life. Approximately one > billion people now go to bed hungry every night. Rohe revisits > principles found controversial in 1798 in identifying a root cause > of our unrest. > > * A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of > Great Civilizations > , Clive > Pointing; St. Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-06987-1 (432p, $24), > Penguin USA (Paper) ISBN: 0-140-17660-8 ($15), (EGJ review > ). > > * An Essay on Principle of Population > , Thomas > Robert Malthus; Prometheus, ISBN 1573922552 (paperback), ($9). The > original 1798 essay on population. > > * Excellent Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population > Challenge , Lester R. > Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil; W.W. Norton, 1999, > Worldwatch Institute , ISBN > 0393319067, ($13). Also available from Amazon.com > . > Examines the stakes involved in potentially adding another 3.3 > billion people to the world population over the next fifty years. > > * Beyond Malthus: Population and Power > , Neil > W. Chamberlain; (out of print), (1970). > > * Beyond Malthus: Sixteen Dimensions of the Population Problem > , 1998, Worldwatch > Institute ($5). An excellent and > easily-read introductory paperback. > > * Excellent Beyond the Limits, Confronting Global Collapse, > Envisioning a Sustainable Future > , > Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers; 1992, Chelsea > Green, ISBN 0-930031-55-5 (hard cover) (300p, $19.95), ISBN > 0930031628(paperback) ($15), (EGJ review > ). The > authors contend that the global industrial system has already > overshot some of the earth's vital ecological limits, and could > collapse by the mid-21st century unless we commit to sweeping > changes now. The first two chapters present an excellent > discussion on /exponential growth/. > > * Cheerfully Childless - The > Humor Book for Those Who Hesitate to Procreate, Eller Metter & > Loretta Gomez; Baker & Taylor and Quality Books, 2002, ISBN > 0-9711627-0-0 > > * Curbing Population Growth, An Insider's Perspective on the > Population Movement > , Oscar > Harkavy; Plenum Press, 1995, ISBN 0-306-45050-X, (249p). An > excellent reference book, describing the history of > population-oriented organizations and their funders. > > * Dynamics of Values in Fertility Change > , > Richard Leete (Ed.); Oxford Univ Press, 1999, ISBN 0198294395, > (360p, $85). > > * Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship > , Isaac > Asimov, (out of print). > > * Excellent Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for > a Humane Future > , > W. Hollingsworth; 1996, Seven Locks Press, 800.354.5348, ISBN > 0-929-765-42-7, ($17.95), (review > ). Also > available from Amazon.com > . Unlike > most books, it rightly sees overpopulation as a threat to the > human spirit as well as to our physical well-being. > > * _Extinction or Survival_, M.J. Turner; 1996, Ardmore Publishing, > 875 Ardmore Dr., RR2, Sidney BC, Canada, V8L 5G2, ISBN > 0-9680850-0-8, ($24.95). Carefully researched, this book deals > with the real problems of overpopulation and the resulting > excessive environmental exploitation, showing how the carrying > capacity of Planet Earth is being seriously eroded. > > * _How Does Congress Approach Population and Family Planning Issues: > Results of Qualitative Interviews with Legislative Directors_, > Sally Patterson, David M. Adamson; Rand Corporation > , 1999, ISBN 0833027042, (49p, $8). > Congressional opinions on population issues are highly polarized. > About 90% of Congress consistently votes either for or against > population-related legislation. Thus the remaining 10 percent is > likely to determine the fate of such issues. Researchers > interviewed a sample of legislative directors in this category. > Most felt that the U.S. should continue to play a leading role > internationally, but several noted that their bosses favor more > multilateral approaches. A majority felt that world population > growth is a problem but is not urgent. Nearly unanimous support > was expressed for U.S. support of voluntary family planning if it > excludes abortion. Congress would benefit from more factual > information on population issues. > > * Intended Consequences : Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal > Government in Modern America > , Donald > T. Critchlow; Oxford Univ Press, 1999, ISBN 0195046579, (320p, > $9). Contains 13 essays by well-known feminist scholars and > activists on the major global issues relevant to the environment, > development, and population. The authors discuss issues of racism, > paternalism, and scapegoating. Also discussed are reproductive > technology, the impact of population growth on the environment, > effects of militarism and consumption, and social justice movements. > > * Excellent How Many People Can the World Support? > , Joel > E. Cohen; Norton, New York, 1995, ISBN 0393314952, ($13). A > well-documented and referenced book on the history of human > population growth, and past and current attempt to project human > carrying capacity of the planet. A definitive work on the > population problem. > > * Excellent Juggernaut, Growth on a Finite Planet > , > Lindsey Grant; 1996, Seven Locks Press, ISBN 0-929765-51-6 > (paperback) (363p). An informative and fascinating book which > compellingly presents the social, political, and economic > implications of continued population growth. One of the best > synopsis of the population problem. > > * Excellent Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population > Taboos , > Garrett Hardin. Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-19-507811-X. > (339p, $25), (EGJ review > ). > Wonderfully rich in clear logic, original ideas and insights. > > * Malthusian Worlds: Us Leadership and the Governing of the > Population Crisis > , Ronald > Walter Greene; Harpercollins, 1999, ISBN 0813390737, ($65). > > * Maybe One : A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child > Families > , Bill > McKibben; Simon & Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0684852810, (256p, $17). > The growing population of the U.S. is a significant threat to > world sustainability because of high U.S. consumption levels. > McKibben discusses the concept of having only one child, on a > personal level and from the perspective of impact on the ecosphere. > > * Our Crowded Planet > , > Fairfield Osborn; Greenwood Publishing Group, 1983, ISBN > 0313226393, (240p, $60). A splendid document of contemporary > civilization not because it solves the problem of overpopulation > but because it brings into focus the immediacy of the problem as > an individual, national, and international concern. This book > includes essays by major figures in the arts and sciences, > including Marston Bates, Henry Steele Commager, F. Fraser Darling, > Charles G. Darwin (grandson of _The Origin of Species_ Darwin), > Julian Huxley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Arnold Toynbee, Solly > Zuckerman, and Paul B. Sears. > > * Our Plundered Planet > , > Fairfield Osborn; Little Brown, 1948, (out of print). The author > calculates Earth's carrying capacity at less than 2 billion (p. > 37). An early warning on the population/resource/environment > crisis. This book focused on renewable resources but added > overpopulation to the equation. Osborn saw the nation's forests, > grasslands, and water resources as threatened. "The tide of the > earth's population is rising, the reservoir of the earth's living > resources is falling," the author wrote. "There is only one > solution: Man must recognize the necessity of cooperating with > nature." Fairfield Osborn was a distinguished author, naturalist, > and conservationist. He was president of the New York Zoological > Society and chairman of the Conservation Foundation. > > * Excellent Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change > , > William R. Catton, Jr.; University of Illinois Press, 1980, ISBN > 0-252-00818-9 (hard cover), (270p, $30), ISBN 0-252-00988-6 > (paperback). An important book - well written with a rich > bibliography. > > * Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of > the Human Species > , A. > McMichael; Cambridge Univ. Press,1993, ISBN 0521558719 ($12). This > eloquent and alarming book examines the likely impact on human > health of the ongoing degradation of the planet's ecosystems. > > * Population and Politics Since 1750 > , > William H. McNeill, University Press of Virginia, 1990, ISBN > 0-8139-1257-1, (71p). In this brief discussion, the author ponders > the question: is demography the engine that drives history? > > * Population, Environment and Development > : > Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on > Population, Environment and Development, U.N., United Nations > Publications, 1994, ISBN 9211512654, ($30). Reports on the Expert > Group meeting in 1992, recommending integrating environmental and > population issues into planning and policy making. > > * Population, Evolution, and Birth Control, A Collage of > Controversial Ideas > , Ed. > Garret Hardin; W.H. Freeman, 1964, ISBN 0716706709, (381p). An > engrossing collection of articles, reviews, and criticisms > reflecting all shades of opinion on what is perhaps the most > important social problem facing mankind. > > * Population Fallacies > , Jack > Parsons; Elek/Pemberton, London, 1977, ISBN 0301740313 (286p, out > of print), (review > ). Under > the three basic categories of Common Sense, Scientific, and > Economic Fallacies, the discussion ranges over such topics as the > use of statistics, foretelling the future, military power, > migration, manpower, economic development, space travel, the myth > of the large happy family and the limits to growth. Each fallacy > is clearly stated, solidly documented, thoroughly analyzed and > finally dismissed. > > * Population Geography: Problems, Concepts, and Prospects > , Gary > L. Peters, Robert P. Larkin; Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1999, ISBN > 0787256722, ($47). This textbook is an introduction to population > geography, and covers theories of population growth, demographic > data and processes, population distribution and composition, and > the environment and food supply. Tables, maps, and data are provided. > > * Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and the Environment > : > Seeking a Common Vision for a Troubled World, D. Richard Searle, > Rick Searle; Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995, ISBN > 1550580647, ($14). > > * Population Handbook - A Quick Guide for Journalists, Teachers, etc > ., 70-page booklet, > ISBN 0-917136-09-8. It contains definitions and features > "Calculating the TFR", "How Life TablesWork", etc. > > * Population, A Lively Introduction > , > McFalls; Population Reference Bureau , > 1991, ISBN 9992437618, ($9). > > * Excellent Population: an Introduction to Concepts and Issues > , John > R. Weeks; Wadsworth, 1992, ISBN 0534553052 (hardcover) ISBN > 0-534-17346-2. (579p, $88.00), (EGJ review > ). A > college textbook and a good introduction to population issues, > including terms and definitions. > > * _Population and Environment: a Journal of Interdisciplinary > Studies_, Human Sciences Press, 212.620.8000. This journal deals > with both issues in a comprehensive and integrated manner. > > * Population and the World Bank: Adapting to Change > , World > Bank, 1999, ISBN 0821344404, ($22), (abstract > ). The > global demographic situation has changed dramatically since the > World Bank started population work three decades ago. This > publication discusses how to apply the Bank's Health, Nutrition, > and Population (HNP) Sector Strategy of 1997 to the Bank's work on > population and reproductive health. > > * Population Politics: the Choices that Shape our Future > , > Virginia Abernethy; 1993, Plenum Publishing, ISBN 0-306-44461-5, > (350p, $27). Also available from Amazon.com > . > (Review, titled Why Do Women Have Babies > , Robert A. McConnell). A > provocative book that raises disturbing questions about > demographic and immigration policies and their implications for > the future of the world. A splendid critique of how U.S. foreign > aid and liberal immigration policy result in population growth in > the U.S. and abroad. > > * _Population, Resources and the Environment: The Critical > Challenges_, United Nations Population Fund, 1991, ISBN > 0-89714-101-6. (154p, $25), (EGJ review > ). > > * _Road to Survival_, William Vogt; Sloane, 1948, (review > ). Another > of the classic "early warnings," like Osborn's book, but much > starker - in Vogt's view, the United States in 1948 at 147 million > was already overpopulated, and its self-indulgent materialism > doomed it to eventual extinction. > > > > * The American Dream: Can It Survive the 21st Century? > , Joseph > L. Daleiden; Prometheus Books, 1999, ISBN 157392265X. (550 p., > $25). An ambitious and comprehensive book, offering well > though-out solutions to complex problems. Ed Levy states in a > review that: "Daleiden's basic message, then, is that today's acts > are destroying tomorrow, and that we are stealing, not just > borrowing, from the future and that we must accept the possibility > of disasters if we are to prevent them. ...An additional value of > the book is the validity of its arguments: e.g., the deft > debunking of the 'demographic transition' theory (with the > addition that even if it were true, it would be too late, because > of doubling time, to matter when it kicked in)." > > * The Challenge of Man's Future > , > Harrison Scott Brown; Viking, 1953, ISBN 0813300339. A classic > early warning on impending population and resource problems. > > * The Fear of Population Decline > , > Micheal S. Teitelbaum; ISBN 0126851905, (out of print). > > * The Future of Population: Predictions > , John > I. Clarke; Orion, 1999, ISBN 0297819232, ($4). > > * The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia > , > Garrett Hardin; Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-512274-7, > (153p, $16). (excerpts and review > ). With > clear logic and imaginative insight, Garret Hardin has again given > us a strong helping hand in the unending task of overcoming denial > of the tough issues in population, economics, and ethics. > > * The Population Bomb > , Paul > Ehrlich; ISBN 0891908617, ($22). (PBS review > ), (excerpts > ). This book > looks at the ideas of one scientist whose theories link > overpopulation to a broad range of global problems (somewhat > outdated - instead see _The Population Explosion_ below). > > * Excellent The Population Explosion > , Paul > R. and Anne H. Ehrlich; Simon and Schuster, 1990, ISBN > 0-671-68984-3. (320p, $19), (EGJ review > > additional review ), and (excerpts > ). A classic > work, this superb, closely reasoned, and fact-filled book should > do much to clear the way for badly needed political action. > > * The Stork and the Plow > , Paul > and Anne Ehrlich; Putnam, 1995, ISBN 0-399-14074-3, (384p, $15), > (excerpts ). > Humanity and agricultural fertility are on a collision course; the > stork is threatening to overtake the plow. Yet the very existence > of this dilemma is largely unappreciated by the general public as > well as politically- and ecologically-oriented pundits. > > * The Third Revolution: Environment, Population and a Sustainable > World , > Paul Harrison, I.B. Tauris; in association with the World Wide > Fund for Nature, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0140146598. (359 p, $12.00). > An excellent introduction; (EGJ review > ). > > * Excellent World Population > , > Leon F. Bouvier, Jane T. Bertrand; Seven Locks Press, 1999, ISBN: > 0929765664, (203 p, $13). > "Readable, insightful, scholarly, and objective. Whatever your > view on population growth, few disagree that it presents the > future with some major challenges. An important book about a fast > developing, worldwide problem." -- Richard D. Lamm. > "Bouvier and Bertrand's new book offers a measured and informed > appraisal - for those who would prefer to actually understand." -- > Michael S. Teitelbaum. > > * Excellent World Population Growth > , George > E. Immerwahr; Peanut Butter Publishing, 226 2nd Ave. West, > Seattle, WA 98119, 206.281.5965, ISBN 0-89716-552-7 (184p, $12). > This excellent book explains population growth in clear, concise > terms and contains an excellent demographic appendix. The author, > a demographer with extensive overseas exposure to the population > issue, states that population problems are colossal but not > hopeless and is chiefly concerned for the world's children. /If > you have trouble finding this book, contact Suggestions and > EcoFuture ./ > > > Books on Overpopulation From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 7 06:23:53 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 02:23:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer><02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net><067C1A943CEF487FBD1B5EE82567E91B@MyComputer> Message-ID: <6749F63FA7D746D2A0F28D53D78661AF@MyComputer> "Stathis Papaioannou" > You haven't explained how vitalism or dualism would > add anything new to the claim that "it's not really me" > when one already agrees that the copy will be *exactly* > like me, from materialist considerations alone. For 15 years I've heard people bellow "But that just wouldn't be me!". In those 15 years without exception the arguments proffered to support that claim were completely idiotic; I haven't heard one that wasn't embarrassingly stupid. The only way it could possibly be true is that the copy isn't me because it doesn't have my soul. I don't believe in souls, but I admit I'm a weirdo. John K Clark From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 07:15:30 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:15:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DAEB79.1040404@rawbw.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> <49DAEB79.1040404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904070015l60eedc2fv833f1efd011656fb@mail.gmail.com> Not really, because I think multiculturalism is good -- I would find it extremely boring living in a place where everyone thinks and acts the same. The place where I live would be more boring of a cemetery on a sunday afternoon if not for its multiethnic, multicultural dimension. Of course, provided everyone respects the others, as long as there is no forced assimilation, etc. etc. But what dod Jesus say about throwing the first stone? On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > You seem to have joined my side of the debate! -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 07:19:43 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:19:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904070019y277001e2ua5f9d1bd946f64c7@mail.gmail.com> I think this was not formulated as an actual proposal meant to be taken seriously, but as an intellectual exercise. On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Here, from the archives, is the post that starts it all. > > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-June/007050.html > > Best, jeff davis -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 07:30:56 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:30:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> I like free speech and don't like censorship, so I kind of agree with Lee on this. And there should be no sacred cows that cannot even be mentioned: sacred cows are as good for hamburgers as other cows. But as I said in another thread, if France were to expel its Muslim citizens, it would also be expelling the Western legal system that, flawed as it may be, is not half bad. Our legal system gives a definition of citizenship with associated rights. As I said, nazi Germany is the only recent precedent I can think of in Western Europe where an ethnic group and the legal system have been kicked away. Also, I am often in France, speak fluent French and know Paris and other cities well. I can tell you that the most alive, interesting and fun parts of the city are those where many ethnic and cultural groups coexist. On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Fred wrote: > >>>> And further what they have posting recently in this thread is not even >>>> remotely Extropian. > >>> >>> >>> Again, you *know* what these terms mean, and it is for >>> the rest of us just to accept, I suppose. >> >> I suggest that each individual on this list who uses the term >> "Extropian" to think long and hard about this. ?Do you really want to be >> associated with the term "Extropian" if the term "Extropian" can be be >> seen as compatible with advocating that innocent Muslims should be >> expelled from France? ?I am not. > > To be associated with (i.e. on the same list as) someone > who advocates a certain position. > > Oh, the horror! Oh, the shame. Indeed, how do you live > with yourself? It must be hell. > > I've never in my life seen anyone so concerned and so > scared of what other people *might* think about things > that he himself not only didn't say, but argued (sort of, > loosely speaking), er, even denounced! > > How damned weird. The instinct to suppress unwelcome opinions > has rarely ever shown itself here in such strength. > > Okay, out of total sympathy for your predicament and all > the others who are *so* sensitive about how guilt by > association may work against them, and so as to save you > such utter and complete anguish, embarrassment, and shame, > I will shut up about what France will do. > > Hmm. No, never mind. I won't. > >> I do not want the term "Extropian" twisted until it > >> includes something like expelling the innocent Muslims >> >> from France. > > Oh, good God. Of all the silly worries. Your "concern" seems > most likely only a cover for the deep discomfort that these > heretical ideas are causing you, and more than anything, you > seem to just want to shut your eyes and shut your mind to these > disagreeable thoughts. I'll bet that your ancestors reacted > extremely harshly and in *precisely* the same manner to all > the heretic Darwin's extraordinarily disagreeable and upsetting > ideas. > > And I will also bet that they (or, if your particular ones > do not happen to be guilty of this charge) or others living > at the time reacted in exactly the same non-intellectual > and emotional terms, failing to engage in a rational exchange > of ideas and failing totally to produce any *argument*. > >> And remember that deportation of innocent civilians has >> been considered a Crime Against Humanity since the Nuremberg > >> Trials. ?So Extropians; do you embrace the idea that >> >> advocating a Crime against Humanity is compatible with > >> the Extropian principles or do you reject it >> >> or do you just not care? > > What? You want more to join you into a deafening chorus to > GET LEE TO SHUT THE HELL UP? > > Why is that SO incredibly important to you? I have my own > ideas (e.g. perhaps it is out of a very deep fear that you > might actually *lose* an idea-based exchange), but I shouldn't > speculate. > > Well---I've just now got to this email, and there are plenty > more to read (you wrote the above a few days ago). So it > will be very interesting if you own "Call to Arms" raises > other angry voices of denunciation (all, naturally, quite > free from *rational* argument as to why my suggestion to > France doesn't lead in the long run to the best solution). > > Lee > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 08:01:36 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 01:01:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> Message-ID: <2d6187670904070101x3e455034i304cfa918ef8a865@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:08 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Here, from the archives, is the post that starts it all. > > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-June/007050.html > > WATCHMEN SPOILER..... The ideas Robert put forward remind me of how in the film Watchmen, Ozymandias had a somewhat similar scheme that would kill millions of people to in theory later save billions. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 08:30:09 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:30:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 4/5/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> They fear that rational argument may not go their way. They >> value, in decreasing order, >> >> 1. prevailing in an argument, especially anything >> touching on values >> 2. prevailing with reason >> 3. finding and speaking the truth >> >> Now none of us can claim that he or she always puts number three >> first, but if we find that we are engaging in sheer calumny, >> or merely expressing our feelings and loathings, then for >> sure you know we are elevating our desire to prevail over >> everything else, including both rationality and a desire to >> get at the truth. > > The error in your modest proposal is that rationality isn't the whole picture. !!! Wow! > There are more important things than being rational. > (Don't tell the Bayesians) ;) You are saying---if I read you right---than in a discussion there are more important things than being rational. This I have to hear. > If you are discussing whether 2 + 2 = 4, then fine, be as rational as you like. > > But if you are discussing religion or politics (the big no-nos), then > you have to bring real practical considerations in the discussions. > Crimes against humanity invalidate the most logical of reasoning. That's hilarious. Even before deciding what is and what is not a "crime against humanity", we are encouraged to dismiss out of hand any arguments that our instincts or intuition deem "dangerous". You would have been far more at home, my friend, back 150 years ago denouncing Darwin. "It's perfectly clear," you might have written, "that such ideas and dialog as to be found in that book could undermine our belief in God. This would be a crime against not only all of Christianity, but the entire Christian nation here in Britain. This consideration trumps any sort of logical reasoning. We have to cut short such discussion because of real, practical considerations." What's the real difference between what you are saying now and what so many said in 1859 and the years following? Indeed, I am only suggesting a certain action taken by one small nation, constituting less than 1% of the world's people, by physically *moving* a segment of their population somewhere else, hardly to be ranked with the Holocaust. (This point I stole from painlord.) Whereas what Darwin's thought and ideas were leading to was a REVOLT AGAINST GOD HIMSELF! > Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you are rational and logically > correct, you still lose the discussion. Never in my life have I seen such a prima facie collapse of the opposition to one of my arguments. I could have scarcely imagined before reading your email here that someone would have the nerve to admit that logically and rationally they were all wet, and that they had to concede the discussion on rational and logical grounds, but that nonetheless their side "had to prevail" because of... because of... because [in essense] because they were right. > One can think of situations where logical analysis might recommend the > enslavement of women, or the forced labor of children, or slavery of > the unemployed, etc. etc. might produce better results in some areas. > But these arguments lose because they are trumped by 'That's no way to > treat human beings!'. No! Those arguments have to be attacked on firmer grounds than merely (almost mindlessly) repeating some mantra, such as "that would be a crime against humanity" (echos of "That would be against God Himself!") or "Humans cannot be treated that way" (why?). I can give you many, many logical reasons why woman ought not to be enslaved in any society that I can imagine right now. (Okay, I'm sure that if I put five minutes' thought into it, I could come up with an SF scenario that would be quite alien---and this scenario itself would illustrate exactly what are the present *effective* *reasons* why women should not be enslaved. Don't you agree?) > Rationality is pretty much useless in matters of human relationships, > on the small and large scale. Oh great. If I cannot come to the Extropian list to receive rational criticism of some doctrine that has occurred to me, then just where am I to go? Have standards on this list fallen so low, or were they even in the legendary days of this list in the early 90s this absurd, this literally irrational? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 7 08:40:09 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:40:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DB1169.4060204@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > > For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse... > > to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to > > Nurse Ratched.# > > Damien Broderick > > Well, for his sake, I hope someone doesn't collect his opinions, > articles and views, prints them, binds them in a convenient folder, > and sends copies of this folder to several such institutions > in his region of italy, as well as to several newspapers, > offices of Italian socialists and communists, and other media > organizations, with his name, address and photograph. Just what the hell are you trying to pull? Of all the cowardly intimidating threats I've ever heard on this list, this takes the cake. (Well, at least since B.P. no longer posts here.) You spoke some kinds of vague threats before, about how names could be taken of those of us who held certain positions, and how we would get our just desserts later. Knock it off. It may not be true anymore that everyone's views are welcome here, but it surely still has to be true that the good people of this list will not tolerate extortion, and threats to freedom of expression like that. Lee P.S. Natasha! Wouldn't *this* be a better place at which to target your wrath? I see some "kill threads" coming up, and some other messages from you that I haven't got to yet, but I'll bet anything that they have to do with people like me and that psychiatric male nurse shutting up more than they have to do with blatant threats being made on the list. (You'll receive very gracious and humble apologies if I'm wrong.) > Such an act would likely could him his job, and worse. Oh, yes, worse. It can't be said you didn't warn him... From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 7 08:38:56 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 04:38:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com><002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> <2d6187670904070101x3e455034i304cfa918ef8a865@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <794D8537A25B43389C72A65A660F0236@MyComputer> John Grigg Wrote: > The ideas Robert put forward remind me of how in the film Watchmen, > Ozymandias had a somewhat similar scheme that would kill millions > of people to in theory later save billions. I've only read one graphic novel in my life, Watchmen, and I must say I thought it was pretty damn good. Does anybody know of another of equal quality? By the way Bradbury seemed perfectly sane most of the time, insightful even; but occasionally he went way way off the deep end. Drop a H bomb on Mecca and that will solve all our problems; but like I say that was rare, most of the time he was as sane as you or me. John K Clark From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 08:41:24 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 08:41:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Is this an April Fool's hoax? was What's wrong with this picture? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/6/09, Jeff Davis wrote: > In the middle of the piece, we find the comment: > > "When Phoenix returned to Earth Nov. 10, 2008, researchers analyzed > the soil collected from the lander." > > But I'm sure no Mars mission has returned any samples to Earth. I > then went to the top of the Michigan Daily web page and saw that the > article was dated April 1st. I have not even checked the Phoenix > mission website to confirm. > Phoenix analyzed the soil and sent the results back to Earth. >From the BBC (not run by kids) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7958471.stm Quote: But Nasa's Phoenix lander has shown the presence in Martian soil of perchlorate salts, which can keep water liquid at temperatures of minus 70C. Pockets of brine might form when soil interacted with ice. Researchers have been discussing the idea at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), here in The Woodlands, Texas. BillK From florent.berthet at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 10:44:24 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 12:44:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Could we stop the madness please? I'm French, both of my girlfriend's parents come from Algeria (though only his father is religious), and I have some very religious muslims friends, including a family in which the parents worked hard in "low" jobs and the children all have a degree in science, from the bachelor to the Ph.D. Again, all of them are 100% muslim while being very respectable and very nice, and I don't see ANY valid reason how anybody could give himself the right to get them out. Lee, using your kind of arguments, somebody could lock you in a cave because MAYBE, by saying such stuff against muslims, you could be the cause of a future civil war (maybe.). I mean, come on, this is just obviously wrong... Anyway I think you've made your point, and it doesn't seem like anybody is going to change his mind anyway, so we'd better stop here. - Florent Berthet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 6 20:50:32 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:50:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904010855l673baef8m97346c8ef2b9881e@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DA6B18.3060708@libero.it> Il 05/04/2009 13.09, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > > For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, > I gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to > Nurse Ratched.# > > Damien Broderick > > Well, for his sake, I hope someone doesn't collect his opinions, > articles and views, > prints them, binds them in a convenient folder, and sends copies of this > folder to > several such institutions in his region of Italy, as well as to several > newspapers, > offices of Italian socialists and communists, and other media > organizations, with > his name, address and photograph. Such an act would likely could him his > job, and worse. I love when people try to intimidate me. It is not the first time you write this nonsense to me or to others. It is interesting none react to this. I suppose this tell how much people here regard you and your words. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 11:12:47 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 13:12:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904070015l60eedc2fv833f1efd011656fb@mail.gmail.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> <49DAEB79.1040404@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070015l60eedc2fv833f1efd011656fb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904070412r6db9e059t9343e36a0e1fb82b@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Not really, because I think multiculturalism is good. So do I. However, it can also be argued that globalisation (uncontrolled, speculative mass import/export of human cattle being one of its byproduct) tends to *reduce* diversity, not to increase it, unless locally and in the very short term. In fact, I would find it extremely boring living in a *world* where everyone thinks and acts the same - not to mention the fact that one would remain with no place where to seek asylum... :-) Something which is not such a far-fetched scenario, given that as transhumanists we would never relinquish technologies pertaining to communication and transportation which have abolished for good any kind of impact geography may have had in the past. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 7 12:15:10 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:15:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DB43CE.20203@libero.it> Il 05/04/2009 11.57, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > Many Muslim residents of France are citizens -- on which legal basis > could, or should, be expelled? > > There is no defensible legal basis of course. There is only one > precedent in the modern history of Europe for expelling and abusing > citizens based on their religion and ethnic origin, and I hope we > have learned the lesson and don't wish to repeat it. One? Are you kidding me? Are you ignorant or what? Are you thinking modern history started yesterday? Why do we must look only to Europe? Why don't look at the recent past in the Muslim world? The Italians were expelled from Istria by the Jugoslavian communists of Tito in the 1945. The Sudetenland Germans where expelled from their region in Czechoslovakia after the WW2 and the German at large living in the est Europe were forced to move away http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_after_World_War_II > Past research provided estimates ranging from 13.5 to 16.5 million > people who fled or were either evacuated, directly expelled or > killed. Recent research places the number at more than 12 million, > including all those who fled during or directly after the war to > both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria.[12] At > least two million people perished due to flight and expulsion, > 400,000 to 600,000 of whom by physical force. We could look at the relocation of the Finnish from Karelia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_of_Finnish_Karelia Expulsion of Cham Albanians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Cham_Albanians Expulsion of Poles by Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Poles_by_Germany Then we could look at the expulsion of Serbian from Kosovo. > Might is usually right -- but it creates very dangerous precedents. This is sure. Like the Rebellion against the King of England did. > If Muslim citizens of France become a majority in the next decades, > _they_ may decide to expel non-Muslims on the basis of might is > right. They already did it in the past, in the recent history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Contemporary_persecution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey They are doing it now in Sudan, Christians in the M.E. are leaving in droves and in fear. Not because a government ordered their expulsion, but because the government don't protect them against the Islamic attacks. A riot here, a riot there, a riot everywhere and the not muslim will die, leave or convert. I expect they will do it again here if they become the majority. Then we will not have mass expulsions, only civil wars, mass exodus and mass killing (from both sides); I would like to avoid the latter, until we are able to avoid them, because I'm sure the ethnic Europeans would win, but I'm totally unsure what they would do after they win in Europe. After a war the fertility usually sky-rocket; if the war is prolonged, the fertility will continue to be high for long time. A billion of ethnic Europeans would not able to live only in Europe, and a youth bulge push for wars abroad. Or, maybe, we will go to the way of the whites in South Africa and Zimbabwe. We will give up power and we will become a persecuted minority (and the society will collapse without a market oriented dominant minority). Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 12:59:08 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:59:08 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <6749F63FA7D746D2A0F28D53D78661AF@MyComputer> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> <067C1A943CEF487FBD1B5EE82567E91B@MyComputer> <6749F63FA7D746D2A0F28D53D78661AF@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/7 John K Clark : >> You haven't explained how vitalism or dualism would >> add anything new to the claim that "it's not really me" >> when one already agrees that the copy will be *exactly* >> like me, from materialist considerations alone. > > For 15 years I've heard people bellow "But that just wouldn't be me!". ?In > those 15 years without exception the arguments proffered to support that > claim were completely idiotic; I haven't heard one that wasn't > embarrassingly stupid. The only way it could possibly be true is that the > copy isn't me because it doesn't have my soul. I don't believe in souls, but > I admit I'm a weirdo. I agree with you and I would like to hear a consistent explanation for why the copy in the teleporter won't really be me but the copy that walks across the room will be me. No-one says, My soul is transferred when I walk but not when I teleport. You're suggesting that this is what they mean whether they say it or not, but I don't think that this is what they mean. I think the confusion lies elsewhere. -- Stathis Papaioannou From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Apr 7 13:22:51 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 08:22:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism In-Reply-To: <49D90861.60304@boone.net> References: <6a13bb8f0904050759x321e648bh1a6a0bee77b255dc@mail.gmail.com> <49D90861.60304@boone.net> Message-ID: <8C13A55B9B294B86AA0DC5F4D0F0F505@DFC68LF1> Ralp wrote: "So most of us are, whether professionals or non-professionals, left waiting breathlessly on the closing of the Final Circuit in an AI godling, or the First Upload, or the True Assembler. And in the meantime, the True Believers can seem like a particularly odd, post-modern cult (if a well-educated one), whose more extreme members seem to be rocking back and forth repeating the technobabble equivalent of "The /Paingod/! He /Rises/! /He *Rises*/!" I think you are serioulsy mistaken." You are seiously mistaken. While it is fictional to compare h+ with Good Friday and Palm Sunday, it is not critical and critical thinking is a essential element of h+. And here is the rub: We can get all dramatic and Hamlet about it, but the poison of death as stirred in our drink from mother nature is a romantic way of accepting the foibles of human nature and nature itself. I would say that most professional, and non-professinal (whatever that menas, but I'm assuming those who are professionals in some sort of business or have credentials in a field) are being proactive about our own lifes, i.e., advancing our knowledge awareness about our current condition and future possibilities for eradicating our postion, adapting to changes as they come about, forcasting our own personal existence - what emotional, physciolgical, eudcational skills we need to employ in order to live a full life, preparing for the possibilities of disease as they could arise from our genetic makeup and our enviironmental circumstances, and investigating and questioning the emerging and convernign sciences and technologies which could offer an altenrative to a limited lifespan and offer continued personal existence in platforms other than biological. This is all pragmatic. You also say, "Enthusiasts, on the other hand, could potentially serve the goals of human enhancement and longevity simply by adopting disciplines and technologies that promote greater human capacities and greater youth and vitality in themselves, and thus perform direct research on a subject the individual has ready access to (themselves) and using relatively low-cost technologies and resources ranging from good diet and exercise to nootropic nutrients and drugs, sensory deprivation (floatation) tanks, hypnosis and extreme disciplines such as the martial arts." Of course this has been going on. For goodness sakes, please read all the press on extropy and all the attetion (and fun made of us) for being healthy, fit, meditating, exerciseing, etc! Nonetheless, transhumanism has been based in very, very large part on living a healthy life. Just because it is not promoted in certain transhumanist circles does not mean that it is not a core value of transhumanism. Now, the rest of what you say seems to be accurate, but what is new about this? Isn't this what has been written, spoken, and suggested for quite some time now? I'm wondering if it is because of the issues concerning the proposed technological singularity and uploads that causes you to think that there are many who just want to be put on a nanoassembler and fly off into space? Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org [mailto:wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org] On Behalf Of Ralph Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:37 PM To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List Cc: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [wta-talk] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism Kaj, A big part of the problem in this dichotomy between the Useless Enthusiasts and the Serious(ly Remote) Professionals is that Transhumanism as it is frequently conceived often relies on the final completion of a single, radical technology that Changes Everything. The implications of having this or that particular, fully realized technology are (rightly) perceived as so dramatic that to some degree almost everything else becomes irrelevant once the Ultimate Technology arrives on the scene. Unfortunately, this leads to professionals intensely (and perhaps rightly) focused on completely the technology they perceive as the tipping point, and enthusiasts talking incessantly about changes they feel powerless to achieve, but which more than a few find reasons to believe they will somehow dominate despite their complete disassociation from the actual research and the institutions doing it (because they will be "first adopters" or what have you). So most of us are, whether professionals or non-professionals, left waiting breathlessly on the closing of the Final Circuit in an AI godling, or the First Upload, or the True Assembler. And in the meantime, the True Believers can seem like a particularly odd, post-modern cult (if a well-educated one), whose more extreme members seem to be rocking back and forth repeating the technobabble equivalent of "The /Paingod/! He /Rises/! /He *Rises*/!" I have personally found the above mantra to be ineffective in bringing people on board the radical-evolution bandwagon. What might be more effective is a more broad-based yet practical strategy for achieving the common goals of Transhumanists and their various associated visionaries and futurists, combined with professional strategies more apt to yield benefits resulting from incremental progress rather than depending on a single, world-altering discovery that may or may not ever come. (Despite the egos involved here, remember... even if a particular breakthrough is entirely possible and eventually occurs, does not guarantee it will happen at /your/ lab.) Some AI researchers appear to have already gone in this direction, with Biomind developing applications that could assist in biotech-oriented human-enhancement technologies while also creating a plausible candidate for outside investment and/or funding. Enthusiasts, on the other hand, could potentially serve the goals of human enhancement and longevity simply by adopting disciplines and technologies that promote greater human capacities and greater youth and vitality in themselves, and thus perform direct research on a subject the individual has ready access to (themselves) and using relatively low-cost technologies and resources ranging from good diet and exercise to nootropic nutrients and drugs, sensory deprivation (floatation) tanks, hypnosis and extreme disciplines such as the martial arts. The above may seem like an eclectic mix, but there are plenty of simple "enhancements" that are well-documented and cheap (such as cutting out fast food/junk food and aerobic exercise) and to the extent that these skills permeate the larger culture, they will not only aid researchers in "Transhumanist fields" directly (for those adopting resources that augment their overall ability to do the work) but indirectly, by assisting other scientists, programmers and inventors, and also leading to a more effectively run society with more wealth and opportunity to engage in seemingly blue-sky or implausible research. Or, that's how I see it, anyway. Kaj Sotala wrote: > Originally posted at http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318060.html : > > A colleague's posting on the Finnish Transhumanist Association's > mailing list made me think about a phenomenon I've observed both in > myself and several others, but never thought about so explicitly. I > call it the Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online > transhumanism. > > The excitement phase is when you first stumble across concepts such as > transhumanism, radical life extension, and superintelligent AI. This > is when you subscribe to transhumanist mailing lists, join your local > WTA/H+ chapter, and start trying to spread the word to everybody you > know. You'll probably spend hundreds of hours reading different kinds > of transhumanist materials. This phase typically lasts for several > years. > > In the disillusionment phase, you start to realize that while you > still agree with the fundamental transhumanist philosophy, most of > what you are doing is rather pointless. You can have all the > discussions you want, but by themselves, those discussions aren't > going to bring all those amazing technologies here. You learn to > ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows > up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same > arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time. Having > gotten over your initial future shock, you may start to wonder why > having a specific name like transhumanism is necessary in the first > place - people have been taking advantage of new technologies for > several thousands of years. After all, you don't have a specific > "cellphonist" label for people using cell phones, either. You'll > slowly start losing interest in activities that are specifically > termed as transhumanist. > > In the reorientation cycle you have two alternatives. Some people > renounce transhumanism entirely, finding the label pointless and > mostly a magnet for people with a tendency towards future hype and > techno-optimism. Others (like me) simply realize that bringing forth > the movement's goals requires a very different kind of effort than > debating other transhumanists on closed mailing lists. An effort like > engaging with the large audience in a more effective manner, or > getting an education in a technology-related field and becoming > involved in the actual research yourself. In either case, you're > likely to unsubscribe the mailing lists or at least start paying them > much less attention than before. If you still identify as a > transhumanist, your interest in the online communities wanes because > you're too busy actually working for the cause. (Alternatively, you've > realized how much work this would be and have stopped even trying.) > > This shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm saying the online h+ > community is unnecessary, and that people ought to just skip to the > last phase. The first step of the cycle is a very useful ingredient > for giving one a strong motivation to keep working for the cause in > one's later life, even when they're no longer following the lists. > > One might think that this cycle isn't really specific to > transhumanism, and that a more general form of it ought to apply to > all communities. While I have no doubt that it probably does apply to > other communities as well, I find that the transhumanist cause is > somewhat rare in that it is so technology-dependant. Hobby communities > are built around a certain interest, and for those you don't need much > more than the community - having gathered a bunch of RPG or BDSM > enthusiasts, you can then go enjoy the activity in question together > with them. For purely political movements, you can make progress with > a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and > recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is > certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people > aren't really going to care about the social implications of a > technology before they can be convinced that the technology in > question is actually going to become real soon. And even if everybody > did agree that radical life extension, say, is a good thing, that > wouldn't really matter for as long as you didn't have life extension > available. You'd need to actually get involved with things that > actually brought life extension forward, instead of just twiddling > your thumbs in the general transhumanist community. This makes the > transhumanist community very different from most other kinds of > communities. > _______________________________________________ wta-talk mailing list wta-talk at transhumanism.org http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 14:31:41 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 16:31:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904070101x3e455034i304cfa918ef8a865@mail.gmail.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <002601c9b69f$11d09f30$19074797@archimede> <2d6187670904070101x3e455034i304cfa918ef8a865@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904070731y576ab14djc7f157327fb9e9e2@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/7 John Grigg : > Ozymandias had a somewhat similar scheme that would kill millions of people > to in theory later save billions. Why, I must say that I was no fan of Ozymandias' ideas when I read the book, and much of the beauty of the novel is its open end, which is more evident than in the movie... -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 15:14:01 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 17:14:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <49DA6B18.3060708@libero.it> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> <49DA6B18.3060708@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904070814w776204f1r83f9671f935bd566@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 10:50 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > I love when people try to intimidate me. I for one am not inclined to accept any compromise as to the freedom of speech, in its most unconditional form. Having been myself repeatedly the victim of such initiatives by the couple of lunatics we both know, I am even less inclined to condone attempts to limit such freedom through direct or indirect threats to "expose" one to the "public reprobation" and to its possible personal consequences. On the other hand, I sincerely trust (and hope) that Dagon's message did not imply anything like that, but was simply intended to stress how in his view certain ideas might not be too popular in our own very country, or rather some enviroments thereof. Perhaps he might wish to confirm for our peace of mind that this is in fact the case. -- Stefano Vaj From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 7 15:47:14 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:47:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) Message-ID: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> John Clark wrote: >I've only read one graphic novel in my life, Watchmen, and I must >say I thought it was pretty damn good. Does anybody know of another >of equal quality? You poor man! Yes, I know of many, though the number is cut down if you really want only novel-length collections rather than individual issues. For instance, Alan Moore's Miracleman run was brilliant, but you'll pay hugely to buy those in collected form. Here are some recommendations: Red Son (what if Superman as a baby landed in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas -- Greg Burch loved this) Any Punisher collection by Garth Ennis (assuming you enjoy hilarious-but-violent), e.g. Welcome Back Frank Garth Ennis' Preacher series (9 volumes; deeply offensive to traditional religions) Lots of stuff by Warren Ellis, including the Planetary series (superb illustration by John Cassaday), Ministry of Space, Ocean, Orbiter, Stormwatch, The Authority, Ultimate Human Sandman (Neil Gaiman, books 1 to 10) Ultimates 1 and 2 (for a thoroughly modern take on super-powered teams) Alias (great characters, written by Brian Michael Bendis) Daredevil (about ten volumes written by Bendis) Powers volumes by Bendis and Oeming (super-powered detective Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller -- most people like this more than I do, but it's a classic) Fell (Warren Ellis; the first issues just came out in trade paperback) John Constantine: Hellblazer (lots of volumes, many by good writers; esp. Garth Ennis issues) Ultimate Iron Man (written by Orson Scott Card; the Ultimate line is Marvel's more recent line, unencumbered by decades of continuity) Alan Moore's Promethea & his V for Vendetta Animal Man (by Grant Morrison--several volumes; lot's of metaphysical fun) We3 (Grant Morrison; fantastic illustration by Frank Quitely) Starman (issues/collections by James Robinson, currently being put out in Omnibus editions) All Star Superman (Morrison/Quitely) Fantastic Four: World's Greatest (Millar/Hitch) Cerebus, volumes 2 through, um, 9, probably not after that (Dave Sim) Doom Patrol (Morrison) Ex Machina and The Last Man (both Brian K. Vaughn) Fables From Hell (brilliant story of Jack the Ripper by Moore) Squadron Supreme (Mark Gruenwald) Joker (Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Moore) Lucifer (volumes 1 to 11 by Mike Carey) Transhuman (not great, but worth reading as a very recent work) Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis) You can't go far wrong with graphic novels by Alan Moore, Warren Elllis, Garth Ennis, and perhaps Grant Morrison -- depending on your tastes. For your further comics edification: Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud I could narrow it down, depending on whether you enjoy SF, superheroes, humor, detective fiction, metaphysical fun, etc. Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 16:50:24 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:50:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <2ae60d770904070950j5812e81eq2029f4c96c445b69@mail.gmail.com> Lee: Indeed, I am only suggesting a certain action taken by one small nation,constituting less than 1% of the world's people, by physically *moving* a segment of their population somewhere else. Its a bit like keeping all dogs out of a library. You can say 'Oh but mine's a good dog and would never wet the carpet or maul someone.", but the sign stays up. This is elitist and xenophobic but I does keep things simple. The answer is simply 'no". But now you've got them in and there's no way to remove them without looking like a pseudo-hitler. They have to riot or act in a unified hostility before people will take them seriously as a threat. They are trained to be open minded, to be tolerant of other folks, and have made friends. I'm all for making friends. All you can do is leave when it gets tense. It's easier to don slippers than carpet the world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 17:20:38 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 19:20:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) In-Reply-To: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904071020i347b8a8eu5044cb021eab3911@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Max More wrote: ... > Daredevil (about ten volumes written by Bendis) > Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller -- most people like this more than I do, but it's a classic) > Ultimate Iron Man (written by Orson Scott Card; the Ultimate line is Marvel's more recent line, unencumbered by decades of continuity) ... Am I alone in picking a few transhumanist hints at least in works above (to which I would only add Ronin by Frank Miller)? Il y a aussi a French tradition of comic novels, well represented by Lauzier, e.g., but there the themes are more traditional, with the exception of the old stories of M?tal Hurlant. -- Stefano Vaj From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 18:14:39 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 11:14:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) In-Reply-To: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904071114q22d3adb7if493d5d8017358ac@mail.gmail.com> I would add "Black Hole" by Charles Burns. This is a fantastic graphic novel about teens, the challenges of growing up, human sexuality & the fear of disease. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Hole-Charles-Burns/dp/0375714723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239127183&sr=8-1 Max, that was quite a list of graphic novels! You know your stuff! Now I know why you still have not yet come out with your book on transhumanism... ; ) Kidding! hee Hey, here's an idea, team up with a talented artist and put forth your transhumanist thoughts in comic book/graphic novel form. It could reach people who otherwise would never ever read your work. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 7 18:51:05 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:51:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090407134847.023520c8@satx.rr.com> At 01:30 AM 4/7/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >>Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you are rational and logically >>correct, you still lose the discussion. > >Never in my life have I seen such a prima facie collapse of >the opposition to one of my arguments. I could have scarcely >imagined before reading your email here that someone would >have the nerve to admit that logically and rationally they >were all wet, and that they had to concede the discussion >on rational and logical grounds, but that nonetheless their >side "had to prevail" because of... because of... because >[in essense] because they were right. Hmm, there's much in what you say, Lee. Let us reason together, as Richard Nixon once memorably said. Meanwhile, take a look at this (from the NYT's tame conservative columnist): Damien Broderick From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 7 19:09:24 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:09:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) Message-ID: <200904071909.n37J9eZT029016@andromeda.ziaspace.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 7 19:14:21 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:14:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) Message-ID: <200904071914.n37JEWCS004055@andromeda.ziaspace.com> John Grigg wrote: >Max, that was quite a list of graphic novels! You know your >stuff! Now I know why you still have not yet come out with your >book on transhumanism... ; ) Kidding! hee Damn, totally busted! Actually, The Proactionary Principle isn't about transhumanism as such... >Hey, here's an idea, team up with a talented artist and put forth >your transhumanist thoughts in comic book/graphic novel form. It >could reach people who otherwise would never ever read your work. Perhaps, once my book is actually finished, I will seriously think about this. I do love the medium. BTW, thanks for the pointer to The Black Hole. Never come across it. Sounds naughty. Max From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 7 19:40:46 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 15:40:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) References: <200904071614.n37GE8FE002522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Thanks for the recommendations Max! John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 20:25:21 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 13:25:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) In-Reply-To: <200904071914.n37JEWCS004055@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904071914.n37JEWCS004055@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904071325kc9019d6pc335236d68558772@mail.gmail.com> Max More wrote: >Actually, The Proactionary Principle isn't about transhumanism as such... There have already been a number of good books about various facets of transhumanism (I just always wanted to see one written by you), and so you are showing your wisdom and timeliness by focusing on The Proactionary Principle, which sprang from your gifted mind. By taking on the Precautionary Principle you will find a much larger audience/better chance to influence for good, than you would with any book on transhumanism (at least at this point). The Precautionary Principle has the potential to really influence and trip up human society, and so I'm grateful you have taken an oppositional stance with your own counter principle. I hope the upcoming book is a major success for you and gets the media attention it deserves. When I went to an ASU conference on transhumanism, they mentioned Nick Bostrom and James Hughes over and over again. The next time around I want them to be obsessing over you! lol I feel you do not always get the credit you deserve. >Perhaps, once my book is actually finished, I will seriously think about this. I do love the >medium. Good news. I hope a publisher would find the idea intriguing. >BTW, thanks for the pointer to The Black Hole. Never come across it. Sounds naughty. Dang! I'm amazed you never came across this book, considering it's legendary status. And so I am very glad I pointed it out. The graphic novel shows romance, relationships and sexuality in a sometimes fantastic and yet painfully true way. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 21:14:02 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 14:14:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DB43CE.20203@libero.it> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> <49DB43CE.20203@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 5:15 AM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: snip (re Muslims) > I expect they will do it again here if they become the majority. Then we > will not have mass expulsions, only civil wars, mass exodus and mass killing > (from both sides); I would like to avoid the latter, until we are able to > avoid them, because I'm sure the ethnic Europeans would win, but I'm totally > unsure what they would do after they win in Europe. snip Mirco is politically incorrect but I suspect mostly correct otherwise. If you have two identifiable human groups in contact with each other, especially if they are intermixed, then if one group has a higher population growth rate than the other, the high growth group will, over time, replace the slower growing one. This is what happened in Kosovo. "Traditional analyses of the conflict in Kosovo tend to focus on nationalistic politics while scarcity issues are given short shrift or ignored completely. The ethnic divide in Kosovo between Kosovar Serb and Kosovar Muslim was typically the most prominent feature of media reports and little if any attention was paid to the underlying causes of the inter-communal conflict that culminated in the March 1999 US led NATO air bombardment of Yugoslavia. The argument of this paper is that in Kosovo, large demographic changes, the degradation of natural resources, conflict over land-rights and unemployment caused by industrial decline played significant roles in creating the poverty and discontent that eventually led to the outbreak of hostilities. The Background In 1976 the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia had a per capita personal income of 86 percent of the Yugoslav average and was steadily increasing. By 1978 electricity and running water had reached all but the remotest villages. Life expectancy had risen to 68 years and 95 percent of children were receiving elementary schooling. There was 1 doctor per 2009 people compared to 1 per 8527 in 1952. This caused a rapid increase in the province's population growth rate and combined with an over-dependence on heavy industry and increasing land shortage/ degradation, Kosovo's unemployment rate went from 18.6 % in 1971 to 27.5% in 1981, 56% in 1989 and to 70% in 1995. The Serb/Montenegrin proportion of Kosovo dropped from 50% in 1950, to 27.4 percent in 1961 to 10 percent in 1991. By 1999 there were two million people living in Kosovo, a doubling since 1960. At an annual growth rate of 2.1%, population growth exceeded economic growth and was higher than that of many developing countries. The burden of added population put a strain on the province's ability to maintain full employment and to provide sufficient funds for such vital infrastructure as schools and hospitals, etc. snip Political and Social Consequences >From 1981 onwards, discontent and anger resulting from unemployment amongst the Kosovar population and perceived or real mistreatment of increasingly marginalized Serbs led to virulent nationalist forces in both ethnic groups. Discontent led to a rise in demonstrations and riots and finally broke out into armed violence in 1995/6 and all-out war beginning in 1998. snip By 1980, at the time of Titos death, the population of Yugoslavia had grown to 23 million from just over 15 million in 1950 without a corresponding growth in GDP. It took almost a decade for the contending forces in the country to find an outlet in violent conflict." snip Commentary Seeing the conflict as purely political or ethnic is to see only the symptom. There is a reluctance to see such conflicts as a result of demographic expansion and natural resource limitations and overuse. One advantage of pointing to the resulting scarcity as the key factor is that a straightforward remedy is also implied. The simple (yet practically impossible to achieve) remedy is to find a way to reduce demands on resources to a sustainable level. Such an approach also suggests an investigation into how population growth leading to ever rising consumption seems a permanent feature of our political and cultural landscape. The implications of such an analysis are stark. The Balkans are only one of many areas where underlying conditions of scarcity make for an actual or potentially explosive situation. Not only is misery and political tension increasing in many areas, but in an age of rapidly expanding weapons of mass destruction, the international ramifications of local conflicts seem to be spreading wider and wider." http://desip.igc.org/StressInKosovo.html The Kosovo experience may be Europe in miniature. Given that example, we could probably calculate the number of years before say France has similar problems. The gradual population replacement of one group with another could happen without violence provided the average population growth of an area is lower than the area's economic growth. The reason is because perception of a bleak future was (and is) the signal for the evolved behavioral switch leading to war in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA, Google the term). In the stone age "bleak future" was based on game and berry availability. Now it is based on income per capita, more particularly on trends in income per capita. > After a war the fertility usually sky-rocket; if the war is prolonged, the > fertility will continue to be high for long time. A billion of ethnic > Europeans would not able to live only in Europe, and a youth bulge push for > wars abroad. I kind of doubt it. I think western cultures along with Japan and China have probably made a transition to low population growth that's unlikely to be reversed. > Or, maybe, we will go to the way of the whites in South Africa and Zimbabwe. > We will give up power and we will become a persecuted minority (and the > society will collapse without a market oriented dominant minority). You might be interested in this: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf where Dr. Gregory Clark argues that Europeans, particularly the English, underwent a long period of intense genetic selection for the traits a "market oriented dominant minority" is noted for. It's not that other races lack the traits, but that they are much more common in the Europeans and other peoples who spent tens of generations in settled stable agricultural societies. Those societies were both Malthusian and Darwinian with very different selection pressures than the selection pressures than humans had experienced previously. Keith From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Tue Apr 7 22:25:12 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:25:12 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up Message-ID: <465073.92311.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Lee, I will address your (im)modest proposal in my next post, but first let me address the points of the moderators politely asking you to reduce your number of posts and for all involved in certain discussions to think carefully before posting. We may not live in a fully reputational-based economy such as Cory Doctorow's "Whuffie", but on email lists like this, what you post and how you post it makes a big difference to how seriously people take you. If you make many posts in a short space of time, people are more likely to glaze over and start skipping your posts, hence the "please don't post more than 8 times in one day" rule. Also, strong opinions you voice will be held against you at the moments you least expect: to quote St Paul "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." or to quote that other source of wisdom Our Lady Madonna of Ciccone, "Every little thing that you say or do gets hung up on you". For example, should someone voice a strong opinion in favour of mass expulsion of a certain group of people, at some future point when he has something to say on the subject of liberty, someone is bound to think "this is coming from a guy who last year was advocating mass expulsions? He's got a nerve!" Finally, as our moderators like to remind us, this is the Extropian List. We should aim to reflect the principles of extropy where possible - "practical optimism" is preferred to pessimism or destructive solutions. Hoping for a more optimistic future, Tom From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Tue Apr 7 22:46:20 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:46:20 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] What the France!? Message-ID: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Now, to address the matter of "why shouldn't France expel the Muslims before they become a majority and destroy French institutions?" I do not believe mass expulsion would work. I can also argue it would harm France for three main reasons: It undermines the foundations of the French state ; it would encourage mass disobedience to the French state ; it would damage international relations. To expel a large percentage of a nation's population takes a lot of work, a lot of time and requires collaboration from a lot of people. To relocate the Apaches and other native American groups took many years and a lot of hard work by the US military. Stalin required absolute totalitarian control to do what he did. When you consider how long it takes western states to deport failed asylum seekers, you can imagine how difficult it would be to perform a mass expulsion. In the planning stages, word would get out - many Jews fled Nazi Germany well before the concentration camps were set up, and the steady exodus of Christians from Palestine comes as people hear the rhetoric of the Israeli state and the rhetoric of Hamas and come to the conclusion it's too dangerous for them. During this time, I'm sure some people would go underground and change their identities successfully, some muslims would be driven into the arms of extremists and commit terrorist acts, and others would try to inform the world at large what has happening. It is unlikely to achieve 100% expulsion of the Muslims from France. The damage France would sustain would be huge. The French Republic is based on liberte, egalite, fraternite - mass expulsions deprive people of liberty, deny equality on the basis of religion, and shit on ideas of fraternity. This destroys the philosophical basis of the French State. Many people in Europe have heard tales of the heroes who sheltered Jews in World War II, and helped smuggle people to safety. A mass ethnic cleansing in their own backyard would cause many otherwise law-abiding French people to become wannabe Oskar Schindlers and find ways to subvert the mass expulsion. It only takes a few sympathisers in the government departments controlling records to create a whole load of fake IDs or to shred the records of who's a Muslim. France likes to position itself as a player on the world stage of diplomacy. It likes to maintain influence in Africa and to negotiate with Middle Eastern countries away from the Anglo-American way of doing things. Any displays of massive prejudice against Islam would destroy France's hard-won influence in many countries, and destroy what generations of politicians had fought to achieve. So, enough of the negativity - what more optimistic way can I think of? Well, it's the one we're trying in Britain. Try and get more moderate muslims into politics and give ordinary muslims a stake in how things are. By getting moderate muslims into government, you give voice to all the ordinary people who just want to live their lives and avoid what the extremists say. You will build a solid base for muslims willing to live in a secular society. Also, when people have something to lose from the extremists, they are less likely to give them the time of day. If a muslim immigrant sees his daughters get educated and gain careers, when the next group of Islamists come to suggest jihad in the west and the setting up of a Taleban-style state, he's more likely to think "but they'll take away my own daughter's jobs, and cause my family hardship." So, for the French I would recommend a healthy dose of Segolene Royal trying to get muslim candidates for her Socialist party, and when Nicholas Sarkozy sees a potential voting bloc favouring the opposition he will suddenly start taking the plight of muslim immigrants more seriously. Tom From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 00:24:03 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 20:24:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090404150404.0271dbb8@satx.rr.com> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> Message-ID: <62c14240904071724iaad54ddue7543fb83570a39d@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Mike, when you say you'd just employ drugs to erase some bad memory or > whatever, to me such is just as bad as the response I get from people that > believe some of their loved ones will go to hell. I ask them if they will > be happy in heaven knowing their brother is in hell. Often times they reply > with something like: 'God will just make us forget them'. Yea right. In > other words, such imaginings are logically impossible for any sufficiently > advanced / intelligent being. Do you suffer with a headache? For how long? Do you take an NSAID to reduce the pain? Would you take a stronger medication if it was prescribed by your doctor for a serious injury? If you are willing to employ drugs to mitigate your sensation of physical pain, then why the double-standard for drugs to mitigate unpleasant mental health maladies? I don't know what to say about your conversation with people regarding heaven/hell/God/etc. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 01:05:46 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 18:05:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904062139x59cb6da1qe2c9d8c6766d3507@mail.gmail.com> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <02654D72212348A48724AB1796788EA2@MyComputer> <580930c20904060502g65e64494lf72a79c9fe08be4b@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240904061949x18edf8ccp2377b4b504fca847@mail.gmail.com> <49DACF2F.6040404@comcast.net> <710b78fc0904062139x59cb6da1qe2c9d8c6766d3507@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:39 PM, Emlyn wrote: > This "consciousness is real" thing isn't logically consistent. It > seems like you think that you can upload someone into "abstract" > software and they'll be just like you but not conscious. In between case: ******* Suskulan's first serious patient after the upgrade was Zaba, a 12 year old who had been shot through her spine while working in a garden. She was near death, and far beyond help by pre clinic standards, when she was placed in Suskulan's "hands." As the nanotech mist enveloped her still body, Suskulan quickly evaluated her than told her parents: "I can heal Zaba but it will take at least a week, perhaps as many as ten days. She will not be able to move or speak at first, but you can talk to her spirit at noon tomorrow." After they left Suskulan moved Zaba's body underground for better cooling and shorter connections to the mass of repair devices. With a small amount of his attention he constructed an image of the repair table and Zaba out of utility fog including the ghastly wounds. This time the nanomachines didn't infiltrate her brain just to shut it down, though they did that and reversed the mild damage from shock and low blood flow. The nanomachines mapped out all her neural circuits and cell connections. Shortly before her parents entered the clinic the next day they tentatively restored consciousness, partly in her brain--which was far below the temperature needed to run on its own--and partly in the haze of nanomachines that were also simulating input in place of her eyes and ears. "What happened to me? Where am I? Where is my body?" Zaba asked as she became conscious. She was calm because the nanomachines were acting as tranquilizers. Suskulan was listening to an interface to her mostly simulated motor cortex. To give Zaba orientation Suskulan imposed on her visual cortex a wire frame image of the human form he usually presented then explained: "You were shot, you are in the clinic Suskulan at the tata, and your body is under the clinic being repaired. The clinic recently gained new powers to speak to spirits while their bodies are being healed. The healing will take some time, even I do not know exactly how many days," he added, "You were badly injured." **** http://www.terasemjournals.org/GN0202/henson.html Keith From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 01:30:33 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 21:30:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Key Issues of Life Extension In-Reply-To: <20090406173851.jc8x94mc5c0ss48o@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904060656m4e51ee33k450d384603bd597f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090406133959.0229ee00@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904061236w6d08a34cn4c0e33acf2ae8eeb@mail.gmail.com> <20090406173851.jc8x94mc5c0ss48o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <62c14240904071830t1eb878gcd1fc76e3115114e@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 5:38 PM, wrote: > > In your view, what do you think are the current 5 (or more) key issues > concerning living indefinitely? These issues can be located in any field > and relate to biology, engineering, technology, science, business, > economics, environment, politics, etc. > I think many of the mechanical problems will be solved at some point. The more difficult long term problem may be inherent to the design itself. Without an effective method of revitalizing the mind, the thinking tends to get old and crusty*. A hundred years seems well tuned to the current architecture. What happens when the hardware is maintained to keep peak performance of the software, but the software slows to an ineffectual trickle of usefulness? I know my computer's bloated OS needs a do-over every year or two... Is there a similar issue with human wetware? * Sure, we can try to learn new things - but only a conscious act of volition can make that happen. If being stuck in your ways precludes that act, how does one become "unstuck"? If a persona is represented by an algorithmic attractor, even with unlimited complexity and refinement of nuance - is there a point at which it has "all been done before?" How long can you watch a plot of a Lorenz attractor[1] before you see the butterfly and are simply no longer interested? [1] http://images.google.com/images?q=lorenz+attractor From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Wed Apr 8 06:36:29 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 23:36:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) Message-ID: <255128.47394.qm@web110405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I don't know Robert Bradbury in person but I do know that he spent much time with me throughout e-mails trying to educate me with an opinion, as he has actual experiences to back up his opinions I would rather listen to him as opposed to someone that just has a mathematical conclusion. I understand that opinion is sometimes wrong but I do believe that a mathematical equation should always be specific. (Exact) If you want the difference between aboslutely correct and undivided...welcome to Extropy:) Anna:) --- On Tue, 4/7/09, Max More wrote: > From: Max More > Subject: Re: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) > To: "Extropy-Chat" > Received: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 3:14 PM > > John Grigg wrote: > > Max, that was quite a list of graphic novels!? > You know your stuff!? Now I know why you still have not > yet come out with your book on transhumanism...? ; > )? Kidding! hee > > Damn, totally busted! > > Actually, The Proactionary Principle isn't about > transhumanism as such... > > > Hey, here's an idea, team up with a talented artist > and put forth your transhumanist thoughts in comic > book/graphic novel form.? It could reach people who > otherwise would never ever read your work. > > Perhaps, once my book is actually finished, I will > seriously think about this. I do love the medium. > > BTW, thanks for the pointer to The Black Hole. Never come > across it. Sounds naughty. > > Max > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed Apr 8 08:09:55 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 01:09:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) References: <255128.47394.qm@web110405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006d01c9b821$69ac9780$47be684c@BOXX> That's what I'm working on right now, a pro nanotech graphic novel story that I wrote, I am creating the images for it now ~ in hopes that it might perhaps generate some extra funds for me to continue on with my animated science movie. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com > --- On Tue, 4/7/09, Max More wrote: > >> From: Max More >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Watchmen (was L'Affaire Bradbury) >> To: "Extropy-Chat" >> Received: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 3:14 PM >> >> John Grigg wrote: >> > Max, that was quite a list of graphic novels! >> You know your stuff! Now I know why you still have not >> yet come out with your book on transhumanism... ; >> ) Kidding! hee >> >> Damn, totally busted! >> >> Actually, The Proactionary Principle isn't about >> transhumanism as such... >> >> > Hey, here's an idea, team up with a talented artist >> and put forth your transhumanist thoughts in comic >> book/graphic novel form. It could reach people who >> otherwise would never ever read your work. >> >> Perhaps, once my book is actually finished, I will >> seriously think about this. I do love the medium. >> >> BTW, thanks for the pointer to The Black Hole. Never come >> across it. Sounds naughty. >> >> Max >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > __________________________________________________________________ > Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your > favourite sites. Download it now > http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 08:34:48 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 08:34:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 4/7/09, Tom Nowell wrote: > > Now, to address the matter of "why shouldn't France expel the Muslims before they > become a majority and destroy French institutions?" > > I do not believe mass expulsion would work. I can also argue it would harm France > for three main reasons: It undermines the foundations of the French state; it would > encourage mass disobedience to the French state ; it would damage international > relations. > Do we really need to go back to the basics and write articles in favor of Human Rights? Remind me again why liberty and human rights are a good idea - it seems to have slipped my mind. Ah, perhaps Muslims should be regarded as less than human, then normal human rights would not apply to them? Is that the way to progress? (If so, we can start a list of other groups to be added to the list for later attention). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/glossary.html Human Rights Definitions Crimes against humanity: The definition of crimes against humanity overlaps with genocide and war crimes. Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, enslavement, and deportation. Attacks must be widespread (directed against multiple victims), and systematic (carried out as part of a plan or policy), rather than isolated instances of criminal conduct. Ethnic cleansing: The use of force or intimidation to remove people of a certain ethnic group from an area is a violation of international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids "individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or that of any other country." BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 09:07:48 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 11:07:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904050257u15597e3ar7f04f0dcc41b3f29@mail.gmail.com> <49DB43CE.20203@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904080207t14e0ecb4nf3d3165abd1da3b0@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > Mirco is politically incorrect but I suspect mostly correct otherwise. > > If you have two identifiable human groups in contact with each other, > especially if they are intermixed, then if one group has a higher > population growth rate than the other, the high growth group will, > over time, replace the slower growing one. ?This is what happened in > Kosovo. Possibly. But I reported - apparently without raising much interest - the three political options being currently debated in France (a fourth not being considered consisting of course in supporting the establishment of an Islamic republic in the country), and indicated what IMHO make all of them totally unfeasible in the present conditions. If this is true, whatever your final goals may be, in the short term the conclusions of everybody as to the measures to be taken should be similar. Any opinion about that? -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 09:17:18 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 11:17:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904080217t18670bbfv29f8a595ee08895@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:46 AM, Tom Nowell wrote: > So, enough of the negativity - what more optimistic way can I think of? Well, it's the one we're trying in Britain. Try and get more moderate muslims into politics and give ordinary muslims a stake in how things are. Wouldn't that be a rather blatant domestication of the democratic process? A muslim, or for that matter a non-muslim, is of course free to vote a "moderate muslim", if he so likes, but if such outcome is deliberately pursued by the political regime in place through discriminatory measures and favoritisms and the establishment of fifth columns in the relevant communities this smacks of colonialistic or occupation regimes where the occupying country was "piloting" the appointment of the colonised country's representatives. I believe to remember that the UK has a tradition in this respect, when parliamentary majorities were guaranteed, e.g., through the "equal representation" of almost empy electoral districts which could be easily controlled, but I wonder if muslims in such a scenario would not be right in crying foul. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 10:02:16 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 12:02:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904080302i1ac981fdo7a6e6603ca53f597@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/7 Florent Berthet > Could we stop the madness please? > I'm French, both of my girlfriend's parents come from Algeria (though only > his father is religious) > Were they expelled when Algeria became independent or they came to France of their own will? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From florent.berthet at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 11:12:31 2009 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 13:12:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <580930c20904080302i1ac981fdo7a6e6603ca53f597@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904080302i1ac981fdo7a6e6603ca53f597@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d342ad70904080412t39b7e4e8wec49ef119013cec2@mail.gmail.com> Of their own will for better life conditions. 2009/4/8 Stefano Vaj > 2009/4/7 Florent Berthet > >> Could we stop the madness please? >> I'm French, both of my girlfriend's parents come from Algeria (though only >> his father is religious) >> > > > Were they expelled when Algeria became independent or they came to France > of their own will? > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 11:30:59 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 13:30:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904080412t39b7e4e8wec49ef119013cec2@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904080302i1ac981fdo7a6e6603ca53f597@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904080412t39b7e4e8wec49ef119013cec2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904080430i51ed83a8o17bb929be3da7e68@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/8 Florent Berthet : > Of their own will for better life conditions. Ah, OK, sorry, I thought they were Pieds Noirs. If they are "native" Algerians of course no analogy would be applicable. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 8 15:40:51 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:40:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> Il 08/04/2009 10.34, BillK ha scritto: > On 4/7/09, Tom Nowell wrote: >> Now, to address the matter of "why shouldn't France expel the Muslims before they >> become a majority and destroy French institutions?" >> >> I do not believe mass expulsion would work. I can also argue it would harm France >> for three main reasons: It undermines the foundations of the French state; it would >> encourage mass disobedience to the French state ; it would damage international >> relations. >> > > > Do we really need to go back to the basics and write articles in favor > of Human Rights? Remind me again why liberty and human rights are a > good idea - it seems to have slipped my mind. > > Ah, perhaps Muslims should be regarded as less than human, then normal > human rights would not apply to them? Is that the way to progress? > (If so, we can start a list of other groups to be added to the list > for later attention). > > http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/glossary.html > > Human Rights Definitions > > Crimes against humanity: > The definition of crimes against humanity overlaps with genocide and > war crimes. Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, > enslavement, and deportation. Attacks must be widespread (directed > against multiple victims), and systematic (carried out as part of a > plan or policy), rather than isolated instances of criminal conduct. > > Ethnic cleansing: > The use of force or intimidation to remove people of a certain ethnic > group from an area is a violation of international law. Article 49 of > the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids "individual or mass forcible > transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied > territory to the territory of the occupying power or that of any other > country." Who want use force and intimidation to remove people unwanted? There are many lawful ways to make life harder for people you don't want. 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. Five years of jail for anyone doing it. 2) Illegal immigrants captured can be jailed until they remember where they cam from. They will be repatriated immediately, no exception. 3) Preaching in mosques must be done in French (or the local language). Five year for anyone preaching in a different language. 4) Anyone jailed for terrorism or helping and abetting or advocating violence will have his citizenship revoked and will be expelled after completing his term. 5) Anyone committing serious crimes (murder, aggravated battery, thief, honour killings, forced marriages, threats, rapes, bigamy, threats, etc.) will have his citizenship revoked if it is a naturalized citizen plus the jail terms. 6) Any asylum seeker will lose all protections if guilt of any crimes, they will be jailed and expelled after their terms. 7) Mandatory swimming lessons in mixed classes for all students. 8) No prayer time during the work schedule. 9) No Halal slaughter. 10) No import of wives and husbands if the any of them is younger than 25 years. They must ask it five years before. 11) People willing to receive organs must become donors before their condition is diagnosed (Muslims don't like becoming donors, but like to receive). 12) All jail sentences for violent crimes will be doubled (immigrants are more crime prone, Muslims much more crime prone). 13) No welfare state to the people guilt of serious crimes. I'm sure a lawyer could come with much more ways to make life harder for bad people. Do you think anything of this will constitute a "Crime against humanity" or "ethic cleansing"? Mirco From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 21:21:22 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 23:21:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation In-Reply-To: <49DAEE7D.8020702@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <49D72418.4030202@rawbw.com> <49D8787F.5030703@rawbw.com> <49DAEE7D.8020702@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/7 Lee Corbin > Dagon Gmail wrote: > > > The decline demographic numbers is a prime cause of the >> > economic malaise affecting the west. >> > ---Lee >> >> And I call that counter-productive if not completely dangerous >> > > bunk. I say that if one person uses x material resources, > >> energy at a certain standard of living, 100 persons will use >> > > far more than 100x in resources. > > You would have a *chance* to be right (though I would still > suspect not) if technology were not constantly improving. > Mass numbers assist technological breakthroughs because > of the higher numbers of geniuses and others who contribute > mightily to the advances. I agree. But damn, I can make this ideal of progress look a little shaky by waving the Microsoft example around. I will give that a euphemism of your choice, but rest assured I don't like the given that despite technological leaps and bounds (we are both healthier, more longlived, better educated, richer, more affluent, than kings a few centuries ago. It can even be argued we have more servants, with automation and petrol-based industry) the world has these glaring blobs of suckage and tar pit. And that is in the rich places. I am angry about the ghettoficaion of the third world. Very angry. I see precious little improvement there and I hope I am wrong in seeing the first signs of (what I cynically would term) the auschwitzization of the third world. (Points at the gaza strip "model" that was so effectively marketed to Bagdad) An American farmer today can grow five or six times the amount > of food that he could in the 1950s on a single acre of land > (or something like that). If you read about it, you'll be utterly > impressed with the results of the green revolution. > > So your statement above just seems quite wrong, in principle > as well as in particular. > I agree that there has been some cosmetic improvement (much of it the result of civil awereness and unions), and you will no dount agree that at some time very big numbers of people, voting or nonvoting, may get very very very upset by what they perceive a worsening of conditions (the deluded idiots..) And since I have always that at some time poverty and despair will be directly linked to terrorism blooms, you better hope I am completely wrong in my world view, for if enough people get upset, and I am right, you would very soon see the glamorization of suicide-memes and the industrialization if terror. Current events keep vindicating me in that world view. > My assertion is that overpopulation is a MAJOR drain on efficiency, >> > > resources, energy, not even considering the cheapening of > > human value, the stress caused by increased societal pressure, > > exploitation, collapse of individual meaning and worth, "I assert that overpopulation is the primary drain on over-all efficiency, over-all resources, access to [affordable] energy. I add that it also cheapens human labor and causes undue stress. Plus this devaluation of the human worth (which we can see most acutely in the third world) creates a palatable climate if "a sense of haunting and scarcity" where humans adopt an urge to get what you can, before anyone else does. Haven't quite got to the upcoming verb in that sentence, but > I think that all that is poppycock (my own contribution to > the standard of list argument here lately). > What you write only describes the backward countries, who, > usually because of corruption and the unequal distribution > of capitalism, have yet to embrace sufficient technology > to raise their standards of living---which has the exact > *opposite* effect of what you state. Namely, increased > standards of living *increase* efficiencies, decrease > stresses in living, *decrease* exploitation, loss of human > values, collapse of inidividual meaning and so on. > Yes, I wholeheartedly agree - if not for "certain distribution inefficiencies" (to get an idea what I might refer to, look this, then comment) - (Yes I agree with that Vid) the west would be becoming better at management. That is however irrelevant, since the west is decreasing in populations and all the damn places (who can be asserted to be also/as well subject to "these distribution inefficiencies") that are poor are essentially spiraling down. Oh right you sidestepped the give that most human beings live in the third wold. So what do I agree with ? - let me specific to avoid falling in semantic traps (I am dutch, and my English is reasonable, it is not my native tongue) I agree that the western society has potential and opportunity to improve itself, fundamentally. I state that to my best perceptions most of the world does most does have potential and opportunity, and in many cases not even vision or incentive to improve conditions. In many parts of Africa there are even solid incentives to reduce conditions. Big portions of the world may have memes and cultures that make them predisposed to largescale "shooting themselves in the food". Wildly fascinating term: big parts of the middle east are "talibanizing". Thats not shooting yourself in the foot. Its more like dangling both feet in a woodchipper. So why so these bearded simpletons do that? Maybe its some kind of zany LARP that got out of hand? You tell me. > That's easy to see, because it is precisely in the most > technologically advanced nations that the social trends > are the best. Unless you want to resort to the old > discredited Comintern line that the west is only achieving > these unprecedented levels of prosperity by exploiting all > the third world basket cases, which is palpably untrue. > There are arguments for that (or were) but I won't press these as a dogma, as my suspicions cannot be proven and its a castrated discourse. But I urge caution to even the most hysterical rightwingers, if that did any good. I believe terms like "wholesale continental sodomy with coke bottles" applies. But who am I other than some unlikeble eurotrash? > I do thank you for your impressive list of references. I'm > pretty sure that it would be almost impossible for me to > find an equally long list supporting my views, because your > view is a la mode, so to speak. For every book pointing out > the errors of the left/green coalition, there are five > repeating the same claims. In that regard, it's just like > global warming. > I feel you are muttering angrily with a hint of frustration but I am absolutely certain you will mock this perception. > Reciting *more* references to your cause doesn't cause you > to win rational debates. No, my chances to bring you towards the baby child Jesus are as slim as pushing back volcanic matter back into the lava tubes with a garden hose. But I have some hope I reach doubters - and I think the stakes are high. Unfortunately I am in a lose/lose situation. 1- I think the compound consequences of population growth in the whole world as well as in the mostly densely populated regions of earth are WORSE than any potential climatic effects. Worse whereas there is still wiggle room in some aspects of the climate debate I cannot suppress my moral outrage when people actually do deny that rampant population growth is "manageable". 2- voters cannot be swayed to not breed. You cannot win elections by advocating democratic reforms in breeding restrictions. It makes you unelectable. Neither is a tyranny sustainable that enforces breeding restrictions. Hence - we are stuck with this situation - but that's why I am a H+ian (or robot woo woo yestron cultist) because I believe that if fundamental solutions do not emerge in society economical systems, politics, industry, management, etc etc) we are headed for the flusher. We are not in a world where "ideal solutions: exist, but if I were harry stalin potter, I would cast might spells that create fountains of immortality (making the imbiber healthy, smart, beautiful, easily upgraded and augmented - *and completely unable to procreate*). I think this is precisely where the solition lies. I will then generously allow you to create competing fountains of your choice, with the caveat this marvel is hidden for the time being in a deserted but very stable biodome a mile under the surface on one of the hundred biggest asteroids. It'll probably grow shark fins on anyone who drinks from it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 22:03:54 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 15:03:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] atheist superheroes and villains Message-ID: <2d6187670904081503q6c28ad47i81dd108196276361@mail.gmail.com> I just came across a rather unique website that profiles the religious/philosophical backgrounds of various comic book superheroes and villains. http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Atheist http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Evangelical http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Wiccan http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Jewish http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Muslim http://www.comicbookreligion.com/?Religion=Latter-day_Saint_/_Mormon John From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 22:53:23 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 00:53:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: <580930c20904070814w776204f1r83f9671f935bd566@mail.gmail.com> References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> <49DA6B18.3060708@libero.it> <580930c20904070814w776204f1r83f9671f935bd566@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: If the individual discussed here would have lived in the netherlands, *I would have*, om ground that as much as a predatory child molestor shouldn't be a physician in a children's hospital, the above individual shouldn't be in a position of medical care for other human beings. Since he works in Italy, I suspend judgement , I am less than interested about what happens in Italy, since the ideals espoused by this person have been categorized as being part of the Italian political spectrum. I "could" likewise reserve to make complex judgement on the Rwanda massacre. It is a domestic issue, even if lacking in grace and charm. However. I abhor certain things in this world, and when I say I abhor them, I have no other recourse than to object and (when the situation escalates) retaliate. I will retaliate to insult, and not necessarily by insult. I will retaliate against being threatened, and not necessarily by threats. I will retaliate against violence and rarely with outright violence. And if someone describes as his preferred a world where I would most likely die miserable and very soon, I will do whatever I can, whatever it takes such a world does not come into being. I used to have an crude idea about what Extropy was. I thought there was an overlap between Extropy and WTA and transhumanism and all that. I am now slowly coming to the conclusion that these overlaps are still there technological growth issues - but this is not the case on terms of politics. I would appreciate it a LOT if the management of Exi chat, preferably the Extropy movement in general, on what areas it differs from other transhumanist movements. I urge this movement to do so fast, because what will happen, whether or not I do that, is that many the above posts and discussions will leak into the media. It is unavoidable that what is weighed here will in time end up discussed by outsiders and it concerns me gravely that if these discussions are not contextualized in some way, "the outside" would have the ammunution to easily demonize and eradicate the extropian ideal. From what I have read here I would estimate this would be remarkably an easy kill. If the position of "Extropy" (and I do not know who 'represents' Extropy) is to condone what has been said here, I clearly have nothing in common with Extropy. I will wait until I have clarity on that burning question. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 23:14:16 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 01:14:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] WWRD? (What will Russia do?) In-Reply-To: <49DAE32E.7010005@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> <49DAE32E.7010005@rawbw.com> Message-ID: If anyone were concerned (or worried. or terrified. or hysterical) about the spread of fundamentalist islamthink again. I think its gay . Let me hasten to add that I consider Wahabism a variant of Saudi Nashi, for good or for bad :) I think of you looked at it purely rationally similar arguments this kind of movements (in Russia, China, the US, Brazil) have a sinister quality that is of concern with the likelyhood that it produces fall-out outside respective countries. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFHYNSKydqU 2009/4/7 Lee Corbin > Dagon Gmail wrote: > > I thought that had been established... >> ..unless you regard human beings as a means to an end < >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeA6y2vFXgU>'. >> > > Very interesting. It proves that Russia is still a > strong nation (on the assumption that Nashi is > representative). > > Perhaps some of you have seen the very nice documentary > "The Singing Revolution", which showed how Estonians > managed to preserve some of their nationalism and patriotism > in spite of Soviet domination all the way from 1940 or so > through 1990 or so. > > It interests me that the Soviets felt too weak (or too > reluctant for some other reason) to really crack down > and deport the leading million or so Estonians into the > vastness of central Russia. (They'd moved millions of > people around near the end of World War II to suit themselves.) > > See the documentary, one question came over and over to > me: Will the Russians return? > > Already Estonia is 40% Russian or something like that. > > My answer was (arrived at an hour or so after seeing > the documentary) that we live in a new age, and that > the Russian people themselves could no longer feel > proud about subduing a weak little neighbor like Estonia. > > After all, they'd had plenty of excuses in the days of > Stalin: "We're doing them a favor, we're spreading > international communism". > > But what now? Now it would be raw power. > > Yet a friend later told me that I was being naive. "The Russian > people will actually be proud of such a move, and will once > again exult in Russia's strength." > > I would love to hear opinions. > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- I said NO SIGNATURE !!! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 8 23:28:42 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:28:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> Il 08/04/2009 0.46, Tom Nowell ha scritto: > So, enough of the negativity - what more optimistic way can I think > of? Well, it's the one we're trying in Britain. Try and get more > moderate Muslims into politics and give ordinary Muslims a stake in What is a "moderate Muslim"? Mr. President Erdo?an did speak the truth when saying ?The Term ?Moderate Islam? Is Ugly And Offensive; There Is No Moderate Islam; Islam Is Islam.? In 2004 61% of Muslims in Britain said they wanted Sharia law. Following the 7/7/2005 London bombs this figure fell to 40%. Is this 40% "moderate"? Or have you half million of "extremists" Muslims in UK. Is this healthy? > how things are. By getting moderate Muslims into government, you give > voice to all the ordinary people who just want to live their lives > and avoid what the extremists say. You will build a solid base for > Muslims willing to live in a secular society. Unfortunately it is a policy that work for a colonial power, in the colonies, but don't work in the homeland. Mainly, you did so without understanding what Islam is and how Muslims think. You gave a stage and power to self proclaimed "representatives" of Muslims, where the Muslims don't recognize representatives and don't feel compelled to follow what their deliberate. > Also, when people have something to lose from the extremists, they > are less likely to give them the time of day. If a Muslim immigrant > sees his daughters get educated and gain careers, > when the next group > of Islamists come to suggest jihad in the west and the setting up of > a Taleban-style state, he's more likely to think "but they'll take > away my own daughter's jobs, and cause my family hardship." This Muslim, like many other Muslims, will help the "extremists" because the government is unable to protect him from them. So, between a nice dog and a feral dog, he will choose to appease the feral one. Why not? The government let the feral one to become the "spokesperson" of the community. If it is so good, why did this lady need to go in hide from her father and his friends? Are they fit for expulsion or not? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1062375/Revealed-Radical-cleric-Bakris-pole-dancer-daughter.html http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/europe/view.bg?articleid=1122134&srvc=next_article And, please, what about this other lady? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3006561.ece >> The young woman, aged 32, whose father is a Muslim imam in the >> north of England, has moved house 45 times to escape detection by >> her family since she became a Christian 15 years ago. >> >> Hannah, who uses a pseudonym to hide her identity, told The Times >> how she became a Christian after she ran away from home at 16 to >> escape an arranged marriage. >> >> The threats against her became more serious a month ago, prompting >> police to offer her protection in case of an attempt on her life. And this man and other 200.000 people http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article510589.ece >> Muslim apostates cast out and at risk from faith and family While >> Christians who turn to Islam are feted, the 200,000 Muslims who >> turn away are faced with abuse, violence and even murder >> Mr Hussein, a 39-year-old hospital nurse in Bradford, is one of a >> growing number of former Muslims in Britain who face not just being >> shunned by family and community, but attacked, kidnapped, and in >> some cases killed. There is even a secret underground network to >> support and protect those who leave Islam. One estimate suggests >> that as many as 15 per cent of Muslims in Western societies have >> lost their faith, which would mean that in Britain there are about >> 200,000 apostates. Mr. Novell you have an underground network in UK that help ex-muslims because the government is unable and unwilling to act and protect them. The "taliban" are able to terrorize large parts of the population in England, not only in Afghanistan. This is because the BNP is gaining so much votes and the Labour is losing so much. They are forced to choose the only party that hear their cry and their pain. > So, for the French I would recommend a healthy dose of Segolene Royal The French, with all of their problems, will go under after the Great Britain, because they have much more self respect for themselves and their country than you (OK, they have a hypertrophic ego). > trying to get Muslim candidates for her Socialist party, and when > Nicholas Sarkozy sees a potential voting bloc favouring the > opposition he will suddenly start taking the plight of Muslim > immigrants more seriously. They already vote in majority for the Socialists. Like they vote in majority for the Labour in UK. Maybe it is the reason the Labour continue to let enter in the UK unemployable, illiterate, intolerant Muslims and give out citizenship after five years. Mr. Sarkozy proposed himself as a law & order man. After the election he did nothing for what I know. His electorate is very discontent of him. Maybe next time they will vote for someone else. Mirco From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 23:37:07 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 01:37:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [SPACE] People in space, not machine - what gives? Message-ID: Assuming at some time in the future there will be colonies of humans in space (of which many people estimate that window of opportunity has come and gone - i.e. only machines will make it in space) IF humans were to actually settle the solar system in big drums, what would people here think... 1- the dynamic of power/empire formation be? Which planet/region would be most "profitrable" 2- what political systems would fare best 3- what new political systems would emerge 4- what kind of "power projection" would work ? (stealth settlements to avoid kinetic bombardments?) 5- aggressive interdependency? Market slavery? 6- can such a solar system be mostly peaceful? Or will it be a mess? 7- does trade make sense (slow tanker vessels?) Assume AI would be limited (which is very unlikely, but speculating about AI civilizations in the solar system, remains a bit pointless) . Likewise, assume nanofabrication is limited too. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 23:41:33 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 01:41:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> Message-ID: I advocate that critics of Islam create the infrastructure to wipe it from the face of the earth. Since extreme violence didn't quite do the trick so far, I propose that the people most worried create a sinister kartel that exports hard core porn to the most fundamentalist of Islamic countries. It will collapse the system from within within a decade. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 8 23:59:52 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:59:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] WWRD? (What will Russia do?) In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D2B69D.1090503@libero.it> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090331221722.026c0d80@satx.rr.com> <49D534ED.7010609@libero.it> <580930c20904030303y6eacc8f8i148c790619a37459@mail.gmail.com> <49D7D37B.1050109@libero.it> <49DAE32E.7010005@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DD3A78.6030407@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 1.14, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > If anyone were concerned (or worried. or terrified. or hysterical) about > the spread of > fundamentalist islam > think > again. I think its gay > . Let me > hasten to add that I consider > Wahabism a variant of Saudi Nashi, for good or for bad :) The first video is from Iran, not from Saudi Arabia. The title fooled you. I know perfectly that many Muslims extremists are homosexual tendencies. They will fuck what they like and when the time come they will be discovered, they will die during the Jihad. Their sins will be washed and they will go in their paradise where they will have eternal erections and 72 virgins females and 18 young boys. Many women are raped by the same jihadists and forced to become suicide bombers to cancel the shame on their family. What could be interesting is to know what happened to these girls in the video after it was posted. Nothing good I suppose. Like the destiny of the girls of the scandal of Agadir. Mirco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 00:16:45 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 17:16:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [SPACE] People in space, not machine - what gives? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2d6187670904081716p2cc5e590u94bf5ec32b368df9@mail.gmail.com> And what do the European French and Muslim immigrants to France have to do with any of this? John ; ) On 4/8/09, Dagon Gmail wrote: > Assuming at some time in the future there will be colonies of humans in > space (of > which many people estimate that window of opportunity has come and gone - > i.e. > only machines will make it in space) IF humans were to actually settle the > solar > system in big drums, what would people here think... > > 1- the dynamic of power/empire formation be? Which planet/region would be > most "profitrable" > 2- what political systems would fare best > 3- what new political systems would emerge > 4- what kind of "power projection" would work ? > (stealth settlements to avoid kinetic bombardments?) > 5- aggressive interdependency? Market slavery? > 6- can such a solar system be mostly peaceful? Or will it be a mess? > 7- does trade make sense (slow tanker vessels?) > > Assume AI would be limited (which is very unlikely, but speculating about AI > civilizations in > the solar system, remains a bit pointless) . Likewise, assume > nanofabrication is limited too. > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 01:09:29 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 18:09:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [SPACE] People in space, not machine - what gives? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In case you didn't notice, I have been talking about this for over a year. Elements are: Pop up with a rocket and push to GEO with a laser for under $100/kg at upwards of half a million tons per year Construction of power sats at a high rate, at least 125 GW/year and rapidly increasing. 1000 or more construction workers at GEO (and their families) but this is not a colony, just a construction job like a dam. In a few years (because of the need for nickel) a mining camp of several hundred to a thousand at an asteroid. But this is also not a space colony. Shame there are not more mathematically inclined people on this list. I could use someone to check my work, most recently on a space anchor and a possible way to offset radiation pressure. Keith 2009/4/8 Dagon Gmail : > Assuming at some time in the future there will be colonies of humans in > space (of > which many people estimate that window of opportunity has come and gone - > i.e. > only machines will make it in space)? IF humans were to actually settle the > solar > system in big drums, what would people here think... > > 1- the dynamic of power/empire formation be? Which planet/region would be > most "profitrable" > 2- what political systems would fare best > 3- what new political systems would emerge > 4- what kind of "power projection" would work ? > ?(stealth settlements to avoid kinetic bombardments?) > 5- aggressive interdependency? Market slavery? > 6- can such a solar system be mostly peaceful? Or will it be a mess? > 7- does trade make sense (slow tanker vessels?) > > Assume AI would be limited (which is very unlikely, but speculating about AI > civilizations in > the solar system, remains a bit pointless) . Likewise, assume > nanofabrication is limited too. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 02:11:51 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 11:41:51 +0930 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= Message-ID: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> I just wrote this in my blog, and it struck me that it might play well here :-) ---- http://point7.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/wheres-my-bodys-control-panel/ Where?s my body?s Control Panel? It occurs to me that if I were to design a robot to do all the things a human does, it?d have a control panel, or administration interface. This is the equivalent of the Settings menu or Properties page in various software. That control panel would likely be internal, operated by the robot?s mind, but it would be there. I would do this because a general intelligence, being able to think about and plan for the future, can know in advance what capabilities it needs. For example, sometimes it?s good to store fat (because there could be food shortages ahead), so a ?Store Fat Mode? would be nice. On the other hand, in modern western society, calories are abundant, and it would be better to stay at a particular desired weight / body shape / etc, so ?Maintain Weight Mode? would be more appropriate. Or ?Add Muscle mode?, or ?Overclocked Metabolism mode?, etc etc. The possibilities are endless. But humans don?t work that way. Watching ?The Biggest Loser? a bit recently (yes that makes me the loser), it strikes me that we have made weight loss into a moral endeavour. ?No pain no gain?. We invoke purity/sanctity, the message is ?you have sinned, now you must do penance, and only then shall you be rewarded with weight loss?. It?s easy to just accept that, because it plays to our fundamental moral systems, but if you think about it rationally, it?s nuts. What?s really happening with weight gain is that we have a system (our bodies) with a regulatory mechanism adapted to calorie shortage, and no administrative override, no calibration features. Separately, there?s this idea that we need to ?burn off? those calories. It assumes this dumb system where calories go in, get used or stored, and the only way to remove stored calories is to use more than you consume, like we have all the systemic complexity of a bucket. If that were true, then seriously fat people could just not eat for a few weeks, and lose big weight, but it doesn?t work like that. I think what?s really going on is a little of this, but more important is that extreme exercise is communicating to the body ?The new normal is massive amounts of physical work, so go into a mode where we can do this?. So the body drops the kilos, adds muscle, etc etc, to adapt to what it is being made to do. And I guess it follows that the purity/sanctity morality is invoked as motivation to keep up the otherwise very unlikely behaviour of high level exercise. The corollary of this is, I expect, that if you stop the penitential flagelation of the flesh, the body will change back into its ?store fat? mode and you?ll be back to weight gain again. That?s all by way of example. The point I want to make is that it shouldn?t be this hard. Exercise for weight loss is a hack, it?s tricking the body into doing what you want in an indirect way. If you were designing a human from scratch, it wouldn?t be necessary, you?d just go into Settings, and change metabolic modes. However, if you were designing (or, heaven forbid, evolving) a body to be inhabited by a non-generally intelligent mind, one that can?t plan forward and can?t do meta analysis on its own goal system, you?d build something exactly like what we humans current are. There would be no possibility of intelligent control, so instead you?d have the body have a range of possible behaviours, and move between them in response to its activity and cues from the environment. Also, you?d have the same thing with the brain itself; emotions/moods/cognitive states would all change, not at the behest of the mind, but according to a pre-programmed regime based on physical and environmental cues. For all the amazing abilities of our bodies, they are a fundamental mismatch for our minds. Even our mental architecture is a fundamental mismatch for the task of being a general intelligence; most of what we are is targetted at coping with a control system totally unlike what we actually possess. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From kanzure at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 02:52:35 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 21:52:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904081952g68d19ed0u40a4bdb7cb43b10@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Emlyn wrote: > Where?s my body?s Control Panel? I wrote something about this on my website, but I can't remember the exact link at the moment, so it will have to wait. Abstractly, you could say that any given sequence of actions has some finite number of steps with a termination step "back at the beginning"- i.e., back at the actor. This is what I was calling 'recursion'. Through recursion path minimization, you minimize the number of steps that it takes for some action to have some sort of impact on you- there's some "gap" (measured in terms of the number of steps) between program, programmer and that which is programmed (Ishq Allah maboud 'lillah). One of the things that matters in transhuman tech issues is the toolchain length from "programmer" and "that which is programmed"- and in the case of transhumanism, that's supposed to be the self. But in reality, in our day to day lives, we find that we have to go through a lot of crap just to get back to something that might be moderately useful in rapid prototyping of augmentations, or in acquiring tools to deal with the small nanoscopic world internal to ourselves with these big, bulky primate hands bestowed upon us. Path length is one measurement that can matter greatly: some paths take too many steps to go from one state to another state, while other paths, such as those provided by pharmaceuticals in the water supply (admittedly, not a really big influence) are somewhat involuntary, when in truth we would all jump on the chance to be able to moderate that to our own self-guided design. So to some extent, perhaps recursion involves changing the external world, the set of tools that you have available and the set of tools that are accessible, how these tools are made and from what materials and resources they can be designed? > It occurs to me that if I were to design a robot to do all the things > a human does, it?d have a control panel, or administration interface. > This is the equivalent of the Settings menu or Properties page in > various software. That control panel would likely be internal, > operated by the robot?s mind, but it would be there. DNA. But, you might say that this doesn't necessarily effect the self. There are two possible scenarios here. (1) You make some modifications to DNA, and infect yourself with an adenovirus or something, and the changes take place and something happens. Somewhat dangerous, maybe unlikely, maybe likely. (2) You make some modifications to DNA and spawn a child process. At this point, #2 looks very reasonable in the sense that it is something that could have already be happening or have happened multiple times in the past. I think that it is a natural extension of the nuclear family to understand that #2 is part of the typical concept of 'family'- who wouldn't want to reinstantiate their long-lost great grandfather, or husband, or child? In terms of the control panel, contributions from each individual being reincarnated and their own personal modifications to the "family DNA" will make for an interesting way to go about things, but it's no where near anything like rapid prototyping. Oops. > ?Add Muscle mode?, or ?Overclocked Metabolism mode?, etc etc. The > possibilities are endless. Wasn't there an individual who had six times the normal molarity of insulin in his blood, and so he doesn't gain weight because of that? Would you like an insulin drip, or maybe some buggers in your gut to overproduce insulin? I have a genetic circuit I've designed for ecoli to produce oxytocin, and I actually have some notes and people here on campus working towards the expression of insulin in some algae, maybe something could be fixed up. I could even tell you the protocols and procedures you would need to implement the DNA from a synthesis house over the net and grow a good yogurt culture (or something) to consume and then have sitting at the bottom of your stomach. Legal issues aside, that is. > made weight loss into a moral endeavour. ?No pain no gain?. We invoke "No pain no gain". Sounds puritanical. > Separately, there?s this idea that we need to ?burn off? those > calories. It assumes this dumb system where calories go in, get used > or stored, and the only way to remove stored calories is to use more > than you consume, like we have all the systemic complexity of a > bucket. If that were true, then seriously fat people could just not Isn't that a Douglas Adams? > The corollary of this is, I expect, that if you stop the penitential > flagelation of the flesh, the body will change back into its ?store > fat? mode and you?ll be back to weight gain again. Anyway, I find it very weird that government websites actually talk very little about exercise physiology. Health, being such a huge and important issue, has very little science behind it when presented to the public over television or in textbooks (at least the ones I remember from high school). I have thrown together some notes on how to automatically test muscles for what factors will enhance their growth- like different stress/strain vectors, forces, myostatin, etc. etc., but I'm surprised I haven't found any studies that have already implemented it- it seems like something fairly obvious to do for some hardcore studies of muscle physiology. > That?s all by way of example. The point I want to make is that it > shouldn?t be this hard. Exercise for weight loss is a hack, it?s > tricking the body into doing what you want in an indirect way. If you > were designing a human from scratch, it wouldn?t be necessary, you?d > just go into Settings, and change metabolic modes. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 02:54:08 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 12:24:08 +0930 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904081954s790ff23x942d56a7f72d87d6@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/9 Dagon Gmail : > I advocate that critics of Islam create the infrastructure to wipe it > from the face of the earth. Since extreme violence didn't quite do the > trick so far, I propose that the people most worried create a > sinister kartel that exports hard core porn to the most fundamentalist > of Islamic countries.? It will collapse the system from within within > a decade. Um, the interned has been around now for about 40 years. Is that what you mean? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 02:54:36 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 12:24:36 +0930 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904081954s790ff23x942d56a7f72d87d6@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> <710b78fc0904081954s790ff23x942d56a7f72d87d6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904081954u22a57d5fndf011120d239306@mail.gmail.com> I mean the internet. Totally spoiled it! 2009/4/9 Emlyn : > 2009/4/9 Dagon Gmail : >> I advocate that critics of Islam create the infrastructure to wipe it >> from the face of the earth. Since extreme violence didn't quite do the >> trick so far, I propose that the people most worried create a >> sinister kartel that exports hard core porn to the most fundamentalist >> of Islamic countries.? It will collapse the system from within within >> a decade. > > Um, the interned has been around now for about 40 years. Is that what you mean? > > -- > Emlyn > > http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related > http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting > http://emlynoregan.com - main site > -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From brentn at freeshell.org Thu Apr 9 02:47:27 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 22:47:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5E30B328-BD9E-4B08-A066-43E8AEE44D74@freeshell.org> On 8 Apr, 2009, at 22:11, Emlyn wrote: > I just wrote this in my blog, and it struck me that it might play > well here :-) > You make some really good points in the article. A couple of things to consider: 1) Some of us don't consider exercise to be flagellation. Its an enjoyable activity! Well - at least for me, some things are. Lifting weights I find to be tedious and abhorrent. Things like the rowing machines and the elliptical machines are like a moving meditation for me. Kind of like Yoga - Hatha, Bikram, or Ashtanga. But hiking is by and far my favorite exercise. 2) More interestingly, let's assume that we learn how to install the functional equivalent of your control panel and that a large fraction of the population both have access to and choose to install it. Wouldn't a logical outcome of that be that the world's total caloric intake would skyrocket as people chose to overclock their metabolisms to self-enhance? (muscles, brains, looks, whatever would float their individual boats.) Right now, we produce more food than the world needs, then waste a good deal of it through systemic inefficiencies, causing there to be both massive obesity and hunger - often within a single square mile. I'd assume that with that "control panel," there would be a lot more hunger and almost no obesity. And a good number of people consuming vat grown yeast- and algae- derived proteins and fats. :) B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 03:06:42 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:06:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> Message-ID: <1239246402.5478.1914.camel@hayek> Well I was going to take a break from posting for a few days; I was not even going to reply to the little rant someone aimed at me since it was so full of false implications and errors of reasoning that it did not even have enough substance to qualify as an ad-hominem attack. However I decided to write a few lines to show some of the flaws in the proposals sent by painload2k at libero.it. I do not plan to cover them all or be exhaustive in my remarks but I will cover some of the more bizarre items. On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 17:40 +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > > Who want use force and intimidation to remove people unwanted? > There are many lawful ways to make life harder for people you don't want. Well first we need to remember that the values that I think most on this list want people to hold such as "equal protection under the law" and "freedom of expression" would be weakened by the proposals. It would be difficult to urge Saudi Arabia to liberalize their society when doing the opposite elsewhere. > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. > Five years of jail for anyone doing it. Well there goes the Masquerade Ball. And Halloween. So you advocate anyone going to a Masquerade Ball gets 5 years in jail. So much for individualism and freedom of expression. > 3) Preaching in mosques must be done in French (or the local language). > Five year for anyone preaching in a different language. Interesting that "local language" is not defined. Would it be the predominate language in a country, state/province, county/parish, city/town, neighborhood or what? Where I live the closest supermarket uses Spanish for announcements over the public address system and the signs are in Spanish usually with English below in a smaller font. And just a few miles a way is a market where Vietnamese is predominate and in the other direction is a market with a lot of Chinese language signs. So this idea of local language is poorly defined. And let us not forget Latin, would the use of Latin be outlawed? I seem to recall the Catholic Church uses it. Thus we see that the proposal is poorly defined and essentially nonsensical. > 4) Anyone jailed for terrorism or helping and abetting or advocating > violence will have his citizenship revoked and will be expelled after > completing his term. Do you really mean "advocating violence" as a general category? What about someone promoting the War in Iraq? Personally I think the War in Iraq is a bad idea but throwing someone in jail for advocating the war violates the principle of free expression. Now maybe this is not what you meant but that is exactly what you wrote. > 7) Mandatory swimming lessons in mixed classes for all students. And what do you do if the students show up for class and do not do anything; they just stand there in their street clothes? What do you do; give them a failing grade? How totally ridiculous. > 8) No prayer time during the work schedule. This is a matter between an employer and and employee. If an employer wants to let an employee off for an hour on Ash Wednesday to say a prayer and get some ashes on their forehead what possible concern is it of the government. > 9) No Halal slaughter. Are you going to outlaw Kosher also? Do you have any idea how difficult this would be to monitor? > I'm sure a lawyer could come with much more ways to make life harder for > bad people. Your list of laws would make life harder for good people as well and would most probably lead to an undesirable outcome. > Do you think anything of this will constitute a "Crime against humanity" > or "ethic cleansing"? Probably not "crime against humanity". As for "ethic cleansing" well what you suggest is certainly lacking it ethics. Fred From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 06:09:56 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 15:39:56 +0930 Subject: [ExI] U.S. Medical Care In-Reply-To: References: <1db0b2da0903230247u518583ffw4893794a2e776543@mail.gmail.com> <49D542CE.6090501@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090402182810.02549870@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904031158j46ace009vcac3c81658bd2a54@mail.gmail.com> <14541BA50ED04079965CE4D12458FCA6@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090403163253.023b6eb0@satx.rr.com> <49D875B1.1010004@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904082309g53a3fa8x596e42d266c05412@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/5 Dagon Gmail : >> For someone who actually works as a psychiatric nurse (as Mirco does, I >> gather) to say this is disturbing. Maybe he could change his name to Nurse >> Ratched.# >> Damien Broderick > > Well, for his sake, I hope someone doesn't collect his opinions, articles > and views, > prints them, binds them in a convenient folder, and sends copies of this > folder to > several such institutions in his region of italy, as well as to several > newspapers, > offices of Italian socialists and communists, and other media organizations, > with > his name, address and photograph. Such an act would likely could him his > job, and > worse. That's clearly a threat, and really out of line in my opinion. I don't agree with Mirco on pretty much anything he says (in fact I have him kill-filed, sorry I know it's rude to admit it). But, what he says, he says on the open internet, granting all and sundry the ability to read it and form opinions on it as they may, including his employers, and so on, as above. So the first thing to note is that he is not trying to hide his opinion from "the light of truth" or something like that. Secondly, we are all in the same position. The views of the transhumanist community are marginal in the context of society at large, and many of our more banal ideas about, say, morphological freedom, would horrify many members of our respective communities. By publicly posting on the internet you give up any claim to privacy for those posts, but on the other hand many of us likely depend, perhaps without having thought about it too much, on the fact that while those posts are public, they are also not being broadcast on the evening news, and/or snail mailed to our employers, to "enemy" organisations, etc. It's a pseudo-anonymity, but it's a modern kind of decorum. It is socially true that there is a difference between posting about unusual and contentious ideas in a quiet internet forum down a sidestreet of the internet, and taking those ideas and shoving them in the face of every single person you know, regardless of the social niceties and subtleties required of each such relationship. Now if any of us tries to run for public office in the future, or has an affair with Britney, then it's a different story, of course :-) -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 06:29:09 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 08:29:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about burkas? Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your own business? Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer to refer to this attitude by another name. On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. Five > years of jail for anyone doing it. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 06:59:26 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 16:29:26 +0930 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <5E30B328-BD9E-4B08-A066-43E8AEE44D74@freeshell.org> References: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> <5E30B328-BD9E-4B08-A066-43E8AEE44D74@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904082359l563e3bd9k1e6510e36c1e591@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/9 Brent Neal : > > On 8 Apr, 2009, at 22:11, Emlyn wrote: > >> I just wrote this in my blog, and it struck me that it might play well >> here :-) >> > > You make some really good points in the article. A couple of things to > consider: > > 1) Some of us don't consider exercise to be flagellation. Its an enjoyable > activity! Well - at least for me, some things are. Lifting weights I find to > be tedious and abhorrent. Things like the rowing machines and the elliptical > machines are like a moving meditation for me. Kind of like Yoga - Hatha, > Bikram, or Ashtanga. But hiking is by and far my favorite exercise. Yep, point taken. I walk about an hour and a half most days of the week (that's how I commute), I love to walk. But, there's exercise and exercise. The flagellation is body-modification oriented exercise. Nothing wrong with body modification, but the purity/sanctity memes surrounding it, no thanks. Something obvious, but interesting in context I think, is that we don't take our cars out for a drive to get them some exercise, or run our appliances to keep them fit. It'd be stupid, because in general running a machine wears it out. However, we actually need to exercise in order to stay in good condition ourselves. This really only seems to be the case because we need to signal to our bodies "We are using all these muscles and other body bits, keep them in good condition", again it's a hack. We must also be wearing out parts when we do this, but we have self-repair mechanisms that are good enough that the signalling hack is more valuable than the losses due to wear, at least until we are old. If you were going to design a replacement body, you'd allow those signals to be sent directly, and skip the otherwise useless behaviour of exercise. > 2) More interestingly, let's assume that we learn how to install the > functional equivalent of your control panel and that a large fraction of the > population both have access to and choose to install it. Wouldn't a logical > outcome of that be that the world's total caloric intake would skyrocket as > people chose to overclock their metabolisms to self-enhance? (muscles, > brains, looks, whatever would float their individual boats.) Right now, we > produce more food than the world needs, then waste a good deal of it through > systemic inefficiencies, causing there to be both massive obesity and hunger > - often within a single square mile. ?I'd assume that with that "control > panel," ?there would be a lot more hunger and almost no obesity. Well, if you have a control panel, you turn off or turn down hunger. Hunger is a hardwired signal to you to eat, part of a feedback loop with the weight gaining stuff. But over-eating as enjoyed in the west involves quantity over quality, a lot of time, and a lot of moral negatives (especially shame). I bet people would just turn down that signal. If you want to bulk up, well, we already consume way too much; it'd probably turn out not to require any more than we currently eat, and maybe less. OTOH, a lot of people will want to be thin, and will consume little as a result. I think if we could control hunger and metabolism separately, we'd eat very little. A problem that might arise is people not eating enough (and turning off the signals to tell them they need to). > And a good number of people consuming vat grown yeast- and algae-derived > proteins and fats. :) I'd eat that if it was tasty. Is it tasty? > > B > > -- > Brent Neal, Ph.D. > http://brentn.freeshell.org > -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 07:01:33 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 16:31:33 +0930 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904090001w2d972256o7e9636acc1cd3922@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/9 Emlyn : > I just wrote this in my blog, and it struck me that it might play well here :-) > > ---- > http://point7.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/wheres-my-bodys-control-panel/ > > Where?s my body?s Control Panel? > By the way, what I was actually thinking about when I wrote this was, how would a "human" look who was designed by an intelligent creator? I think the answer is "little or nothing like us at all". -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 07:27:05 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:27:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Even the best of libertarians intents are easily corrupted by Xenophobia and Racism. 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic > I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about burkas? > > Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business > of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your > own business? > > Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you > care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer > to refer to this attitude by another name. > > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: > > > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. > Five > > years of jail for anyone doing it. > -- > Eschatoon Magic > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon > aka Giulio Prisco > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- I said NO SIGNATURE !!! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 08:04:34 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 10:04:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a libertarian, though I am one deep inside. There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a healthy live-and-let-live soul, which believes in self-ownership and personal freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to liberty. It is not "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other is a fascist soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress and murder others. I promise that I will call myself a libertarian when the second soul will go. 2009/4/9 Dagon Gmail : > Even the best of libertarians intents are easily corrupted by Xenophobia and > Racism. > > 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic >> >> I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about >> burkas? >> >> Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business >> of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your >> own business? >> >> Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you >> care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer >> to refer to this attitude by another name. >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it >> wrote: >> >> > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. >> > Five >> > years of jail for anyone doing it. >> -- >> Eschatoon Magic >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon >> aka Giulio Prisco >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > -- > I said NO SIGNATURE !!! > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 12:01:29 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:01:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> References: <49D873D9.6000208@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49DDE399.4030008@libero.it> Il 05/04/2009 11.03, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > If I write about actions that France could and should take to > survive, I'll definitely leave gaping a class of people I perhaps > should refer to as extreme individualists. These, or at least the > subset of them of immediate concern, are people who may hold dear any > number of high principles long revered in western civilization; yet > who do not and perhaps cannot identify with the institutions and > peoples who gave rise to those principles---and, see below, cannot > perceive ambient threats to those principles of an existential > nature. Interesting post. Brussel Journal have an article about some differences between the western and the Islamic society. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3826 Islam and the West: Lines of Demarcation > the citizens of Western states ...... > have lost confidence in their way of life. Indeed, they are > no longer sure what that way of life requires of them. I think this is one of the problems with some people. They don't understand that some institutions and relations need to be maintained and protected or they will disappear. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 13:34:43 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:34:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1239246402.5478.1914.camel@hayek> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1239246402.5478.1914.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49DDF973.2030701@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 5.06, Fred C. Moulton ha scritto: > On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 17:40 +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: >> Who want use force and intimidation to remove people unwanted? >> There are many lawful ways to make life harder for people you don't >> want. > Well first we need to remember that the values that I think most on > this list want people to hold such as "equal protection under the > law" and "freedom of expression" would be weakened by the proposals. > It would be difficult to urge Saudi Arabia to liberalize their > society when doing the opposite elsewhere. Just now, we are saudizing our society, but you don't note it. >> 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your >> face. Five years of jail for anyone doing it. > > Well there goes the Masquerade Ball. And Halloween. So you > advocate anyone going to a Masquerade Ball gets 5 years in jail. So > much for individualism and freedom of expression. Well, until the law force me to go unmasked (here, in Italy), I want the Muslims do the same. It exactly about "Equal protection under the law". And we have wonderful Carnivals here. >> 3) Preaching in mosques must be done in French (or the local >> language). Five year for anyone preaching in a different language. > > Interesting that "local language" is not defined. Would it be the > predominate language in a country, state/province, county/parish, > city/town, neighborhood or what? Where I live the closest > supermarket uses Spanish for announcements over the public address > system and the signs are in Spanish usually with English below in a > smaller font. And just a few miles a way is a market where > Vietnamese is predominate and in the other direction is a market with > a lot of Chinese language signs. So this idea of local language is > poorly defined. And let us not forget Latin, would the use of Latin > be outlawed? I seem to recall the Catholic Church uses it. Thus we > see that the proposal is poorly defined and essentially nonsensical. This is so only because you think he USoA are the world and your way is the way. In other countries, the "local language" is the language used in the official documents. Italian in Italy, French in France, English in UK, Russian in Russia and so on. Only the USA I suppose there is no defined standard about what language it is the standard one. >> 4) Anyone jailed for terrorism or helping and abetting or >> advocating violence will have his citizenship revoked and will be >> expelled after completing his term. > Do you really mean "advocating violence" as a general category? Not. In specific terms. Do you want a discussion in legalese? When a preacher exhort people to hit girls that don't wear a hijab he is advocating violence. This simple act put him (as I suppose, by default, he believe what he preach) in a "state of war" with any girl not wearing a hijab. When they say that they will not submit to the rule of kaffirs, they say that they are not bind to any rule in our regard apart Shaaria. When they advocate that they must rule themselves and must rule the others, they are telling that they must become the masters and we must become the slaves. This put them in a state of war with all free men in the world. They preach against democracy. What about when they teach to the parents to hit their children if they don't pray? When a preacher tell his audience that "the time is fast approaching where the table are going to turn and Muslims will be in position of being uppermost in strength and, when this happen, people will not get killed unjustly" what I must think? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Mosque This is about a mosque that the government of Mr. Blair said was "moderate". > Abu Usamah saying of apostates: ?If the imam wants to crucify him he > should crucify him. The person is put up on the wood and he's left > there to bleed to death for three days.? > Abu Usamah speaking on the deficiency of women's minds: ?Allah has > created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect > is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that > will make her emotional. It takes two witnesses of a woman to equal > the one witness of the man.?[4] > Abdullah el-Faisal: ?You have to bomb the Indian businesses, and as > for the Jews you kill them physically. > Dr Bilal Philips on marriage with girls before puberty: ?The prophet > Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to > puberty. With his practice, he clarified what is permissible, and > that is why we shouldn't have any issues about an older man marrying > a younger woman, which is looked down upon by this society today, > but we know that Prophet Mohammed practised it, it wasn?t abuse or > exploitation, it was marriage. > Abu Usamah saying that homosexuals should be killed by throwing them > off a cliff, stating ?throw [the homosexual] off the mountain.?[6] My position is well explained in these essays about Islam citing Locke: http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2008/04/the-right-of-th.html http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2008/04/john-locke-on-t.html By worlds and deeds these Muslims are at war with all free humans, that the free humans understand it or not. And telling to be Muslims put people in a state of war against all free humans, that they understand it or not. Like to declare themselves Nazis put in a state of war with the Jews. Or, given the precedents and the words the Jews must wait and see what will happen really? A lamb that don't know or don't understand a lion is a walking snack. But, usually, the lamb will fear and loathe most the guarding dog that warn her and protect her than the lion that will eat her. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 13:36:13 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:36:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DD332A.50608@libero.it> Message-ID: <49DDF9CD.6040206@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 1.41, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > I advocate that critics of Islam create the infrastructure to wipe it > from the face of the earth. Since extreme violence didn't quite do the > trick so far, I propose that the people most worried create a > sinister kartel that exports hard core porn to the most fundamentalist > of Islamic countries. It will collapse the system from within within > a decade. This show how much you don't understand the human nature. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 14:06:41 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:06:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DE00F1.8020606@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 8.29, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about burkas? > > Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business > of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your > own business? In a libertarian world, I would not forced to deal with Muslims, not to pay their welfare by socialists politicians. So they could mask as much as they like. In a libertarian world, I and many other kafirs, would prevent any masked person in our properties, either Muslims or ninjas. As the public places are properties of the government (now), it can decide that people must be unmasked. Or must unmask at request of the police, or other. What is unacceptable is that I can not mask myself and they can mask themselves and the government close its eyes when this happen to avoid troubles (riots, violence, etc.). The same is true for many other laws. > Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you > care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer > to refer to this attitude by another name. I care the freedom to be able to prevent others to remove my freedom now and in the future. You think about freedom like a series of tenets and taboos; do this, don't do that and all be good; never mind the effects of your actions or inactions in the future. I think freedom like a tree that must be cared ad protected and preserved. And sometimes you need to strip away the ivy. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 14:11:54 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:11:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DE022A.205@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 10.04, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a libertarian, > though I am one deep inside. > > There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a healthy > live-and-let-live soul, which believes in self-ownership and personal > freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to liberty. It is not > "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other is a fascist > soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress and murder > others. I promise that I will call myself a libertarian when the > second soul will go. In between there is the people understanding that liberty must be equal for all and it is not some suicidal pact where we let an enemy to grow until it is powerful enough to destroy us. Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 14:15:59 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:15:59 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic : > I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about burkas? > > Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business > of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your > own business? > > Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you > care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer > to refer to this attitude by another name. It's freedom in the sense of the most authoritarian regime, which allows everyone to say and do anything they want, with the only restriction being that they don't say or do anything the regime doesn't like. -- Stathis Papaioannou From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 9 14:32:28 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:32:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] APA - "Human Kinds" - Vancouver, April 2009 Message-ID: <14FDDBE162BB4333A02CD0FB283D3532@DFC68LF1> I will be speaking at the American Philosophical Association's "Human Kinds" symposium in Vancouver this weekend. Is anyone in Vancouver and available to have dinner or drinks with me? http://whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/human-kinds-symposium-vanc ouver-april-11th/ http://www.apaonline.org/resources/CFP%27s/SIPR%20SESSION.aspx Please respond off list. Cheers - Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 14:57:18 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 16:57:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <49DE022A.205@libero.it> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <49DE022A.205@libero.it> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904090757j459d34daxb10556a2333d3682@mail.gmail.com> In other words, you are saying that you want to be free to try to acquire power that you could use to damage others, but others should not be free to try to acquire power that they could use to damage you. Sounds easy, doesn't it? And it also sounds familiar. Call this attitude whatever you like it -- I call it fascism. On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 4:11 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 09/04/2009 10.04, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: >> >> That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a libertarian, >> though I am one deep inside. >> >> There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a healthy >> live-and-let-live soul, which believes in self-ownership and personal >> freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to liberty. It is not >> "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other is a fascist >> soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress and murder >> others. I promise that I will call myself a libertarian when the >> second soul will go. > > In between there is the people understanding that liberty must be equal for > all and it is not some suicidal pact where we let an enemy to grow until it > is powerful enough to destroy us. > > Mirco > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 15:16:20 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:16:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239290180.5478.2034.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 09:27 +0200, Dagon Gmail wrote: > Even the best of libertarians intents are easily corrupted by > Xenophobia and Racism. If this is the case then we should be clear then whatever remains is not called libertarian. > 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic > I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap > about burkas? > > Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What > business > of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you > mind your > own business? > > Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense > that you > care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I > prefer > to refer to this attitude by another name. > > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: > > > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal > your face. Five > > years of jail for anyone doing it. > > -- > Eschatoon Magic > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon > aka Giulio Prisco > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > -- > I said NO SIGNATURE !!! > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 15:14:22 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:14:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239290062.5478.2031.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 08:29 +0200, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about burkas? > > Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business > of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your > own business? As I have pointed out previously painlord2k at libero.it is not a libertarian. Once everyone realizes that then some of the confusion will be removed. > Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you > care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer > to refer to this attitude by another name. > > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: > > > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. Five > > years of jail for anyone doing it. From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 15:26:18 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:26:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 10:04 +0200, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a libertarian, > though I am one deep inside. > > There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a healthy > live-and-let-live soul, which believes in self-ownership and personal > freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to liberty. It is not > "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other is a fascist > soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress and murder > others. I promise that I will call myself a libertarian when the > second soul will go. While I think I understand your concern I do disagree with your description. This "second soul" of which you speak has ever been, is not now and will never be libertarian. So the problem is not with libertarians it is with the impostors who use the term. What we have seen is an example of what I spend some effort to work against terms like "libertarian", "free-market", "Extropian" or "trans-humanist" being wrongly defined as including ideas which are not part of them and which are exactly the opposite of them. Thus I think it is worth some effort to make sure that the term "Extropian" is not associated with racism. Fred > 2009/4/9 Dagon Gmail : > > Even the best of libertarians intents are easily corrupted by Xenophobia and > > Racism. > > > > 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic > >> > >> I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about > >> burkas? > >> > >> Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business > >> of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your > >> own business? > >> > >> Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you > >> care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer > >> to refer to this attitude by another name. > >> > >> > >> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > >> wrote: > >> > >> > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. > >> > Five > >> > years of jail for anyone doing it. > >> -- > >> Eschatoon Magic > >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon > >> aka Giulio Prisco > >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco > >> _______________________________________________ > >> extropy-chat mailing list > >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > > -- > > I said NO SIGNATURE !!! > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 15:32:45 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 17:32:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904090832u75575e38j758c980fc92084e0@mail.gmail.com> Fred - of course I agree that the "second soul" of which I speak has never been, is not now and will never be libertarian. Not to mention their unholy alliance with religious fundamentalists in the Bush era. But many of them call themselves libertarians, and real libertarians are not always ready to denounce them. On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > > On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 10:04 +0200, Eschatoon Magic wrote: >> That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a libertarian, >> though I am one deep inside. >> >> There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a healthy >> live-and-let-live soul, which believes in self-ownership and personal >> freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to liberty. It is not >> "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other is a fascist >> soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress and murder >> others. I promise that I will call myself a libertarian when the >> second soul will go. > > While I think I understand your concern I do disagree with your > description. ?This "second soul" of which you speak has ever been, is > not now and will never be libertarian. ?So the problem is not with > libertarians it is with the impostors who use the term. > > What we have seen is an example of what I spend some effort to work > against terms like "libertarian", "free-market", "Extropian" or > "trans-humanist" being wrongly defined as including ideas which are not > part of them and which are exactly the opposite of them. ?Thus I think > it is worth some effort to make sure that the term "Extropian" is not > associated with racism. > > Fred > > >> 2009/4/9 Dagon Gmail : >> > Even the best of libertarians intents are easily corrupted by Xenophobia and >> > Racism. >> > >> > 2009/4/9 Eschatoon Magic >> >> >> >> I thought you were a libertarian, what is this stalinist crap about >> >> burkas? >> >> >> >> Aren't libertarian supposed to like individual freedom? What business >> >> of yours is if someone likes to wear a burka? Why don't you mind your >> >> own business? >> >> >> >> Ah yes, I see -- you call yourself a libertarian in the sense that you >> >> care about _your_ freedom to _remove_ the freedom of others. I prefer >> >> to refer to this attitude by another name. >> >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:40 PM, painlord2k at libero.it >> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> > 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. >> >> > Five >> >> > years of jail for anyone doing it. >> >> -- >> >> Eschatoon Magic >> >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon >> >> aka Giulio Prisco >> >> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> extropy-chat mailing list >> >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > I said NO SIGNATURE !!! >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > extropy-chat mailing list >> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > >> > >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Apr 9 16:07:53 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 12:07:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= References: <710b78fc0904081911o3d381019y3028e1a6e01e218a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Emlyn" > Where?s my body?s Control Panel? Evolution didn?t deem to give us a control panel, probably because positive feedback loops have little survival value. However in the future there is no reason we couldn?t develop one. I image most of us would push the happiness slide switch on the control panel as far right as it will go, so too the ?pride in successfully accomplishing a difficult task? slide. I?m pretty sure those will be the most popular settings. It could also be the reason we don?t see ET. John K Clark From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 9 18:52:13 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:52:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? Message-ID: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some things that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review confirmed those doubts: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ Any comments from those who have watched it? Max From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 18:46:27 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:46:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904090832u75575e38j758c980fc92084e0@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> <1fa8c3b90904090832u75575e38j758c980fc92084e0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239302787.5478.2111.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 17:32 +0200, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Fred - of course I agree that the "second soul" of which I speak has > never been, is not now and will never be libertarian. Not to mention > their unholy alliance with religious fundamentalists in the Bush era. > But many of them call themselves libertarians, and real libertarians > are not always ready to denounce them. Well I do what I can but there are a finite number of hours in a day. And thanks for noticing and correcting my typo. As for an "unholy alliance" with religious fundamentalists do you have names of groups or individuals? I am interested if you have the name of a group or individual with which I am not familiar. I just did not have the time to track them all. I suspect that it is due in part to living in the Silicon Valley that of the libertarians I know the overwhelming majority are non-believers. I can think of two (or maybe three) who identify as Christian and one who I think might identify as Jewish (but might be more of a Deist). I suspect my experience would be different if I lived elsewhere. I recently attended a book discussion group compromised of libertarians and the books under discussion where some recent books by authors such as Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. Of the regular attendees only one was a believer and that person had brought along a couple of friends who were also believers. You comments do raise a point worth mentioning. Not all Christian fundamentalists have a goal of political power. It was not too many decades ago that Christian fundamentalists tended to stay out of politics. Their involvement in politics started to increase in the 1970s. It is interesting to note that there are now some Christian fundamentalists who are bemoaning the involvement with politics since they think it stirred up a backlash against them. Fred From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 9 19:00:29 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:00:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <20090405125255.GG35780@vt11.net> References: <5188B5384C5545D084A5514F42B050AB@MyComputer> <398dca510904041344v38c0703fi92b11c5ef18b431@mail.gmail.com> <20090405125255.GG35780@vt11.net> Message-ID: <49DE45CD.5030503@rawbw.com> Jordan Hazen wrote (4/5/2009 5:52 AM) > On Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 04:44:31PM -0400, Isabelle Hakala wrote: >> One of the things that occurs to me about mind uploading is this... >> I would want to upload my mind, and let that 'simulation' run for, >> oh... say a decade, without any outside influences, and me still >> living in the outside world, and then compare notes with my uploaded >> self. > > Could you elaborate on "without any outside influences?" Hopefully > this doesn't mean keeping the upload isolated from the world? > > I'd think that such an extended period of sensory deprivation would be > extremely unhealthy, perhaps even a recipe for insanity-- at the > least, very stunted development-- Surely it would depend on what mood you were in while this was ongoing, e.g., moods can in theory be completely determined by drugs. Often after *some* kinds of extremely hectic days, *some* people would really like total sensory deprivation. In fact, sometimes when I'm trying to think clearly about some pure math problem, that would be great. So I conclude that the upload would have a variety of simulated dials appearing to overlay his apparent sensory input, and the one that says "volume" might be turned down clear to zero with utterly no harm---again, if mood control is provided by, say, some other knobs. Lee especially considering how much > longer a decade might seem to a mind running on faster hardware. > > After perhaps a few {minutes|hours|days} of introspection and reliving > memories, I'd be poking about desperately for a "hibernation mode" > toggle... > > If you mean only to avoid all contact between your biological and > uploaded selves, that may not be realistic either. If nothing else, > the upload would be tempted by curiosity to follow you around on the > 'net. > From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 19:26:56 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 12:26:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2ae60d770904091226g3272f039m1101320a6578e4ee@mail.gmail.com> I read the article and agree that is a road trip style documentary where he visits people in east coast America, central America, Amsterdam, Vatican city, Utah, Israel... He meets and talks about Mormons, Catholics, Scientologists, Fundies and Moderates. The impression I got was that he wanted people to be more reasonable. He encounters people who seem Zealous and crazy. I thought the movie was funny and not just in a 'ha ha, Christians are dumb! Look at the funny monkey!" but also because Bill is a comedian. He just puts his thoughts in funny sentences. Don't rent it though. You can see it for free online. -Chad -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefan.pernar at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 19:38:17 2009 From: stefan.pernar at gmail.com (Stefan Pernar) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 21:38:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <944947f20904091238i68412f5ck3b9a86769e3f1d8@mail.gmail.com> I watched most of it and it was typical religion bashing and thus highly unenlightening. I find the new atheists generally uninspiring and for the most part as irrational and dogmatic in their views as religious fundamentalists. Since I had a couple of ugly exchanges on this topic I will not engage in further debate. For anyone interested in my perspective you can find it at http://rationalmorality.info/?p=54 Stefan On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Max More wrote: > I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some things > that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review confirmed those > doubts: > http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ > > Any comments from those who have watched it? > > Max > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stefan Pernar Skype: Stefan.Pernar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 20:11:06 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:11:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1239307866.5478.2143.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 13:52 -0500, Max More wrote: > I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some > things that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review > confirmed those doubts: > http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ > > Any comments from those who have watched it? I saw the movie in a theater. There are parts of the movie that are very funny and some that are not. Some of the funniest parts are not when Bill Maher is making a joke but rather when Bill Maher lets people just be themselves. The scene in the office of the member of the US Congress is very funny and that scene alone was worth the price of admission to the theater. My recommendation is rent the movie and enjoy the funny parts; ignore the other parts. Just adjust expectations according; it is not a great movie, it is just an occasionally funny movie. By the way the movie "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney is much, much funnier and much more insightful. Bill Maher is doing one thing and Julia Sweeney is doing a different thing. I enjoyed the Julia Sweeney movie more. As for the review by Brendan O'Neill. I was rather disappointed. It is not much of a review rather it is an article in which the O'Neill goes on about what he terms "new Atheists" and there are a few remarks thrown in about the movie. And the remarks about the movie seems to have missed the point. O'Neill seems to be at best only vaguely aware of what Bill Maher was trying to do. O'Neill goes on about the "new Atheists" (usually considered as Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and sometimes Stenger) yet only quotes Hitchens. And O'Neill goes on about how the humancentricity of religion and claims that this is what Dawkins, Dennett et al really hate about religion. Well to put it bluntly O'Neill does not know what he is talking about when it comes to religion. As for "new Atheists" one wonders if he has ever read Dawkins or Harris since he clearly does not understand them. My suggestion: Skip the review and see "Letting Go of God" and if that is not available see "Religulous". Just have the correct expectations. Fred > Max > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 21:30:16 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 14:30:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <1239307866.5478.2143.camel@hayek> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1239307866.5478.2143.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <2d6187670904091430r432c0130k56d868b784f3d39@mail.gmail.com> I have not yet seen Religulous (I definitely plan to...) but some critics have said Maher definitely "stacked the deck" in editing to generally only show religious people in his film who were not articulate and came across badly/comically. The focus was on humor and "sticking it to the religious believer," rather than having an even moderately intelligent/enlightened (which could still be funny) discussion. John On 4/9/09, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > > On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 13:52 -0500, Max More wrote: >> I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some >> things that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review >> confirmed those doubts: >> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ >> >> Any comments from those who have watched it? > > I saw the movie in a theater. There are parts of the movie that are > very funny and some that are not. Some of the funniest parts are not > when Bill Maher is making a joke but rather when Bill Maher lets people > just be themselves. The scene in the office of the member of the US > Congress is very funny and that scene alone was worth the price of > admission to the theater. > > My recommendation is rent the movie and enjoy the funny parts; ignore > the other parts. Just adjust expectations according; it is not a great > movie, it is just an occasionally funny movie. By the way the movie > "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney is much, much funnier and much more > insightful. Bill Maher is doing one thing and Julia Sweeney is doing a > different thing. I enjoyed the Julia Sweeney movie more. > > As for the review by Brendan O'Neill. I was rather disappointed. It is > not much of a review rather it is an article in which the O'Neill goes > on about what he terms "new Atheists" and there are a few remarks thrown > in about the movie. And the remarks about the movie seems to have > missed the point. O'Neill seems to be at best only vaguely aware of > what Bill Maher was trying to do. O'Neill goes on about the "new > Atheists" (usually considered as Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and > sometimes Stenger) yet only quotes Hitchens. And O'Neill goes on about > how the humancentricity of religion and claims that this is what > Dawkins, Dennett et al really hate about religion. Well to put it > bluntly O'Neill does not know what he is talking about when it comes to > religion. As for "new Atheists" one wonders if he has ever read Dawkins > or Harris since he clearly does not understand them. > > My suggestion: Skip the review and see "Letting Go of God" and if that > is not available see "Religulous". Just have the correct expectations. > > Fred > >> Max >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 22:02:42 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:02:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904091430r432c0130k56d868b784f3d39@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1239307866.5478.2143.camel@hayek> <2d6187670904091430r432c0130k56d868b784f3d39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239314562.5478.2180.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 14:30 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > I have not yet seen Religulous (I definitely plan to...) but some > critics have said Maher definitely "stacked the deck" in editing to > generally only show religious people in his film who were not > articulate and came across badly/comically. As I have said previously these critics are missing the point about what the movie is about. It was never intended to be a rigorous intellectual exposition. Consider if you saw an advertisement of a movie called Mechaniculous. You see that the movie is done by Bill Maher and that it is about auto mechanics. You would likely expect that it would be filming some of the goofiest mechanics saying and doing silly things. Maher would probably make jokes about the auto mechanics. That is the kind of movie I would expect; I would not go to a Bill Maher movie about auto mechanics expecting a documentary analysis of the latest types of fuel injectors, the new types of training in these devices for auto mechanics and the special methods that auto mechanics use when dealing with them. Now it is possible to not enjoy the overall genre of the type of movie that Bill Maher makes; that is a personal aesthetic matter. But to criticize a Bill Maher comedy spoof by the standards of serious documentary makes the critic look like a clueless twit. Look at the difference between the movie "Religulous" which is a comedy spoof and the movie "Letting Go of God" which is an autobiographical comedy. Each deals with religion but are doing it is different ways and neither of them is intended as a documentary on comparative religion. So to criticize either one for not being a proper comparative religion documentary is either silly or stupid. Fred > The focus was on humor > and "sticking it to the religious believer," rather than having an > even moderately intelligent/enlightened (which could still be funny) > discussion. > > John > > On 4/9/09, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > > > > On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 13:52 -0500, Max More wrote: > >> I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some > >> things that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review > >> confirmed those doubts: > >> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ > >> > >> Any comments from those who have watched it? > > > > I saw the movie in a theater. There are parts of the movie that are > > very funny and some that are not. Some of the funniest parts are not > > when Bill Maher is making a joke but rather when Bill Maher lets people > > just be themselves. The scene in the office of the member of the US > > Congress is very funny and that scene alone was worth the price of > > admission to the theater. > > > > My recommendation is rent the movie and enjoy the funny parts; ignore > > the other parts. Just adjust expectations according; it is not a great > > movie, it is just an occasionally funny movie. By the way the movie > > "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney is much, much funnier and much more > > insightful. Bill Maher is doing one thing and Julia Sweeney is doing a > > different thing. I enjoyed the Julia Sweeney movie more. > > > > As for the review by Brendan O'Neill. I was rather disappointed. It is > > not much of a review rather it is an article in which the O'Neill goes > > on about what he terms "new Atheists" and there are a few remarks thrown > > in about the movie. And the remarks about the movie seems to have > > missed the point. O'Neill seems to be at best only vaguely aware of > > what Bill Maher was trying to do. O'Neill goes on about the "new > > Atheists" (usually considered as Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and > > sometimes Stenger) yet only quotes Hitchens. And O'Neill goes on about > > how the humancentricity of religion and claims that this is what > > Dawkins, Dennett et al really hate about religion. Well to put it > > bluntly O'Neill does not know what he is talking about when it comes to > > religion. As for "new Atheists" one wonders if he has ever read Dawkins > > or Harris since he clearly does not understand them. > > > > My suggestion: Skip the review and see "Letting Go of God" and if that > > is not available see "Religulous". Just have the correct expectations. > > > > Fred > > > >> Max > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> extropy-chat mailing list > >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 22:10:51 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:10:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: http://www.movies-on-demand.tv/movie/2385-Religulous_2008.html Its halfway between documentary and comedy act. Yet another piece of evidence movies have become too 'light' to go through all the effort of renting or going into town to see it. Its funny, but not half as funny as cartman laying down the law. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 22:43:29 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 15:43:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904091543w7ff83aa3la6af46f85fe752ab@mail.gmail.com> Fred Moulton wrote: >So to criticize either one for not being a proper comparative religion >documentary is either silly or stupid. Maher presents himself enough in the "documentary mode" that he is deserving of criticism. He doesn't have to present things at the academic or going for the Oscar level to try to be at least somewhat balanced/fair. Dagon Gmail wrote: Its halfway between documentary and comedy act. Yet another piece of evidence movies have become too 'light' to go through all the effort of renting or going into town to see it. >> Thank you. John On 4/9/09, Dagon Gmail wrote: > http://www.movies-on-demand.tv/movie/2385-Religulous_2008.html > > Its halfway between documentary and comedy act. Yet another piece of > evidence movies have become too > 'light' to go through all the effort of renting or going into town to see > it. Its funny, but not half as funny as > cartman laying down the law. > From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 22:54:59 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:54:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904090757j459d34daxb10556a2333d3682@mail.gmail.com> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <49DE022A.205@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904090757j459d34daxb10556a2333d3682@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DE7CC3.1050202@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 16.57, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > In other words, you are saying that you want to be free to try to > acquire power that you could use to damage others, but others should > not be free to try to acquire power that they could use to damage you. > Sounds easy, doesn't it? And it also sounds familiar. Call this > attitude whatever you like it -- I call it fascism. I'm not interested in dominating others. Believe it or not. Their religion, instead, is founded on the belief that they must convert, dominate or kill who that don't believe like them. The founder of Islam gave unequivocal example of this; his successors continued in the same path every time they had the power to do so. In the West and in the East. The faith is the same, their scholars believe in the same fundamental now as in the past. My suggestion is, as my arguments will fall on deaf ears, to go to web pages like: http://www.faithfreedom.org/ http://www.apostatesofislam.com http://www.answering-islam.org http://www.memri.org read about Islam and Muslims (mainly from ex-muslims - they know what they are writing about), then go to the forums and websites of mainstream Islam and look with your eyes what are the questions and what are the answers. Mirco From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 9 22:54:51 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:54:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904091543w7ff83aa3la6af46f85fe752ab@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670904091543w7ff83aa3la6af46f85fe752ab@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1239317691.5478.2196.camel@hayek> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 15:43 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > Fred Moulton wrote: > >So to criticize either one for not being a proper comparative religion > >documentary is either silly or stupid. > > Maher presents himself enough in the "documentary mode" that he is > deserving of criticism. He doesn't have to present things at the > academic or going for the Oscar level to try to be at least somewhat > balanced/fair. I interpreted all of what Maher was doing in the movie as part of the joke but if someone else wants to interpret differently I guess they can. But to me that is missing part of the joke in the movie. Fred > Dagon Gmail wrote: > Its halfway between documentary and comedy act. Yet another piece of > evidence movies have become too 'light' to go through all the effort > of renting or going into town to see it. > >> > > Thank you. > > John > > > On 4/9/09, Dagon Gmail wrote: > > http://www.movies-on-demand.tv/movie/2385-Religulous_2008.html > > > > Its halfway between documentary and comedy act. Yet another piece of > > evidence movies have become too > > 'light' to go through all the effort of renting or going into town to see > > it. Its funny, but not half as funny as > > cartman laying down the law. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 9 23:18:48 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:18:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49DE8258.8020402@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 17.26, Fred C. Moulton ha scritto: > What we have seen is an example of what I spend some effort to work > against terms like "libertarian", "free-market", "Extropian" or > "trans-humanist" being wrongly defined as including ideas which are not > part of them and which are exactly the opposite of them. Thus I think > it is worth some effort to make sure that the term "Extropian" is not > associated with racism. Could you explain me why being anti-Islamic is racist and anti-Christians is not? Could you explain me what are the racial traits of Muslims? When Islam become a race? Is it Islam biological? Is it inherited with the nuclear DNA or with the mitochondrial DNA? For me a blond Muslim is the same as a black Muslim, a yellow Muslim or a Martian one. That you cry "racism" is a demonstration that your position is ideological. You have no real criticism to raise, so you fall back and use a straw man. Racist, fascist, child-molester, what else? Knee-jerk reactions. No one asked "why do you believe this?" That you are afraid to ask or didn't think to ask is telling, for sure. Mirco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 23:37:29 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 16:37:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype Message-ID: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> I thought this would be timely considering all the arguments lately about this subject... http://www.buzzle.com/articles/muslim-threat-to-europe-dont-buy-all-the-hype.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 00:12:05 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:12:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What the France!? In-Reply-To: <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> References: <562660.43191.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <49DCC583.5090300@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904082329o23a7467eyf8d3ba4cb636b96f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904090104r3ded652dob3c92c7742a33ce5@mail.gmail.com> <1239290778.5478.2045.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <580930c20904091712v7dfa378al8284dc92a23f8051@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > Thus I think > it is worth some effort to make sure that the term "Extropian" is not > associated with racism. While I am far from sharing anti-islamic fundamentalism, I find the implication that it is "racist" and that Islam is thus a race... pretty racist itself. In fact, Islam today involves a broader diversity of racial types than the "American way of life". A pinch of perspective going beyond the Great Split between who is a true WASP and the rest of the world would perhaps be in order. -- Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 10 02:37:47 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:37:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <1239317691.5478.2196.camel@hayek> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670904091543w7ff83aa3la6af46f85fe752ab@mail.gmail.com> <1239317691.5478.2196.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090409212619.022eefa0@satx.rr.com> At 03:54 PM 4/9/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: >I interpreted all of what Maher was doing in the movie as part of the >joke but if someone else wants to interpret differently I guess they >can. But to me that is missing part of the joke in the movie. I just watched it at http://megavideo.com/?v=7viu43yz and it's a joke only in the blackest, grimmest way, a joke with a very serious uncompromising message embedded in it (which is presented too apocalyptically, maybe, but I agree with almost everything he says). The humor is all of the form, "Adults *said* that? They *did* that? Wtf??!!" So yes, he's emphasizing what's egregiously ridiculous and dangerous in "faith" rather than what's sweet and consoling and kindly, and some of his more bizarre spokescritters for faith are extremists not typical of the average churchgoer--but what I think he shows very effectively is how *entangled and complicit* the "nice" people are in the crazy, ludicrous, brain-stopping, dangerous bullshit. Of course, given some of the crazy, dangerous bullshit we've seen on the ExI chat list recently, this human failing is not restricted to those deluded by religions. But I'd guess the proportion of loons is lower here. I hope. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 06:42:52 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:12:52 +0930 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090409212619.022eefa0@satx.rr.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670904091543w7ff83aa3la6af46f85fe752ab@mail.gmail.com> <1239317691.5478.2196.camel@hayek> <7.0.1.0.2.20090409212619.022eefa0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904092342o496b2947oaf9871edf66d3d1c@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/10 Damien Broderick : > At 03:54 PM 4/9/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: > >> I interpreted all of what Maher was doing in the movie as part of the >> joke but if someone else wants to interpret differently I guess they >> can. ?But to me that is missing part of the joke in the movie. > > I just watched it at http://megavideo.com/?v=7viu43yz and it's a joke only > in the blackest, grimmest way, a joke with a very serious uncompromising > message embedded in it (which is presented too apocalyptically, maybe, but I > agree with almost everything he says). The humor is all of the form, "Adults > *said* that? They *did* that? Wtf??!!" So yes, he's emphasizing what's > egregiously ridiculous and dangerous in "faith" rather than what's sweet and > consoling and kindly, and some of his more bizarre spokescritters for faith > are extremists not typical of the average churchgoer--but what I think he > shows very effectively is how *entangled and complicit* the "nice" people > are in the crazy, ludicrous, brain-stopping, dangerous bullshit. > > Of course, given some of the crazy, dangerous bullshit we've seen on the ExI > chat list recently, this human failing is not restricted to those deluded by > religions. But I'd guess the proportion of loons is lower here. I hope. > > Damien Broderick I just watched it online too. It's funny, well worth watching. It feels unbalanced, but I think that might be because we are accustomed to giving religion a "fair go". In fact, religion is ridiculous on its face, and it's very hard to criticize it without going nuclear, and without sounding like you are being mean. It reminds me of the kinds of annoying people you can find in your life, who give the impression of being incredibly emotionally fragile so you feel obligated to not ruffle their feathers, and who proceed to egregiously miss social hints and cues; you know, the energy vampires. They are subtle defectors in the iterated prisoner's dilemma of social life. Religion seems to me to make use of the same tactic; put up something so wacky, that people who want in have to give up their rational tools to successfully join, and people who don't want in can't criticize without appearing extremely rude. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From stefan.pernar at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 06:51:38 2009 From: stefan.pernar at gmail.com (Stefan Pernar) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:51:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <944947f20904091238i68412f5ck3b9a86769e3f1d8@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <944947f20904091238i68412f5ck3b9a86769e3f1d8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <944947f20904092351p62638eb2qeb9cdad086f3bfd7@mail.gmail.com> Hey again, This is something that I would call enlightening when it comes to religion: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html Fairly recent too :-) Highly recommend to check it out. Cheers, Stefan On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Stefan Pernar wrote: > I watched most of it and it was typical religion bashing and thus highly > unenlightening. I find the new atheists generally uninspiring and for the > most part as irrational and dogmatic in their views as religious > fundamentalists. Since I had a couple of ugly exchanges on this topic I will > not engage in further debate. For anyone interested in my perspective you > can find it at http://rationalmorality.info/?p=54 > > Stefan > > On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Max More wrote: > >> I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some things >> that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review confirmed those >> doubts: >> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ >> >> Any comments from those who have watched it? >> >> Max >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > Stefan Pernar > Skype: Stefan.Pernar > -- Stefan Pernar Skype: Stefan.Pernar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 08:47:22 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:47:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Careful there, before you know it you will be branded a coward, a sell-out, a denier, a hippie, a traitor, ahmenidaddinadinajad fan, an appeaser, "most likely to be gay", raglover, dhimmi, a liberal or a communist. This is a contentious issue - the fanaticism of the small 1% of schizo-muslims is only matched in zeal and numbers by the xenophobia of their detractors. 2009/4/10 John Grigg > I thought this would be timely considering all the arguments lately about > this subject... > > > http://www.buzzle.com/articles/muslim-threat-to-europe-dont-buy-all-the-hype.html > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 09:01:20 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:01:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> And let's not forget that we Xians have done the same atrocities, and worse, than every other culture. Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in warfare? Yeah, right. 2009/4/10 Dagon Gmail : > Careful there, before you know it you will be branded a coward, a sell-out, > a denier, a > hippie, a traitor, ahmenidaddinadinajad fan, an appeaser, "most likely to be > gay", raglover, > dhimmi, a liberal or a communist. > > This is a contentious issue - the fanaticism of the small 1% of > schizo-muslims is only > matched in zeal and numbers by the xenophobia of their detractors. > > 2009/4/10 John Grigg >> >> I thought this would be timely considering all the arguments lately about >> this subject... >> >> >> http://www.buzzle.com/articles/muslim-threat-to-europe-dont-buy-all-the-hype.html >> > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From dagonweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 09:09:54 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:09:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dutch TV show exonerates Osama bin Laden 'Devil's Advocate' jury finds no proof he was behind Sept. 11 By Scott Roxborough April 9, 2009, 12:37 PM ET BERLIN -- A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show "Devil's Advocate" on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. The Netherlands, home to "Big Brother" creator Endemol, is known for being on the cutting edge of format-based television. But even for Dutch standards, "Devil's Advocate," from Amsterdam production house AVRO, pushes the envelope. The show features star defense attorney Gerard Spong standing up for some of the world's worst criminals. * In the latest show, Spong was able to convince the jury that bin Laden's connection to Sept. 11 was a product of "Western propaganda."* The jury also ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove bin Laden was the real head of terrorist network al-Qaida. However, the jury did rule that bin Laden is a "terrorist who has misused Islam." The show is certain to provide further ammunition in the already heated Dutch debate over immigration and the country's large Muslim minority. The Netherlands saw a sharp rise in anti-immigration and anti-Islamic sentiment after the 2004 murder of Dutch director Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. Spong has been at the center of the debate, supporting legal action against anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 10:38:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:38:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in warfare? > > Yeah, right. As in throwing carcasses and other biological stuff which were infected by plague beyond castle walls and in the wells of the enemy during the crusades for the greater glory of God? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From dagonweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 10:42:43 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:42:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ7mn4q56FU On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Eschatoon Magic > wrote: > > Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in > warfare? > > > > Yeah, right. > > As in throwing carcasses and other biological stuff which were > infected by plague beyond castle walls and in the wells of the enemy > during the crusades for the greater glory of God? :-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 10:50:28 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:50:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> Yes, like that. Another illuminating example of the compassionate nature of the Western civilization is provided by heroic pioneers giving free blankets to protect poor native americans from the harsh winter. The same blankets that had covered smallpox victims... On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: >> Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in warfare? >> >> Yeah, right. > > As in throwing carcasses and other biological stuff which were > infected by plague beyond castle walls and in the wells of the enemy > during the crusades for the greater glory of God? :-) > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 10:58:21 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:58:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904100358s72568051tb922ac32f21a43c3@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/10 Dagon Gmail : > Careful there, before you know it you will be branded a coward, a sell-out, > a denier, a > hippie, a traitor, ahmenidaddinadinajad fan, an appeaser, "most likely to be > gay", raglover, > dhimmi, a liberal or a communist. This may be a position distinctly unpopular with both sides of this debate, but what about desisting from the idea that somebody has a claim to Objective Superiority, Eternal Truth and the Really Good Values, and let everybody regulated oneself as they like best - including by defining borders to the concept of "people" in the words "popular sovereignty"? It must be stressed that immigration was to a large extent generated by the forced westernisation of the originating countries, at a legal, social, economic and cultural level. On the other hand, those obsessed with the "human, universal rights" of the members of other cultures, countries and communities should consider that were one-worldism really to take over, and should, say, radical Muslims become a majority in western countries, this would inevitably reduce or eliminate the ability of individuals really at odd with their own cultural norms to seek refuge abroad and... to emigrate there. :-) In addition, as mentioned a number of times, a plural world - which involves a certain degree of continued international diversity - gives transhumanism its best chance, owing to its preventing the establishment of worldwide prohibitionist policies, and the pressure that competition amongst different models and ways of life may exert against neoluddite and other unpleasant options. Thus, I think "multiculturalism" means refusing both crusades aimed at aligning other places to our own values and preferences and legal systems (when not simply to our... interests), *and* the practical imposition of those of somebody else on ourselves owing to the sheer force of number. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 11:10:31 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:10:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF2927.9080900@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 12.38, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Eschatoon > Magic wrote: >> Question: do you know which culture started using biological >> weapons in warfare? >> >> Yeah, right. > > As in throwing carcasses and other biological stuff which were > infected by plague beyond castle walls and in the wells of the enemy > during the crusades for the greater glory of God? :-) Romans did it first. And this is only the first recorded. > The first recorded use of biological agents was by the Romans, using > dead animals to foul the water supply of their enemies. This had the > dual effects of decreasing enemy numbers and lowering morale. The > idea behind this kind of attack is that a weakened enemy is an easily > defeated enemy. The Tartars had the idea of infecting the enemy by > catapulting bodies infected with bubonic plague over the walls of the > city of Kaffa. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 11:18:38 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:18:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 11.01, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > And let's not forget that we Xians have done the same atrocities, and > worse, than every other culture. > Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in warfare? The obvious reflex to badmouth Christianity or the Europeans when having no arguments to defend Islam. Knee-jerk reaction? But, say, what do you want prove? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 12:11:48 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:11:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 11.09, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > BERLIN -- A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of > the Sept. 11 attacks. Next time they could do a show with a TV jury and find that the showers, at Auschwitz, were simply showers and no one died there apart for old age. I would call it "An inconvenient truth", that bin Laden take responsibility in 2004 of the attacks: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html http://www.metacafe.com/watch/393559/osama_bin_laden_broadcast_on_al_jazeera_on_october_29_2004/ That you, like many other, need to prove the reality using a fiction is telling so much. The funny part is that Islamists think people like you are from the western conspiracies that want hide the facts to discredit them in front of the other Muslims. > In the latest show, Spong was able to convince the jury that bin > Laden's connection to Sept. 11 was a product of "Western > propaganda."* The jury also ruled there was insufficient evidence to > prove bin Laden was the real head of terrorist network al-Qaida. > However, the jury did rule that bin Laden is a "terrorist who has > misused Islam." I'm sure Spong could convince a jury that Snow-white and the Seven Dwarves did it, it all depend on the composition of the jury (and how much it was paid). But for sure, bin Laden "misused" Islam, but don't "misunderstood" Islam. > The show is certain to provide further ammunition in the already > heated Dutch debate over immigration and the country's large Muslim > minority. The Netherlands saw a sharp rise in anti-immigration and > anti-Islamic sentiment after the 2004 murder of Dutch director Theo > Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. And Pym Fortuin by a Green activist, for his political stance against Islam and immigration. And the fact that Ayan Irsi Ali need to be always protected from the Police, like Geert Wilders and many others. How many Muslims are protected by the police in fear of violent retaliations by white westerns? > Spong has been at the center of the debate, supporting legal action > against anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders. I'm sure he never supported legal actions against the Muslim preachers advocating shaaria. Not so glamorous and too dangerous. At scum like him I prefer people like Souad Sbai (a Moroccan female Muslim elected by the party of Berlusconi) http://www.souadsbai.com/ She said: > Italians are racists? No, but be careful not to step on their toes. > The Italian left has destroyed the country > "If a Pakistani intends to impose on another nation his legal system, > not only can never be the integration but the interpersonal > relationship takes so much negative connotations, that will destroy > the local system" > "Arranged for buses to reach the places of the demonstrations have > not been filled, even partially, by men or women of the left, thus > demonstrating that the liberality of thought does not belong to that > part of politics that opens the borders indiscriminately." If all Muslims were like her I would have not a problem with Islam. Unfortunately it is not so. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 12:42:39 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:42:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904100542q1d1ac8eeud10ef1e5b514dfb8@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:11 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > I would call it "An inconvenient truth", that bin Laden take > responsibility in 2004 of the attacks: > http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html Sure. And he may heartily approve the attack, even though it is uncertain whether it actually contributed to any extent to the success of the "Islamist" cause - that is, besides the fact that its attribution to Al-Qaeda was a major PR coup for said organisation in that camp. But in, say, a criminal trial, it is not enough that somebody who has an interest in taking responsibility for a fact - e.g., a serial killer craving media attention - "confesses". He or she must also offer evidence that they knew beforehand, or that they are aware of details which have never been made public and which they would have had no other way to learn. Now, it is at least very unclear to me whether such circumstances have been proved or not with regard to the 11/9 attack. And when both parties are quite happy with the official version, one wonders whether its actual "inaccurateness" would really change a thing as to what the public is led to believe... -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 12:45:17 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:45:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF3F5D.7020903@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 1.37, John Grigg ha scritto: > I thought this would be timely considering all the arguments lately > about this subject... > > http://www.buzzle.com/articles/muslim-threat-to-europe-dont-buy-all-the-hype.html I > > agree with the second part of this statement: > While I don't think the solution lies in evoking the reactionary > forces of 'Christendom', I do think that secular values need to > become more militant when it comes to addressing the nefarious > aspects of extremist religious ideology. Unfortunately it is not so. > Tolerance though needs to co-exist with tough law and order measures > in an effort to combat domestic terrorism. For now I only see tolerance of crime and evil and ineffectual law and order measures. This only give the extremist space and time to growth larger and more dangerous. > This task is made a lot easier when there is a level of trust, and > that can only be engendered by exercising tolerance. Unfortunately > multiculturalism has tended to emphasis the separateness of > communities, and has made mutual understanding more difficult to > achieve. So sad so true. > Terror threats are very real. European multiculturalism in its > present form I believe facilitates these threats because of the above > mentioned gulf it has created between communities. Yes, these dangers > exist, but alarmist talk that Europe is about to fall under the > thrall of Islam is badly overblown and frankly I'm surprised that > professor Lewis has climbed onto that particular bandwagon. A simple > look at current demographics tells you that it's not imminent. > Moreover, if cultural and religious wars break out down the road, > they will be fought at the ballot box and on the media. In the case > of terrorist acts by the few, European nations aren?t exactly sitting > ducks waiting to keel over. They have robust legal systems and well > managed police services. Talk of impending doom and a Muslim > ?takeover? grossly underestimates the resourcefulness and character > of peoples that survived the Nazi era and before that WW1. They > aren?t exactly pushovers. And this is what I fear will happen if nothing is done before and not after the confrontations will start. And, just now, nothing serious is done. The police and the secret services are good at stopping terror plots, but before or after someone of the Islamic terrorist will be lucky, or they will be too much to control and stop all of them before they act. But this reduce the awareness of the problem in the general population, so the politicians are more interested in solving some shorter term problems than to prevent the bigger problems down the road. As one of them tell (in private) at an earthquake prevention meeting "I have problems to pay for the drugs used, the salary of the workers, I have no money or time for fixing the hospitals of my regions so they will be earthquakes resistant". Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 13:12:07 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:12:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904100612p7893e1daxf79d6e908d013769@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 1:18 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > The obvious reflex to badmouth Christianity or the Europeans when having no > arguments to defend Islam. Knee-jerk reaction? I openly deplore Islamic colonisation and "repopulaton" of European countries - as, btw, I would deplore such a colonisation by Chinese, Martians or Australian Aboriginal people -; I do not think in the least that for expressing your willingness to oppose it you should be banned from the society of civilised people; and I believe that existing European citizens should have a say about those with whom they are going to share their future and how they want to live, rather than seeing PC choices imposed on them in contempt of any democratic and self-determination process. On the other hand, I am treated by a Web site you cooperate with as a "no-global fascist" because I defend, inter alia, muslims' freedom to protect their identity and sovereignty (and, btw, access to technology!) face to the imposition of western interests, views, customs and legal systems - and sometimes military occupation. Most of current political regimes of the middle east would be wiped from the map in a matter of months were the continued western support be withdrawn. How can we expect their subjects, be they muslim or not, to react to their current situation? Somebody is scandalised by your idea of deporting French Muslims. Shouldn't we say that "deportation" is a word that describes well the predicament of middle east youth without a future as well as oppressed and exploited by those neocolonialistic, medieval (see the Emirates), and corrupted regimes, thus forced to relocate themselves in western countries where they are at least told, by immigrationist propaganda, to stand a chance of a better standard of living according to the values we proposed them to be "universal and exclusive"? Thus, I think that anybody concerned with the protection of what one may cherish of our own political and other traditions should in the first place stop promoting any idea of globalist jihads against anybody who may wish to do the same with their own. -- Stefano Vaj From dagonweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 16:27:06 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:27:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> Message-ID: Great. So Mirco is not ony "post"-democratic, "post"-judicial, he now makes a spectacle of being "post"-evidence. Charming. There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a medicable condition. 2009/4/10 painlord2k at libero.it > Il 10/04/2009 11.09, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > > BERLIN -- A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of >> the Sept. 11 attacks. >> > > Next time they could do a show with a TV jury and find that the showers, > at Auschwitz, were simply showers and no one died there apart for old age. > > I would call it "An inconvenient truth", that bin Laden take > responsibility in 2004 of the attacks: > http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html > > > http://www.metacafe.com/watch/393559/osama_bin_laden_broadcast_on_al_jazeera_on_october_29_2004/ > > That you, like many other, need to prove the reality using a fiction is > telling so much. > > The funny part is that Islamists think people like you are from the > western conspiracies that want hide the facts to discredit them in front > of the other Muslims. > > In the latest show, Spong was able to convince the jury that bin >> Laden's connection to Sept. 11 was a product of "Western >> propaganda."* The jury also ruled there was insufficient evidence to >> prove bin Laden was the real head of terrorist network al-Qaida. >> However, the jury did rule that bin Laden is a "terrorist who has >> misused Islam." >> > > I'm sure Spong could convince a jury that Snow-white and the Seven > Dwarves did it, it all depend on the composition of the jury (and how > much it was paid). > > But for sure, bin Laden "misused" Islam, but don't "misunderstood" Islam. > > The show is certain to provide further ammunition in the already >> heated Dutch debate over immigration and the country's large Muslim >> minority. The Netherlands saw a sharp rise in anti-immigration and >> anti-Islamic sentiment after the 2004 murder of Dutch director Theo >> Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. >> > > And Pym Fortuin by a Green activist, for his political stance against > Islam and immigration. And the fact that Ayan Irsi Ali need to be always > protected from the Police, like Geert Wilders and many others. > How many Muslims are protected by the police in fear of violent > retaliations by white westerns? > > Spong has been at the center of the debate, supporting legal action >> against anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders. >> > > I'm sure he never supported legal actions against the Muslim preachers > advocating shaaria. Not so glamorous and too dangerous. > > At scum like him I prefer people like Souad Sbai (a Moroccan female Muslim > elected by the party of Berlusconi) > http://www.souadsbai.com/ > She said: > > Italians are racists? No, but be careful not to step on their toes. >> The Italian left has destroyed the country >> > > "If a Pakistani intends to impose on another nation his legal system, >> not only can never be the integration but the interpersonal >> relationship takes so much negative connotations, that will destroy >> the local system" >> > > "Arranged for buses to reach the places of the demonstrations have >> not been filled, even partially, by men or women of the left, thus >> demonstrating that the liberality of thought does not belong to that >> part of politics that opens the borders indiscriminately." >> > > If all Muslims were like her I would have not a problem with Islam. > Unfortunately it is not so. > > Mirco > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- I said NO SIGNATURE !!! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From benboc at lineone.net Fri Apr 10 16:21:28 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:21:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49DF7208.1020302@lineone.net> I want to thank John K Clark for the belly-laugh provoked by this post: >I want to thank Giulio Prisco, I did not know Wikipedia had an article on >mind uploading. The article is actually quite good, and it says two things >that I've been saying for well over a decade. First it says: > >[Mind Uploading] "denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness." > >But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the >vitalist view. > >It then says: > >"The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many >philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and the soul." > >But of course nearly everyone, even most people on this list believe in the >soul. > > John K Clark but when he says: >I don't want to insult people by saying that they are too cowardly to follow >an idea as far as it will go regardless of whatever strange destination it >leads to, so I can only conclude that most on this list disagree with my >basic premise and believe in the ideas behind vitalism and the soul, even if >they don't like the particular words very much. > >And it's not just Extropians, my premise is too shocking for Shock Level >Four also. Sorry if I sound a bit cranky, but that's the way I see it. and >If you could find no reason not to walk into a chamber that will make a copy >of your body and then instantly destroy the original then you are one of the >very very few that agree with me. Perhaps there are more, but they sure >haven't spoken up much in the last 15 years. I feel impelled to say: Don't be downhearted John! There are at least some other people here who definitely /don't/ believe in a supernatural (or crypto-supernatural) soul. I even know of at least one person entirely outside of the usual transhumanist circles who naturally assumes that they are 'just information', and see no philosphical problems in uploading. I think that, although we seem to be evolved to be predisposed to believe in supernatural explanations, there's a quietly growing minority of people who could be called 'real' materialists. Like American Atheists, there may be a lot more of them than anybody suspects. Ben Zaiboc From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Apr 10 17:11:15 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:11:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous?. References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: "Max More" >I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some things >that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review confirmed those >doubts: > http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ I highly recommend the documentary Religulous, I saw it in a theater and then bought the DVD. You're unlikely to learn anything new from it but it's one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. And it managed to do it while maintaining a fair and balanced approach; it treated religion with all the respect it deserves. None of the criticisms of the movie in that link you supplied made much sense to me. Rent it Max, you will laugh! John K Clark From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 17:14:39 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:14:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904100542q1d1ac8eeud10ef1e5b514dfb8@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <580930c20904100542q1d1ac8eeud10ef1e5b514dfb8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF7E7F.4010009@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 14.42, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:11 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> I would call it "An inconvenient truth", that bin Laden take >> responsibility in 2004 of the attacks: >> http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html > > Sure. And he may heartily approve the attack, even though it is > uncertain whether it actually contributed to any extent to the success > of the "Islamist" cause - that is, besides the fact that its > attribution to Al-Qaeda was a major PR coup for said organisation in > that camp. He taken responsibility for the attacks at Dar el Salaam and Nairobi in Africa against the USA embassy and the attacks at the U.S. Cole; I remember that President Clinton launched attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan to retaliate. > But in, say, a criminal trial, it is not enough that somebody who has > an interest in taking responsibility for a fact - e.g., a serial > killer craving media attention - "confesses". He or she must also > offer evidence that they knew beforehand, or that they are aware of > details which have never been made public and which they would have > had no other way to learn. He gave orders, someone followed the orders. This is enough to give and take responsibility for the attacks. And as the military commander of al-Qaeda is his right and duty to take responsibility for what his men did. The problem is that it is out of fashion to declare a war against someone for a war act. Government like to act with an UN mandate, for "international police actions", "peacekeeping", "peace-enforcing". So they use the courts of criminal justice to try people that don't belong there. They are warrior; soldier of an unjust cause, not criminals. They belong to a war concentration camp for prisoners of war (as illegal combatants), not to a jail. > Now, it is at least very unclear to me whether such circumstances have > been proved or not with regard to the 11/9 attack. Well, with this standard I suppose that Hitler and Stalin would be acquitted and Pol Pot too. International affairs are a messy thing, more when terrorism and secret services are involved. So we do with the few informations we have and not with the many we have not. > And when both parties are quite happy with the official version, one > wonders whether its actual "inaccurateness" would really change a > thing as to what the public is led to believe... Given the number of jihadi killed in the last years (al Qaeda only) I wonder what they would had done if not urged to combat the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. What do you do with training camps for guerilla and terrorism for 1.000's of men in Afghanistan and 20.000 trained men? Harvest daisies? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 17:16:32 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:16:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> Message-ID: <49DF7EF0.2060404@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 18.27, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > Great. So Mirco is not ony "post"-democratic, "post"-judicial, he > now makes a spectacle of being "post"-evidence. Charming. > There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a > medicable condition. You diagnosed yourself correctly, so I urge you to follow the advice of your psychiatrist and take the pills. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 17:44:25 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:44:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Max More wrote: > I had been wondering whether to rent Religulous, having read some things > that made me doubt it would be worthwhile. This review confirmed those > doubts: > http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/6447/ I have not seen this film yet, but the review gave me pause regarding some ideological details of the New Atheism, a current for which I have a soft spot myself. In particular, I could not care less about the concerns of Brendan O?Neill on whether new atheists are really "humanists" or not - in fact, anthropocentrism is something that must overcome even more quickly than man itself -; but I found somewhat disquieting the author's allusions to a profoundly "anti-sublime", anti-promethean, not to mention "millenialist", spirit which would pervade at least in part New Atheism's mentality, a few echos of which I easily find in authors such as Hitchens. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 17:56:24 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:56:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49DF7E7F.4010009@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <580930c20904100542q1d1ac8eeud10ef1e5b514dfb8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF7E7F.4010009@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904101056i411b83f4pe7db314072a52292@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 7:14 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > He gave orders, someone followed the orders. This is enough to give and take > responsibility for the attacks. Let us say that you are the head of Al-Qaeda, mounting a kind of crusade against the US and trying to get at head of it. You learn from TV that you are credited to an attack on the metropolitan territory of the same US of A, and of having achieved what neither Mexican, nor German nor Japanese nor Soviet armies could ever achieve. Wouldn't you rush telling the world and its dog "Yes, sure, it's me, I am in fact the greatest terrorist (that is, jihadist) mastermind of history", even if you had not the foggiest idea of how it happened? >> And when both parties are quite happy with the official version, one >> wonders whether its actual "inaccurateness" would really change a >> thing as to what the public is led to believe... > > Given the number of jihadi killed in the last years (al Qaeda only) I wonder > what they would had done if not urged to combat the US in Afghanistan and > Iraq. What do you do with training camps for guerilla and terrorism for > 1.000's of men in Afghanistan and 20.000 trained men? > Harvest daisies? No, you misunderstand me. What I am saying is that sometimes you have converging interests with your "worst enemies": e.g., bin Laden for sure appreciated the opportunity to become a kind of mythical figure and a world-class political and military figure, as much as the Bush administration the opportunity to have somebody specifically to point to with regard to what happened. This may well have galvanised the combatants on *both* side. Please note that I am not moralising on that one. For instance, I am a staunch supporter of the idea that transhumanists and the most rabid bioluddites have at least in common a short-term shared interest in seeing a higher attention by the public opinion on the issue of a possible posthuman change... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 17:56:29 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:56:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904100612p7893e1daxf79d6e908d013769@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <580930c20904100612p7893e1daxf79d6e908d013769@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF884D.6080304@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 15.12, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 1:18 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> The obvious reflex to badmouth Christianity or the Europeans when having no >> arguments to defend Islam. Knee-jerk reaction? > > I openly deplore Islamic colonisation and "repopulaton" of European > countries - as, btw, I would deplore such a colonisation by Chinese, > Martians or Australian Aboriginal people -; I do not think in the > least that for expressing your willingness to oppose it you should be > banned from the society of civilised people; and I believe that > existing European citizens should have a say about those with whom > they are going to share their future and how they want to live, rather > than seeing PC choices imposed on them in contempt of any democratic > and self-determination process. The current EU architecture is a bureaucracy feast. They have powers that are not delegated to them by the people in a clear and reasonable manner. They take it slice by slice, the EU population be damned if oppose to them. > On the other hand, I am treated by a Web site you cooperate with as a > "no-global fascist" because I defend, inter alia, muslims' freedom to > protect their identity and sovereignty (and, btw, access to > technology!) face to the imposition of western interests, views, > customs and legal systems - and sometimes military occupation. Well, I'm not out of AIT because of you, albeit I don't agree with you on a few political points. I'm out because I (like others) am unwilling to cooperate to the international socialist agenda of Campa and his unending string of "synthesis". > Most of current political regimes of the middle east would be wiped > from the map in a matter of months were the continued western support > be withdrawn. How can we expect their subjects, be they muslim or not, > to react to their current situation? I don't know, but I don't know how we could withdraw or support if we continue to buy oil. International politics is messy and dirty, for sure. And the isolationists are simply putting their head under the sand. > Somebody is scandalised by your idea of deporting French Muslims. > Shouldn't we say that "deportation" is a word that describes well the > predicament of middle east youth without a future as well as oppressed > and exploited by those neocolonialistic, medieval (see the Emirates), > and corrupted regimes, thus forced to relocate themselves in western > countries where they are at least told, by immigrationist propaganda, > to stand a chance of a better standard of living according to the > values we proposed them to be "universal and exclusive"? The problem is the "immigrationists" don't propose any value to the immigrants as precondition. This is the main problem. The problem with these feudal places is that they reproduce the causes that lead people to leave and immigrate in the west. I red about African immigrants in China and Chinese in Russia, so the problem is really global. Until these governments stay there and let emigration (so the pressure of the population to overthrow them is eased) there is no solution. So, or we support government that trap their populations or we help them to change their government is something that make them willing to stay in their homes. What is not widely acknowledge is that after the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, large part of the displaced populations are returned to their home countries. If we don't interfere with M.E. countries, can they interfere with us? What we do if someone else interfere with them? If the population of Morocco immigrate in large number in Netherlands (against the will of the Dutch), the Netherlands have the right to interfere with Morocco? As a fan of Star Trek, I understand that the First Directive is there only to be broken from any and all Starfleet captains. > Thus, I think that anybody concerned with the protection of what one > may cherish of our own political and other traditions should in the > first place stop promoting any idea of globalist jihads against > anybody who may wish to do the same with their own. Good. But what we do with the global jihad supporters? And the unwanted, illegal, immigrants? Wait until they knock at the door? Wait until they are inside the door? Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 10 18:07:42 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:07:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.co m> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> At 07:44 PM 4/10/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote: >I could not care less about the concerns of >Brendan O?Neill >on whether new atheists are really "humanists" or not >- in fact, anthropocentrism is something that must overcome even more >quickly than man itself -; but I found somewhat disquieting the >author's allusions to a profoundly "anti-sublime", anti-promethean, >not to mention "millenialist", spirit which would pervade at least in >part New Atheism's mentality, a few echos of which I easily find in >authors such as Hitchens. And interestingly O'Neill's criticism (to the extent that it's justified, and Dawkins always seems vulnerable) fails to touch most transhumanism: Certainly I have argued for years, sometimes in this forum, that one element of religion is Ernst Bloch's and Fredric Jameson's `unexpected emergence, as it were, beyond "the nightmare of History" and from out of the most archaic longings of the human race, of the impossible and inexpressible Utopian impulse here none the less briefly glimpsed: "Happiness for everybody!...."' And maybe it's *not* impossible--but not because we'll be saved in a Rapture by our invisible jealous god. Damien Broderick From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 18:13:14 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:13:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> I just want to prove that we are not better than them. History proves it. Of course, if I am attacked, I will have to protect myself. If they shoot at us, we will have to shoot at them. But don't give me crap about us being better than them, because we are not. We are al humans. Humans are nasty to each other and fight. Let's acknowledge this basic darwinian fact and hope to become able to do something about it, but without any "ethical" crap about the alleged superiority of our culture. On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 1:18 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 10/04/2009 11.01, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: >> >> And let's not forget that we Xians have done the same atrocities, and >> worse, than every other culture. > >> Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in >> warfare? > > The obvious reflex to badmouth Christianity or the Europeans when having no > arguments to defend Islam. Knee-jerk reaction? > > But, say, what do you want prove? > > Mirco > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 10 18:25:03 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:25:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <580930c20904101056i411b83f4pe7db314072a52292@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <580930c20904100542q1d1ac8eeud10ef1e5b514dfb8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF7E7F.4010009@libero.it> <580930c20904101056i411b83f4pe7db314072a52292@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49DF8EFF.2060508@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 19.56, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 7:14 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> He gave orders, someone followed the orders. This is enough to give and take >> responsibility for the attacks. > > Let us say that you are the head of Al-Qaeda, mounting a kind of > crusade against the US and trying to get at head of it. Please, call it Jihad. They call it so. A crusade is different in purpose than Jihad. > You learn from TV that you are credited to an attack on the > metropolitan territory of the same US of A, and of having achieved > what neither Mexican, nor German nor Japanese nor Soviet armies could > ever achieve. > Wouldn't you rush telling the world and its dog "Yes, sure, it's me, I > am in fact the greatest terrorist (that is, jihadist) mastermind of > history", even if you had not the foggiest idea of how it happened? He denied, sort of, initially. Then he admitted. Then many more people admitted to be involved in the attacks, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Then we have videos with their voices and words. Osama bin Laden - November 9th, 2001 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0FVeqCX6z8 If he is not guilty, he deserve whatever he receive for the simply fact to have lied about it. But, if someone come up with proof he is innocent or someone else is guilty, I'm ready to hear. > No, you misunderstand me. What I am saying is that sometimes you have > converging interests with your "worst enemies": e.g., bin Laden for > sure appreciated the opportunity to become a kind of mythical figure > and a world-class political and military figure, as much as the Bush > administration the opportunity to have somebody specifically to point > to with regard to what happened. This may well have galvanised the > combatants on *both* side. Well, if they "converge" and the true culprits don't come up, what else Are we expected to do? Bin Laden: "It's me" Bush: "I don't believe you" bin Laden: "It's me" Bush: "I don't believe you" .... Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 10 18:34:11 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:34:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> At 06:27 PM 4/10/2009 +0200, Dagon wrote of Mirco: >There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a >medicable condition. So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated youth" should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet and gentle. Hmmm. Damien Broderick From ninjawaffles at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 19:10:05 2009 From: ninjawaffles at gmail.com (Chad Robb) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:10:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2ae60d770904101210y75f0e2c5va0a86e835a8b51f8@mail.gmail.com> > Damien: So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated > youth" should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet and > gentle. Hmmm. > At what point are we medicating the human condition? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 19:45:05 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:45:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60903312003h222bd939i488d0d719a033248@mail.gmail.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/7/09, Florent Berthet wrote: > ...I have some very religious muslims friends, > including a family in which the parents worked hard in "low" jobs and the > children all have a degree in science, from the bachelor to the Ph.D. Again, > all of them are 100% muslim while being very respectable and very nice, ... Florent, I have a favor to ask. Substantial numbers of Americans(in particular) are currently in a state of anti-muslim hysteria. This is a bad state to be in, a dangerous state. Particularly when accompanied by severe economic stress. Your message is the antidote. Muslims are people just like everybody else. Moms, dads, kid, jobs; love, hate, joy, grief, and irony, lots of irony. Same as always. And of course you know this and can report this FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, so you have real credibility. So please, here on this list, and wherever else you have an opportunity, remind people of the truth. At this moment there is a desperate need. Perhaps we can avoid the worst of the looming consequences. My thanks, Jeff Davis "Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose your taste for it when you realize how hard people try, how much they mind, and how long they remember." Martin Amis From pharos at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 20:12:17 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:12:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/10/09, Jeff Davis wrote: > So please, here on this list, and wherever else you have an > opportunity, remind people of the truth. At this moment there is a > desperate need. Perhaps we can avoid the worst of the looming > consequences. > The stats I saw last week said that US unemployment was still getting worse and now 10% of Americans are getting food stamps. The millionaire leaders have been claiming to see green shoots of recovery in an attempt to keep the lid on things. I shall be surprised if Americans don't start to lash out in anger as the economy continues to worsen this year. Protests are already increasing in Europe and the UK. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 20:20:40 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:20:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What's wrong with Maher's Religulous? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904101320x4f77ddf5y9127c0eaab199386@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 8:07 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And interestingly O'Neill's criticism (to the extent that it's justified, > and Dawkins always seems vulnerable) fails to touch most transhumanism: Indeed, but it begs the question of differences between transhumanism and new atheism that I am perhaps too tempted to ignore, out of my heartfelt support for the second... > Certainly I have argued for years, sometimes in this forum, that one element > of religion is Ernst Bloch's and Fredric Jameson's `unexpected emergence, as > it were, beyond "the nightmare of History" and from out of the most archaic > longings of the human race, of the impossible and inexpressible Utopian > impulse here none the less briefly glimpsed: "Happiness for everybody!...."' Why, for me, owing to my personal Nietzschean-Darwinian persuasion, it sounds more like "eternal restlessess, struggle, self-overcoming, challenges and emancipation from the old-world chains for everybody interested, in view of a neverending dream of human and posthuman greatness", but I see your point... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 10 20:57:48 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:57:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> At 08:12 PM 4/10/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: >The stats I saw last week said that US unemployment was still getting >worse and now 10% of Americans are getting food stamps. > >The millionaire leaders have been claiming to see green shoots of >recovery in an attempt to keep the lid on things. I shall be >surprised if Americans don't start to lash out in anger as the economy >continues to worsen this year. To my astonishment (but one can never trust phone polls--who answers these things? and the parameters are undefined), I read: Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism Rasmussen Reports Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 9 14:37:12 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 07:37:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The enemy?/was Re: What the France!? Message-ID: <737276.13322.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/9/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 09/04/2009 10.04, Eschatoon Magic > ha scritto: > > That is one of the reasons why I never called myself a > libertarian, > > though I am one deep inside. > > > > There are two souls in modern libertarianism. One is a > healthy > > live-and-let-live soul, which believes in > self-ownership and personal > > freedom of everyone, and hates _all_ limits to > liberty. It is not > > "liberty, but..."., it is "liberty, period". The other > is a fascist > > soul which believes in the freedom of some to oppress > and murder > > others. I promise that I will call myself a > libertarian when the > > second soul will go. > > In between there is the people understanding that liberty > must be equal for all and it is not some suicidal pact where > we let an enemy to grow until it is powerful enough to > destroy us. I think that a true libertarian would be afraid of the enemy known as the state. I find it funny that someone who calls himself or herself a libertarian is afraid of some women in burkas, but quite willing to allow the state all sorts of privileges with regard to these same women. As for Eschatoon Magic's talk of the two soul in libertarians, I totally disagree. There are simply libertarians -- ones who accept the libertarian principle (of non-initiation of force) -- and non-libertarians. The latter group often includes people who fancy themselves libertarians but who, for various reasons, set aside the libertarian principle. For the record, one can be a staunch racist and still be a libertarian -- just as long as one still adheres to the libertarian principle. This would mean, for the staunch racist, that she or he couldn't advocate initiating force against even the members of racial group she or he happened to despise or look down on. Likewise, one can be the worst form of anti-libertarian -- say, someone who believes in using deadly force all the time -- and not be a racist. It's a category error to confuse the two. Of course, we could discuss thick vs. thin libertarianism -- in which case, an argument might be made that libertarianism as such, in its thick form, must be anti-racist. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 9 14:24:42 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 07:24:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Public spaces/was Re: What the France!? Message-ID: <797882.3810.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/9/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > As the public places are properties of the government > (now), it can decide that people must be unmasked. Or must > unmask at request of the police, or other. I think that would be a point of debate: whether public spaces are truly property of the government. Further, the issue is who should control public spaces. The strict libertarian view is, IMHO, that public spaces either have legitimate NON-governmental owners (and governments have merely stolen the property and dubbed it "public" to keep the fiction that everyone (the public owns it) and that governments are actually doing the will of everyone* when they control such spaces) or are unowned (in which case, they can be homesteaded). In my view, a strict libertarian would and should contest any government's control of public spaces -- well, within the limits of practical action. (I.e., one should at least ideologically and morally challenge the state -- but not necessarily risk being shot or spending time in the big house over this.:) Regards, Dan * Certainly, this view is, whether you accept libertarian property theory, wrong. If the public includes everyone, then public spaces bakes in fundamental antagonisms in any real world community. After all, different members of the public are going to feel this or that public space should be used in mutually incompatible ways, creating conflicts. The government, at best, can only enforce the views of some members of the public. (This is, of course, assuming an all inclusive defintion of "public." Naturally, I expect members of the public who get control of the government to feel they are more public than their adversaries -- and they'll dub the latter "special interests" or "petty interests" or "selfish.") From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 9 14:39:45 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 07:39:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur Message-ID: <131298.19179.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> See http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Dinosaur-Extinction-Forever/dp/0525951040 Have any of you read this? Has it been discussed here yet? Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 9 16:23:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:23:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= Message-ID: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/9/09, John K Clark wrote: >> Where?s my body?s Control Panel? > > Evolution didn?t deem to give us a control panel, > probably because positive > feedback loops have little survival value. However in the > future there is no > reason we couldn?t develop one. I image most of us would > push the > happiness slide switch on the control panel as far right as > it will go, > so too the ?pride in successfully accomplishing a > difficult task? slide. > I?m pretty sure those will be the most popular settings. > It could also be the reason we don?t see ET. That would depend on the rate at which ETIs are produced and when they develop a "body control panel" and [ab]use it. It's conceivable, e.g., that humans could've started settling space or other planets decades ago -- in other words, long before they could seriously attempt something like a body control panel. Once off world, my guess is they would've rapidly expanded into the solar system and, with something like Orion, even started on interstellar travel and colonization by now. (Granted, another alternative path would be where the body control panel is developed a lot earlier too. With only one datum to look at, it's hard to say which is more likely.) Then we'd have to think about if humans had started a fairly ambitious expansion program -- along with creating lots of noise -- how quickly a body control panel would spread and be [ab]used through all the colonies. Regards, Dan From asyluman at gmail.com Fri Apr 10 18:43:07 2009 From: asyluman at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:43:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: As an alienated youth, I disagree. On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 06:27 PM 4/10/2009 +0200, Dagon wrote of Mirco: > > There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a >> medicable condition. >> > > So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated youth" > should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet and gentle. > Hmmm. > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 11 04:37:40 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:37:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it><7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com><1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com><1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com><1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com><6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <819A0D68470140FBBCF8B024F1A2B62C@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... > > To my astonishment (but one can never trust phone polls--who > answers these things? and the parameters are undefined), I read: > > al_politics/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism>Just > 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism Rasmussen Reports ... Never trust phone polls or any polls in which the news agency insists on interpreting the results for us. Notice an absolutely universal characteristic of news agencies: they do not simply list the poll questions, with bar graphs showing how many answered with each category. Why don't they report it that way? Give us the exact wording of the questions, the choices, and who chose what. If they feel the savage urge to explain it to us, append a word file, elsewhere preferrably, for their rattling speculations and interpretations have little value to me. spike From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 07:26:05 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:26:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > > medicable condition. >> > There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a > > So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated youth" > should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet and gentle. > Hmmm. Of course not ! I am sure I would be apprehended for medication much earlier. But I am very interested when this kind of people may want to start self-medicating when they find they have been consistently counterproductive for years and years. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 07:36:53 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:36:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] - [deepsea farming] Message-ID: In the next decades we need additional sources of nourishment. As it is right now we only use a thin layer of surface. What if we used the deep sea better? The one reason the deep sea sucks is because it is dark. What if - someone went to a stretch of deep sea a mile deep, dangled a strong cable down a mile long, with strong pressure-resistant lights along the length, and whatever infrastructure to attract growing plants and animals. You can also do the same with a singing mesh that is raised from the seabed every so often for maintenance or harvesting. The basic idea is to introduce large amounts of bright light into the deep seabed and cultivate some sort of photosynthesis there, and then harvest plants (or fish) that subsist on that flora. This is already done on dry land, in greenhouses. All it takes there is heating, water and energy. In the sea you would have to deal with the effects of salt, but that seems to be managable since we happily eat fish. We will probably have depleted the top sea levels from fishable edibles in a couple of decades. When that happens near 10 billion people will need food. If we can grow that food by hydroponics, assuming we figured out the energy question, we can do so both in deserts but equally well in the rich environment of deposited silt on the seabed. If we can grow the plants that thrive in that rich medium, and we make sure those plants are lit, we can grow fertile jungles of crop down there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 11:21:39 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:21:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E07D43.2030307@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 20.13, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > I just want to prove that we are not better than them. To clarify for me, please. Are we a cult that preach to conquer the world and destroy anyone and anything that resist to us? Willing to delete any and all proof and records of whatever happened before us? Do we preach submission or death to anyone with different believes? > History proves it. History prove anything and the opposite. > Of course, if I am attacked, I will have to protect myself. If they > shoot at us, we will have to shoot at them. Do you wait until the projectile in in the air to act and the blade is cutting your neck? Do you wait until the blade is drawn out? The guns pointed at you? Do you wait until they have the weapons? Do you wait until they have deliberated to attack you and you know of it? > But don't give me crap about us being better than them, because we are > not. When in a war, it is unimportant who is right, only who is left. And only people with scarce self-esteem need to prove to others they are better then someone else. It can be useful to check, sometimes, to not be wrong. > We are al humans. Humans are nasty to each other and fight. Sometimes, sometimes not. We must be prepared to both the possibilities. > Let's > acknowledge this basic Darwinian fact and hope to become able to do > something about it, but without any "ethical" crap about the alleged > superiority of our culture. Our culture have a few features that are better (for me and I suppose you) than the Islamic. The ethics are a construct, like mathematics. Different axioms lead to different conclusion. Like many types of mathematics, many types of ethics are useful to obtain nothing or are self-contradictory. But, usually, ethics are developed for utilitarian goals: the ethics of a group is needed to keep regulate the in-group and out-group relations so the trust is maximized and the group obtain an advantage in the long run. We can judge the "superiority" of an ethics system in this way. But it is relative to other groups, not absolute. And the changing of conditions can change the fitness of the groups and what ethics are successful. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 11:37:50 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:37:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E0810E.60803@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 22.57, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 08:12 PM 4/10/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: > To my astonishment (but one can never trust phone polls--who answers > these things? and the parameters are undefined), I read: > Just > 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism Rasmussen Reports > Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than > socialism. Given the answers after, I think this show that the American adults don't know that "capitalism" and "free-market" are practically synonymous. Interesting the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Note also the changing from younger adults to mature ones. Maybe, older you get less you believe in pipe dreams. > Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do > not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism. Who risk want be free from predatory control, where who than don't like risking want someone else provide for them. > The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that > 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) > are not sure which is better. It would be interesting to know what are the jobs of these people. > Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer > capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings > are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% > for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor > capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism > is better. Well, whatever they like or not, with Obama and Pelosi they will know what is socialism and how much it work. Not that in the recent years the US would be an example of capitalism or free market. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 11:42:15 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:42:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <2ae60d770904101210y75f0e2c5va0a86e835a8b51f8@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <2ae60d770904101210y75f0e2c5va0a86e835a8b51f8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E08217.3020805@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 21.10, Chad Robb ha scritto: > > Damien: So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks > "alienated youth" should be medicated and incarcerated until they > become sweet and gentle. Hmmm. > At what point are we medicating the human condition? Strangely we started to medicate the human condition long ago, but without much successes. Lately the success is increasing. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 11:47:30 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:47:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E08352.4040306@libero.it> Il 10/04/2009 20.34, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 06:27 PM 4/10/2009 +0200, Dagon wrote of Mirco: > >> There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a >> medicable condition. > > So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated youth" > should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet and gentle. > Hmmm. Wrong, only until they are no more "furious". They can be medicated at home when they are "alienated and calm" to care for the "alienated" part of the problem. It cost less and it is better for them. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 11:58:12 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:58:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Il 11/04/2009 9.26, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > medicable condition. > > There comes a point where being staunchly partisan becomes a > > So you think Mirco should be medicated, and he thinks "alienated > youth" should be medicated and incarcerated until they become sweet > and gentle. Hmmm. > Of course not ! I am sure I would be apprehended for medication much > earlier. Well, I know sometimes people are medicated from the childhood. But it is done by the appropriate services and, usually, with the consent of the parents. Unfortunately we are unable to early detect people with psychiatric problems before the onset of the pathology and, usually, the detection happen only after the first or second psychotic episode start. Lesser are the number of crisis untreated and longer the crisis last, worst is the prognosis. Every crisis destroy a little part of the brain. > But I am very interested when this kind of people may want to start > self-medicating when > they find they have been consistently counterproductive for years and > years. Usually they start self medicating in some way or another. Alcohol, coffee or drugs (recreational or not) they try to self medicate. The problem is that self medication is problematic when you are confused and self discipline is difficult to impose to themselves. This is because help from other is useful. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 12:03:40 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:03:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] - [deepsea farming] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Human eat around 2500 calories per day or around 10,000 kj--which over 24 hours is about 120 watts. If you take light in to human food out at1% (which is probably optimistic) then you need about 12kW per person. So to feed a billion people on artificial light would take 12 TW, or about the same as current total energy consumption. Keith 2009/4/11 Dagon Gmail : > In the next decades we need additional sources of nourishment. As it is > right now we only > use a thin layer of surface. What if we used the deep sea better? > > The one reason the deep sea sucks is because it is dark. What if - > > someone went to a stretch of deep sea a mile deep, dangled a strong cable > down a mile > long, with strong pressure-resistant lights along the length, and whatever > infrastructure to > attract growing plants and animals. You can also do the same with a singing > mesh that > is raised from the seabed every so often for maintenance or harvesting. The > basic idea is > to introduce large amounts of bright light into the deep seabed and > cultivate some sort of > photosynthesis there, and then harvest plants (or fish) that subsist on that > flora. > > This is already done on dry land, in greenhouses. All it takes there is > heating, water and > energy. In the sea you would have to deal with the effects of salt, but that > seems to be > managable since we happily eat fish. > > We will probably have depleted the top sea levels from fishable edibles in a > couple of > decades. When that happens near 10 billion people will need food. If we can > grow that food > by hydroponics, assuming we figured out the energy question, we can do so > both in > deserts but equally well in the rich environment of deposited silt on the > seabed. If we can > grow the plants that thrive in that rich medium, and we make sure those > plants are lit, > we can grow fertile jungles of crop down there. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 12:31:56 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:31:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] - [deepsea farming] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes - The point being that growing food on the surface might account for what we have now (6+ billion) and we will lose surface for agriculture due to climatic issues. So we need extra biomass to grow food. Hence - seafloors, artificial illumination, automated farming, etc. Note that your arguments ( we dont have to the energy resources!!) also holds as soon as we run out of oil. Right now growing animal food required a LOT more than 12kW per person. 2009/4/11 Keith Henson > Human eat around 2500 calories per day or around 10,000 kj--which over > 24 hours is about 120 watts. If you take light in to human food out > at1% (which is probably optimistic) then you need about 12kW per > person. So to feed a billion people on artificial light would take 12 > TW, or about the same as current total energy consumption. > > Keith > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 13:12:50 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:12:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Public spaces/was Re: What the France!? In-Reply-To: <797882.3810.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <797882.3810.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E09752.9060208@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 16.24, Dan ha scritto: > --- On Thu, 4/9/09, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> As the public places are properties of the government (now), it can >> decide that people must be unmasked. Or must unmask at request of >> the police, or other. > > I think that would be a point of debate: whether public spaces are > truly property of the government. Further, the issue is who should > control public spaces. The definition is a bit lousy, I admit. We could say that all public spaces (what is not incorporated is some specific property) are owned by "the people". And we could define "the people" like the group of persons that form a compact governing and controlling the place (the citizens). The (people forming the) government control the public spaces only as agents of the compact. Obviously this bring a few problems on how to administrate the shared places, the public ones. But it is nothing different from administrating a condominium or a shared enterprises. > The strict libertarian view is, IMHO, that > public spaces either have legitimate NON-governmental owners (and > governments have merely stolen the property and dubbed it "public" to > keep the fiction that everyone (the public owns it) and that > governments are actually doing the will of everyone* when they > control such spaces) or are unowned (in which case, they can be > homesteaded). In my view, a strict libertarian would and should > contest any government's control of public spaces -- well, within the > limits of practical action. (I.e., one should at least ideologically > and morally challenge the state -- but not necessarily risk being > shot or spending time in the big house over this.:) The third possibility is that, the people agree between themselves to reserve a part of the spaces to public use and confer the administration to a body of government. The hall of a condominium is a shared properties of the condominium owners, it is administered for them by the staff of the condominium and I don't think there is a right to homestead there. I suppose that the condominium owners have the right to deliberate that masked people can not enter in the condo shared parts or must unmask / identify themselves is asked by the security staff. Some owners could have different ideas, but this is matter of what they agreed when they became owners of a part of the condo. If the don't like the rules, they can change condo or convince the other owners to change the rules. The problem happens when people are born inside the condo and start to have not defined understanding of the rules or the rules are lousy and imprecise or wrong. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 13:42:58 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:42:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904110642l615d0e79oadd11b4a1b65df3e@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: >?Substantial numbers of ?Americans(in > particular) are currently in a state of anti-muslim hysteria. ?This is > a bad state to be in, a dangerous state. ?Particularly when > accompanied by severe economic stress. > > Your message is the antidote. ?Muslims are people just like everybody > else. ?Moms, dads, kid, jobs; love, hate, joy, grief, and irony, lots > of irony. ?Same as always. This again is to many Europeas "typically American". Whenever the Others are not the Devil, they must be Just the Same. Something which leads to the surprise of Col Kurtz in Apocalypse Now that the Viet-cong could do such "terrible things" while being "nice, decent folks, fathers, workers and neighbours" in their everyday life (I am quoting from memory). Now, the muslims are *not* the same. And even the "muslim" concept is misleading: it would be more accurate to speak of Arabs in France, Turks in Germany, etc., since important differences exist also in that camp. But perhaps Islam is too emotional a subject for many people. Have you ever tried to live a few years in Japan? So, all in all, I think that an "ethnical" French may well be concerned of living in the future in an islamic republic - and in the present in areas where he risks to become quickly an alien. On the other hand, the only three conceivable alternatives being currently debated are those I already mentioned in another long post - which apparently nobody read... :-) - are just three: forced assimilation, deportation, multiculturalism (in the sense of multiple communities semi-independently regulating their own affairs on the same territory). All of them, however, requires as a first step at least a relative "suspension" of immigration flows. That is, exactly the opposite of the view of those who would like to replace slaves as soon as they emancipate and integrate with freshly-imported ones. -- Stefano Vaj From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat Apr 11 13:55:57 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:55:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <580930c20904110642l615d0e79oadd11b4a1b65df3e@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904110642l615d0e79oadd11b4a1b65df3e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <44529.12.77.169.45.1239458157.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Stefano Vaj wrote: > > On the other hand, the only three conceivable alternatives being > currently debated are those I already mentioned in another long post - > which apparently nobody read... :-) - are just three: forced > assimilation, deportation, multiculturalism (in the sense of multiple > communities semi-independently regulating their own affairs on the > same territory). > I read your post and I found it worth reading twice. :) Americans perhaps see the way immigration worked *in the past* in the USA - ghettos of immigrants who were eager to partake of The American Dream, therefore trying to assimilate (with older folks' reservations about language/culture/religion being "lost"). IIUC the immigration into Europe at present is of people who do not particularly wish to assimilate, just to have the advantage of living in A Better Place than their homelands. Regards, MB From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 14:07:30 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:07:30 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: <49E07D43.2030307@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <49E07D43.2030307@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/11 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 10/04/2009 20.13, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > >> I just want to prove that we are not better than them. > > To clarify for me, please. > Are we a cult that preach to conquer the world and destroy anyone and > anything that resist to us? Willing to delete any and all proof and records > of whatever happened before us? Do we preach submission or death to anyone > with different believes? I regard all religion with contempt, but your characterisation of all Muslims as murderous fanatics is, well, beneath contempt. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 14:09:59 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:09:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The enemy?/was Re: What the France!? In-Reply-To: <737276.13322.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <737276.13322.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E0A4B7.1010503@libero.it> Il 09/04/2009 16.37, Dan ha scritto: > I think that a true libertarian would be afraid of the enemy known as > the state. I am, but there are many enemies and anyone have different priorities. > I find it funny that someone who calls himself or herself > a libertarian is afraid of some women in burkas, but quite willing to > allow the state all sorts of privileges with regard to these same > women. I'm not in fear of the women in burkas. I'm in fear of their men. I fear the fact that they are able to force them in burkas, in arranged weddings, beating them in submission. I'm in fear that we allow them to preach hate and teach hate, organize and grow stronger inside our societies. There are many enemies of freedom, someone play by some rules and someone play with different rules; someone play with no rules. It is not only the state that is a danger to freedom, but also cults that use violence to spread or to keep people captives of the group and criminals that use violence to prey upon others. So, we need to choose our priorities. > For the record, one can be a staunch racist and still be a > libertarian -- just as long as one still adheres to the libertarian > principle. The problem is that we all limit the "libertarian principle" in scope in some way. Usually this is on the line of "it is worth of human or human-like respect". I think libertarians have no problem to eat meat from slaughtered cows (vegetarians apart). So we don't apply the "not egress first" to the cows. Many tribes consider deserving human respect only the people of their tribe, not the others. So, they could be libertarians in principle in their internal relations, but not in their external ones. What would do a libertarian or a group of libertarians when they live near a tribe that don't consider them to deserve "human-like respect", the same respect they give to the member of their tribe? Say the tribe have a few youngster that like to form a party and go out to pillage, rape and kill. What they do when some individual of the "libertarian group" are raped, killed, robbed, maimed, etc.? What they would do if the chief of the tribe (or the elders) are unwilling or unable to punish or inhibit the few youngsters? Say this will continue, but it is not a real problem, initially, for the majority of the libertarians, because the victims are mainly on the borders areas and not where the main libertarian population live. But the tribe have an higher fecundity, so their population grow and the war parties grow stronger every years. Then, some libertarians in the border zone pack and leave the place, that is colonized by the tribe. Then always more libertarians leave the borders and these are settled by the tribes. Then sometimes, rarely, some war parties enter in the deep of the libertarians territory. What do you do? Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 14:18:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:18:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/11 painlord2k at libero.it : > Unfortunately we are unable to early detect people with psychiatric problems > before the onset of the pathology and, usually, the detection happen only > after the first or second psychotic episode start. > > Lesser are the number of crisis untreated and longer the crisis last, worst > is the prognosis. Every crisis destroy a little part of the brain. Mostly true if you are referring to psychotic illness, but this how does this relate to your original statement about alienated youth?. An untreated psychotic person is usually dysfunctional in any environment. He doesn't make a good rebel or criminal. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 14:44:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:44:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <44529.12.77.169.45.1239458157.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904110642l615d0e79oadd11b4a1b65df3e@mail.gmail.com> <44529.12.77.169.45.1239458157.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <580930c20904110744v1f3747d1s174d67fa08d115d@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 3:55 PM, MB wrote: > Americans perhaps see the way immigration worked *in the past* in the USA - ghettos > of immigrants who were eager to partake of The American Dream, therefore trying to > assimilate (with older folks' reservations about language/culture/religion being > "lost"). > > IIUC the immigration into Europe at present is of people who do not particularly > wish to assimilate, just to have the advantage of living in A Better Place than > their homelands. In fact, it should be remembered that the US knew at least *two* radically different models of immigration, the first being that of original settlers and subsequent newcomers arriving only a little later, whose ideas, language and ethnicity was pretty close to theirs. While immigration in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa certainly belongs to a third kind, it should perhaps be pointed out that the "first immigration" did not try in the least to assimilate and integrate in the Native American societies, values and culture, let alone respect its legal systems! It destroyed if for good. And yet probably some of those immigrants were decent, ordinary folks like you and me... "People just like everybody else. Moms, dads, kid, jobs; love, hate, joy, grief, and irony, lots of irony. Same as always." :-) -- Stefano Vaj From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat Apr 11 14:32:15 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:32:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Message-ID: From: To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 4:58 AM > Usually they start self medicating in some way or another. > Alcohol, coffee or drugs (recreational or not) they try to self medicate. Coffee? COFFEE? Oh, dear, I live in the nucleus of El Loony Bin on this planet - Seattle (and I am one of its permanent residents; however, just to be on the safe side, please lock me up and throw away the key!) Olga Olga From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 15:02:25 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:02:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <49E07D43.2030307@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904110802x359fd24au66c8fdb97d0ceb33@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/11 painlord2k at libero.it : > I regard all religion with contempt, but your characterisation of all > Muslims as murderous fanatics is, well, beneath contempt. Why, I think that this is just describing them as being, at least in part, people who believe in what they say. Where I am not so sure is whether other cultures, in spite of the invariably "humanitarian" veneer of their propaganda, are so different in their crusades for a Better World, or rather a Brave New World. :-) Even though the latter crusades, admittedly, may be ultimately more commanded by economic and Realpolitik interest than by religious, or other, ideals. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 15:43:48 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:43:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E0BAB4.6010607@libero.it> Il 11/04/2009 16.32, Olga Bourlin ha scritto: > From: > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 4:58 AM > >> Usually they start self medicating in some way or another. >> Alcohol, coffee or drugs (recreational or not) they try to self medicate. > > Coffee? COFFEE? Oh, dear, I live in the nucleus of El Loony Bin on this > planet - Seattle (and I am one of its permanent residents; however, just > to be on the safe side, please lock me up and throw away the key!) I know patients that drank 50 cup of coffee in a day (Italian Espresso Coffe). Obviously they were a bit shaky. Usually they don't know, but caffeine is the antidote of aloperidol (Haldol), so usually more Haldol we give them more they want to drink coffee (of Coke). I think half of the western civilization rest on the use of alcohol and the other rest on the use of coffee. We tried other stuff in past, but not with the same success. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 11 16:11:13 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:11:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> Il 11/04/2009 16.18, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/11 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> Unfortunately we are unable to early detect people with psychiatric problems >> before the onset of the pathology and, usually, the detection happen only >> after the first or second psychotic episode start. >> >> Lesser are the number of crisis untreated and longer the crisis last, worst >> is the prognosis. Every crisis destroy a little part of the brain. > > Mostly true if you are referring to psychotic illness, but this how > does this relate to your original statement about alienated youth?. An > untreated psychotic person is usually dysfunctional in any > environment. He doesn't make a good rebel or criminal. Alienated youth are often suffering of a form or another of psychiatric problems. They could be sub-clinical. Usually don't needing forced treatments. Usually don't are detected until much later, when the problems show clearly, they start abuse drugs and so on. Many alienated youth are simply alienated because they have poor behaviours, poor impulse control and poor tolerance to frustrations. They are more on the "borderline personality disorder" side. Good rebels and criminals are from a different recipe than the normal out of the mill rebels and criminals (they are able to plan long term and execute, they are able to relate with others). They are there to climb the ladder of power and success with a different style and they don't give a damn to what someone else think or feel about them. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 11 16:15:00 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:15:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com><49E085D4.60108@libero.it> Message-ID: <27ECE8E745BB457893B79C714A8255EA@spike> > > Usually they start self medicating in some way or another. > > Alcohol, coffee or drugs (recreational or not) they try to > self medicate. > > Coffee? COFFEE? Oh, dear, I live in the nucleus of El Loony > Bin on this planet - Seattle ... Olga > > Olga! Where have you been? {8-] We haven't seen your comments in several weeks at least. Welcome back. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 11 16:32:23 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:32:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Eschatoon Magic ... > I just want to prove that we are not better than them... ... > But don't give me crap about us being better than them, > because we are not. We are al humans. Humans are nasty to > each other and fight. Let's acknowledge this basic darwinian > fact and hope to become able to do something about it, but > without any "ethical" crap about the alleged superiority of > our culture... Esch, this one caught my attention because it points out a fundamental schism in human thought. It divides humanity in a way that is not racial or even cultural. There exists among some humans a bedrock belief that all cultures are, at some fundamental level, equivalent. Among others, an equally strong fundamental notion that some cultures are better than others. Which are you and why? Step back from the original religion based question, and look at it from an amoral top level point of view. Think carefully about your answer. Your first comment is you want to prove we are not better. Why do you want to prove that yours is not better? Wouldn't you want to create a better society? What if the others agree with you that you are not better? They argue that they are better than you. Do you then want to prove they are not better than you? What if they are murderously outraged by that notion, and wish to violently demonstrate otherwise? What I am asking is about the conflict of two memesets, a full step back from the religion notion, and one we discussed here a few years ago. If the entire world is divided into two equal sized groups, one with the memeset that all cultures are equivalent, and the other with memeset that their own culture is superior to the those who say cultures are equivalent. In the long run, it appears to me the ones who consider their own culture superior have a memetic advantage. spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat Apr 11 17:11:20 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:11:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com><49E085D4.60108@libero.it> <27ECE8E745BB457893B79C714A8255EA@spike> Message-ID: <0E17EA1AB40C4FA88B4900117884165A@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 9:15 AM > Olga! Where have you been? {8-] We haven't seen your comments in > several > weeks at least. Welcome back. You know me, I'm mostly a lurker here. (These days, between sips of coffee ;), I've been hanging out on Facebook :)) ... The comments on this list lately have been, as usual, for me - somewhere between "bracing" (a good thing) and "chilling" (to the bone). However, I cannot go without a day without getting my daily grey-matter workout here! Olga From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat Apr 11 17:17:02 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:17:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up In-Reply-To: <580930c20904110744v1f3747d1s174d67fa08d115d@mail.gmail.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904110642l615d0e79oadd11b4a1b65df3e@mail.gmail.com> <44529.12.77.169.45.1239458157.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <580930c20904110744v1f3747d1s174d67fa08d115d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <44849.12.77.169.5.1239470222.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Stefano wrote: > In fact, it should be remembered that the US knew at least *two* > radically different models of immigration, the first being that of > original settlers and subsequent newcomers arriving only a little > later, whose ideas, language and ethnicity was pretty close to theirs. > > While immigration in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa > certainly belongs to a third kind, it should perhaps be pointed out > that the "first immigration" did not try in the least to assimilate > and integrate in the Native American societies, values and culture, > let alone respect its legal systems! It destroyed if for good. > Can one see similarities between the current Muslim immigration to Europe and the 1st immigration of Europeans to North America? Being of European background, I am glad the 1st immigration turned out as it did. Regards, MB From mfj.eav at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 17:56:32 2009 From: mfj.eav at gmail.com (Morris Johnson) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:56:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] for god and country-army sniper stories Message-ID: <61c8738e0904111056h4a19efa1q515298efa34c4a04@mail.gmail.com> -- LIFESPAN PHARMA Inc. Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc. SW34-01-16-w2nd meridian 306-447-4944 701-240-9411 Mission: To Preserve, Protect and Enhance Lifespan Plant-based Natural-health Bio-product Bio-pharmaceuticals @ hempforhorses.com http://www.angelfire.com/on4/extropian-lifespan http://www.4XtraLifespans.bravehost.com megao at sasktel.net,mfj.eav at gmail.com extropian.pharmer at gmail.com To ask to be my facebook friend: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=1276717946 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Apr 11 20:49:39 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:49:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] [SPACE] People in space, not machine - what gives? Message-ID: <73282.48806.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Dagon wrote: "IF humans were to actually settle the solar system in big drums, what would people here think... 1- the dynamic of power/empire formation be? Which planet/region would be most "profitrable" 2- what political systems would fare best 3- what new political systems would emerge 4- what kind of "power projection" would work ? (stealth settlements to avoid kinetic bombardments?) 5- aggressive interdependency? Market slavery? 6- can such a solar system be mostly peaceful? Or will it be a mess? 7- does trade make sense (slow tanker vessels?) Assume AI would be limited (which is very unlikely, but speculating about AI civilizations in the solar system, remains a bit pointless) . Likewise, assume nanofabrication is limited too." 1) Well, I think first you'd get mining colonies of NEOs. After ther most juicy targets have been taken, the most successful area would be cislunar space - from GEO to your 2:1 resonant orbits proposed in "Man and the Planets" to your classic L4/L5 colonies, all these would be within short communication distance of earth with minimal lag due to lightspeed, and close to a handy source of humans who may want to emigrate. After that, wherever there's minerals and not a huge gravity well and a decent amount of sunlight makes for good colonising - so the main belt is a good choice, mercury has all the solar energy you can handle if you can build a colony capable of survival, but the further out you get the less tempting it is. Ultimately the giant planets offer a chance of big materials and whatever you can mine from their atmospheres all within a few light minutes of each other, but the moving things against a gravity well and dealing with radiation can make things tricky. 2) What political system would fare best? No-one knows, and that's the joy of it. Theoretically any *could* work, and quite a few may work out. I know you're probably expecting me to talk about my favourite form of socialism here, but my only thought is that the systems which successfully gather the power of collective human action will spread quicker and more successfully than those which don't, as this is likely to be a team effort. 3) What new political systems would emerge? I suspect that having self-sufficient colonies separated by distance would allow room for any political system that's theorised to be given a chance. If every colony is its own city-state, there's room for anything. After all, the city states of ancient Greece gave rise to several forms of rulership and philosophy, while the cities of medieval Italy gave rise to interesting experiments in finance, commerce and the concept of a "middle class" between the serfs and nobility outside of the feudal order. 4) What kind of "power projection" would work? Once you get out of Earth-moon space, the distances are too great to make most military action worth it. You'd want to project power through propaganda, monetary ties, political persuasion, having "your kind of people" demographically take over compatible places, etc. If it came to war, the fragility of artificial biospheres and destructive power of hard objects moving very fast means people will die quickly and you're unlikely to capture rival colonies unless you launch a coup from within. So, warfare is only likely where one party is willing to eliminate another. 5) Given the need for many different products to sustain civilisation and the difficulty of shipping things from far away, colonies that can't manufacture all they need will be locked in interdependency or market slavery. Once a colony doesn't, it can do without. So, good fabbing technology is a must. If nanofabrication doesn't exist, someone in the space colonies will invent it as it massively simplifies their life. 6) Can such a solar system be peaceful? Well, on the one hand humans are humans, and will find excuses for conflict until all become posthuman, at which point it depends on whether the posthumans conflict over resources or not. I'm hoping the distance between some colonies will allow room for differences to exist and to discourage warfare. 7) Is trade possible? Well, mostly it would be information via communication links. As for shipping objects slowly - this may work in orbit around a major body (earth, Jupiter, etc.) but once there's a moderate distance this falls down. Given a time of weeks to years to ship anything, people will only want to import "vitamin components" they have difficulty making themselves. Given a decent pace of technological change, there's a real risk your stack of cutting-edge tech would be obsolete by the time it got there - if a Moore's law type scenario is in effect, anything with a shipping time over one doubling cycle is likely to be poorly marketable. Interestingly, if we're assuming that AI isn't that powerful at this point, and no mind uploading exists, then getting enough skilled people to live in your colony and work it is a problem. One of the main things you'd want shipping in would be people with skills the AIs of the time aren't good at. So, shipping people around could be a major industry - hopefully this will be controlled migration around the solar system and not some cunningly disguised form of slavery eg "emigrate to us! Only $2gazillion, but with our low-interest loans you'll have the debt paid off in no time!" Tom From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 23:41:38 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:41:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur In-Reply-To: <131298.19179.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <131298.19179.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904111641m14866fb1j1d7229aaa3328161@mail.gmail.com> I remember a discussion started here by Robert Bradbury about building a fire-breathing dragon. Spike, do you remember that? Those were the days... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 03:26:20 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:26:20 +1000 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/12 painlord2k at libero.it : > Alienated youth are often suffering of a form or another of psychiatric > problems. They could be sub-clinical. Usually don't needing forced > treatments. Usually don't are detected until much later, when the problems > show clearly, they start abuse drugs and so on. Many alienated youth are > simply alienated because they have poor behaviours, poor impulse control and > poor tolerance to frustrations. They are more on the "borderline personality > disorder" side. Psychiatry distinguishes between (in the DSM-IV) "Axis I" disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and "Axis II" or personality disorders. There are fundamental differences between the two. For example, personality disorders are stable throughout life and do not respond to the biological treatments we currently have, while Axis I disorders afflict people who were previously well, tend to lead to either progressive disability or severe episodic disability, and often do respond to biological treatments. Better understanding of the brain may allow us to change peoples' personalities in future but we have to be very careful with how we use such technologies, since there would be a temptation for government or business to require everyone to be a docile, law-abiding citizen. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 12 05:28:26 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:28:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904111641m14866fb1j1d7229aaa3328161@mail.gmail.com> References: <131298.19179.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670904111641m14866fb1j1d7229aaa3328161@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Behalf Of John Grigg Subject: Re: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur I remember a discussion started here by Robert Bradbury about building a fire-breathing dragon. Spike, do you remember that? Those were the days... John : ) Ja we used to discuss a lot of wacky cool stuff like that. Now it is mundane politics much of the time, and the worst part is that most of our commentary is reprehensibly mainstream. What happened to us? Do let us remember our roots and think harder. These are the days. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 12 13:15:08 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:15:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E1E95C.1010303@libero.it> Il 12/04/2009 5.26, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > Psychiatry distinguishes between (in the DSM-IV) "Axis I" disorders > such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and "Axis II" or > personality disorders. There are fundamental differences between the > two. Sure, but we don't know the causes of the two type of conditions. Neither we know if they are linked to positive genetics traits (probably) in different habitats. We know that ADD is positively linked with better outcomes in pastoral societies, where it is linked to worse outcomes in urban societies. What we see are probably old adaptations that in the modern settings don't work very well. > For example, personality disorders are stable throughout life and > do not respond to the biological treatments we currently have, while > Axis I disorders afflict people who were previously well, tend to lead > to either progressive disability or severe episodic disability, and > often do respond to biological treatments. We can not treat people with over Axis II for their condition, but we can treat the symptoms so they don't handicap too much the life of the person affected. > Better understanding of the > brain may allow us to change peoples' personalities in future but we > have to be very careful with how we use such technologies, since there > would be a temptation for government or business to require everyone > to be a docile, law-abiding citizen. Docile, law abiding zombies. This technology would be more disruptive than the nuclear weapons. We could cure many people and screw many others and the society. This remember me the movie with Sylvester Stallone (Demolition Man) where they can "fix" the psyche of people making them totally spineless, helpless but not good. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 13:22:37 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:22:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> Message-ID: <580930c20904120622l2e77bfeaw5a58b0cb17c502c9@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 6:32 PM, spike wrote: > What I am asking is about the conflict of two memesets, a full step back > from the religion notion, and one we discussed here a few years ago. ?If the > entire world is divided into two equal sized groups, one with the memeset > that all cultures are equivalent, and the other with memeset that their own > culture is superior to the those who say cultures are equivalent. ?In the > long run, it appears to me the ones who consider their own culture superior > have a memetic advantage. Why, this issue is really central in my own reflection. In fact, I think that the idea that values and cultural norms and POVs would exist which are "objectively superior" is really too discredited in genealogical, philosophical and consequentialist terms to deserve much further discussion. "God is dead", at least in the West, and we know by now well enough the details of its birth and of its not-too-edifying biography. Its "universal" claims are automatically disproved by the identification of specific roots of that very idea, which are not, btw, European, but biblical - which explains why "my truth is the Truth" is a meme equally shared by the christian, jewish and muslim legacy. Moreover, the same goes with its replacement with secular avatars: "As the archeology of thought easily shows, Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end... like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea" (Michel Foucault). On the other hand, the concept of an "equivalence" of different cultures is IMHO still not "relativistic" enough, as it still posits the existence of a common measure by which a value judgment (in that case, a judgment of equivalence) can be based. And it is not really compatible with the empirical fact of most people's preference for their own... What should be said is instead that "every culture is superior - from its own point of view". In other words, if there is no absolute terms of reference, we cannot avoid founding our own value judgments on a relative value system - our own. Recognising the relativity of the same does not imply in the least that we would be "weaker" in defending it. In fact, in historical terms, most cultures and communities were born, flourished, resisted aggression, fought, and died without ever any idea of incarnating any "universal truth", "objective justice" or a "superior exemple for humankind". One may wonder in this respect whether abolishing the conceit of "superiority" would change anything, since those who do not know or care about it can adopt exactly the same behaviours, by taking the relative as absolute. Well, I should say that a big difference nevertheless exists. In fact, while cultural relativism does not guarantee any kind of mythical "golden age" peace, and Darwinian mechanisms amongst cultures and peoples obviously remain in place, a "relativistic" cultural attitude, which I maintain to be the "normal" state of things, at least does not necessarily imply that different cultural norms are morally intolerable, that those who do not share my own point of view must be at all cost shown "the error of their ways", and that an ethical duty exists to save the Others from themselves, possibly killing them in the process, unless and until they recognise my own "superiority". Even from a "humanistic" angle, this dividend should not be neglected. In addition, this seems the only attitude ultimately compatible with the opinion that sees diversity as the fundamental wealth of our species, and its futher, "extropic" and plural, increase and evolution as a goal per se. -- Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 13:35:56 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:35:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <49E1E95C.1010303@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> <49E1E95C.1010303@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/12 painlord2k at libero.it : >> For example, personality disorders are stable throughout life and >> do not respond to the biological treatments we currently have, while >> Axis I disorders afflict people who were previously well, tend to lead >> to either progressive disability or severe episodic disability, and >> often do respond to biological treatments. > > We can not treat people with over Axis II for their condition, but we can > treat the symptoms so they don't handicap too much the life of the person > affected. We can treat them if they become depressed or psychotic as we treat anyone else, but we can't treat the personality disorder itself. It happens not infrequently in my work as a doctor in public mental health that a mood or psychotic disorder is misdiagnosed as a personality disorder, especially early in its course. The two things that give it away is that that the family say the patient "changed" in personality at some point, rather than having been that way their whole life, and a response to medication. In fact, a therapeutic trial of medication is the only hard biological test we have for these mental illnesses, with a very high specificity (i.e. low false positive response rate). -- Stathis Papaioannou From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 13:48:18 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:48:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Take a stress pill, Dave" In-Reply-To: <49E1E95C.1010303@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF3784.20103@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410133001.0228f050@satx.rr.com> <49E085D4.60108@libero.it> <49E0C121.1070109@libero.it> <49E1E95C.1010303@libero.it> Message-ID: > > Docile, law abiding zombies. >> > This technology would be more disruptive than the nuclear weapons. > We could cure many people and screw many others and the society. > This remember me the movie with Sylvester Stallone (Demolition Man) where they can "fix" the psyche of people making them totally spineless, helpless > but not good. > *as long as people have the freedom to move between places* I will take your pepsi test anytime. We cannot right now, and I sure as hell can't ever, but if it were possible to create colonies, independent of the main state - and if a colony were to be run as a collective, where people would be allowed entry if they consented to these technologies (and I am thinking specifically of the iPlant device) the resulting society would be far more effective in straight head-on economic competition with other states. Plus I think in very short order people would want to migrate to such a polity (and the old state systems would go insane propagandizing against it). The potential for abuse is immense, but that is true in any alternative you'd care to come up with, including capitalism, communism, fascism, monarchy or variants of dictatorship. I think this is a terrible vision to some people, but unavoidable and I am all for it - assuming the modifications to NOT reduce free will. I want competitiveness out, I want pathological exludism out, I want a society where people feel united, even if it were engineered by neurological techniques, preferably when enhanced by plastic surgery and rejuvenation. Create a diffuse hack/game proof dopamine/seratonin rewards system, tweak it against chaotic selfreinforcing cycles, and then link it to societal approval. Do good, and society likes you. Do bad and you get a very strong urge to do better. Then make all resources part of the collective. Let this baby compete with free markets and I am sure it'll outcompete them nearly every other system. The key is to rip out the human instinct to predate on other humans, and implement a mechanic to finetune that and fix any errors that result of evolutionary imperatives. Then make everyone conscious actors in collective benefit and prosperity and make people happier the more succesful the collective is. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 16:40:20 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:40:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> As it is probably evident, I am more in the relativist camp. I think you are probably right on "it appears to me the ones who consider their own culture superior have a memetic advantage". But it can, I hope, be compensated by other memetic advantages. On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 6:32 PM, spike wrote: > > >> ...On Behalf Of Eschatoon Magic > ... >> I just want to prove that we are not better than them... > ... >> But don't give me crap about us being better than them, >> because we are not. We are al humans. Humans are nasty to >> each other and fight. Let's acknowledge this basic darwinian >> fact and hope to become able to do something about it, but >> without any "ethical" crap about the alleged superiority of >> our culture... > > > Esch, this one caught my attention because it points out a fundamental > schism in human thought. ?It divides humanity in a way that is not racial or > even cultural. ?There exists among some humans a bedrock belief that all > cultures are, at some fundamental level, equivalent. ?Among others, an > equally strong fundamental notion that some cultures are better than others. > > Which are you and why? > > Step back from the original religion based question, and look at it from an > amoral top level point of view. ?Think carefully about your answer. ?Your > first comment is you want to prove we are not better. ?Why do you want to > prove that yours is not better? ?Wouldn't you want to create a better > society? ?What if the others agree with you that you are not better? ?They > argue that they are better than you. ?Do you then want to prove they are not > better than you? ?What if they are murderously outraged by that notion, and > wish to violently demonstrate otherwise? > > What I am asking is about the conflict of two memesets, a full step back > from the religion notion, and one we discussed here a few years ago. ?If the > entire world is divided into two equal sized groups, one with the memeset > that all cultures are equivalent, and the other with memeset that their own > culture is superior to the those who say cultures are equivalent. ?In the > long run, it appears to me the ones who consider their own culture superior > have a memetic advantage. > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Apr 12 17:39:57 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:39:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> Message-ID: "spike" > There exists among some humans a bedrock belief that all > cultures are, at some fundamental level, equivalent. > Among others, an equally strong fundamental notion that > some cultures are better than others. Which are you and why? I don't want to get into the question of which culture is best as there is no arguing over matters of taste. However a logical man cannot deny that there are real differences among cultures; they are NOT equivalent. John K Clark From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 17:52:33 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:52:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: There is a universe of which we know nothing. We inhabit a thin shell of reality, on a world of no special importance and we only number a scarce few billion with brains as pathetic as dead leaves. This collective consciousness of a few billion humans, all with a very precarious understanding and ability to appreciate reality. We know nothing, or next to nothing. What technology we have, what science we have, it is less than a baby in its crib reaching towards the edge of the cradle towards a blur it can barely make out. I only know my heart screams out, for something better than this. Be cautious in anything, any judgment, any pronunciation, about even the most (apparently) ludicrous of subjects, for we know nothing. For now all we can be sure of is to not treat others as we ourselves do not wish to be treated, and even that in the most cautious of manners. We inhabit a very precarious age in human history where single humans still die, and we collectively stand years away from all of us dying, and many who read this may experience the total extinction of humanity personally. Or not. This is an era not to be underestimated or trivialized in any way. We truly live in the turning point between despicable animal consciousness and the eternal atrocity we call nature. We now can formulate an alternative to void and the horror of evolutionary imprisonment. We stand on the brink of real meaning. And last we should do is be smug or cavalier about it. So think wisely, and a long time, about what direction we all go. I really believe the words are spoken right here, right now, that define which direction we are headed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 18:18:20 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:18:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> Of course there are differences -- some cultures have been better that many others at doing some things at some times, and other cultures have been better than many others at doing other things at other times. But this does not mean that one culture is better than all others at doing all things at all times. On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 7:39 PM, John K Clark wrote: > "spike" > >> There exists among some humans a bedrock belief that all >> cultures are, at some fundamental level, equivalent. >> Among others, an ?equally strong fundamental notion that >> some cultures are better than others. Which are you and why? > > I don't want to get into the question of which culture is best as there is > no arguing over matters of taste. However a logical man cannot deny that > there are real differences among cultures; they are NOT equivalent. > > John K Clark > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 12 20:51:55 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:51:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Eschatoon Magic > Subject: Re: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? > > As it is probably evident, I am more in the relativist camp.... > > >> ...On Behalf Of Eschatoon Magic > > ... > >> I just want to prove that we are not better than them... > > ... > > Esch, ... Why do you want to prove that yours is not better? ...? > > > > spike This discussion reminds me of a kind of a subtheme found in the old testament. Several of the writers are puzzled by the fact that the surrounding nations, which are pure evil by the standards of the bible writers, seem to be doing just fine. Another subtheme is that the Israelis drifted in and out of strict obedience to their religion over the centuries. When they were obedient, things went fine. When they drifted, stuff went way wrong. They lost battles specifically. So how could they explain the surrounding nations? These reprehensible heatherns don't do ANYTHING right, they do NONE of the commandments of god, but look at them, they prosper! How can this be? Major cognitive dissonance, ja? Here's a few examples I could think of, but there are plenty more in there: Jeremiah 12:1 Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Job 21:7 Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Psalms 37:1,2 Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Psalms 73:3 For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Malachi 3:15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape. So the silly boneheads never realize the obvious, that their neighbors are capitalists, while the Israelis are socialist at best, bordering on communist. So of course the evildoers are richer. Chaim Potok wrote an excellent book called I Am the Clay, derived from his own life experiences. Potok was an army chaplain during the Korean war. In IAtC, Potok writes about a chaplain who grows up in the New York yeshivas for a traditional jewish education, then is sent to Korea. He is constantly puzzled by the inconguous fact that here is a society that knows nothing of his god, yet they are ethical. They know nothing of the scriptures that say that joy comes from being an obedient jew, and yet they seem so happy. Loving, kind, good, upstanding citizens are they. The chaplain has no explanation for these things, any more than the guys that wrote Jeremiah, Job, Psalms and Malachi. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 21:39:00 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:39:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/12/09, spike wrote: > So the silly boneheads never realize the obvious, that their neighbors are > capitalists, while the Israelis are socialist at best, bordering on > communist. So of course the evildoers are richer. > > (Grin) You've got exactly the same mindset, Spike. If the neighbors are doing better, then by default they must be capitalist. Sorry, nut the neighboring tribes of Israel were anything *but* capitalist. Different societies are on top at different times. Nothing much to do with whether their system is better. Some are just bigger, some develop a neat trick first, (like gunpowder), some have a dictator who is really good at organizing the army, (Alexander), some are on top only because the others are even worse. I've never had much interest in politics, as they never represented my interests. I see my role as more like a flea on an elephant, trying to make the best of whatever comes my way and trying not to get trodden on. BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 12 23:50:49 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:50:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative Message-ID: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> Far more interesting than a mere societal question of whether or not one certain class of Frenchmen ought in some sense to expel some other class (i.e., should the Catholics have expelled the Huguenots to Canada) are the amazing and very striking implications made by the posts, in their cumulation, on the process of thinking, and on rational thinking in general. There indeed was exhibited a great deal of what should be called "solely right hemispheric thinking". For example, some assertions (made by me and others) were and are dismissed out of hand without argument (!) in many posts. It ought to be called "solely right hemispheric" because that is that organ that generates immediate and timeless aesthetic judgments. Many posters were not at all shy in emphasizing their *revulsion*, their *disgust*, and other all-at-once immediate judgments, the province of the right hemisphere, and evinced utterly no embarrassment that these were unaccompanied by any explanations or argument. Now at the best of times these kinds of right-hemispheric judgments (as opposed to conclusions) are absolutely necessary for coherent thought. But normally, in the cases of interest, the process works like this: you see something, or you hear something, and you form a highly positive or negative judgment. Next, you search for a rationalization, literally a sequence (thereby involving the left hemisphere) of chronologically ordered statements or steps (even images) that backs up the conclusion you want. Now as bad as that may sound on first reading, it's actually good---or at least as good as we're going to get. For we seldom have any reason to suppose that we are often capable of anything better. Far long gone and dead, for example, is the ideal of a scientist who dispassionately goes about collecting data (completely innocent of any hypotheses), then analyzes that data, and arrives at some conclusion. That's a badly distorted view of what the so-called "scientific method" really does, and everybody now knows that. No, we are rationalizers, and that's just the way it is. And it could be worse. We could be like animals, who only react to the present circumstance, their minds unequipped to recall past experience in detail and unable to rationally extrapolate future experience. But the reader can easily recall examples where he or she has engaged in this *rationalizing*, and found, probably disappointingly, that the hoped for judgment could not be supported. In fact, the reader recalls that the more one thought and rethought a judgment he or she had made initially, the less justified it seemed to be, and the more that some sudden, new competing hypotheses seemed to be viewed sympathetically by the right hemisphere. Gradually in the best cases, a revised judgment is (perhaps unhappily) finally accepted by the right hemisphere under the protest that "well, I really have no choice but to conclude X, as ugly as it is". But what so surprised me about the exchanges in question was the *paucity* of rationalization. Many people were *completely* unembarrassed to put forth very strong judgments unaccompanied by any reasoning whatsoever, no matter how evidently after the fact. How could this be? How could it be especially in an on-line forum where no immediacy of reflection and no immediate rebuttal is called for? That is, this kind of behavior could be expected far more in face-to-face encounters where no time is permitted for a thoroughly worked-out left-brain-assisted rationalization. It's scary. If the Extropian "masses" :-) are so disinclined to attempt rationalizations of their aesthetic conclusions, what chance do our democracies have? How is any instant judgment (say "pro-Obama" or "anti-Obama") possibly going to be dethroned? A second question: is this striking absence of non- rational behavior better, worse, or the same as at other historical times? As we all become more and more ADHD, it seems to me that this will just get worse. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 12 23:35:58 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:35:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] L'Affaire Bradbury In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090407134847.023520c8@satx.rr.com> References: <49D86AD0.3000706@rawbw.com> <49DB0F11.8000106@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090407134847.023520c8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E27ADE.20804@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: >> have the nerve to admit that logically and rationally they >> were all wet, and that they had to concede the discussion >> on rational and logical grounds, but that nonetheless their >> side "had to prevail" because of... because of... because >> [in essence] because they were right. > > > > Hmm, there's much in what you say, Lee. Let us reason together, as > Richard Nixon once memorably said. Meanwhile, take a look at this (from > the NYT's tame conservative columnist): > > Interesting. In particular (to sum up a bit) > Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers > embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is > more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly > evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate > processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous. and > Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and > involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make > snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good > or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have > language. And even as adults, we often can?t explain to ourselves why > something feels wrong. > > In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the > emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of > Virginia memorably wrote, ?The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the > temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant > masquerading as a high priest.? What seems to be missing from the article (and perhaps from the entire point of view) is that these "basically simultaneous" and instant "rapid intuitive" decisions involving "the emotion-processing parts of the brain", is an *emphasis* that these are single-value judgments. What I mean to say is that it fails to notice that one must normally think of *many* such single instant episodes in order to avoid whimsy. Let me give an example. Let's suppose that FDR and his advisers operated by single-impression methods. Then he would have taken one image of, say, some Japanese civilian being roughly pushed by soldiers into a truck. The danger of this---which is exactly why televised or YouTube news is so dangerous---is that it is only *one* image. To be rational is not to discard the emotional impact of single images. Far from it. It is, instead, to conflate many, many such images and take a measured weighted average of the feelings that they generate according to one's value system. The importance of that last sentence can hardly be over-stressed. So in pondering the mass internments of the Japanese, Roosevelt would also have had to entertain the emotional impact of many, many such images. Here is a very small subset of those that surely entered his thinking: 1. Japanese civilian Y (instead of X) undergoing the same rough treatment. 2. Japanese child Z being yanked from his or her school... 3. Mobs of hysterical anti-Japanese whites, blacks, and other asians surrounding a Japanese/American house and throwing rocks, and maybe preparing to burn it down. 4. a scene in which a Japanese landing army is receiving help from a Japanese/American racialist who admires his own race and wishes it victory 5. subsequent (to 4) scenes involving "the Rape of Los Angeles" 6. a Japanese/American having to sell his car for an outrageously low price and a grinning Anglo writing out a small check and so on and so on. What is a "rational" response? It is to bring to mind as many such images as possible, and, *most importantly*, to let them affect any conclusion by weight of their statistical number. Brooks fails to mention the catastrophic result of being blinded by *one* of those instant moral judgments, blinded to thousands of others that must also be considered. And it takes time, and a lot of what we call "thought" to properly weigh many thousands of equally valid images, and to inform (or to reject) many of them by rational predicates. Lee From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon Apr 13 01:29:27 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:29:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com><580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry to see this trend. http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ Olga From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 13 02:05:35 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:05:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike><1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> > ...On Behalf Of BillK > > On 4/12/09, spike wrote: > > > So the silly boneheads never realize the obvious, that their > > neighbors are capitalists, while the Israelis are > socialist at best, > > bordering on communist. So of course the evildoers are richer. > > > (Grin) You've got exactly the same mindset, Spike. If the neighbors > are doing better, then by default they must be capitalist... Hey, that works for me. {8-] > Sorry, nut the neighboring tribes of Israel were anything > *but* capitalist. > > Different societies are on top at different times. Nothing > much to do with whether their system is better. Some are just > bigger, some develop a neat trick first... BillK Ja, so goes the argument in Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. An indirectly related version of a similar argument runs throughout Steven Jay Gould's essays. OK BillK granted, I have strained the analogy from modern times. Upon further consideration, I would call the ancient Israeli culture as theocratic totalitarianism. The analogy to socialism breaks down in that pretty much all cultures in those days were crippled by superstition and lack of technology. My view on the wealth of nations is of course influenced by our recent experience with the Berlin Wall, and the results revealed upon it's destruction in 1989. That was a good semi-controlled experiment which demonstrates the relative success of the two systems. Do allow me offer a comment from a controls engineer's point of view. Compared to communism, capitalism shortens the feedback loop from personal investment to personal enrichment, where the term personal investment includes one's own labor, intellect and risk of personal assets. Holding to the classic controls theory analogy, we would say: by shortening that feedback loop, the gain of the system is increased. Of course there are winners and losers, but the higher gain feedback loop of capitalism performs better overall. Economic freedom creates wealth. spike From frankmac at ripco.com Mon Apr 13 03:18:26 2009 From: frankmac at ripco.com (frankie) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:18:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] all Cultures are equivalent Message-ID: <42E3ECD3BB8B42F1BE4F09DB807A4A67@FRANKPC> Have you ever been to Cyprus, Half of the island is Greek other half Turk, Have you ever been to Bosnia or it's neighbor Croatia hate each other. Now with Ireland almost broke the Catholics(Irish) are starting to kill the English again, then there are the French, Invaded Algeria and now (it is written) the Algerians pay back is happening, The Germans have the Turk's cheap labor last century, and here the Mexicans have reclaimed California. On this Easter day I think the world would be better off if those guys or girls who drew those lines in Peru would come back and tell mankind to lay off this junk and start living in peace Frank -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 04:38:14 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:38:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> Lee, I am disappointed with your argumentation. When I challenged you to provide me with the exact chain of reasoning leading you from "I live in France" to "let's destroy all Muslims in France", you didn't. When I challenged you to run the numbers and to explain how a 6% minority with marginally higher procreation levels could become a majority in 25 years, you didn't. Yet you persist in dismissing me and others as dumb ("right hemisphere", "rationalizations"). This hurts, since you are a guy I have a lot of respect for and I know you have a good grasp of rational, economist-like thinking, at least when you feel like it. On top of that, you have been whining about people trying to shut you down like a heretic. No, you are not a heretic. You walk in any bar in the US and you will find dozens of regular dudes who think like you do. In fact, the idea of wasting an outgroup simply because they are an outgroup is the default notion since time immemorial. "Kick'em all out, and shoot if they get uppity" is not a heresy, it's regular dude stuff. So, as to uphold the high standards of the list, let me ask you again - Run the numbers. Give me a quantitative analysis of current situation, trends, likely quantitative outcomes of various interventions in support of your plan. To channel Eliezer, shut up and multiply. And did I mention, run the numbers? If you don't do that, what's the use arguing? Rafal From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 13 05:12:56 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:12:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West (was Re: Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype) In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Yes, like that. Another illuminating example of the compassionate > nature of the Western civilization is provided by heroic pioneers > giving free blankets to protect poor native Americans from the harsh > winter. The same blankets that had covered smallpox victims... Anyone who supposed that Western civilization is necessarily nicer than other civilization doesn't understand that *niceness is a luxury*, and if some people in some Western nations today (or the nations themselves) are kind, it is only because they can afford to be. Why did the British in World War II begin the unrestricted bombing of German cities? Mainly because they felt they had to; they were losing otherwise. Not that this explains the American non-nuclear attacks on Japanese cities! (You see, unfortunately the converse doesn't work: groups and nations, as well as individuals, are often meaner than they need to be. E.g. the egregiously cruel behavior of the Japanese in WWII.) Western nations have been the first to use almost everything, from Greek Fire to nuclear weapons. Do you want to (please) tell me about some culture that wouldn't have used these weapons themselves? Someone nicer, kinder, nobler? The Indians were the first to use war-Elephants, the Chinese gunpowder powered rockets, and the Mongolians various superior tactics (though they practiced total genocide, they didn't invent it). Here we have yet another example of the basic drive throughout Western civilization towards destructive self-criticism, a self-criticism that goes far beyond the facts. Lee > On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: >>> Question: do you know which culture started using biological weapons in warfare? >>> >>> Yeah, right. >> As in throwing carcasses and other biological stuff which were >> infected by plague beyond castle walls and in the wells of the enemy >> during the crusades for the greater glory of God? :-) >> >> -- >> Stefano Vaj >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 05:19:13 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:19:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Ketman Message-ID: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 12:45 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > How do I differentiate from a "moderate" Muslim from a "extremist" Muslim? > Many purported "moderate" Muslims are so only when they are speaking in > a western language to westerns, but they are "extremists" when they > speak in Arabic to Muslims. This is know like al-Taqiyya/Dissimulation > or Ketman (also spelled Kitman) > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketman > >> Ketman (Arabic kitm?n ????? "secrecy, concealment") is the act of >> paying lip service to authority while holding personal opposition. >> It is a sort of political or religious camouflage, for the purpose >> of survival, because, if you said publicly that you are against those >> in power, the consequences for you and your family would be >> immediate and catastrophic. So you can teach your children, in deep >> secrecy, to practice ketman exactly the same as you, but never to >> forget the real truth, as you see it. This can go on through many >> generations, and erupt one distant day in the form of revolutions, >> uprisings, etc. >> >> Though the term was originally used exclusively in regards to >> Islamic authority, the term is most frequently encountered in >> reference to Communist authoritarianism. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya > >> Within the Shia theological framework,[1] the concept of Taqiyya >> (???? - 'fear, guard against', also taghiyeh)[2] refers to a >> dispensation allowing believers to conceal their faith when under >> threat, persecution or compulsion.[3] >> >> The word "al-Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing or disguising >> one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or >> strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in >> time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury." A one-word >> translation would be "dissimulation." [4] > > http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter6b/1.html > > MEMRI is there with so many translations showing only this. Many > "undercover" reporters recorded hateful sermons inside mainstream > Mosques in Europe and in the USA. And when confronted, the leaders of > the Mosques talk about "He was let preaching without supervision because > he take out the trash from the Mosque; not our fault." or other nonsense. > ### Do you realize that your post is literally incoherent? You start out by arguing that in principle you cannot tell the difference between nice Muslims and asshole Muslims (which, if true, could be a reason to treat them all alike) but then you justify this claim by quoting persons who actually were able to tell the difference ("many undercover reporters"). So which is it? This reminds me of the Jewish question. I mean, all reasonable people know that Jews use Christian baby blood to make matzoh, and especially Jewesses eat a lot of it when they lay their eggs. Sure, there could be a non-blood-sucking Jew or two, but how do we tell the difference? They all stick together, so we really have to gas them. Or else Christian babies will continue to get snatched away and eaten! Do you want Christian babies to be eaten? (Just to avoid misunderstandings, the previous paragraph was just vituperative satire a la Borat, not an expression of my beliefs). Painlord, I know you can think clearly, you are a smart dude, your posts about economics show it but it looks like that tribal stuff is messing you up. Rafal From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 05:38:44 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:38:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [DIYbio-SF] DIYbio SF update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <55ad6af70904122238t54d52d28q621f74ce6c55d610@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tito Jankowski Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:36 AM Subject: [DIYbio-SF] DIYbio SF update To: DIYbio-SF at googlegroups.com Cc: NoiseBridge Discuss Hi everyone, What do you think of this idea: The DIYbio Salon -- a meeting to learn and teach about biotech and biohacking. If you're into exploring your genome, making plants that communicate with twitter, synthetic biology, or even hacking a beetle to fly like a remote control plane -- we dig it. Every meeting is for amateurs and experts ?-- you can share or listen in! Each Salon session will combine 5 minute "lightning talks" about cool topics and longer workshops such as "An Intro to Synthetic Biology" or "Arduino + Biology". We're thinking this would be a cool way to learn and give back to the community -- and take the focus off bio-labs and bio-equipment. We'd probably be meeting on 1 Saturday a month to start off. Would you be interested? Also, on Saturday Marnia, Josh, Praveen, Tim, and I got on skype for a meeting about DIYbio. Here's a quick summary to keep you updated: 1. Marnia moved the fridge from Noisebridge to her garage 2. Whenever you send a DIYbio email concerning Noisebridge, such as scheduling, etc, please cc NoiseBridge Discuss 3. The GFP experiment is on hold until further notice Tito --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ DIYbio.org San Francisco For access to academic articles, email the name and title to: getarticles at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to DIYbio-SF+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 05:46:23 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:46:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> Message-ID: 2009/4/13 spike : > My view on the wealth of nations is of course influenced by our recent > experience with the Berlin Wall, and the results revealed upon it's > destruction in 1989. ?That was a good semi-controlled experiment which > demonstrates the relative success of the two systems. > > Do allow me offer a comment from a controls engineer's point of view. > Compared to communism, capitalism shortens the feedback loop from personal > investment to personal enrichment, where the term personal investment > includes one's own labor, intellect and risk of personal assets. ?Holding to > the classic controls theory analogy, we would say: by shortening that > feedback loop, the gain of the system is increased. ?Of course there are > winners and losers, but the higher gain feedback loop of capitalism performs > better overall. ?Economic freedom creates wealth. And, in the final analysis, the efficient and productive systems shall prevail over the less efficient, less productive. So what would you say if in a few decades the wealthiest, most powerful nations are not following a pure free market economic program? -- Stathis Papaioannou From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 13 06:32:32 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:32:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> At 03:46 PM 4/13/2009 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >Economic freedom creates wealth. >And, in the final analysis, the efficient and productive systems >shall prevail over the less efficient, less productive. So what >would you say if in a few decades the wealthiest, most powerful >nations are not following a pure free market economic program? Why, surely that *no* nation in these terrible decades has followed such a program. Also, it couldn't happen. It just couldn't. Actually, I'm more concerned about an orthogonal issue. Let's assume that unconstrained market freedom does indeed maximize wealth especially if it doesn't pay any attention to externalities, as was the case (I gather) in its heyday. But does that tide of wealth really lift all boats, or is the extra wealth channeled into few and fewer hands (as has happened, I gather, in the last decade or more in the US)? Is an aristocracy of immense wealth really the US ideal? Used not to be, I hear. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 08:13:35 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:13:35 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Ketman In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/13/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Painlord, I know you can think clearly, you are a smart dude, your > posts about economics show it but it looks like that tribal stuff is > messing you up. > No, his posts about economics are equally as incoherent. There's a difference between 'smart' and 'sensible'. BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 08:50:40 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:50:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904130150i6364fff4rc6100f0c7a26f77f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/13 spike : > >> My view on the wealth of nations is of course influenced by our recent >> experience with the Berlin Wall, and the results revealed upon it's >> destruction in 1989. ?That was a good semi-controlled experiment which >> demonstrates the relative success of the two systems. >> >> Do allow me offer a comment from a controls engineer's point of view. >> Compared to communism, capitalism shortens the feedback loop from personal >> investment to personal enrichment, where the term personal investment >> includes one's own labor, intellect and risk of personal assets. ?Holding to >> the classic controls theory analogy, we would say: by shortening that >> feedback loop, the gain of the system is increased. ?Of course there are >> winners and losers, but the higher gain feedback loop of capitalism performs >> better overall. ?Economic freedom creates wealth. > > And, in the final analysis, the efficient and productive systems shall > prevail over the less efficient, less productive. So what would you > say if in a few decades the wealthiest, most powerful nations are not > following a pure free market economic program? ### There has not been a case in history where a nation would become wealthy and powerful during peacetime by following anything else but the freest market economic path possible under the circumstances. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 08:54:39 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:54:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:32 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > doesn't pay any attention to externalities, as was the case (I gather) in ### "Externalities" is just the kind of baloney that economists invented when their own research started going too far against their own prejudices. The anti-market bias afflicts most economists, too, they just learned how to clothe their antipathy in jargon. Rafal From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 09:10:22 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:10:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West (was Re: Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype) In-Reply-To: <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> Thanks Lee for this very smart observation. It is kind of obvious, but obvious things often need being spelled out so that they are not forgotten. Many of "us" are nice people... because we can afford it. In the past, when we could not afford it, we were not nice. Many fellow human beings born in other cultures still cannot afford being nice, and they are not nice. Many fellow human beings born in _our_ culture still cannot afford being nice, and they are not nice. Simple as that. It follows that we should do our very best to give everyone the possibility to be a nice person. On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 7:12 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Eschatoon Magic wrote: > >> Yes, like that. Another illuminating example of the compassionate >> nature of the Western civilization is provided by heroic pioneers >> giving free blankets to protect poor native Americans from the harsh >> winter. The same blankets that had covered smallpox victims... > > Anyone who supposed that Western civilization is necessarily > nicer than other civilization doesn't understand that *niceness > is a luxury*, and if some people in some Western nations today > (or the nations themselves) are kind, it is only because they > can afford to be. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 09:33:44 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:33:44 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904130150i6364fff4rc6100f0c7a26f77f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7641ddc60904130150i6364fff4rc6100f0c7a26f77f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/13 Rafal Smigrodzki : > ### There has not been a case in history where a nation would become > wealthy and powerful during peacetime by following anything else but > the freest market economic path possible under the circumstances. I don't understand what "freest possible under the circumstances" means here. Surely the successful countries, even if mostly capitalist, could have been a little *more* free, and hence be even more successful. For example, Belgium could stop public health spending and substantially lower taxes, giving it an advantage over the Netherlands; then the Dutch, seeing their neighbours prosper, would do likewise and even more, by shutting down loss-making public transport systems; whereupon the Belgians would, in a wave of public euphoria at their ever-increasing prosperity, eliminate all public spending on schools, saving themselves even more money and also ridding themselves of a possible source of statist propaganda in the guise of "education". Of course, people are stupid and gullible and would resist this at first, but once they saw their neighbours prospering they would have no choice but to follow or be left behind. Why isn't it happening? After all, communism fell in Eastern Europe ultimately because the population could see they were being left behind, and the barriers to change there were far greater than those in the West. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 11:44:13 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:44:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West (was Re: Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype) In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E3258D.9070908@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 11.10, Eschatoon Magic ha scritto: > Thanks Lee for this very smart observation. It is kind of obvious, > but obvious things often need being spelled out so that they are not > forgotten. > > Many of "us" are nice people... because we can afford it. In the > past, when we could not afford it, we were not nice. Many fellow > human beings born in other cultures still cannot afford being nice, > and they are not nice. Many fellow human beings born in _our_ > culture still cannot afford being nice, and they are not nice. Simple > as that. > It follows that we should do our very best to give everyone the > possibility to be a nice person. "Be nice" is a possibility we give to people when we are not causing harm to them or are not interested to harm them. Then they can choose to "be nice" or "be indifferent" (that is much better than "be violent"). But, in many cultures "be nice" is synonymous of "be weak" or "be dead" or "be damned". And many will regard nice people like present or future preys. Or will act under the conviction that it is their duty to do something "not nice" or that they must be "not nice" as a way to protect themselves from their peers. > [002:216] Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto > you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, > and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah > knoweth, ye know not. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 13:19:06 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:19:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books In-Reply-To: <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <580930c20904130619p75404008m3941dcb0a7b25e11@mail.gmail.com> This is indeed deplorable... Sign of the times? On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry to see this trend. > > http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ > > Olga > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 13:28:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:28:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] all Cultures are equivalent In-Reply-To: <42E3ECD3BB8B42F1BE4F09DB807A4A67@FRANKPC> References: <42E3ECD3BB8B42F1BE4F09DB807A4A67@FRANKPC> Message-ID: <580930c20904130628t24894effl3ab42d946cd1561a@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/13 frankie : > On this Easter day I think the world would be better off if those guys or > girls who drew those lines in Peru would come back and tell mankind to lay > off this junk and start living in peace Or perhaps we should all learn to "agree to disagree", renounce entropic and genocidal one-worldisms, support your "team" and of course protect it, but at the same accept the continued existence of other teams equally supported by their respective fans without the delusion that they are simply stupid or misinformed or "brainwashed". -- Stefano Vaj From brentn at freeshell.org Mon Apr 13 13:51:02 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:51:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 13 Apr, 2009, at 4:54, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### "Externalities" is just the kind of baloney that economists > invented when their own research started going too far against their > own prejudices. The anti-market bias afflicts most economists, too, > they just learned how to clothe their antipathy in jargon. > > Rafal Externalities, or externalized costs, are very real, not made-up jargon. Let me give you an example: Let's say I own a bit of land upstream from you. I can poop in the river and for me, waste disposal is free. Much cheaper than digging a latrine or building some hippie composting system. The water just carries it downstream. Of course, by doing so, I've imposed some costs on you. You now have to install a catch system to remove my waste from your drinking water, and boil everything to kill the coliform bacteria. Of course, it doesn't matter to ME, since I've externalized that cost. :) Economically, it makes a lot of sense for me to push that cost onto you. What can compete with free, after all? But it doesn't mean that its the right thing to do, so you are well within your rights to make sure there is a Clean Water Act preventing me from pooping in the river and thus making sure that I'm paying for my own waste disposal, rather than using the fortunate happenstance of the river to force you to pay for it. There's a very good reason economists care about externalities, one that seems obvious to me: precision. If you don't account for external costs, then there is no consistency in your measurement system. It's like using a balance without taring it each time. You have no idea how one thing compares to anything in terms of its real cost, because you're not measuring the same thing each time. Which, contrary to your assertion, means that understanding externalities is vital to market economics - how can an agent in the market make the best choice if there is no precise or accurate counting of the cost? B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 13 13:55:29 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:55:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike><1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > Subject: Re: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? > > 2009/4/13 spike : > > > My view on the wealth of nations is of course influenced by > our recent > > experience with the Berlin Wall... > > assets. ?Holding to the classic controls theory analogy, we > would say: > > by shortening that feedback loop, the gain of the system is > increased... > > And, in the final analysis, the efficient and productive > systems shall prevail over the less efficient, less > productive. So what would you say if in a few decades the > wealthiest, most powerful nations are not following a pure > free market economic program?... Stathis Papaioannou Then of course the feedback control system analogy fails, and the theory would be discarded. The current success of China works perfectly with that analogy, for in a control system in which the feedback loop is not as direct, the output shows large amplitude fluctuations at lower frequencies. We would expect communist nations to have a generation or two of relatively good times, followed by a long and deep bust. There would be an alternative explanation in this case: the Chinese government mandates for small families (one child, left behind) caused enormous savings for a while, lasting until all those ageing parents need support from their vastly overwhelmed younger generation. Secondly, China is functionally transitioning from communism to capitalism, since 1989. Good for them, but it still doesn't solve a huge problem of what to do with the starving hordes of AARPs, or rather in their case CARPs. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 13 14:01:32 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:01:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West (was Re: Muslim Threat to Europe-Don't Buy All the Hype) In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com><49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0FD994E584EE401599FDA9AB45B9C4A0@spike> > ...In the past, when we could not afford it, we were not nice... Eschatoon Magic No way, Jose! In my misspent youth I was too poor to pay attention, but I was nicer then than I am now, in my far more financially comfortable misspent middle age. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 14:33:55 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:33:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Ketman In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E34D53.30000@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 7.19, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > ### Do you realize that your post is literally incoherent? You start > out by arguing that in principle you cannot tell the difference > between nice Muslims and asshole Muslims (which, if true, could be a > reason to treat them all alike) but then you justify this claim by > quoting persons who actually were able to tell the difference ("many > undercover reporters"). So which is it? It is that "first hand" it is impossible or very difficult to differ the nice and the asshole. You need to look at them one by one, research what they did, what they say in English (or Italian or any other languages of kafir) and what they tell in Arabic to their "brothers". It is like to know that a cargo full of lemons have 0.01% of them poisoned with a LD50 of arsenic (lethal dose 50% of the times). What do you do? Check all the oranges, one by one? Trash them all? Make lemonade with all of them so the poison is diluted? I can think Suad Sbai is trustable, like was Magdi Allam (before becoming Christian) because their life is know and what they stand for is know to all by their words and deeds (practically their deeds are so against mainstream Islam that we could regard them as wine bottles with a "vinegar" label) . But the Muslim down the street I don't know what he think, what he would do given the chance to avoid retaliation or if he "rediscover" his faith, because I have not the time to test them for twenty years and assess the risks. > This reminds me of the Jewish question. I mean, all reasonable > people know that Jews use Christian baby blood to make matzoh, Is this because I like to eat matzoh? ;-P > and especially Jewesses eat a lot of it when they lay their eggs. > Sure, there could be a non-blood-sucking Jew or two, but how do we > tell the difference? They all stick together, so we really have to > gas them. Or else Christian babies will continue to get snatched away > and eaten! Do you want Christian babies to be eaten? Well, in Italy, Ariel Toaff (son of the most famous italian Rabbi (1920-2005) Elio Toaff) wrote a book about ritual homicides by Jews (Pasque di sangue. Ebrei d?Europa e omicidi rituali (il Mulino, Bologna 2007) where he tell us that for a few centuries, in the middle age, there was a not so small group of Jews that really did it, maybe, sometimes. Outrage from fellow Jews and from Christians followed. http://www.cesnur.org/2007/mi_toaff.htm > Toaff thus able to discuss the issue we do not waste a row despite > its large volume, from 28 May 1247, when the first bull on the theme > of Pope Innocent IV (1195-1254), the ratio of the Holy Office of > 1759, there eight of pontifical documents which Popes have made claim > to investigate the matter and have concluded that these allegations > "very false";, "stupid" and "incredible" (so the Blessed Pope Gregory > X, 1210-1276, in His bull, 7 October 1272). In 1706, against a > resurgence of the blood accusation in Poland, the Holy Office had > explicitly authorized the chief rabbi of Rome, Tranquillo Vita Corcos > (1660-1730), published a critical study on the subject, and had sent > the Polish bishops. Here there is also a warning to Catholics that > anti-Jewish enthusiastic wanted to Toaff's book, which should > acknowledge that it dramatically wrong, the ordinary teaching of a > theory of many Popes. So could happen that the same people that we say were misunderstood could misunderstood themselves and agree with the misunderstanders. We can not police and we are not expected to police the Muslims to differentiate the good and the evils. This is their duty. They can do it much better than us. What I would expect from them is a clear, unequivocal, take of distances from the people advocating violence against kafir, apostates, Jihad, Shaaria and so on. Here a piece that argue that Islam is not Good or Evil, it is both. First peaceful (Mecca), then Violent (Medina). http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/refuting-counter-terrorism-dhimmitude/ > But we all know that what is meant is that moderate Muslims speak > nicely and we are not afraid of them. They mean a Meccan Muslim when > they use the word "moderate." Let's tackle his claim that the > moderate Muslims are not silent. They may not be silent in dealing > with kafirs, but they are silent in dealing with Medinan Muslims. > Why? Two reasons. Medina was violent and most people are afraid of > violence. That is the reason violence works. But there is a second > reason. Remember that the Medinan jihadic Koran is better than the > Meccan version. Medina trumps Mecca and Muslims know this. > Mohammed preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and > gained 150 followers. Then Mohammed moved to Medina and became a > politician and warrior. In 10 years time he annihilated the Jews of > Medina, who were half of the town's citizens. Then he turned to > attacking all kafirs. In the last 9 years of his life he was involved > in a violent event every 6 weeks, on the average. He died without a > single enemy left in Arabia. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 15:06:18 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:06:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> > "Eschatoon Magic" > Of course there are differences -- some cultures have been > better that many others at doing some things at some times, > and other cultures have been better than many others at > doing other things at other times. But this does not mean that > one culture is better than all others at doing all things at all times. I'm glad you concede that cultures aren't equivalent, and as I said "better" is a matter of taste, but I am interested in the tastes and preferences of members of this list. Can you think of anything that the Islamic culture has done since they invented the zero 800 years ago that you personally think they should be proud of? I can't, at least not right off the top of my head. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 15:37:46 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:37:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Public spaces Message-ID: <63647.61672.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 4/11/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 09/04/2009 16.24, Dan ha scritto: > > --- On Thu, 4/9/09, painlord2k at libero.it > > wrote: > >> As the public places are properties of the > government (now), it can > >> decide that people must be unmasked. Or must > unmask at request of > >> the police, or other. > > >> I think that would be a point of debate: whether >> public spaces are >> truly property of the government.? Further, the >> issue is who should >> control public spaces. > > The definition is a bit lousy, I admit. > We could say that all public spaces (what is not > incorporated is some specific property) are owned by "the > people". And we could define "the people" like the group of > persons that form a compact governing and controlling the > place (the citizens). The (people forming the) government > control the public spaces only as agents of the compact. Actually, these are based on fantasies too. No government existing today was formed in that way. The use of "public spaces" and "public property" merely hides this fact and tries to conceal that the government controls -- in a sense "owns" -- such spaces and properties and as it sees fit. > Obviously this bring a few problems on how to administrate > the shared places, the public ones. But it is nothing > different from administrating a condominium or a shared > enterprises. There is. This is a false analogy with property that is legitimately acquired by a group of people. Governments simply don't acquire property that way. So, there's no way to legitimize such ownership and control simply because it bears outward resemblances to how legitimate property is managed. (In fact, one could argue that the use of coercion to acquire it and using fictions to defend actually adds to the differences -- specifically, the inefficiencies and knowledge problems -- between public and private property.) > > The strict libertarian view is, IMHO, that > > public spaces either have legitimate NON-governmental > owners (and > > governments have merely stolen the property and dubbed > it "public" to > > keep the fiction that everyone (the public owns it) > and that > > governments are actually doing the will of everyone* > when they > > control such spaces) or are unowned (in which case, > they can be > > homesteaded).? In my view, a strict libertarian > would and should > > contest any government's control of public spaces -- > well, within the > > limits of practical action.? (I.e., one should at > least ideologically > > and morally challenge the state -- but not necessarily > risk being > > shot or spending time in the big house over this.:) > > The third possibility is that, the people agree between > themselves to reserve a part of the spaces to public use and > confer the administration to a body of government. Which has never ever happened. > The hall of a condominium is a shared properties of the > condominium owners, it is administered for them by the staff > of the condominium and I don't think there is a right to > homestead there. Again, false analogy. Actual governments were not conferred such a status by real owners. (Even on the off chance that one ever was, it would still not allow said government to exceed the rights of the original owners.) > I suppose that the condominium owners have the right to > deliberate that masked people can not enter in the condo > shared parts or must unmask / identify themselves is asked > by the security staff. > > Some owners could have different ideas, but this is matter > of what they agreed when they became owners of a part of the > condo. If the don't like the rules, they can change condo or > convince the other owners to change the rules. > > The problem happens when people are born inside the condo > and start to have not defined understanding of the rules or > the rules are lousy and imprecise or wrong. See above. The problem is a false analogy with actual private ownership. This is a typical statist rationalization for government and for public property. Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 16:09:44 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:09:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 17.06, John K Clark ha scritto: > I'm glad you concede that cultures aren't equivalent, and as I said > "better" > is a matter of taste, but I am interested in the tastes and preferences of > members of this list. Can you think of anything that the Islamic culture > has > done since they invented the zero 800 years ago that you personally think > they should be proud of? I can't, at least not right off the top of my > head. Take this out. The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. They are only involved in the transmission of the concept to west Europe - probably only because they were the only route available at the time. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 16:30:00 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:30:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E36888.7030408@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 6.38, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > Lee, I am disappointed with your argumentation. When I challenged > you to provide me with the exact chain of reasoning leading you from > "I live in France" to "let's destroy all Muslims in France", you > didn't. He wrote "expel" not "destroy". Then I gave a few reasons because the Muslims as followers of Islam and bound to imitate Mohammad by their religion are a problem that must be dealt before and not after. But, citing Bill Warner >> Here is the problem. All of my arguments are based upon the actual >> doctrine. When I talk about Islam I use the Koran, the Sira and the >> Hadith. Their arguments are based upon hearsay and opinion. But >> according to the media and university intellectuals I am a >> hate[-]filled bigot and they are a beacon of goodness. Lies are good. >> Truth is bigotry. Can we say Orwellian? > When I challenged you to run the numbers and to explain how a 6% > minority with marginally higher procreation levels could become a > majority in 25 years, you didn't. Well, I don't believe that they will become a majority in France or in Europe in the next 25 years. But they will become a larger fraction of the population, with a larger number of young people than the ethnic Europeans. The problems are the young, thy can become Medina Muslims where their fathers were Mecca Muslims. But, for another side, where is the need of a majority of the population, when you have more young (soldiers) and can take the power with the force of the arms? If they believe that it is Allah's Will and don't believe in democracy, "Egalite", "Fraternite", "Liberte", why not take the power with the violence of the arms if the others are weak? Why don't beat them, the kafir, in submission? Just now, they are so powerful that they are able to prevent a dutch MP to speak to the House of the Lords in London with the threat of 10.000 angry Muslims protesting and raising Hell in front of the House. They already are asking for Shaaria in their neighbours in many places of Europe. And are a small minority. It is too long and too much to argue all here in a single post. As I wrote before, you can make your mind reading and researching by yourself using Google and staying away from the PC and misinforming MSM. > "Kick'em all out, and shoot if they get uppity" is not a heresy, it's > regular dude stuff. So what are you protesting? If it is regular is not so wrong or are you saying the "regular dude" is a fascist, Nazi, violent, blah, blah, blah? I think in the western societies we are grow over this type of thinking, to the "live and let live" approach. And we are arguing how the "live" part conflict over the "let live" part. Can we "let live" someone that is a danger to our future "live"? Can two opposite ways to live and organizing the society let the other live without endangering themselves? Islam can not stand against Christianity and western societies, because without violence to impose the tenets of Islam the followers simply have no reasons to follow Islam. Christianity and western values prize freedom and personal responsibility, where Islam take away freedom (Islam translate in Submission literally) and negate personal responsibility (Inshalla - Allah Willing). Islam is insufferable, because try to regulate anything in the life of its followers, even the minute details, and the life of unbelievers too. The western societies tried hard to ban violence from the society, with large success. The number of homicides, aggressions, robberies, rape and so on, is tiny compared with the majority of other societies. But Islam can not work and last without active and violent suppression of the dissenters. It start to lose members and strength. From the other side, the successful of the western societies will not last long if there is too much violence and distrust inside their societies and they will fall-back to the old ways. If we suppress the violence, we suppress the only way Islam can prevent people to leave in large numbers and publicly. It is like the Cold War, Capitalists Vs. Communists. The exact moment the Communists were unwilling or unable to suppress the freedom of the dissenters to leave or protest their power vanished and they were overthrow in a matter of days or weeks. This is because they reacted so harshly to the Hijab ban in the French public schools. Without the possibility to force girls to wear the Hijab, they were deprived the possibility to easily mark the submitted (with Hijab) and the unsubmitted (without) and attack the unsubmitted ones. This is because the French government banned all religious apparels in public schools (Jews and Christians too). Because they were like the "war colors" of the gangs. And this is because the Imam caught preaching hate and violence must be packed and sent back from where they came from. Mainly they are not born in France, have not the citizenship and too often they don't know the local language. So, there is no infringing on the rights of the citizens. But if they wait, there will be a generation of imams born in France, with citizenship with the same ideas of the aliens Imams, then things will be much more difficult to deal with and solutions much more costly in blood and wealth. Mirco P.S. If you want argue to the fact that the memeset of the Muslims is not dangerous, we could argue specifically this in a specific thread. Or we could argue some other specific issues in their specific thread. It is not possible to argue coherently about them all together. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 16:37:00 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:37:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904130937l34a9713r84d11365278463bc@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > When I challenged you to run the numbers and to explain how a 6% > minority with marginally higher procreation levels could become a > majority in 25 years, you didn't. Where did you pick such data? In France, a census about religion would be illegal... Moreover, an Arab may well remain a very motivated member of the relevant community even if he is not religious anymore - exactly as it is often the case for Jews worldwide. Lastly, "marginally higher procreation levels" are indeed a fair description when comparing fertile couples of the same age, but but the highest percentage of ethnic Frenchmen can be found amongst senior citizens, so the comparison is misleading as to future demographic trends. This is obviously reversed for immigrants of all origins - save perhaps for a few American novelists spending their retirement days in Paris... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 16:38:10 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:38:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] all Cultures are equivalent In-Reply-To: <580930c20904130628t24894effl3ab42d946cd1561a@mail.gmail.com> References: <42E3ECD3BB8B42F1BE4F09DB807A4A67@FRANKPC> <580930c20904130628t24894effl3ab42d946cd1561a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 6:28 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2009/4/13 frankie : >> On this Easter day I think the world would be better off if those guys or >> girls who drew those lines in Peru would come back and tell mankind to lay >> off this junk and start living in peace > > Or perhaps we should all learn to "agree to disagree", renounce > entropic and genocidal one-worldisms, support your "team" and of > course protect it, but at the same accept the continued existence of > other teams equally supported by their respective fans without the > delusion that they are simply stupid or misinformed or "brainwashed". Somewhere between "not a chance" and "the odds are against it." When people see hard times a-coming, existing divisions deepen, memes to demonize others spread and eventually people make the future look brighter by reducing the population, especially those "others." It is switched on psychological mechanisms that were honed to a fine edge in the stone age. If you want to keep them switched off, the only way I can see to do it is to grow the population slower than the economy grows. It is as mechanical as a dam washing out. Keith From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 17:28:50 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:28:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Public spaces In-Reply-To: <63647.61672.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <63647.61672.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E37652.2030209@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 17.37, Dan ha scritto: > Actually, these are based on fantasies too. No government existing > today was formed in that way. The use of "public spaces" and "public > property" merely hides this fact and tries to conceal that the > government controls -- in a sense "owns" -- such spaces and > properties and as it sees fit. You are right. All the governments properties are unjustly owned and controlled. And given that the chain of ownership is usually unknown, there is no way to give back to the real owners or their heirs. The Gordian Know was solved in a simple way, as it was insoluble in other ways more palatable. I'm not claiming that this solution is without problems. But in a fully libertarians society all available land would be property of someone after enough time and then agreements would need to follows on how use a part of the land to let people and goods to move. Then we have the problem of how decide how much the property extend up in the air and low in the earth or over the water. There is any good solution to how return the land owned by the government to the people? Because I can see the government disown the land a day. And a bunch of people fight to homestead it one hour after, all with their feet ready to step in the land and reclaim it for them as the government step out. I think there is no solution bound to make all happy or simply right for all and able to redress all torts. Only "good enough" solutions. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 18:08:36 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:08:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Public spaces Message-ID: <275285.72259.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 13/04/2009 17.37, Dan ha scritto: > > > Actually, these are based on fantasies too.? No > government existing > > today was formed in that way.? The use of "public > spaces" and "public > > property" merely hides this fact and tries to conceal > that the > > government controls -- in a sense "owns" -- such > spaces and > > properties and as it sees fit. > > You are right. All the governments properties are unjustly > owned and controlled. And given that the chain of ownership > is usually unknown, there is no way to give back to the real > owners or their heirs. > > The Gordian Know was solved in a simple way, as it was > insoluble in other ways more palatable. > > I'm not claiming that this solution is without problems. > But in a fully libertarians society all available land > would be property of someone after enough time and then > agreements would need to follows on how use a part of the > land to let people and goods to move. Not so. Some land could remain unowned in a libertarian society. In fact, under libertarianism, aside from self-owned beings, there would be just privately owned property and unowned things. The latter could be homesteaded (or appropriated) becoming privately owned; the former could be abandoned becoming unowned. As for what do with current government owned land, leaving it in the governments' hands is NOT a libertarian solution. That's merely statism and I submit that anyone who proposing keeping it govenrment hands is not really a libertarian or, to be charitable, not consistently libertarian (on this issue). As you might agree, where possible, it must be returned to its rightful owners. Where that is NOT possible, it still must be removed from government ownership and control -- even if it's only put back into a state of non-ownership and ready to be homesteaded. (Another possibility is putting the property into ownership of the taxpayers (and other known victims) of the governments in questions in propertion to the level of taxes (or privations) suffered.) > Then we have the problem of how decide how much the > property extend up in the air and low in the earth or over > the water. > > There is any good solution to how return the land owned by > the government to the people? > Because I can see the government disown the land a day. And > a bunch of people fight to homestead it one hour after, all > with their feet ready to step in the land and reclaim it for > them as the government step out. > > I think there is no solution bound to make all happy or > simply right for all and able to redress all torts. Only > "good enough" solutions. This does not follow. This is like saying there is slavery and since there's no simply solution to the problem of slavery, we must keep the slave system intact and merely make it as efficient as possible. No doubt, were a libertarian society to come about in an existing society -- as opposed to, say, starting a libertarian settlement from scratch off world -- it'd be gradually. But that gradualism would be one of removing government from each area of encroachment -- not one of pretending that existing government property can be used by supposed libertarians to pretend that it's okay to play xenophobe with it. Regards, Dan From frankmac at ripco.com Mon Apr 13 18:23:45 2009 From: frankmac at ripco.com (frankie) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:23:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] All Cultures are equivalent Message-ID: <3985D274E452462781FE3E8ECB279CE0@FRANKPC> My son-in-law who is a Muslin, is now taking care of his sick mom in Algeria, while my Daughter like a good desert woman waits for his return here in Chicago . My family(especially my wife) looks down upon him not because he is a Muslin, but because he drives a cab when he is here in Chicago. What kind of man is he who reads the same book day after day , they can not explain why he prays five times a day, and then spends most of the rest of the time drinking tea with his friends while waiting for fares at Ohare. Other than being material for jokes on David Letterman, he contributes nothing to this society as he well drives a cab and not teaching at some southern college like others here on this list. Of course, it is his faith that only requires that he take care of the poor, and practices his faith 5 times a day by praying does not leave much for invention like say the iPod or the cell telephone, but he in his defense he has played Santa Claus at Christmas time and I thank him for that. He is a good man, he makes my daughter happy, he believes in family and he practices his beliefs with deeds and not words. To ask the question what has Muslin contributed to society is not fair, unless you ask the same concerning the worlds other religions. Hey when the United States dropped TWO atomic bombs on Japan, their creators were either JEWS or CHRISTIANS not a muslin among them. Ask the people who lost relatives in Japan when this happened and they would give you a different answer to whether these Christians and Jews have contributed to society was a good thing or a bad thing. While thinking about that consider what the world would look like had Germans, Italians and Japs won instead of the English and Russians, would there have been any JEWS left on this planet , would we have walked on the moon as a world united would football be on television in the fall in America , and just think of what they as a people these Germans or Italians or Jap's would have have contributed to society had won. Just the idea of a living in a place run by Italians Germans and Japs brings laughter to the rest of the world. But then again there would not be a MIDDLE EAST problem and Mitchell would be out of a job. Leave the Muslins alone, and they will leave you alone. Frank -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Mon Apr 13 18:34:57 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:34:57 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur In-Reply-To: References: <131298.19179.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670904111641m14866fb1j1d7229aaa3328161@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 11 Apr 2009, spike wrote: > > On Behalf Of John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur > > > I remember a discussion started here by Robert Bradbury about > building a fire-breathing dragon. Spike, do you remember that? Those were > the days... Guys, If you please, build Laura Dern instead. Dinos stink and they look ugly, no matter if they smile or not. If only scientists were less disconnected. What kind of fun it is, anyway, to have dino at home? Sounds like some perverted SM stuff. Or, in best case, stupidity, like in the urban legend of man and little tiger living together in a flat (until tiger grew up, of course, and poor bastard had to throw him meat from behind the door once a day). Regards Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 18:32:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:32:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rosetta Project Message-ID: <289141.42756.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.rosettaproject.org/about/ I think this might be of interest to some here. Naturally, given the apparent link between language and conceptual ability, I think it should be of interest. Regards, Dan http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/ From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 18:52:22 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:52:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur Message-ID: <59217.24362.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Sat, 11 Apr 2009, spike wrote: > > >? > > On Behalf Of John Grigg > > ??? Subject: Re: [ExI] How to Build a > Dinosaur > > ??? > > ??? > > ??? I remember a discussion started > here by Robert Bradbury about > > building a fire-breathing dragon.? Spike, do you > remember that?? Those were > > the days... > > Guys, > > If you please, build Laura Dern instead. Dinos stink and > they look ugly, > no matter if they smile or not. Have you actually sniffed and seen one? If so, quick! Please relate your experiences to the nearest paleontologist... :) > If only scientists were less disconnected. What kind of fun > it is, anyway, > to have dino at home? Sounds like some perverted SM stuff. > Or, in best > case, stupidity, like in the urban legend of man and little > tiger living > together in a flat (until tiger grew up, of course, and > poor bastard had > to throw him meat from behind the door once a day). Actually, the book is about evo-devo and the experiment, were it tried, would tell us more about gene expression in development than dinosaurs. At best, assuming that turning on earlier traits (and turning off later traits) is possible, it would just cook up a bird ancestor -- or, more precisely, some bird ancestor traits. (I put "some" here because, from listening to the book, he's focusing on specific traits. And it's likely that the full suite of things that make up a bird ancestor are lost at this time. He seems to discount dino-DNA finds as not being as helpful as doing evo-devo. My view is you could do both. There'd still be limits and it's arguable that you're not really making a dinosaur -- even a bird ancestor -- but merely, at best, turning on some ancestor traits and making some sort of weird hybrid.) Anyhow, I do agree with the author: the experiment would stir up more talk about evolution. My guess, though, is that Biblical literalists and other anti-evolutionists would merely say this is evidence that dinosaurs were not ancient extinct animals, but merely birds (or other extant animals) whose development got messed up. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 18:56:04 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:56:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books Message-ID: <844070.3155.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > This is indeed deplorable... > > Sign of the times? > > On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Olga Bourlin > wrote: > > Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry > to see this trend. > > > > http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ >From what I've heard, this was a software glitch and the author is overreacting. Just to test this, I went to the Amazon.com site and typed in "homosexual" and selected Books. The first return was: Homosexual Desire (Series Q) -- http://www.amazon.com/Homosexual-Desire-Q-Guy-Hocquenghem/dp/0822313847 This is a classic of gay theory -- not a book on forcing your gay son to pretend he's straight. Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 19:27:19 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:27:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com><72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Message-ID: > The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. > They [Islam] are only involved in the transmission of the > concept to west Europe I know but I was trying to be generous; I figured I'd get enough flack as it is. And I'm sure that sometime in the last 800 years Islam has done something that is worth more than a bucket of warm spit, it must have; but I'll be damned if I can think of an example at the moment. John K Clark From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 19:41:20 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:41:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904131241o19f9dd35la92f6a41dd4f7828@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Damien Broderick >Is an aristocracy of immense wealth > really the US ideal? Used not to be, I hear. Isn't aristocracy and wealth an oxyomoron? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 19:45:28 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:45:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <697240.63610.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: > > > > The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. > > They [Islam] are only involved in the transmission of > the > > concept to west Europe > > I know but I was trying to be generous; I figured I'd get > enough flack as it is. And I'm sure that sometime in the > last 800 years Islam has done something that is worth more > than a bucket of warm spit, it must have; but I'll be damned > if I can think of an example at the moment. Category error in my view: Islam is an abstraction or an aggregate. It does not act. What does act is an Islamic person -- or to be accurate what act are individuals, be they Muslims, atheists, or whatever. Put that way, Muslims have made what some of us might consider positive contributions. But what's the point of this discussion? Maybe I missed something... Also, it seems quite clear that Muslims are able to take up Western technologies and ideas and use them for their ends. The view that every last Muslim is out to set the calendar back to the Middle Ages (whether an historically accurate Middle Ages or no) seems simplistic to me -- no different, IMO, than that every last Christian wants to live in the time of Bede or Augustine. Regards, Dan From bkdelong at pobox.com Mon Apr 13 19:46:45 2009 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:46:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books In-Reply-To: <844070.3155.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <844070.3155.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: There is FAR more to this. Search "Twitter" (#amazonfail & #glitchmyass) and Google for "Amazon Fail". Also see the posts from earlier this AM in: http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer Personally, I believe someone figured out how to exploit the Amazon API to the point where anything tagged as having GLBT content had their Sales Ranking removed. If that's the case and others figured it out just as fast (including before Amazon developers), we could see this happen to other books as well. On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> This is indeed deplorable... >> >> Sign of the times? >> >> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Olga Bourlin >> wrote: >> > Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry >> to see this trend. >> > >> > http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ > > >From what I've heard, this was a software glitch and the author is overreacting. ?Just to test this, I went to the Amazon.com site and typed in "homosexual" and selected Books. ?The first return was: > > Homosexual Desire (Series Q) -- http://www.amazon.com/Homosexual-Desire-Q-Guy-Hocquenghem/dp/0822313847 > > This is a classic of gay theory -- not a book on forcing your gay son to pretend he's straight. > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Family. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Life. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 19:49:25 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:49:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future (Was: Re: How to Build a Dinosaur) Message-ID: <2d6187670904131249i1b892279j368a5a972199f045@mail.gmail.com> Hi Spike, Spike wrote: >What happened to us? Do let us >remember our roots and think harder. I fondly remember and miss Robert Bradbury's frequent insightful postings, along with Greg Burch (what a cool guy with so much real world experience), Anders Sandberg (what a fun and creative mind), Nick Bostrom (who went on to be a pillar of transhumanist academic thought), Max More (our ExI co-founder, at least he still posts a little), Amara Graps (motherhood and work I suppose keeps her real busy), Hal Finney, Eugen Leitl (I heard he was the best dressed man on the list!), Mike Lorrey (I at least miss the big lug and his many many posts), and of course Eliezer (we "saw" him grow up on the extro list). I'm sure there are still many others that I forgot to list that you and others could add. Jupiter brains, uploading, qualia, the civil rights of virtual lifeforms, starship propulsion systems, libertarianism pro/con, right to arm bears debates, "fun" math and engineering problems (Keith Henson doesn't have many playmates left who can do the math/engineering mental heavy lifting and keep up, we must now be a bunch of liberal arts grads...), and of course musings on how cool life will be after the Singularity. Yep, those were the days! If we ever lose you, Damien, Lee (despite his recent postings, ; ) ) and Natasha (our transhumanist matriarch, who keeps alive the spirit of the arts here, and also keeps *us* in line!, hee), this list will definitely be the less for it. I think much of our discussion is "reprehensibly mainstream" because the real world has so painfully intruded on our dreams of a bright tomorrow (the war, the economic melt-down, the war on terrorism/our civil liberties, etc.), and we instinctively realize that we must successfully deal with the "here and now" to make it to the kind of future we want. But there is no reason that the finest years of the list should not actually be ahead of us! Best wishes to all, John : ) P.S. I was able to attend Extro 5 in 2001 because Robert Bradbury gave me a bunch of his frequent flyer miles. I will never forget his great kindness! I remember sitting at a table in your backyard as Robert discussed with Greg Burch, his upcoming commercial venture for nanotube research. It was fun staying at your house in a room next to Anders, and I kept on hearing pages turn as he intellectually devoured the library you have in your home! lol I still wonder how much sleep he got... Oh, and there is my cool recollection of driving around in a van with Anders and Greg, with the conversation about building bio-nano spacecraft to get extropy members off-planet as soon as possible! Finally, I recall Max taking time out of his very busy schedule at the conference to talk to me about his life. Good times. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 19:49:41 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:49:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com><580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <2BEFA3BA243B415FB267778116449727@MyComputer> "Olga Bourlin" > Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry to see this trend. > http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ I don't see what that has to do with the First Amendment. If somebody doesn't want to sell something in their store I think they have every right not to do so. If I owned a bookstore I wouldn't sell astrology books, not because I didn't think they'd make money but because I'd feel unclean if I did. You may disagree, but hell, it's my bookstore. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 19:50:43 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:50:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] China/was Re: are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <770096.67409.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike wrote: > There would be an alternative explanation in this case: the > Chinese > government mandates for small families (one child, left > behind) caused > enormous savings for a while, lasting until all those > ageing parents need > support from their vastly overwhelmed younger > generation.? Secondly, China > is functionally transitioning from communism to capitalism, > since 1989. > Good for them, but it still doesn't solve a huge problem of > what to do with > the starving hordes of AARPs, or rather in their case > CARPs. I think the transition to a more market-based economy started earlier than that -- perhaps 1980 or earlier. To be sure, command economies are never totally in command; there's always some market component. But what I mean is that the policies started changing earlier, but they became more noticable by 1989 and after. Regards, Dan http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/ From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 13 19:51:18 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:51:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <580930c20904131241o19f9dd35la92f6a41dd4f7828@mail.gmail.co m> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904131241o19f9dd35la92f6a41dd4f7828@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413145006.022b9d98@satx.rr.com> At 09:41 PM 4/13/2009 +0200, you wrote: >Isn't aristocracy and wealth an oxymoron? :-) > >-- >Stefano Vaj I thought it was a pleonasm. Maybe not in Italy. Damien Broderick From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 20:00:09 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:00:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= References: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer> "Dan" > It's conceivable, e.g., that humans could've started settling space or > other planets decades ago -- in other words, long before they could > seriously attempt something like a body control panel. That may be conceivable to you but it isn?t to me. Certainly talking about ?decades? is completely inappropriate when talking about the sort of thing where even 50 million years is just a blink of an eye. I think the fundamental difference between you and me is that I think intelligence is capable of engineering the galaxy and perhaps the universe; you don?t. If I?m right then a blind man in a fog bank could detect the existence of ET. So where the hell is he? It seems to me that either we?re the first or there is a hidden disaster of some sort that slaps down all intelligent races when they get too smart. Perhaps that hidden disaster is the control panel, or to call it by another name drug addiction. John K Clark From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 20:09:28 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:09:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70904131207i37ecc8b4n4de8debb3caf8188@mail.gmail.com> References: <55ad6af70904131207i37ecc8b4n4de8debb3caf8188@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904131309l6028853ble388fca68e3db4b@mail.gmail.com> Kicking it up a notch. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bryan Bishop Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:07 PM Subject: DIY DNA synthesis (more) To: diybio at googlegroups.com, kanzure at gmail.com Hey all, I sent an email to a friendly polymer-advocate and figure it should also be archived here for prosperity's sake. I'm glad someone liked the idea of do-it-yourself DNA synthesis. Here's the (unedited) email-- Hey David, So I was up this morning again doing some reading on ways that we could do DIY DNA synthesis. I've produced a bibliography of interesting papers relevant to the idea. For some reason when I first came across DNA synthesis, I assumed it was only solid-phase, but I'm glad to find out that there are photolabile-group-deprotection (etc.) methods that make it possible to synthesize genomes via photolithography. BibTeX bibliography: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/bibliographies/DIY-DNA-synth.bib Now, a friend of mine- the one on campus here building a reprap- suggested using LCDs as a reprogrammable photomask. There are many papers that have talked about doing this, and a few that actually demonstrate it. The oldest papers go back into the late 1980s where they were talking about electro-optical adaptive phase masks and such. Anyway. That's pretty neat, but it requires this terribly large lense to make it work. But .. in my literature search .. I once found a paper describing micromolding in microchannels via capillary force. In other words, the polymers literally crawl up the channels and then cure. There has even been a paper on doing this for making microemitters (organic/polymer LEDs). But the problem with this method is that it requires 10^-6 torr for the vacuum deposition process of the metal electrode or something. Yikes. [[as it turns out, Hong H Lee and friends have a cathode contact metal transfer method that can be used here, but it seems to also require gnarly chemicals]] Other papers talk about using ink-jet printers to print out OLEDs, which is fine, but they still sometimes require those metal contacts. Maybe there's a way around this? What I would like to be able to do is print out a PCB pattern from my printer and use an ink-jet compatible polymer to draw the LEDs. And then have a matrix-addressable-array of my tiny microemitters (they don't have to be *too* tiny, and they don't have to last forever)- so that I could rapidly switch the electronics on/off so that I can activate light in different regions, or ideally control each LED individually all at once. Anyway, that's just basic electronics. Maybe you have some ideas or general directions in which to point me? An electrodeless light-emitting diode may *sound* impossible or crazy, or mad and crazy, but that's what I'm here for :-). Ink-jet-printablephosphorescent organic light-emitting-diode devices http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JSIDE8000016000012001229000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes I don't have access to that paper. Are you able to get it? So, if there's a way to do LCD-based synthesis without the lense, that would be ideal. But alternatively, printing out an array of LEDs isn't entirely terrible, as long as the color "just so happens to be" the right wavelength for the photocurible DNA synthesis steps. Blah. This is getting complicated. But other than that, things sound like they are about to get interesting, especially if you're able to "print out" genomes from an inkjet printer (more or less). - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 20:11:34 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:11:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Sharpie microfluidics In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70903020905p7e89d915tc145a24b00ab1067@mail.gmail.com> References: <55ad6af70903020905p7e89d915tc145a24b00ab1067@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904131311w7be60985k37a4d2208ea4ace9@mail.gmail.com> Kicking it up (another) notch. The full discussion is over at the following link, but of course extropian insight is always neat: http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_frm/thread/b3bb2d8b8a654fd4/1197606e3c3dc439?#1197606e3c3dc439 general FAQ: http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/DIYbio_FAQ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bryan Bishop Date: Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:05 PM Subject: Sharpie microfluidics To: diybio at googlegroups.com, Open Manufacturing , kanzure at gmail.com Hey all, Saturday afternoon, I was in the lab playing around with that microfluidics paper archive. I really recommend you guys go read through it. In particular, I have come across a method for constructing microfluidic devices cheaply, with materials you probably have laying around your home or the office. Basically, you need 2 glass microscopy slides, tape, and a sharpie. It would also help if you have some alligator clamps. Metal paperclips don't work and just scratch/destroy the slides, don't bother. Ideally, you need to make the slides super hydrophobic by soaking them in piranha for 12 hours, which is a 3 to 1 ratio concoction of H2SO4 and hydrogen peroxide (respectively), but it's really nasty and I wouldn't recommend it. Also, I didn't seem to have to do that to make this work, although I am confident it would help and be worth the trouble. Maybe doing big baths or batch-runs of soaking the glass would be more practical? Don't worry- that's the most complicated step in this whole process, and you get to ignore it (yay!). So here's what you do. (1) Draw your pattern in sharpie on two slides. In other words, the two slides should have a mirror image of each other, so that they can be stacked together, such that the sharpie pattern is facing itself on both sides. You can do this with stencils, freehand- which I successfully did for a design with 2 parallel lines as well as 2 circles (using a dime, sort of). (2) Take a small piece of tape and loop it, so that it is connected to itself. Put this loop on the left side of one of the slides. Do this again for the right side. (3) Sandwhich the two slides together, such that the two patterns meet up, and such that you're basically unable to distinguish which side you started with :-). (4) To see it in action, micropipette a drop of water into an opening at the top that you declare the input. You can try squirting water, but it will not work very well unless you made the slides super hydrophobic-- for droplets, this works fine. So, for large volumes of fluid, like deposited via a straw or leaky squirt bottle nozzle, it will flood over the lines simply because the glass isn't all that hydrophobic- however you will see that the water still stays away from the sharpie-drawn lines, so it's a hint as to what will happen if you go use piranha, or something- I'm sure someone can help figure out an alternative, more readily available concoction for making the slides hydrophobic. You can see a diagram here: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/microfluidics/sharpie.png I promise I'll make a video and get some photographs very very soon. :-) I last mentioned microfluidics in a recent post about $100 DNA sequencing in 5 years via nanofluidics from BioNanoMatrix: http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_frm/thread/4b1efc2d0033fc10# archive: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/microfluidics_2009.zip Some videos (not from me): microfluidic pin-ball via lasers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ruyV2Lak4 more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOYdn8Ft_IU droplet formation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK1xNcAObjA surface tension-confined microfluidics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HrRuaLFGmY (somewhat the same as sharpie microfluidics) sandwhich for microscale reactions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ8rjO0FpZc The sharpie-based method can be found here: "Performing chemical reactions in virtual capillary of surface tension-confined microfluidic devices". But that's about it. Nobody has cited that paper apparently. What's the deal? There are many papers out there about "labs on a chip". I think it is interesting that an amateur can now start drawing their labs on a chip, and perform many of the experiments and reactions that otherwise require huge equipment. Many microfluidic devices have been mentioned in the literature that do PCR, thermocycling, DNA sequencing, DNA synthesis, in vitro cell-free protein synthesis, immunoassays, emulsions, particle separation/filtration, even simple procedures like gel electrophoresis can be done with microfluidic devices via an array of dots (maybe- this needs to be tested some more methinks). So what's next? Well, I think I need a stamp, or a (sharpie) pen plotter, or some better stencils, or something. Originally I was trying to do this with nail polish, because some nail polish cures in UV light. There are some epoxies and paints that work here too apparently. Anyway, if that would have gone better, then I would have printed out some circuits from a printer, laminated it, and then done UV mask lithography on a small surface layer of nail polish, and then wash away the rest of it. Maybe somebody with actual nail polish experience can figure out a way to make this work? I bought some supplies for $14, it's not much. (Also, wax is hydrophobic, so a wax printer or just melting wax from a candle and then imprinting the pattern of some bent metal from a paperclip would work, but it's not as awesome as using sharpies.) That still leaves the question as to what's next open though. What is this going to be used for? I was confining algae in bubbles and moving it around with the sharpie patterns. That's one possible use. But then how are we going to actuate the bubbles? You can use a heat gradient by heating one side and cooling the other, salt water plus electrical conduction, pneumatic pumps, laser-actuated movement of droplets, etc. There have been some papers in the past about applying a force perpendicular to the surface just before the droplet and this apparently causing movement to occur, so that's something to look into. There's also the question of how to get inputs and outputs into this system: I'm thinking straws, and then superglue or chewing gum to seal it (sort of). Another option is to find plastic hydrophobic slides and just use a needle to poke holes in the top/bottom for letting fluid flow outwardly. That's all I have for now. = Microfluidics bibliography, especially DIY-friendly = A Brownian dynamics-finite element method for simulating DNA electrophoresis in nonhomogeneous electric fields - complicated geometries Accumulating particles at the boundaries of a laminar flow A "do-it-yourself" array biosensor A Dry Process for Production of Microfluidic Devices Based on the Lamination of Laser-Printed Polyester Films A Gravity-Driven Microfluidic Particle Sorting Device with Hydrodynamic Separation Amplification A high rate flow-focusing foam generator AlgalBiophysics_TBPS_2003 A microfabricated thermal field-flow fractionation system A microfluidic abacus channel for controlling the addition of droplets A microfluidic bioreactor for increased active retrovirus output An optical toolbox for total control of droplet microfluidics with lasers Applications of microfluidics for neuronal studies A simple pneumatic setup for driving microfluidics A soft lithographic approach to fabricate patterned microfluidic channels Bonding of glass-based microfluidic chips at low- or room-temperature in routine laboratory Bonding of glass microfluidic chips at room temperatures ?Bonding of soda-lime glass microchips at low temperature (65 celsius) Boosting migration of large particles by solute contrasts Brownian dynamics simulations of a DNA molecule colliding with a small cylindrical post Capillary flow control using hydrophobic patterns Capture of DNA in microfluidic channel using magnetic beads - increasing capture efficiency with integrated mixer Capture of particles of dust by convective flow - PhysFluids_17_063302 Cell infection within a microfluidic device using virus gradients Cell separation by non-inertial force fields in microfluidic systems Cell Stimulus and Lysis in a Microfluidic Device with Segmented Gas-Liquid Flow CFD - CFD in microfluidic systems - MATLAB source code CFD - Computational Fluid Dynamics in Microfluidic Systems CFD - Designing microfluidic components for enhanced surface delivery using a genetic algorithm search - automated design CFD - Elmer CFD for Microfluidics - examples CFD - Proprietary CFD software tools for microfluidic applications - a case study CFD - Simulations of Microfluidic Systems - Friedhelm Schonfeld CFD - Theory and numerical simulation of droplet dynamics in complex flows--a review CFD - TINY3D - A robust solver for incompressible flow on cartesian grids with colocated variables CFD - Toolbox for the design of optimized microfluidic components - without solving flow equations CFD - Toolbox for the design of optimized microfluidic components - without solving flow equations - supplementary Conformational Preconditioning by Electrophoresis of DNA through a Finite Obstacle Array Construction of refreshable microfluidic channels and electrophoresis along them Continuous flow separations in microfluidic devices Continuous particle separation in a microchannel having asymmetrically arranged multiple branches Continuous particle separation in spiral microchannels using dean flows and differential migration Continuous Particle Separation Through Deterministic Lateral Displacement Correlations of droplet formation in T-junction microfluidic devices: from squeezing to dripping Critical particle size for fractionation by deterministic lateral displacement Design and evaluation of a Dean vortex-based micromixer - separations Design and numerical simulation of a DNA electrophoretic stretching device Discrete magnetic microfluidics on superhydrophobic surfaces using magnetic fields Does Thermophoretic Mobility Depend on Particle Size? Droplet microfluidics Droplet traffic in microfluidic networks: A simple model for understanding and designing Dynamic patterning programmed by DNA tiles captured on a DNA origami substrate Effective mixing of laminar flows at a density interface by an integrated ultrasonic transducer - on a PCB Effect of contact angle hysteresis on thermocapillary droplet actuation Effects of flow and diffusion on chemotaxis studies in a microfabricated gradient generator Effects of Separation length and voltage on Isoelectric focusing in a plastic microfluidic device_Journal_In Press2006 Electrophoresis - Design and Optimization of Compact Microscale Electrophoretic Separation Systems Enhanced particle filtration in straight microchannels using shear-modulated inertial migration Fabrication inside microchannels using fluid flow Fabrication of microsensors using unmodified office inkjet printers Field gradient electrophoresis FLASH: A rapid method for prototyping paper-based microfluidic devices Flat fluidics - acoustically driven planar microfluidic devices Flows of concentrated suspensions through an asymmetric bifurcation Formation of simple and compound drops in microfluidic devices Frontal photopolymerization for microfluidic applications - CabralLangmuir_2004 Fully integrated miniature device for automated gene expression DNA microarray processing Generating fixed concentration arrays in a microfluidic device Generation of complex concentration profiles in microchannels in a logarithmically small number of steps Generation of dynamic temporal and spatial concentration gradients using microfluidic devices Generation of gradients having complex shapes using microfluidic networks High resolution DNA separations using microchip electrophoresis Human neural stem cell growth and differentiation in a gradient-generating microfluidic device Hydrodynamic metamaterials: Microfabricated arrays to steer, refract, and focus streams of biomaterials. Ice-lithographic fabrication of concave microwells and a microfluidic network - ice droplets for structure formation in PDMS Inertial migration of neutrally buoyant particles in a square duct - an investigation of multiple equilibrium positions Inertial migration of rigid spherical particles in Poiseuille flow Inertial migration of spherical particles in circular Poiseuille flow at moderately high Reynolds numbers Integration of polymer and metal microstructures using liquid-phase photopolymerization Lab on paper Lecithin-Based Water-In-Oil Compartments as Dividing Bioreactors - in vitro protein synthesis Light-induced shape-memory polymers Marangoni flows Maskless photolithography using UV LEDs Membrane-free microfiltration by asymmetric inertial migration - spirals - bifurcations Membraneless microseparation by asymmetry in curvilinear laminar flows Microbioreactors for bioprocess development Microbubble or pendant drop control described by a general phase diagram Microchannels Constructed on Rough Hydrophobic Surfaces Microfluidic assembly blocks Microfluidic bubble logic - Gershenfeld Microfluidic chip-based valveless flow injection analysis system with gravity-driven flows Microfluidic logic gates and timers Microfluidic manipulation via Marangoni forces Microfluidics of complex fluids Microfluidic sorting in an optical lattice Micropatterning of biomedical polymer surfaces by novel UV polymerization techniques Microvortex for focusing, guiding and sorting of particles Microwave welding of polymeric-microfluidic devices Mixing-induced activity in open flows Modeling shapes and dynamics of confined bubbles Nanomaterials and chip-based nanostructures for capillary electrophoretic separations of DNA Nonlithographic fabrication of microfluidic devices On-chip cell lysis by local hydroxide generation Particle Continuous Separation by Evaporation Force on Microfluidic System Patterned Superhydrophobic Surfaces: ?Toward a Synthetic Mimic of the Namib Desert Beetle Pattern formation in acoustic cavitation Patterning of flow and mixing in rotating radial microchannels PCR - A circular ferrofluid driven microchip for rapid polymerase chain reaction PCR - An inexpensive and portable microchip-based platform for integrated RT-PCR and capillary electrophoresis PCR - Disposable real-time microPCR device: lab-on-a-chip at a low cost PCR - Droplet-based micro oscillating-flow PCR chip PCR - Integrated Portable Polymerase Chain Reaction-Capillary Electrophoresis Microsystem for Rapid Forensic Short Tandem Repeat Typing PCR - Nanodroplet real-time PCR system with laser assisted heating PCR - On-chip, real-time, single-copy polymerase chain reaction in picoliter droplets Performing chemical reactions in virtual capillary of surface tension-confined microfluidic devices - sharpies - nail polish - glass surfaces - hydrophobicity Photosensitive Polymer from Ionic Self-Assembly of Azobenzene Dye and Poly(ionic liquid) and Its Alignment Characteristic toward Liquid Crystal Molecules PNAS-2008-Morton-7434-8 Polymer embossing tools for rapid prototyping of plastic microfluidic devices Pressure drops for droplet flows in microfluidic channels Principles of microfluidic actuation by modulation of surface stresses Protein fabrication automation Rapid fabrication of microfluidic devices in poly(dimethylsiloxane) by photocopying Rapid method for design and fabrication of passive micromixers in microfluidic devices using a direct-printing process Rapid prototyping of microfluidic devices with a wax printer Rapid prototyping of microfluidic systems using a laser-patterned tape Recent advances of microfluidics in Mainland China Refreshable microfluidic channels constructed using an inkjet printer Room Temperature Microchannel Fabrication for Microfluidic System - see evaporation force paper Separation enhancement in pinched flow fractionation Separation of suspended particles by asymmetric arrays of obstacles in microfluidic devices Shrinky-Dink microfluidics: 3D polystyrene chips Shrinky-Dink microfluidics: rapid generation of deep and rounded patterns Simple, robust storage of drops and fluids in a microfluidic device Simultaneous cell lysis and bead trapping in a continuous flow microfluidic device Stacking of beads into monolayers by flow through flat microfluidic chambers Step-and-scan maskless lithography for ultra large scale DNA chips Surface Effects on PCR Reactions in Multichip Microfluidic Platforms Surface-Tension-Confined Microfluidics Synthesis - Gene synthesis on microchips - review Synthesis - Impact of microdrops on solid surfaces for DNA synthesis Synthesis - Integrated two-step gene synthesis in a microfluidic device (1k bp, 1 error per 250 bp) Synthesis - Microfluidic PicoArray synthesis of oligodeoxynucleotides and simultaneous assembling of multiple DNA sequences (10 kb) Synthesis - Parallel gene synthesis in a microfluidic device (1 kb, but parallelizable) - CBA Synthesis - Solvent resistant microfluidic DNA synthesizer Systematic modeling of microfluidic concentration gradient generators The design and fabrication of autonomous polymer-based surface tension-confined microfluidic platforms The impact of diffusion on confined oscillated bubbly fluid The lateral migration of neutrally-buoyant spheres transported through square microchannels The origins and the future of microfluidics - Whitesides - 2006 The pressure drop along rectangular microchannels containing bubbles Thermocapillary manipulation of droplets using holographic beam shaping: Microfluidic pin ball Thermophoresis: moving particles with thermal gradients Three-dimensional microfluidic devices fabricated in layered paper and tape Trends - Droplets as Microreactors for High-Throughput Biology Trends - miniautirising the laboratory in emulsion droplets Ultra rapid prototyping of microfluidic systems using liquid phase photopolymerization (5 min) Use of polystyrene spin-coated compact discs for microimmunoassaying Valves for autonomous capillary systems - droplets - delay valves - abruptly changing geometries Versatile stepper based maskless microlithography using a liquid crystal display for direct write of binary and multilevel microstructures Xurography: rapid prototyping of microstructures using a cutting plotter - vinyl cutters = Papers related to BioNanoMatrix's DNA sequencing tech = see also: http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/DNA_sequencing http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/DNA_sequencing#Microfluidic_DNA_sequencing DNA prism for high-speed continuous fractionation of large DNA molecules A nanoelectrode lined nanochannel for single-molecule DNA sequencing A nanofluidic railroad switch for DNA An experimental study of DNA rotational relaxation time in nanoslits Design and numerical simulation of a DNA electrophoretic stretching device Diffusion mechanisms of localised knots along a polymer DNA confined in nanochannels: Hairpin tightening by entropic depletion Electrical Detection of DNA and Integration with Nano-fluidic Channels Electrophoretic stretching of DNA molecules using microscale T junctions ** Fabrication of 10 nm enclosed nanofluidic channels Fabrication of Size-Controllable Nanofluidic Channels by Nanoimprinting and Its Application for DNA Stretching Nanofilter array chip for fast gel-free biomolecule separation Polymers in Confined Geometry The dynamics of genomic-length DNA molecules in 100-nm channels The shape of a flexible polymer in a cylindrical pore - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 19:54:39 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:54:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books Message-ID: <371664.95946.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, B.K. DeLong wrote: > There is FAR more to this. Search > "Twitter" (#amazonfail & > #glitchmyass) and Google for "Amazon Fail". > > Also see the posts from earlier this AM in: > http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer > > Personally, I believe someone figured out how to exploit > the Amazon > API to the point where anything tagged as having GLBT > content had > their Sales Ranking removed. If that's the case and others > figured it > out just as fast (including before Amazon developers), we > could see > this happen to other books as well. If that's so, then this isn't Amazon playing Big Brother, but just someone hacking their site, no? Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 20:22:22 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:22:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <697240.63610.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9599A1322264494FBC19967AC8085E4E@MyComputer> "Dan" > Category error in my view: Bullshit. > Islam is an abstraction or an aggregate. Bullshit > What does act is an Islamic person A Person infected with a virulent mind virus called "Islam". > Muslims have made what some of us might consider positive contributions. But not in the last 800 years. > But what's the point of this discussion? To find the truth. > Also, it seems quite clear that Muslims are able to take up Western > technologies and ideas and use them for their ends. No you are quite wrong, they're not even very good at copying. A few Muslim countries through a lucky geological break happen to be sitting on top of a lake that contains 2/3 of the world's oil and so are rich, but that hasn't stopped Nigeria, a Muslim country with lots of oil, from being the second poorest country on Earth, beaten only by Mozambique, another Muslim country. Continuing on our list of the poorest countries in the world we have Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Congo, Bangladesh, Angola and Afghanistan, all are predominantly Muslim countries. Do you really think it is just a coincidence all if them are Islamic? I mean political correctness is all very well but I don't think it should take precedence over logic. Let's look at a subset of the Muslim world, the Arabs. There are over 250 million Arabs and they have most of the world's oil, but nevertheless the GNP of the entire Arab world is less than that of Spain, a country with no oil and a population of only 40 million. One reason for this may be that the number of books translated into Arabic over the past thousand years is about the same as the number of books translated into Spanish just last year. I freely admit this is an entirely subjective statement but in my personal opinion Islamic culture sucks. > Maybe I missed something... An entirely reasonable hypothesis. John K Clark From bkdelong at pobox.com Mon Apr 13 20:31:43 2009 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:31:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books In-Reply-To: <371664.95946.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <371664.95946.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Possibly. Like I said - my supposition. I'm disappointed at the speed at which the Amazon PR machine is reacting to this by telling absolutely outraged customers "it's a glitch" they're fixing, please don't close their accounts. yet.....they're not communicating on the same technological channels this potential misinformation/information is spreading. On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, B.K. DeLong wrote: >> There is FAR more to this. Search >> "Twitter" (#amazonfail & >> #glitchmyass) and Google for "Amazon Fail". >> >> Also see the posts from earlier this AM in: >> http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer >> >> Personally, I believe someone figured out how to exploit >> the Amazon >> API to the point where anything tagged as having GLBT >> content had >> their Sales Ranking removed. If that's the case and others >> figured it >> out just as fast (including before Amazon developers), we >> could see >> this happen to other books as well. > > If that's so, then this isn't Amazon playing Big Brother, but just someone hacking their site, no? > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Family. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Life. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 20:32:09 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:32:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <102994.92713.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 09:41 PM 4/13/2009 +0200, you > wrote: > >>Isn't aristocracy and wealth an oxymoron? :-) >> >>-- >>Stefano Vaj > > I thought it was a pleonasm. Maybe not in Italy. To be sure, one would have to define the terms. I can see how some might think them synonymous or nearly so as to make them interchangeable. And I can see how others might make a sharp distinction. Regards, Dan http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/Testing.html From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 20:13:13 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:13:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= Message-ID: <280412.5857.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > > > It's conceivable, e.g., that humans could've started > settling space or > > other planets decades ago -- in other words, long > before they could > > seriously attempt something like a body control > panel. > > That may? be conceivable to you but it isn?t to me. > Certainly talking about > ?decades? is completely inappropriate when talking > about the sort of > thing where even 50 million years is just a blink of an > eye. > > I think the fundamental difference between you and me is > that I think > intelligence is capable of engineering the galaxy and > perhaps the universe; > you don?t. That's a strange conclusion to get from my above statement. I don't believe that at all. My point was rather that what you seem to believe is that technological progress goes at some rate for most or all intelligences and along a fairly specific path for ditto -- such as humans developing a body control panel before they move out into space. > If I?m right then a blind man in a fog bank > could detect the > existence of ET. So where the hell is he? It seems to me > that either we?re > the first or there is a hidden disaster of some sort that > slaps down all > intelligent races when they get too smart. Perhaps that > hidden disaster is > the control panel, or to call it by another name drug > addiction. I think it's possible, but I'm not sure it's likely. The problem with most of the filter talk is you need a filter -- i.e., something that filters out all the ETIs -- that works in a huge %age of cases or you end up with ETIs or evidence of ETIs all over the place in short order. Since the data doesn't support this, yes, there must be some filter -- whether humans were the first or intelligence always self-destructs or whatever -- but this particular filter -- which has been proposed in other varieties before -- could only work if almost all ETIs embrace it before they start out to cause changes humans might notice. (Settling space is merely one possible change humans might notice -- simply because if the process starts one might imagine one ETI kind (species?) in this galaxy settling the whole galaxy in short order.) Don't you agree? Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 21:18:28 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:18:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books Message-ID: <923091.51170.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, B.K. DeLong wrote: > Possibly. Like I said - my > supposition. I'm disappointed at the speed > at which the Amazon PR machine is reacting to this by > telling > absolutely outraged customers "it's a glitch" they're > fixing, please > don't close their accounts. yet.....they're not > communicating on the > same technological channels this potential > misinformation/information > is spreading. Well, it could be a trial balloon, of course and they're now doing damage control, but I'd give them, for now, the benefit of the doubt. Regards, Dan See "Communication Breakdown: The Novels of Stanislaw Lem" at: http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/Lem.html From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 21:34:04 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:34:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= References: <280412.5857.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: : "Dan" > you seem to believe is that technological progress goes at some rate for > most or all intelligences and along a fairly specific path Yes I plead quality on that point. I believe that all intelligent races are bounded by the laws of physics and so there must be some similarity among their development; not year to year or decade by decade or even century by century; but when you?re talking abut million years by million years, yes I think there must be some correspondence with rate of development. It?s all the same Physics after all and to the Universe a million years is a very shot time. > yes, there must be some filter -- whether humans were the first or > intelligence always self-destructs or whatever -- but this particular > filter -- which has been proposed in other varieties before -- could only > work if almost all ETIs embrace it before they start out to cause changes > humans might notice. Let me make it clear that the following is almost certainly bullshit, but suppose, just suppose nature is unkind. Suppose that in the technological history of any civilization there will come a time when it will find hints of a new force in nature, and suppose there is a very obvious experiment to investigate that possibility, and suppose because it is so new there is not one scrap of information to think it is in any way dangerous so the experiment is performed. And then BOOM, more energy is released in 2 seconds than the sun has generated in its entire 5 billion year history. It is of course difficult to predict how a newly discovered force in Physics will behave, that's why it's new. Madam Curie was certainly not stupid, and when she first discovered Radium she had not one scrap of information to think that the strange rays given off by that element were in any way dangerous, but it ended up killing her. Even today her lab notes are so radioactive you?d need protective clothing to read them. Well OK, Gamma Ray Bursters are probably not industrial accidents, but the idea might make a good science fiction story. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 13 21:48:23 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:48:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?iso-8859-1?q?Where=E2=80=99s_my_body=E2=80=99s__Control_P?= =?iso-8859-1?q?anel=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <280412.5857.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413164720.02352c88@satx.rr.com> >[????all intelligences and along a fairly specific path > >a??W?v???+r?{aj?h?{Hm?bz?? ?Z?X???e?????z??y?.???o+azV?????+"r??v?- ????-m?(??"?)Z?+rjj'??^??^??h?g??z-??????j?+u?u??u?u?+z??q???????????n?p ????+z???)?i???)e???y??o)??X??'??????a?y- ????-m?(??(??????zw?+a??^??^??h?g???@??e??jg??+"r??????V?v?- ?'???????Yb?|?j?"????+!??b?????^?????????~)mz?!z?^??j{0z?? ????h?)?zYb???y?pk+,zW?z?k??l??!j??z????b????'.????[^?brZ????????v)??????z??????????]?yr????????-jYDL????q??m????a{+-j?h??hq??y?Z?????????g???x????????rW???Z??^~?e???+?j,???????&??[!??????????-??i???j??z+.?H?u+??????{az???z%??jXb??+????'"?)b??b?{az???Y\?g??)?????"?W???b??(}????+q????n???v??????z+????????????g???"????(??aj?h????X??????i???y???????(??- ????????????????+??b?{h???+b?)??,????????(??????g??+)z???g?wm ??8?&???????++zW???b?kr????Z??^???j??????b?+lz{b??[?Yb?|?j?b??+??b??????y??~'.??h?????a??{ >rv+???y???????r?',?)em?Z??aj?0?(??w?1?Z?+??????????)???n?'Z??!z{!y????b??/z??E?b?k!z???h????h~)?????*'??a?y- ?m ?-???z????zz}?? ?^????????j|?k'Z???????zw^v?d?Yb?^?K???k(^?V???^??????v*r??{*.??y?k????+?rZ-?)????i?aze??S???i??????j?????n\????v?-?&?i?"u???????u???m??j >(v?"zw~'-??????&?g()Z?G???)??Z?f??)??+-{k??? ?e??l{k????m????+-??m??r??????????+-?w?r?{k??? ? what the *hell* formating is this? even in the archives, it comes out as one long string that runs off the right hand side of the page. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 21:50:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:50:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <807930.52018.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > >> Category error in my view: > > Bullshit. I'm not bs-ing. >> Islam is an abstraction or an aggregate. > > Bullshit I disagree. It lumps too many people together -- people who likely have different views and different ways of acting on these views. Were this not true, then every last person falling under the aggregate would think and act pretty much the same. I don't see this. Do you? (This is no different than other such aggregates like Christian, vegetarian, conservative, or transhumanist.) >> What does act is an Islamic person > > A Person infected with a virulent mind virus called > "Islam". Seems a backhanded way of admitting individuals act. >> Muslims have made what some of us might consider >> positive contributions. > > But not in the last 800 years. I disagree. I know Muslims today who are in technical fields and who otherwise make positive contributions. I think one could make the case that it's not their specifically Islamic beliefs that're driving their contributions, but that'd require more analysis and would weigh against a blanket condemnation of all Muslims. >> But what's the point of this discussion? > > To find the truth. I doubt that given your tone. >> Also, it seems quite clear that Muslims are able to >> take up Western >> technologies and ideas and use them for their ends. > > No you are quite wrong, they're not even very good at > copying. A few Muslim > countries through a lucky geological break happen to be > sitting on top of a > lake that contains 2/3 of the world's oil and so are rich, > but > that hasn't stopped Nigeria, a Muslim country with lots of > oil, from being > the second poorest country on Earth, beaten only by > Mozambique, another > Muslim country.? Continuing on our list of the poorest > countries in the > world we have Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Congo, > Bangladesh, Angola and > Afghanistan, all are predominantly Muslim countries. Do you > really think it > is just a coincidence all if them are Islamic? I mean > political correctness > is all very well but I don't think it should take > precedence over logic. I'm not being politically correct here -- or ideological considerations of that sort don't drive my thinking. That said, there does seem to be something to what you say, but what about the resource curse? This is where societies with plentiful natural resources tend to have less economic growth and development. Now, in this case, much of the Islamic world in North Africa and the Middle East was also under oppressive internal rule for a long time. So it already started out behind the curve and then the resource curse, if it's plausible in this case, might have locked it in. > Let's look at a subset of the Muslim world, the Arabs. > There are over 250 > million Arabs and they have most of the world's oil, but > nevertheless the > GNP of the entire Arab world is less than that of Spain, a > country with no > oil and a population of only 40 million. See above. > One reason for > this may be that the > number of books translated into Arabic over the past > thousand years is about > the same as the number of books translated into Spanish > just last year. This might have less to do with Muslims per se than with their ruling elites. > I freely admit this is an entirely subjective statement but > in my personal > opinion Islamic culture sucks. I wouldn't disagree -- from a personal perspective. I mean I don't particularly seek it out. >> Maybe I missed something... > > An entirely reasonable hypothesis. Yet another example of the overall tone here. Regards, Dan From max at maxmore.com Mon Apr 13 21:37:41 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:37:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Will Oil Demand Peak Before Supply Does? Message-ID: <200904132204.n3DM4VCm013479@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Interesting perspective... Anyone have a handy source for looking up subsidies paid for using diesel? Will Oil Demand Peak Before Supply Does? By Matt C. Rogers McKinsey Digital, 23 February 2009 http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/energy/will-oil-demand-peak-before-supply-does Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 13 22:05:25 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:05:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= Message-ID: <831847.83875.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: >> you seem to believe is that technological progress >> goes at some rate for >> most or all intelligences and along a fairly specific >> path > > Yes I plead quality on that point. Did you mean guilty? Do you also agree that you made a mistake with regard to my beliefs? > I believe that all > intelligent races are > bounded by the laws of physics I agree with that. > and so there must be some similarity among > their development; not year to year or decade by decade or > even century by > century; but when you?re talking abut million years by > million years, yes I > think there must be some correspondence with rate of > development. I'm not sure about that. Let me try to restate the view I offered earlier. Imagine there're are two paths of development that are otherwise highly similar. In one, the body control panel or similar stuff (similar in that, whatever it is, it acts as a filter) is invented first. (This might be the path humans are now on.) Let's call this filtering tech. They invent other stuff -- things would give a clue to others that they exist; let's call this non-filtering tech -- later on. In this scenario, as you seem to posit, the filter comes into being and this group is never detected after -- simply because the stuff that would call attention to their existence (whatever it is) simply never gets invented or deployed (in the right way). In the other, the non-filtering tech gets invented (and deployed in the right way) first. The filtering tech comes later. Now it could be that the filtering tech eventually quashing the non-filtering tech -- as might happen if, say, humans (or posthumans) start settling the solar system, but then perfect one or more filtering tech, say, on Earth and this spreads quickly to all settlements -- something like the body control panel being perfected and every last sentient being decides to fiddle with this and do nothing else ever. You might have a few decades of signaling human or posthuman presence followed by silence. But still there'd always be the chance that the filtering tech never quashes it completely. We'd still have to wonder -- presuming filtering tech does its job -- how often this happens. We'd still be left with the Fermi Paradox to some extent. > It?s all > the same Physics after all and to the Universe a million > years is a very > shot time. Yes, but you still have to establish why, in a million years, if it takes that long for a filter to deploy, why an ETI hasn't done some mega-engineering or other things to give away its presence. Your view depends on all these things turning out right. I'm merely questioning that. Why? To me, your view just sounds like a "just so" story. Why are there are no cars in the parking lot on Sunday? The Bigfoot got them all. Why is there no evidence of Bigfoot? Well, he has superstealth powers. :) > > yes, there must be some filter -- whether humans were > the first or > > intelligence always self-destructs or whatever -- but > this particular > > filter -- which has been proposed in other varieties > before -- could only > > work if almost all ETIs embrace it before they start > out to cause changes > > humans might notice. > > Let me make it clear that the following is almost certainly > bullshit, but > suppose, just suppose nature is unkind. Suppose that in the > technological > history of any civilization there will come a time when it > will find hints > of a new force in nature, and suppose there is a very > obvious experiment > to investigate that possibility, and suppose because it is > so new there is > not one scrap of information to think it is in any way > dangerous so the > experiment is performed. And then BOOM, more energy is > released in > 2 seconds than the sun has generated in its entire 5 > billion year history. > > It is of course difficult to predict how a newly discovered > force in Physics > will behave, that's why it's new. Madam Curie was certainly > not stupid, and > when she first discovered Radium she had not one scrap of > information to > think that the strange rays given off by that element were > in any way > dangerous, but it ended up killing her. Even today her lab > notes are so > radioactive you?d need protective clothing to read them. > > Well OK, Gamma Ray Bursters are probably not industrial > accidents, > but the idea might make a good science fiction story. It's already been done: _Definitely Maybe_ by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Published, I believe, in the early 1970s. Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 22:32:13 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:32:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <807930.52018.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C316E582BCE4FA0B427D6E7EB897F54@MyComputer> "Dan" > I disagree. It [Islam] lumps too many people together Lumping is a very useful concept! But you're right about one thing, the fact of the matter is that in the real world nothing is perfectly lumped; however in the real world nothing is better lumped than your ordinary garden verity Islamic Fundamentalist. I mean, if you think it's a good idea to strap a dynamite belt on yourself so you can blow up yourself and a bunch of people you'd never met before on a bus is a good idea then you're pretty damn lumpy. It's simply a question of logic. John K Clark From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 13 22:21:45 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:21:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com><72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Message-ID: <23F508EB489B4484B823017BBA71C430@spike> > ...John K Clark: > > > ...Can you think of anything that > > the Islamic culture has done since they invented the zero... They didn't invent the zero, according to most modern mathematical historians. > > ...800 years > > ago that you personally think they should be proud of? I can't, at > > least not right off the top of my head. ... It shaped Obama's country. Obama to Turkish parliament: "We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world - including in my own country." Before you go crazy trying to figure out what he meant, note that he did not specify which country he was referring to as his own. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 13 23:06:48 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:06:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] All Cultures are equivalent In-Reply-To: <3985D274E452462781FE3E8ECB279CE0@FRANKPC> References: <3985D274E452462781FE3E8ECB279CE0@FRANKPC> Message-ID: <49E3C588.2090406@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 20.23, frankie ha scritto: > My son-in-law who is a Muslin, is now taking care of his sick mom > in Algeria, while my Daughter like a good desert woman waits for his > return here in Chicago. Like a good desert woman? Like a good city dweller, I would say. > My family(especially my wife) looks down upon him not because he is a > Muslin, but because he drives a cab when he is here in Chicago. Wrong reason to look down on someone. People doing honest jobs and behaving honestly must be respected. > What kind of man is he who reads the same book day after day, they > can not explain why he prays five times a day, and then spends most > of the rest of the time drinking tea with his friends while waiting > for fares at Ohare. Do he let dogs on his car? > Other than being material for jokes on David Letterman, he > contributes nothing to this society as he well drives a cab and not > teaching at some southern college like others here on this list. Someone doing an honest job contribute to society; he must be respected when drive cabs or when teach in a college. I have not much respect for a few college teachers. They only regurgitate what was feed to them by their teachers. > Of course, it is his faith that only requires that he take care of > the poor, It require to give alms for the poor (muslims), the poor unbelievers come after. > and practices his faith 5 times a day by praying does not leave much > for invention like say the iPod or the cell telephone, but he in his > defense he has played Santa Claus at Christmas time and I thank him > for that. Like many Muslims before him and like him, this appear to be a Muslim that didn't read his book. It simply repeat his prayers at the right time, read the text, but don't understand them. I have wrote about how the Quran is in Arabic Classic, so near all the modern Muslims have problem to understanding it. It is like Latin and Italian. They are forced to memorize the sounds but rarely are told what is in the sounds. > He is a good man, he makes my daughter happy, he believes in family > and he practices his beliefs with deeds and not words. Good. They plan to have children? They will be Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Buddhist? I suppose he would like they become Muslims. But, what will he do if they tell him they want to be something other? Ask him. Ask him what would do his Prophet in the same situation. > To ask the question what has Muslin contributed to society is not > fair, unless you ask the same concerning the worlds other religions. Here you mix what Muslims have contributed to society and what Islam have contributed to society. The first probably something. The second nothing of positive. > Hey when the United States dropped TWO atomic bombs on Japan, their > creators were either JEWS or CHRISTIANS not a muslin among them. When did the atomic bomb become evil? They spared the US, the Japan and the other allies to fight an invasion of the Japan. They spared 2 million of US soldiers lives only, plus the Japanese, plus the other. > Ask the people who lost relatives in Japan when this happened and > they would give you a different answer to whether these Christians > and Jews have contributed to society was a good thing or a bad > thing. Your reasoning is all about emotions. Your in-law is a good man? So you need the urge to protect him (and your daughter) from harm. The people that lost relatives in Nanchino would tell you that Japan received the right retribution for what they did there. Why don't you think at the river of blood that the Japan Army caused in Nanchino? At the babies launched over the baionettes, at the people marched to the death in the forest of the Birmania and so many others that it is too long to write. Why do you whitewash these dead and give worth only to the dead you are interested in exploit? Do you know what is happening in Sudan? Do you know that the IOC (Islamic Organization Conference) support the same President of Sudan that is accused of Crime Against Humanity? Do you know > While thinking about that consider what the world would look like had > Germans, Italians and Japs won instead of the English and Russians, > would there have been any JEWS left on this planet , would we have > walked on the moon as a world united would football be on television > in the fall in America , and just think of what they as a people > these Germans or Italians or Jap's would have have contributed to > society had won. Just the idea of a living in a place run by Italians > Germans and Japs brings laughter to the rest of the world. But then > again there would not be a MIDDLE EAST problem and Mitchell would be > out of a job. This is laughable, that the M.E. problem is Israel. Israel is a symptom, the disease is Islam. It is easy to blame all to Israel, but other places were razed to ground after the WW2. Italy, Germany, Japan, Taiwan. Italy lost Istria and a large number of Italians were expelled or killed from Yugoslavia. My grandparents and their children. They lost all, but they don't continued to live in camps (to this the Palestinians can thanks the other arabs that prevent them from becoming citizens). They don't launched attacks to the civilians over the border. Americans have a very limited (not their guilt) knowledge of how much people where displaced after the WW2 in Europe. What happened to the Palestinians is nothing special. They could declare their state now, if they like. They don't. This is because they are more interested in destroying Israel than to build a home where they can live in peace. > Leave the Muslins alone, and they will leave you alone. Until they will not. Tell to the Jews of Khaybar. Google and Wikipedia are your friends. Study the Quran, the Hadit, the Sharia; it is all online. Study what Mohammed did and ask yourself who would call this man "prophet" and "example to be imitated". For example, ask your in-law about Khaybar http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sira/20.htm > The apostle occupied the Jewish forts one after the other, taking > prisoners as he went. Among these were Safiya, the wife of Kinana, > the Khaybar chief, and two female cousins; the apostle chose Safiya > for himself. The other prisoners were distributed among the Muslims. > Bilal brought Safiya to the apostle, and they passed the bodies of > several Jews on the way. Safiya's female companions lamented and > strewed dust on their heads. When the apostle of Allah observed this > scene, he said, 'Remove these she?devils from me? But he ordered > Safiya to remain, and threw his reda [cloak] over her. So the Muslims > knew he had reserved her for his own. The apostle reprimanded Bilal, > saying, 'Hast thou lost all feelings of mercy, to make women pass by > the corpses of their husbands?' > Kinana, the husband of Safiya, had been guardian of the tribe's > treasures, and he was brought before the apostle, who asked where > they were hidden. But Kinana refused to disclose the place. Then a > Jew came who said, 'I have seen Kinana walk around a certain ruin > every morning.' The apostle asked Kinana, 'Art thou prepared to die > if we find thou knewest where the treasure was?' And he replied, > 'Yes.' So the apostle ordered the ruin to be dug up, and some of the > treasure was found. After that Kinana was asked again about the > remainder, but he still refused to tell. The apostle of Allah handed > him over to al?Zubayr, saying, 'Torture him until he tells what he > knows', and al?Zubayr kindled a fire on his chest so that he almost > expired; then the apostle gave him to Muhammad b. Maslama, who struck > off his head. Do you trust someone that consider Mohammed (the apostle) an example, when the same Muslims believe that he ordered to torture a man for rob him of gold? After the apostle take the wife of Kinana for himself as war booty? This is the "Sirat Rasoul Allah" of Inb Ishaq, a faithful Muslim living 80 years after Mohammed. It is canon for the Muslims. It is like their Gospel. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 23:22:07 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:22:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=E2=80=99s_my_body=E2=80=99s_Control_?= =?windows-1252?q?Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413164720.02352c88@satx.rr.com> References: <280412.5857.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413164720.02352c88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 4/13/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > > > > [????all intelligences and along a fairly specific path > > > > a??W?v???+r?{aj?h?{Hm?bz????Z?X???e?????z??y?. ? > > what the *hell* formating is this? even in the archives, it comes out as > one long string that runs off the right hand side of the page. It's UTF-8 encoding. Your Eudora Version 7.0.1.0 mail client can't read it. It's fine in gmail. Why don't you open a gmail account and just use it for mail lists? It also means that google stores the megabytes of mail list posts for you. You can still use Eudora for private / important mails and store them on your own computer (and backups, of course). BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 13 23:37:11 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:37:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?iso-8859-1?q?Where=E2=80=99s_my_body=E2=80=99s__Control__?= =?iso-8859-1?q?Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <280412.5857.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413164720.02352c88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413183430.022811f0@satx.rr.com> At 11:22 PM 4/13/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: > > what the *hell* formating is this? even in the archives, it comes out as > > one long string that runs off the right hand side of the page. > >It's UTF-8 encoding. Your Eudora Version 7.0.1.0 mail client can't read it. > >It's fine in gmail. Yet not, as I noted, in the archives either. Or is that something Firefox imposes? I do use gmail for some purposes, but I dislike it. Ah well. Damien Broderick From rtomek at ceti.pl Mon Apr 13 23:57:10 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:57:10 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] How to Build a Dinosaur In-Reply-To: <59217.24362.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <59217.24362.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Apr 2009, Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > On Sat, 11 Apr 2009, spike wrote: > > > > >? > > > On Behalf Of John Grigg > > > ??? Subject: Re: [ExI] How to Build a > > Dinosaur > > > ??? > > > ??? > > > ??? I remember a discussion started > > here by Robert Bradbury about > > > building a fire-breathing dragon.? Spike, do you > > remember that?? Those were > > > the days... > > > > Guys, > > > > If you please, build Laura Dern instead. Dinos stink and > > they look ugly, > > no matter if they smile or not. > > Have you actually sniffed and seen one? If so, quick! Please relate > your experiences to the nearest paleontologist... :) Their ugly looks is obvious to me from what I've seen in books and "Jurassic Park(s)". :-) But this may be just some strange personal taste of mine. As of their smell, my experiences with animals suggest that they don't smell like perfume (but ok, they not always stink). I don't remember sniffing crocodiles or snakes, so maybe they are nice. I just expect that t-rex breathe would either kill me or put into deep sleep, enough to make me indifferent to being eaten alive (they now say t-rex were just scavengers, but I doubt they would object a small appetiser like me). > > If only scientists were less disconnected. What kind of fun > > it is, anyway, > > to have dino at home? Sounds like some perverted SM stuff. [...] > > Actually, the book is about evo-devo and the experiment, were it tried, > would tell us more about gene expression in development than dinosaurs. Ok, I don't know enough about this to make any meaningful remarks. Without reading the book, it could be difficult to discuss it. However... > At best, assuming that turning on earlier traits (and turning off later > traits) is possible, it would just cook up a bird ancestor -- or, more > precisely, some bird ancestor traits. (I put "some" here because, from > listening to the book, he's focusing on specific traits. And it's > likely that the full suite of things that make up a bird ancestor are > lost at this time. He seems to discount dino-DNA finds as not being as > helpful as doing evo-devo. My view is you could do both. There'd still > be limits and it's arguable that you're not really making a dinosaur -- > even a bird ancestor -- but merely, at best, turning on some ancestor > traits and making some sort of weird hybrid.) Probably so. To me, it looks like "simply" fiddling with genes to see what comes out of the box. Personally, I would really like this kind of research to be done via the means of computer simulation. Maybe some day. Birds, there are some really clever genera (hopefully plural used is ok :-) ) amongst them. I am not sure, if playing with their genes is really safe and can be controlled as well as it should. Not that I expect some diabolic offspring of this experiment to turn against humanity (sure, this could make a good f/x loaded film). But I would rather play it safe. > Anyhow, I do agree with the author: the experiment would stir up more > talk about evolution. Maybe they should try it on bacteria or yeasts first (shorter genome, but it doesn't look as well on a book cover as dinosaurs). Maybe playing with ape's genes could tell us even more things, and more relevant to ourselves? Not that I know what I'm saying. Maybe I will have time to try and read something about the subject. > My guess, though, is that Biblical literalists > and other anti-evolutionists would merely say this is evidence that > dinosaurs were not ancient extinct animals, but merely birds (or other > extant animals) whose development got messed up. > People seem to be very creative when it comes for finding bad (or/and lacking logical reasoning) ways of using their brain. Regards Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 13 23:58:46 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:58:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= References: <831847.83875.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <29F82462E7154687AC5C5F258C28E479@MyComputer> "Dan" > Did you mean guilty? Yes, as membars of this list nows with extenseve evidence, speling is nit my strongeste pointe. > Do you also agree that you made a mistake with regard to my beliefs? No, I don?t agree with that. I think you?re talking nonsense. > Imagine there're are two paths of development that are otherwise highly > similar. [..] In the other, the non-filtering tech gets invented (and > deployed in the right way) first. The filtering tech comes later. I don?t give a hoot in hell which comes first! I?m talking abut about geologic, no I?m wrong, I?m talking about Cosmetologist ages; on that time scale who came who was first is unimportant. John K Clark From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 14 00:03:45 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:03:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com><49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com><72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E3D2E1.2030009@libero.it> Il 13/04/2009 21.27, John K Clark ha scritto: > > >> The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. >> They [Islam] are only involved in the transmission of the >> concept to west Europe > > I know but I was trying to be generous; I figured I'd get enough flack > as it is. And I'm sure that sometime in the last 800 years Islam has > done something that is worth more than a bucket of warm spit, it must > have; but I'll be damned if I can think of an example at the moment. Muslims apologist like to boast this and that, but to closer scrutiny little last. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 00:09:35 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:09:35 +0000 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?_Fermi_Paradox_again_=28Was=3A_Where=92s_m?= =?windows-1252?q?y_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F=29?= Message-ID: On 4/13/09, Dan wrote: > > Yes, but you still have to establish why, in a million years, if it takes that long for a > filter to deploy, why an ETI hasn't done some mega-engineering or other things to > give away its presence. Your view depends on all these things turning out right. > I'm merely questioning that. Why? To me, your view just sounds like a "just so" > story. Why are there are no cars in the parking lot on Sunday? The Bigfoot got > them all. Why is there no evidence of Bigfoot? Well, he has superstealth powers. :) > Here are two papers to consider. An old one from 1999 blames gamma ray bursts for destroying intelligent life. So intelligent life will only get a chance to develop after the frequency of GRBs dies down. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9901322 A new paper from Jan 2009 says that transmissions from ET get fainter the longer the distance they have to travel, so that there could be 200 civilizations in our galaxy and they would never hear each other. http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3863 This paper is discussed here http://arxivblog.com/?p=1167 and all the usual objections are raised in the comments. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 14 00:23:57 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:23:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future (Was: Re: How to Build a Dinosaur) In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904131249i1b892279j368a5a972199f045@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904131249i1b892279j368a5a972199f045@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0B604639CF184E4699DFC786DD78BEA7@spike> On Behalf Of John Grigg ... ...I fondly remember and miss Robert Bradbury's frequent insightful postings...and of course Eliezer (we "saw" him grow up on the extro list)... Ja, but of course we saw you grow up on the same list. I am still waiting to see me grow up on the list. ...But there is no reason that the finest years of the list should not actually be ahead of us!... Well said, sir, and may it be so. ...I was able to attend Extro 5 in 2001 because Robert Bradbury gave me a bunch of his frequent flyer miles. I will never forget his great kindness!... He also made possible the attendance of at least three others by way of supplying airline tickets. I know this from hearing it from the recipients, not the donor. In fact I didn't know until just now that he had donated airline miles to you. Robert never made a big deal about it, but he helped many. ...It was fun staying at your house in a room next to Anders, and I kept on hearing pages turn as he intellectually devoured the library you have in your home!...lol I still wonder how much sleep he got... Not much as I recall, nor did the rest of us. That party we had after Extro5 is still talked about by the neighbors to this day. We were out back doing the hakosote game. I laughed so hard my cheeks ached. That was the first time a lot of us had ever met face to face. We were so amazed at what we saw and heard. Some of the classic list quarrelers got along just fine in the meat world. Some were exactly as we would have expected from their online personality, others seemed so opposite. ...Oh, and there is my cool recollection of driving around in a van with Anders and Greg, with the conversation about building bio-nano spacecraft to get extropy members off-planet as soon as possible! Finally, I recall Max taking time out of his very busy schedule at the conference to talk to me about his life. Good times... The best of times were these. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 00:29:56 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:29:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Lee, I am disappointed with your argumentation. When I challenged you > to provide me with the exact chain of reasoning leading you from "I > live in France" to "let's destroy all Muslims in France", you didn't. Perhaps I didn't get to that post, sorry. Besides, I'm very disappointed with your rephrasing. Who said *ANYTHING* about destroying anyone? How bizarre that you should choose that word. Besides, I had previously outlined my reasoning pretty clearly. If I lived in France, and if there existed a clear distinction between my ancestors who were French and had been living there a millenium or so, and if I valued greatly the French (and of course, Western) traditions that were and are so at odds with what happens in *every* Muslim controlled country, then it follows that my people and I must expel the Muslims or else run the exceedingly severe risk of losing those very traditions; and worse, very possibly having to live or have our children live under Sharia. > When I challenged you to run the numbers and to explain how a 6% > minority with marginally higher procreation levels could become a > majority in 25 years, you didn't. What? This is a matter of numbers for you? Are you saying that if they were a 40% minority that would tip the balance in your thinking? This sounds misleading, to put it mildly. Are you really grappling with the issues? Why don't you give me some examples where you *would* expel some minority, and I mean *expel*, not "destroy". > Yet you persist in dismissing me and others as dumb ("right > hemisphere", "rationalizations"). This hurts, Jesus Christ. The two halves are *totally* necessary for *all* thinking. My apology, since if one read There indeed was exhibited a great deal of what should be called "solely right hemispheric thinking". For example, some assertions (made by me and others) were and are dismissed out of hand without argument (!) in many posts. and had no context, then one could suppose that I was thinking that the left hemisphere played no role. I should rephrase, and say instead that it's "dominant right hemisphere thinking", of the timeless kind, as I explained. You probably read Brooks' article, and besides this is all well known: an instantaneous judgment originates in the right hemisphere. > On top of that, you have been whining about people trying to shut you > down like a heretic. No, you are not a heretic. You walk in any bar in > the US and you will find dozens of regular dudes who think like you > do. The things I was saying were pretty heretical on *this* list, though I guess one or two others are pretty much in agreement with me. Extreme expressions of revulsion and disgust in a public forum have just three purposes: (1) shut the offender up (2) advertise how squeaky *clean* I (the speaker) am, and (3) prevent our crowd from getting a bad reputation for having certain beliefs, though this 3 should be stricken from the list since calm rational retort serves the same purpose. > So, as to uphold the high standards of the list, let me ask you again > - Run the numbers. Give me a quantitative analysis of current > situation, trends, likely quantitative outcomes of various > interventions in support of your plan. To channel Eliezer, shut up and > multiply. And did I mention, run the numbers? > > If you don't do that, what's the use arguing? Oh, I like to hear views and analyses that differ from mine. (Some people don't. (I'm not saying you.)) I do appreciate your argument that according to you according to your numbers, the truly crucial "us becoming a minority" wouldn't be going to happen for some time (were I that hypothetical Frenchman I spoke of above). Indeed, the singularity might happen first. But as painlord said first, it would be a hell of a lot better to expel 6% of the population (which, remember is not destroying anyone) than risk an eventual civil war or worse. So I don't quite see the real point of numbers, here. Lee P.S. So you've completely changed the topic *back* to the question of WSFD. When I changed the subject line to this, it was to get away from that (here), and to talk about the need for rationalization (bad as it sounds) in sound thinking. From amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br Tue Apr 14 00:08:17 2009 From: amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br (Antonio Marcos) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:08:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books Message-ID: <229210.18027.qm@web110306.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> So, after the list of all-time best-sellers are we finally going to get to see a list of all-time worst-sellers? =) Cheers, AM. --- Em seg, 13/4/09, B.K. DeLong escreveu: > De: B.K. DeLong > Assunto: Re: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books > Para: "ExI chat list" > Data: Segunda-feira, 13 de Abril de 2009, 17:31 > Possibly. Like I said - my > supposition. I'm disappointed at the speed > at which the Amazon PR machine is reacting to this by > telling > absolutely outraged customers "it's a glitch" they're > fixing, please > don't close their accounts. yet.....they're not > communicating on the > same technological channels this potential > misinformation/information > is spreading. > > On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Dan > wrote: > > > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, B.K. DeLong > wrote: > >> There is FAR more to this. Search > >> "Twitter" (#amazonfail & > >> #glitchmyass) and Google for "Amazon Fail". > >> > >> Also see the posts from earlier this AM in: > >> http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer > >> > >> Personally, I believe someone figured out how to > exploit > >> the Amazon > >> API to the point where anything tagged as having > GLBT > >> content had > >> their Sales Ranking removed. If that's the case > and others > >> figured it > >> out just as fast (including before Amazon > developers), we > >> could see > >> this happen to other books as well. > > > > If that's so, then this isn't Amazon playing Big > Brother, but just someone hacking their site, no? > > > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > -- > B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) > bkdelong at pobox.com > +1.617.797.8471 > > http://www.wkdelong.org? ? ? ? > ? ? ? ? ? ? Family. > http://www.ianetsec.com? ? ? ? > ? ? ? ? ? ? Work. > http://bkdelong.livejournal.com? ? ? > ? ? ???Life. > > > PGP Fingerprint: > 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5? A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE > > FOAF: > http://foaf.brain-stream.org > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Veja quais s?o os assuntos do momento no Yahoo! +Buscados http://br.maisbuscados.yahoo.com From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 00:38:27 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:38:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ketman In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E3DB03.8070005@rawbw.com> While I'm on Rafal's case, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 12:45 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: > >> How do I differentiate from a "moderate" Muslim from a "extremist" Muslim? >> Many purported "moderate" Muslims are so only when they are speaking in >> a western language to westerns, but they are "extremists" when they >> speak in Arabic to Muslims. This is know like al-Taqiyya/Dissimulation >> or Ketman (also spelled Kitman) >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketman >> >>> Ketman (Arabic kitm?n ????? "secrecy, concealment") is the act of >>> paying lip service to authority while holding personal opposition. >>> It is a sort of political or religious camouflage, > > ### Do you realize that your post is literally incoherent? How odd of you to say that. Are you serious? > You start out by arguing that in principle you cannot tell the difference > between nice Muslims and asshole Muslims (which, if true, could be a > reason to treat them all alike) but then you justify this claim by > quoting persons who actually were able to tell the difference ("many > undercover reporters"). So which is it? It was clear to me that he was saying that *despite* the known practices of Ketman (which were very interesting to read about), there is a reality to the situation, whether or not in some, or none, or many instances it is concealed. > Painlord, I know you can think clearly, you are a smart dude, your > posts about economics show it but it looks like that tribal stuff is > messing you up. It is of the utmost interest to me that the refrain is repeated over and over again that "your side in this argument is not thinking clearly". Funny---why do you suppose that we do not accuse *you* of that? I do not think that you are failing to think clearly, and of others, I'd have never used that description ---I merely pointed out that they (at times in some posts) were not making arguments (i.e. being merely emotional). Consider the set of all cases in which one side accuses the other of "not thinking clearly". I'll bet that you conclude that in the majority of cases, those making the complaint feel a little desperate about something (even if for an understandable reason). Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 00:48:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:48:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 03:46 PM 4/13/2009 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> >Economic freedom creates wealth. > >> And, in the final analysis, the efficient and productive systems shall >> prevail over the less efficient, less productive. So what would you >> say if in a few decades the wealthiest, most powerful nations are not >> following a pure free market economic program? Memes can conquer all. History is rife with superior systems that lost out. > Actually, I'm more concerned about an orthogonal issue. Let's assume > that unconstrained market freedom does indeed maximize wealth especially > if it doesn't pay any attention to externalities, as was the case (I > gather) in its heyday. But does that tide of wealth really lift all > boats, or is the extra wealth channeled into few and fewer hands (as has > happened, I gather, in the last decade or more in the US)? I would insist that if the *median* wealth is not rising, then it should not properly be said that a system was increasing the wealth of a society. My impression is that the median person today is richer in real terms than 25 years ago. Lee P.S. John Clark writes > Can you think of anything that the Islamic culture has > done since they invented the zero 800 years ago that > you personally think they should be proud of? No, the Arabs got the concept of zero from India, where it originated. So as to not exaggerate, however, do recall that Muslim civilizations did far surpass totally primitive societies, and that there were a number of scientific and technical originations. It's only in *comparison* with other cultures, especially the West, that their accomplishments look puny. From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 01:04:20 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:34:20 +0930 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= In-Reply-To: <26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer> References: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904131804x28d32a35u4255c6e5f5eafc36@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/14 John K Clark : > If I?m right then a blind man in a fog bank could detect the > existence of ET. So where the hell is he? It seems to me that either we?re > the first or there is a hidden disaster of some sort that slaps down all > intelligent races when they get too smart. There's another possibility, which is that before ETs get to space travel, they find something else which makes the whole endeavor moot. Perhaps there are doors to other universes hidden in the subatomic particles, something like that? Hopefully something less banal than that. Anyway, the filter is always interpreted as destructive, but it needn't be so. And, of course, there's the possibility that we are looking at something comprehensively engineered, but are currently too stupid & ignorant to be able to figure that out. What would an engineered universe look like, if we go beyond trite space opera? If, before you colonize the galaxy, you first engineer yourself out of Middle World[1], then your mega engineering might look to the primitives like very strange rules of physics that almost make sense but not quite. Somehow that seems familiar :-) -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site [1] - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 01:08:56 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:08:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism by Nation In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > Rasmussen Reports > > Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. > > The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% > disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not > sure which is better. > > Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, > 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more > supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and > 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just > 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. Who was it who said: "Anyone who is not a socialist by age 20 doesn't have a heart, and anyone who is still a socialist by age 40 doesn't have a brain." It's quite famous, but I can't find who said it. Lee From amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br Tue Apr 14 00:50:28 2009 From: amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br (Antonio Marcos) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:50:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rosetta Project Message-ID: <470678.1917.qm@web110301.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I didnt see much on the site.. what would be the difference from this one: http://www.omniglot.com/ Kindly, AM. --- Em seg, 13/4/09, Dan escreveu: > De: Dan > Assunto: [ExI] The Rosetta Project > Para: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Data: Segunda-feira, 13 de Abril de 2009, 15:32 > > http://www.rosettaproject.org/about/ > > I think this might be of interest to some here.? > Naturally, given the apparent link between language and > conceptual ability, I think it should be of interest. > > Regards, > > Dan > http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/ > > > ? ? ? > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Veja quais s?o os assuntos do momento no Yahoo! +Buscados http://br.maisbuscados.yahoo.com From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 01:22:52 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:22:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Thanks Lee for this very smart observation. Well, thank you, but in places it was rather badly written, I'm afraid. > Many of "us" are nice people... because we can afford it. In the past, > when we could not afford it, we were not nice. Yes, but to be more precise, being nice can arise out of habit. For example, it might take a nice, and healthy and wealthy person in our society many months of extremely grueling conditions to change over. And I believe I did state that the converse sadly isn't true: some comfortable people and some comfortable groups have been surprisingly wicked. > Many fellow human > beings born in other cultures still cannot afford being nice, and they > are not nice. Many fellow human beings born in _our_ culture still > cannot afford being nice, and they are not nice. Simple as that. Yes, though speaking about individuals, it is the exceptions to this rule that are quite interesting. Sometimes you'll find someone who's had a very rough go of it, but somehow manages to have amazingly great empathy for others. Born with a lot of it, I guess. > It follows that we should do our very best to give everyone the > possibility to be a nice person. On the world stage, this means trying to help all societies acquire the Western institutions that deliver the goods. Within nations, this means attempting to rub out subcultures (the cultures, of course, not the people in them) that nourish viciousness. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 14 01:32:27 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:32:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?iso-8859-1?q?_Re=3A__Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=3F?= In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904131804x28d32a35u4255c6e5f5eafc36@mail.gmail.co m> References: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904131804x28d32a35u4255c6e5f5eafc36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413202749.0867ebe8@satx.rr.com> At 10:34 AM 4/14/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >If, before you >colonize the galaxy, you first engineer yourself out of Middle >World, then your mega engineering might look to the primitives like >very strange rules of physics that almost make sense but not quite. To quote THE SPIKE, where I recalled Stanislaw Lem's fictional notion: [1] `The New Cosmogony', in his delightful collection of reviews of non-existent books, A Perfect Vacuum, Mandarin, 1991 (originally in English in 1979, sublimely translated by Michael Kandel), pp. 197-229. I am grateful to Mitch Porter and John Redford for reminding me of this wonderful, funny piece. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 14 01:38:14 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:38:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] UPI: Adult stem cells revert to embryonic state In-Reply-To: <573625.68288.qm@web37901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <573625.68288.qm@web37901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413203431.08726f98@satx.rr.com> <http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/04/13/Adult-stem-cells-revert-to-embryonic-state/UPI-12351239649236> >SAN FRANCISCO, April 13 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have, for >the first time, returned adult mouse cells to their embryonic >pluripotent state, meaning they can become any cell type. > >The University of California-San Francisco researchers said they >used tiny molecules called microRNAs to reprogram the cells. Uh oh. Next step: weaponize this process. Followed by: not the gray goo catastrophe, but the blob or pink goo catastrophe. AKA: solution to the Fermi "Paradox". (Let's hope not.) Damien Broderick From moulton at moulton.com Tue Apr 14 01:29:25 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:29:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism by Nation In-Reply-To: <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1239672565.29217.565.camel@hayek> GIYF This page shows various versions and attributions http://www.geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html Scroll down and there is discussion of likely origin of phrase. I have not verified the info on the page but it is a good place to start. On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 18:08 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > Damien Broderick wrote: > > > Rasmussen Reports > > > > Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. > > > > The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% > > disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not > > sure which is better. > > > > Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, > > 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more > > supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and > > 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just > > 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. > > Who was it who said: "Anyone who is not a socialist by age 20 > doesn't have a heart, and anyone who is still a socialist by > age 40 doesn't have a brain." It's quite famous, but I can't > find who said it. > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 02:14:54 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:44:54 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books In-Reply-To: <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904131914s6c364377o4184701ca838888b@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/13 Olga Bourlin : > Being a great fan of the First Amendment, I am sorry to see this trend. > > http://therumpus.net/2009/04/amazon-delisting-books/ > > Olga http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp?from=blog_last3 AmazonFail: An inside look at what happened (seattlepi.com, byline is Andrea James, "News Gatherer". what the?) I've spoken to an Amazon.com employee who works closely with the systems involved in the glitch. The employee asked me not to share his name because of company policies on talking with the media. On Sunday afternoon at least 20 Amazon.com employees were paged alerting them that items, possibly many, were incorrectly being flagged as adult. The employees also received links to the Twitter discussion AmazonFail. Thousands of people were angry that gay-themed books had disappeared from Amazon's sales rankings and search algorithms. The number of Tweets on Sunday afternoon that had the term "AmazonFail" surpassed even those with the words "Easter" or "Jesus." By this time, Amazon.com had upgraded the problem to Sev-1. (Amazon.com breaks down its operational issues in terms of severity levels. Sev-3 means a problem affects a single user. Sev-2 is a problem that affects a company, or a lot of people. Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level.) "People got pulled away from their Easter thing when this whole thing broke," the employee said. "It was just a screwup." Amazon.com employees are on call 24/7, and many began working on the problem from home. It didn't take much digging to realize that there was a data error. Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from 'false' to 'true.') "It's no big policy change, just some field that's been around forever filled out incorrectly," the source said. Amazon employees worked on the problem well past midnight, and then handed it over to an international team, he said. Seattle-based Amazon.com sells millions of items, so the 57,000 affected represent just a tiny portion of the company's selection. But Amazon's perception problem was enormous, and aggravated by the company's official description of the problem as a "glitch." The source wanted it known that mistakes do happen at Amazon.com -- they're all human. "Most everyone at one point who works with catalog systems has broken some piece of the catalog," the source said. In fact, employees sometimes tell war stories over lunch where the conversation can go something like this: "Oh yeah, I remember when I broke a portion of France and all this stuff happened." Usually, mistakes get corrected pretty quickly, the source said. And there you have it from a source who watched the situation unfold within his company and on Twitter. An Amazon spokesman was not immediately available for comment. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 14 02:15:20 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:15:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] All Cultures are equivalent In-Reply-To: <3985D274E452462781FE3E8ECB279CE0@FRANKPC> References: <3985D274E452462781FE3E8ECB279CE0@FRANKPC> Message-ID: <4BE470EC9D93447E88FDCC5998AC92A0@spike> ...On Behalf Of frankie ...there would not be a MIDDLE EAST problem and Mitchell would be out of a job...Frank Frank, to take a big step back, it looks to me like the problem comes down to philosophically irreconcilable differences. One good example, a dominant middle east religion reveres a particular guy (altho I cannot recall his name) holding him as the perfect example of a good life. He married a six year old child, and copulated with her when she was nine: http://www.muslimhope.com/AishaNine.htm The west will have no part of that, not now, not ever. This explains the great uproar over the recent case of an eight year old child who was married to a 47 year old man: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/04/12/saudi.child.marriage/index.html How can these two diametrically incompatible views ever play well together? spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 04:16:27 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:16:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Where=92s_my_body=92s_Control_Panel=3F?= References: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com><26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer> <710b78fc0904131804x28d32a35u4255c6e5f5eafc36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Emlyn" Wrote: > there's the possibility that we are looking at something > comprehensively engineered, but are currently too > stupid & ignorant to be able to figure that out. No, I just don?t buy that for one second. > the filter is always interpreted as destructive, > but it needn't be so. I?m not sure I buy that either, it?s probably not true but I can?t deny it?s a very intriguing idea. I just wish I?d thought of it before you did. It?s such a good line I intend to steal it; as Picasso said good artists copy, great artists steal. John K Clark From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 04:41:22 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:41:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> John K. Clark wrote: Let's look at a subset of the Muslim world, the Arabs. There are over 250 million Arabs and they have most of the world's oil, but nevertheless the GNP of the entire Arab world is less than that of Spain, a country with no oil and a population of only 40 million. One reason for this may be that the number of books translated into Arabic over the past thousand years is about the same as the number of books translated into Spanish just last year. I freely admit this is an entirely subjective statement but in my personal opinion Islamic culture sucks. >>> My question for the list members is why did Islamic culture, which in medieval times had a technological and cultural heyday that greatly surpassed Europe, fall so short in the intervening centuries that lead up to the present era? I have read it was among other things, the Mongol invasions that devastated entire kingdoms, and also the rise of Muslim theocracies over the secular states. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 05:05:53 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:05:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Elections are dumb References: <618400.64253.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com><26827C579FBB43BF8CA2554143332A0E@MyComputer><710b78fc0904131804x28d32a35u4255c6e5f5eafc36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <098BD56E4D964061A2C39F09EA87B209@MyComputer> According to the constitution of the USA each state is supposed to get 2 senators, but Minnesota only has one and has missed out on several rather momentous votes. Nobody knows who Minnesota?s other senator is. In the latest re re re re count out of 2.4 million votes cast one guy has a 225 vote lead; naturally the loser is appealing and demanding re re re re re count, and undoubtly he will get it. So more than 5 months after the election nobody knows who won. It?s obvious to any logical person that due to the margin of error nobody will ever know who won and the only logical thing to do is have another election without the third party candidate in the original contest or just flip a coin. But that would be illegal, it would be foolish to expect that logic would have anything to due with the law. Perhaps the appeals will end before the 6 year term of office expires; perhaps not. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 05:34:48 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:34:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com><577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike><1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com><49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike><7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com><49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer> John Grigg Wrote: > My question for the list members is why did Islamic culture, which in > medieval times had a technological and cultural heyday that greatly > surpassed Europe, fall so short in the intervening centuries that lead up > to the present era? I have no idea. Nobody understands the dynamics of culture, but at least I'm smart enough not to pretend that I do. I don't know why Islamic culture sucks, but I do know it suck, in fact it approaches a perfect vacuum. John K Clark From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 06:04:37 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:04:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> <7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer> Message-ID: <2d6187670904132304t22044ard010bb5913f76686@mail.gmail.com> John K. Clark wrote: >Nobody understands the dynamics of culture, Really?? I would say many an academic (who has dedicated his/her lifetime to studying a particular culture) would strongly disagree with you. John > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 06:21:40 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:21:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "top 10 inaccurate movies about the future" Message-ID: <2d6187670904132321y15628cb5o3649a950a351535c@mail.gmail.com> I realize Hollywood SF films are entertainment and not actual predictions of the future, but I still found this very interesting... http://movies.yahoo.com/photos/celebrities/gallery/1633/top-10-inaccurate-movies-about-the-future#photo0 John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 07:29:26 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:29:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com><49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike><7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com><49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com><2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com><7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer> <2d6187670904132304t22044ard010bb5913f76686@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <88D532552AF2456EAA2C4AEFF476AF82@MyComputer> Me: >>Nobody understands the dynamics of culture John Grigg: >Really?? Yes really. > I would say many an academic (who has dedicated his/her lifetime > to studying a particular culture) would strongly disagree with you. You are absolutely correct! I am certain there are countless academics who claim they understand culture completely. But the funny thing is that if they really did then they'd be multi Billionaires, no they'd be trillionires. How many academic experts on culture do you know of that have an astronomical amount of money? John K Clark From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 07:49:55 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:49:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <88D532552AF2456EAA2C4AEFF476AF82@MyComputer> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> <7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer> <2d6187670904132304t22044ard010bb5913f76686@mail.gmail.com> <88D532552AF2456EAA2C4AEFF476AF82@MyComputer> Message-ID: <2d6187670904140049g5016f9f5n7a3fae6e31035e65@mail.gmail.com> John K Clark wrote: How many academic experts on culture do you know of that have an astronomical amount of money? >>> Well, James Hughes claims to be in the top 1% of Americans in terms of earning power. I didn't realize being a professor was such a profitable field! John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 08:45:19 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:45:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com><49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike><7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com><49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com><2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com><7DA01CC5716F4C41B0D6748AAF7587AA@MyComputer><2d6187670904132304t22044ard010bb5913f76686@mail.gmail.com><88D532552AF2456EAA2C4AEFF476AF82@MyComputer> <2d6187670904140049g5016f9f5n7a3fae6e31035e65@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: John Grigg > James Hughes claims to be in the top 1% of Americans in terms of earning > power. I have no idea who James Hughes is. I could find out in seconds through all powerful Google but don't see the point. The pauper is only in the top 1%; I'm talking about people with real money. > I didn't realize being a professor was such a profitable field! It's not profitable at all, but it certainly would be if those professors actually knew what the hell they were talking about. So you tell me; what is missing in this picture? John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 10:24:33 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:24:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/14 John K Clark : > > >> The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. >> They [Islam] are only involved in the transmission of the >> concept to west Europe > > I know but I was trying to be generous; I figured I'd get enough flack as it > is. And I'm sure that sometime in the last 800 years Islam has done > something that is worth more than a bucket of warm spit, it must have; but > I'll be damned if I can think of an example at the moment. On the basis of what you consider worthwhile, you could probably write off most of the world's population over most of history. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 10:36:01 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:36:01 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Ketman In-Reply-To: <49E34D53.30000@libero.it> References: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> <49E34D53.30000@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/14 painlord2k at libero.it : > We can not police and we are not expected to police the Muslims to > differentiate the good and the evils. This is their duty. They can do it > much better than us. > What I would expect from them is a clear, unequivocal, take of distances > from the people advocating violence against kafir, apostates, Jihad, > Shaaria and so on. Why can't we police the Muslims? Should we have special police and special laws for every religious, racial, and political group? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 10:59:38 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:59:38 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism by Nation In-Reply-To: <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/14 Lee Corbin : > Damien Broderick wrote: > >> Rasmussen Reports >> >> Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. >> >> The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% >> disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not >> sure which is better. >> >> Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% >> socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more >> supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% >> for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of >> those older Americans believe socialism is better. > > Who was it who said: "Anyone who is not a socialist by age 20 > doesn't have a heart, and anyone who is still a socialist by > age 40 doesn't have a brain." It's quite famous, but I can't > find who said it. It's not impossible that the people who answered the survey didn't understand what the difference between capitalism and socialism was, given the results of surveys on apparently much easier questions: http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2008/06/25/does-earth-orbit-the-sun-many-people-dont-know/3209/ -- Stathis Papaioannou From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 11:04:09 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:04:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future (Was: Re: How to Build a Dinosaur) In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904131249i1b892279j368a5a972199f045@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904131249i1b892279j368a5a972199f045@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904140404uf225d2emf8b6b927fc3a965f@mail.gmail.com> Yes, discussing these things was much more fun. But as you say, there is no reason that the finest years of the list should not actually be ahead of us! I certainly hope so. I will post some fun ideas to discuss soon. As far as the "reprehensibly mainstream" part is concerned: it is not that "the real world has so painfully intruded on our dreams of a bright tomorrow" -- the real world tends to do just that, and we all know it. It is that in order to get to our dreams of a bright tomorrow, we must start right here and now in the real world. Things like war, politics and economy are entangled with our bright roadmap, and will always be so. Politics and economics ARE important. I do discuss politics and economy a lot, but mostly on other fora. Here, most political posts are only about hatred for other ethnic groups, or hatred for other political or economical positions. Those who are more vocal in expressing their hatred are also those who evidently don't understand anything about real politics and economics, so I don't take them seriously. I welcome political discussions here and think they are very relevant to what we wish to achieve. At the same time I think we should discuss fun things much more. 2009/4/13 John Grigg : > Hi Spike, > > Spike wrote: >>What happened to us? ?Do let us >>remember our roots and think harder. > > I fondly remember and miss Robert Bradbury's frequent insightful postings, > along with Greg Burch (what a cool guy with so much real world experience), > Anders Sandberg (what a fun and creative mind), Nick Bostrom (who went on to > be a pillar of transhumanist academic thought), Max More (our ExI > co-founder, at least he still posts a little), Amara Graps (motherhood and > work I suppose keeps her real busy), Hal Finney, Eugen Leitl (I heard he was > the best dressed man on the list!), Mike Lorrey (I at least miss the big lug > and his many many posts), and of course Eliezer (we "saw" him grow up on the > extro list).? I'm sure there are still many others that I forgot to list > that you and others could add. > > Jupiter brains, uploading, qualia, the civil rights of virtual lifeforms, > starship propulsion systems, libertarianism pro/con, right to arm bears > debates, "fun" math and engineering problems (Keith Henson doesn't have many > playmates left who can do the math/engineering mental heavy lifting and keep > up, we must now be a bunch of liberal arts grads...), and of course musings > on how cool life will be after the Singularity.? Yep, those were the days! > > If we ever lose you, Damien, Lee (despite his recent postings, ; )? ) and > Natasha (our transhumanist matriarch, who keeps alive the spirit of the arts > here, and also keeps *us* in line!, hee), this list will definitely be the > less for it. > > I think much of our discussion is "reprehensibly mainstream" because the > real world has so painfully intruded on our dreams of a bright tomorrow (the > war, the economic melt-down, the war on terrorism/our civil liberties, > etc.), and we instinctively realize that we must successfully deal with the > "here and now" to make it to the kind of future we want. > > But there is no reason that the finest years of the list should not actually > be ahead of us! > > Best wishes to all, > > John? : ) > > P.S.? I was able to attend Extro 5 in 2001 because Robert Bradbury gave me a > bunch of his frequent flyer miles.? I will never forget his great kindness! > I remember sitting at a table in your backyard as Robert discussed with Greg > Burch, his upcoming commercial venture for nanotube research.? It was fun > staying at your house in a room next to Anders, and I kept on hearing pages > turn as he intellectually devoured the library you have in your home! lol? I > still wonder how much sleep he got...? Oh, and there is my cool recollection > of driving around in a van with Anders and Greg, with the conversation about > building bio-nano spacecraft to get extropy members off-planet as soon as > possible!? Finally, I recall Max taking time out of his very busy schedule > at the conference to talk to me about his life.? Good times. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 11:26:38 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:26:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha news update In-Reply-To: <200904132327.n3DNRDBL003211@mercury.wolfram.com> References: <200904132327.n3DNRDBL003211@mercury.wolfram.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904140426v4c4c503fh2ffd671fec52fbcd@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wolfram|Alpha Team Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:27 AM Subject: Wolfram|Alpha news update To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thanks again for your interest in Wolfram|Alpha. We are excited by the great headway our team is making as we prepare for Wolfram|Alpha's launch in May. Recently, Stephen shared insight into the upcoming release with science writer Rudy Rucker. We hope you will check out his article as well as the podcast of their conversation: http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth We look forward to sharing more news with you soon. Best regards, The Wolfram|Alpha Team You received this email because you signed up on our Wolfram|Alpha preview page. It was sent from an unmonitored email address, so please do not reply to this email address. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 11:59:10 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:59:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E36888.7030408@libero.it> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E36888.7030408@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904140459h7356698eg14e3e18b326876bf@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 6:30 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > I think in the western societies we are grow over this type of thinking, to > the "live and let live" approach. And we are arguing how the "live" part > conflict over the "let live" part. > > Can we "let live" someone that is a danger to our future "live"? > Can two opposite ways to live and organizing the society let the other live > without endangering themselves? In fact, I assume that competition for scarce resources is not really going away, irrespective of ideological tenets; and Islam is not necessarily the only player, nor, for that matter, even a single player. But if one thinks about that, Islamic expansion had been over for centuries before western countries decided to stir that specific wasp nest. And coming back to immigration, how many people emigrated from countries ruled by muppet governments, and how many came from "rogue States" or were the partisans thereof? The only Iranian people one meets in Italy are upper-middle class Iranian Jews. And the idea that Iran may consider (or Saddam Hussein may have considered) a traditional military invasion of Europe or the US seems pretty ridiculous. In fact, most muslim military attacks are perceived even by the most fanatical jihadists as retaliatory or defensive in nature, not as a step in a world domination plan. -- Stefano Vaj From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:04:15 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:04:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Cosmic Engineers] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha news update In-Reply-To: <580930c20904140426v4c4c503fh2ffd671fec52fbcd@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904132327.n3DNRDBL003211@mercury.wolfram.com> <580930c20904140426v4c4c503fh2ffd671fec52fbcd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904140504p4ab3974dvebd4f3e244cd3ccf@mail.gmail.com> Alpha looks like a very ambitious project, way beyond what has been tried so far. But Stephen Wolfram is one of he smartest person around and has a track record of really impressive achievements. He develoepd the first versions of Mathematica almost entirely by himself, and I am still slowly digesting A New kind of Science. Too bad the H+mag site is not working atm, Rucker is one of my favorite writers. I look fwd to reading /listening to their exchange on Alpha. On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Wolfram|Alpha Team > Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:27 AM > Subject: Wolfram|Alpha news update > To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com > > > Thanks again for your interest in Wolfram|Alpha. > > We are excited by the great headway our team is making as we > prepare for Wolfram|Alpha's launch in May. > > Recently, Stephen shared insight into the upcoming release with > science writer Rudy Rucker. We hope you will check out his > article as well as the podcast of their conversation: > http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth > > We look forward to sharing more news with you soon. > > Best regards, > > > The Wolfram|Alpha Team > > You received this email because you signed up on our > Wolfram|Alpha preview page. It was sent from an unmonitored email > address, so please do not reply to this email address. > > > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cosmic Engineers" group. > To post to this group, send email to cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cosmic-engineers+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cosmic-engineers?hl=en > -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- > > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:09:55 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:09:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904140509v10b44c87hc727a5604b062bb7@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Yes, but to be more precise, being nice can arise > out of habit. Wasn't it an old American say "speak softly but carry a big stick"? IMHO, western policies are too often arrogant and weak at the same time. Political correctness and its dreams of a westernised one-world imposes our not being "nice", not even when it would be in our best interest, and at the same time keeps us eminently vulnerable. > On the world stage, this means trying to help all societies > acquire the Western institutions that deliver the goods. Historical experience should show that such external "help" is a recipe for disaster - including to some extent for the "helpers". -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:18:42 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:18:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books In-Reply-To: <2BEFA3BA243B415FB267778116449727@MyComputer> References: <200904091852.n39IqSLn009773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904101044o60bf5089xa4cd80fcd6f36b07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410125702.02682200@satx.rr.com> <2C16C4CED2FD48528610DA015C48B1A0@patrick4ezsk6z> <2BEFA3BA243B415FB267778116449727@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20904140518m169e1961s70235816734df1e3@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 9:49 PM, John K Clark wrote: > I don't see what that has to do with the First Amendment. If somebody > doesn't want to sell something in their store I think they have every right > not to do so. Good news If this is a false alarm, but assuming it were not, I the "legalistic" angle would be largely irrelevant. The real issue, IMHO, is not whether you are entitled to do A or B, but whether you would decide for B, and why. Even those who would not challenge your personal freedom not to sell a given book may well deplore that PC views become so dominant as to affect our cultural consumptions. >From a practical, rather than a legal, point of view, as I believe Ezra Pound once said, "freedom of speech without freedom of radio speech does not count for much". -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:39:50 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:39:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090413145006.022b9d98@satx.rr.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904131241o19f9dd35la92f6a41dd4f7828@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413145006.022b9d98@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904140539g6f31484n1224260aeeee3cb0@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 09:41 PM 4/13/2009 +0200, you wrote: > > Isn't aristocracy and wealth an oxymoron? :-) >> >> -- >> Stefano Vaj >> > > I thought it was a pleonasm. Maybe not in Italy. > > My joke concerned the fact that a primary concern for the accumulation of personal wealth does not really qualify you for a "government of the best"... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:44:25 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:44:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <23F508EB489B4484B823017BBA71C430@spike> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <23F508EB489B4484B823017BBA71C430@spike> Message-ID: <580930c20904140544h762832f2r604c3472195155f4@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 12:21 AM, spike wrote: > It shaped Obama's country. ?Obama to Turkish parliament: > > "We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done > so much over the centuries to shape the world - including in my own > country." > > Before you go crazy trying to figure out what he meant, note that he did not > specify which country he was referring to as his own. :-DDD This sounds really crazy. But perhaps he was referring to the geological structure of the Rocky Mountains, as decided by Allah upon the creation of the western emisphere in view of the believers that may decide one day or another to live in their proximity... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:09:15 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:09:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <67433.3027.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > > > I disagree.? It [Islam] lumps too many people > together > > Lumping is a very useful concept! But you're right about > one thing, the > fact of the matter is that in the real world nothing is > perfectly lumped; > however in the real world nothing is better lumped than > your ordinary garden > verity Islamic Fundamentalist. I mean, if you think it's > a? good idea to > strap a dynamite belt on yourself so you can blow up > yourself and a bunch of > people you'd never met before on a bus is a good idea then > you're pretty > damn lumpy. It's simply a question of logic. Rhetorical excess! Almost all Muslims do NOT do that. The vast majority appear to live peacefully, both in Islamic societies and non-Islamic ones. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:11:24 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:11:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Amazon is Beginning to Delist Some Books Message-ID: <956903.52266.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Antonio Marcos wrote: > So, after the list of all-time best-sellers are we finally > going to get to see a list of all-time worst-sellers? =) I'm gay (or close enough) and I've never read a single work on queer theory, so you might be right... :) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:15:09 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:15:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fermi Paradox again Message-ID: <643591.6608.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, BillK wrote: > On 4/13/09, Dan wrote: > > > > Yes, but you still have to establish why, in a million > years, if it takes that long for a > > filter to deploy, why an ETI hasn't done some > mega-engineering or other things to > > give away its presence.? Your view depends on all > these things turning out right. > > I'm merely questioning that.? Why?? To me, > your view just sounds like a "just so" > > story.? Why are there are no cars in the parking > lot on Sunday?? The Bigfoot got > > them all.? Why is there no evidence of > Bigfoot?? Well, he has superstealth powers.? :) > > > > > Here are two papers to consider. > > An old one from 1999 blames gamma ray bursts for > destroying > intelligent life. So intelligent life will only get a > chance to > develop after the frequency of GRBs dies down. > http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9901322 > > A new paper from Jan 2009 says that transmissions from ET > get fainter > the longer the distance they have to travel, so that there > could be > 200 civilizations in our galaxy and they would never hear > each other. > http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3863 > > This paper is discussed here > http://arxivblog.com/?p=1167 > and all the usual objections are raised in the comments. Yes, all old news... But still worth discussing. Have you -- any of you -- read _If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life_ by Stephen Webb? Decent intro to the major arguments regarding Fermi. It might make a good gift for a birthday or other holiday. Regards, Dan From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 13:18:07 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:18:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Besides, I had previously outlined my reasoning pretty > clearly. If I lived in France, and if there existed a > clear distinction between my ancestors who were French > and had been living there a millenium or so, and if I > valued greatly the French (and of course, Western) > traditions that were and are so at odds with what happens > in *every* Muslim controlled country, then it follows that > my people and I must expel the Muslims or else run the > exceedingly severe risk of losing those very traditions; > and worse, very possibly having to live or have our > children live under Sharia. > 1) You don't live in France. 2) You assume there is a clear distinction between 'old' French citizens and 'new' French citizens. 3) You greatly value French tradition and civilization. 4) You therefore want to expel all Muslims from France. So all this attacking human rights is merely a 'thought experiment' for your intellectual amusement and the disruption of the extropy list. Sometimes you so-called 'libertarians' make me hurt my ribs with laughing so much. Just about every point above contradicts the principles you claim to hold dear. You don't really value French tradition, as you have lectured us before about how the Western systems of government should be scrapped in favor of a libertarian system. But you still want to initiate force against law-abiding citizens because you suspect that many years in the future they 'might' spoil a society that you want to scrap anyway. Therefore you should also agree that the French should expel all 'libertarians' because they recommend dismantling the French system of government and destroying centuries of tradition. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:23:26 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:23:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= Message-ID: <771609.13148.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" >> Do you also agree that you made a mistake with regard >> to my beliefs? > > No, I don?t agree with that. I think you?re talking > nonsense. I'm sorry you feel that way. >> Imagine there're are two paths of development that are >> otherwise highly >> similar. [..] In the other, the non-filtering tech >> gets invented (and >> deployed in the right way) first.? The filtering >> tech comes later. > > I don?t give a hoot in hell which comes first! I?m > talking abut about > geologic, no I?m wrong, I?m talking about Cosmetologist > ages; on that time > scale who came who was first is unimportant. Let me try again. Let's say it there are two paths (again). In one path, filtering tech develops first -- long before any non-filtering tech. This works well for your scenario and explains Fermi: you humans are either the first or will soon be silent (and we shall find someone else to pester). On the other, non-filtering tech develops first and filtering tech only develops (or is deployed effectively as a filter) 100 million years later. In which case, there would be geologic time scales of spreading out. (Surely, such are NOT needed if things like mega-engineering projects, making lots of non-noise, and space migration can happen on scales smaller than, say, a thousand years.) Regards, Dan From artillo at comcast.net Tue Apr 14 13:29:05 2009 From: artillo at comcast.net (artillo at comcast.net) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:29:05 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] Elections are dumb In-Reply-To: <1420090324.1649191239715548403.JavaMail.root@sz0062a.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <998945856.1651131239715745243.JavaMail.root@sz0062a.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net> aah yes, political jackassery at it's finest. It's ridiculous that it has gone on as long as it has. Maybe someone should suggest an "American Idol"-Style call-in vote tiebreaker... (I think Franken would win on sheer entertainment value alone! :D ) At least the people could relate to that kind of "fluff" as opposed to the arcane and convoluted wranglings of the US legal system. One would think that after the last few HUNDRED election cycles, we would have worked out the kinks by now, but I'm really starting to think that they keep it so flawed for pure entertainment value. >According to the constitution of the USA each state is supposed to get 2 >senators, but Minnesota only has one and has missed out on several rather >momentous votes. Nobody knows who Minnesota?s other senator is. In the >latest re re re re count out of 2.4 million votes cast one guy has a 225 >vote lead; naturally the loser is appealing and demanding re re re re re >count, and undoubtly he will get it. So more than 5 months after the >election nobody knows who won. It?s obvious to any logical person that due >to the margin of error nobody will ever know who won and the only logical >thing to do is have another election without the third party candidate in >the original contest or just flip a coin. But that would be illegal, it >would be foolish to expect that logic would have anything to due with the >law. Perhaps the appeals will end before the 6 year term of office expires; >perhaps not. > > John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 13:30:07 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:30:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? In-Reply-To: <67433.3027.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <67433.3027.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904140630j2230a091ifd92e2e47ea949@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Dan wrote: > Rhetorical excess! ?Almost all Muslims do NOT do that. ?The vast majority appear to live peacefully, both in Islamic societies and non-Islamic ones. Yes. As do most members of any culture, provided that they are not engaged in some war-like scenario. -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:26:17 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:26:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism by Nation Message-ID: <152014.39335.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Damien Broderick wrote: > Who was it who said: "Anyone who is not a socialist by age > 20 > doesn't have a heart, and anyone who is still a socialist > by > age 40 doesn't have a brain." It's quite famous, but I > can't > find who said it. I thought it was Clemenceau, but googling seems to show that others made similar remarks well before him. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:35:39 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:35:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Elections are dumb Message-ID: <361394.44756.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, John K Clark wrote: > According to the constitution of the > USA each state is supposed to get 2 > senators, but Minnesota only has one and has missed out on > several rather > momentous votes. Nobody knows who Minnesota?s other > senator is. In the > latest re re re re count out of 2.4 million votes cast one > guy has a 225 > vote lead; naturally the loser is appealing and demanding > re re re re re > count, and undoubtly he will get it. So more than 5 months > after the > election nobody knows who won. It?s obvious to any > logical person that due > to the margin of error nobody will ever know who won and > the only logical > thing to do is have another election without the third > party candidate in > the original contest or just flip a coin. But that would be > illegal, it > would be foolish to expect that logic would have anything > to due with the > law. Perhaps the appeals will end before the 6 year term of > office expires; > perhaps not. Minnesotans should export its inability to elect officeholders. With many more government posts unfilled, more people might notice how unnecessary government is to living life in a civilized society. In fact, not a few might come to see that states are just parasites. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:37:38 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:37:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <798774.70510.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Dan > > wrote: > > Rhetorical excess! ?Almost all Muslims do NOT do > that. ?The vast majority appear to live peacefully, both in > Islamic societies and non-Islamic ones. > > Yes. As do most members of any culture, provided that they > are not > engaged in some war-like scenario. Exactly. The strictly libertarian view -- which, IMO, should be the Extropian one -- is that such people should not be bothered unless and until they start behaving unpeacefully. (Of course, one can try to peacefully proselytize them, but one should not, IMO, harass them.) Regards, Dan From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 13:40:50 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:40:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904140640i31f910f5v2de8f44144d2a2d5@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:18 PM, BillK wrote: > But you still want to initiate force against law-abiding citizens > because you suspect that many years in the future they 'might' spoil a > society that you want to scrap anyway. As already explained, my position is somewhat different from that of Lee or Mirco, and certainly more perplexed, but this is just rhetorics. First of all, if a law were enacted that provides for the expulsion of somebody, and the same body resisted it, it would not be composed by "law-abiding citizens" by definition! Secondly, are we really ready to abolish any idea of self-determination and popular sovereignty in the name of Human Rights? And even from a purely libertarian point of view, how could a right of secession from a given country be recognised, but at the same time not the right of a country to determine its very composition and future? -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 13:17:52 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:17:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future Message-ID: <687604.32314.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike wrote: > The best of times were these. All of you have to stop falling into this nostalgia funk. You're intelligent and creative enough to come up with new ideas and bounce them off each other. Why not focus on that and transcend this depressive reminiscing? Regards, Dan From kanzure at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 14:01:10 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:01:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man In-Reply-To: <49E49311.2040100@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <49E49311.2040100@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904140701w1fa198b1lc51eefe8a7e7002c@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul D. Fernhout Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:43 AM Subject: FYI: Experimental Man To: Bryan Bishop http://www.experimentalman.com/ "This website is designed to be a resource for people wanting to learn more about personalized medicine ? the tailoring of diagnostics and health care to individuals ? and its implications. It features the results of one man?s extensive testing of his genes, environmental impacts, brain and body, along with commentary, analysis and musings about the usefulness and the impact of this information on individual human beings like you. The effort is to explain and humanize a new wave of science that is likely to profoundly change our vision of our health, and who we are." --Paul Fernhout From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 14:43:10 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:43:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism by Nation Message-ID: <233962.28316.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > It's not impossible that the people who answered the survey > didn't > understand what the difference between capitalism and > socialism was, > given the results of surveys on apparently much easier > questions: > > http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2008/06/25/does-earth-orbit-the-sun-many-people-dont-know/3209/ > Well, some of it might be that the terms are loaded. I participate in a Left-Libertarian group where some members define socialism as something other than a command economy -- using the term "state socialism" for command economies (and state capitalism for the soft fascism that now seems the rule in much of the world*). By the way, isn't it more accurate to say the Earth goes around the solar system's barycenter? Regards, Dan * Fascism is perhaps a more accurate term since, in the West, the state rigorously controls almost all activities to a large degree and ownership of capital and property in general is merely nominal -- and the state can at any time, it seems seize property when it sees fits when it doesn't merely tell owners what they must or must not do under pain of death and all lesser penalties. From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Apr 14 14:59:50 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:59:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Solar Power Satellite Place] Digest Number 186 In-Reply-To: <1239694018.961.89873.m4@yahoogroups.com> References: <1239694018.961.89873.m4@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: 1. PG&E Makes Deal for Space Solar Power Message ________________________________________________________________________ 1. PG&E Makes Deal for Space Solar Power ? ?Posted by: "markreiff" no_reply at yahoogroups.com markreiff ? ?Date: Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:26 pm ((PDT)) FYI, "PG&E Makes Deal for Space Solar Power - Utility to buy orbit-generated electricity from Solaren in 2016, at no risk" MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30198977 : California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to : purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that : plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning : in 2016. : San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric said it was seeking : approval from state regulators for an agreement to purchase power : over a 15-year period from Solaren Corp., an 8-year-old company : based in Manhattan Beach, Calif. The agreement was first reported : in a posting to Next100, a Weblog produced by PG&E. : Solaren would generate the power using solar panels in Earth orbit : and convert it to radio-frequency transmissions that would be : beamed down to a receiving station in Fresno, PG&E said. From : there, the energy would be converted into electricity and fed into : PG&E's power grid. : PG&E is pledging to buy the power at an agreed-upon rate, : comparable to the rate specified in other agreements for renewable- : energy purchases, company spokesman Jonathan Marshall said. Neither : PG&E nor Solaren would say what that rate was, due to the : proprietary nature of the agreement. However, Marshall emphasized : that PG&E would make no up-front investment in Solaren's venture. : "We've been very careful not to bear risk in this," Marshall told : msnbc.com . : Solaren's chief executive officer, Gary Spirnak, said the project : would be the first real-world application of space solar power, a : technology that has been talked about for decades but never turned into reality. : "While a system of this scale and exact configuration has not been : built, the underlying technology is very mature and is based on : communications satellite technology," he said in a Q&A posted by : PG&E. A study drawn up for the Pentagon came to a similar : conclusion in 2007. However, that study also said the cost of : satellite-beamed power would likely be significantly higher than : market rates, at least at first. : In contrast, Spirnak said Solaren's system would be "competitive : both in terms of performance and cost with other sources of : baseload power generation." : Solaren's director for energy services, Cal Boerman, said he was : confident his company would be able to deliver the power starting : in mid-2016, as specified in the agreement. "There are huge : penalties associated with not performing," he told msnbc.com . He : said PG&E would be "our first client" but was not expected to be : the only one. : The biggest questions surrounding the deal have to do with whether : Solaren has the wherewithal, the expertise and the regulatory : support to get a space-based solar power system up and running in : seven years. "Quite a few hurdles there to leap," Clark Lindsey of : RLV and Space Transport News observed. : In the Q&A, Spirnak said his company currently consists of about : 10 engineers and scientists, and plans to employ more than : 100 people a year from now. He said each member of the Solaren team : had at least 20 years of experience in the aerospace industry, : primarily with Hughes Aircraft Co. and the U.S. Air Force. Spirnak : himself is a former Air Force spacecraft project engineer with : experience at Boeing Satellite Systems as well. : "The impetus for forming Solaren was the convergence of improved : high-energy conversion devices, heavy-launch vehicle developments, : and a revolutionary Solaren-patented SSP [space solar power] design : that is a significant departure from past efforts and makes SSP no :t only technically but economically viable," Spirnak said. : Boerman said Solaren's plan called for four or five heavy-lift : launches that would put the elements of the power-generating : facility in orbit. Those elements would dock automatically in space : to create the satellite system. Boerman declined to describe the : elements in detail but noted that each heavy-lift launch could put : 25 tons of payload into orbit. : "We've talked with United Launch Alliance, and gotten an idea of : what's involved and what the cost is," he said. : The plan would have to be cleared by the Federal Aviation : Administration as well as the Federal Communications Commission and : federal and state safety officials, Boerman said. : In the nearer term, PG&E's deal would have to be approved by the : California Public Utilities Commission, Marshall said. : He said the space-power agreement was part of PG&E's effort to : forge long-term deals for renewable energy, including deals for : terrestrial-based solar power. Marshall pointed out that : space-based and terrestrial-based solar power generation were : "really very different animals." : Unlike ground-based solar arrays, space satellites could generate : power 24 hours a day, unaffected by cloudy weather or Earth's : day-night cycle. The capacity factor for a ground-based solar is : typically less than 25 percent. In contrast, the capacity factor : for a power-generating satellite is expected to be 97 percent, : Marshall said. : "The potential for generating much larger amounts of power in space : for any given area of solar cells makes this a very promising : opportunity," Marshall said. : He said the agreement called for 800 gigawatt-hours of electricity : to be provided during the first year of operation, and : 1,700 gigawatt-hours for subsequent years. The larger figure is : roughly equal to the annual consumption of 250,000 average homes. : PG&E has 5.1 million electric customer accounts and 4.2 million : natural-gas customer accounts in Northern and Central California. Mark Reiff Messages in this topic (1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: ? ?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarpowersatelliteplace/ <*> Your email settings: ? ?Digest Email ?| Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: ? ?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarpowersatelliteplace/join ? ?(Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: ? ?mailto:solarpowersatelliteplace-normal at yahoogroups.com ? ?mailto:solarpowersatelliteplace-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: ? ?solarpowersatelliteplace-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: ? ?http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From moulton at moulton.com Tue Apr 14 15:36:48 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:36:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Feast for the eyes - Chile Volcano Eruption Photos Message-ID: <1239723408.29217.665.camel@hayek> Fascinating Photos of Chile Volcano Eruption http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/gallery/Chile_Volcano/246/?section=1 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 15:56:05 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:56:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Feast for the eyes - Chile Volcano Eruption Photos Message-ID: <865461.44620.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > Fascinating Photos of Chile Volcano Eruption > http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/gallery/Chile_Volcano/246/?section=1 I want to talk to the SysOp. These photos are a bit too dramatic -- like the whole thing was staged. :) Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 16:19:47 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:19:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= References: <771609.13148.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7E43682EC1BE42B1B857B02FDFEAE2B4@MyComputer> "Dan" > Let me try again. Let's say it there are two paths (again). In one path, > filtering tech develops first -- long before any non-filtering tech. This > works well for your scenario and explains Fermi: you humans are either the > first or will soon be silent (and we shall find someone else to pester). > On the other, non-filtering tech develops first and filtering tech only > develops (or is deployed effectively as a filter) 100 million years later. > In which case, there would be geologic time scales of spreading out. > (Surely, such are NOT needed if things like mega-engineering projects, > making lots of non-noise, and space migration can happen on scales smaller > than, say, a thousand years.) I believe you need to express yourself more clearly because I don't have a clue what you're talking about. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 16:34:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:34:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?b?V2hlcmXigJlzIG15IGJvZHnigJlzIENvbnRyb2wgUGFuZWw/?= Message-ID: <167489.26462.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > > Let me try again.? Let's say it there are two > paths (again).? In one path, filtering tech develops > first -- long before any non-filtering tech.? This > works well for your scenario and explains Fermi: you humans > are either the first or will soon be silent (and we shall > find someone else to pester). On the other, non-filtering > tech develops first and filtering tech only develops (or is > deployed effectively as a filter) 100 million years later. > In which case, there would be geologic time scales of > spreading out. (Surely, such are NOT needed if things like > mega-engineering projects, making lots of non-noise, and > space migration can happen on scales smaller than, say, a > thousand years.) > > I believe you need to express yourself more clearly because > I don't have a clue what you're talking about. Didn't anyone else have a problem understanding my statements? Regards, Dan From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 16:45:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:45:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <580930c20904140509v10b44c87hc727a5604b062bb7@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> <580930c20904140509v10b44c87hc727a5604b062bb7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E4BDA8.1020104@rawbw.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> Yes, but to be more precise, being nice can arise >> out of habit. > > Wasn't it an old American say "speak softly but carry a big stick"? Yes. > IMHO, western policies are too often arrogant and weak at the same time. But when T. Roosevelt made that statement, America may have been arrogant (along with all of Western civilization) but not weak. > Political correctness and its dreams of a westernised one-world > imposes our not being "nice", not even when it would be in our best > interest, and at the same time keeps us eminently vulnerable. Very true. What upsets the Muslim world as much as anything--- and receives very, very little press here (please see Dinesh D'Sousa's book "The Enemy at Home")---is how incredibly irritating are all the western liberal agendas like planned parenthood and women's rights in Muslim countries. They just *hate* the constant relentless pressure to alter their customs in these ways that the west wants to foist upon them. >> On the world stage, this means trying to help all societies >> acquire the Western institutions that deliver the goods. > > Historical experience should show that such external "help" is a > recipe for disaster - including to some extent for the "helpers". The *right* way to issue such help is through trade, but also through destructive pressure against corrupt governments. It would apparently also help to shut down the IMF, since no matter what they've ever done, it seems to harm the nations it tries to help. And the econ issues are admittedly very, very difficult. (The common denominator as to why the World Bank and the IMF always harm instead of help very possibly is that one cannot simply go into a bad part of town and try to help by giving away money---you'll just make things worse.) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 17:05:30 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:05:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> BillK contributes a *rational* response (for the most part), and I forgot to thank Rafal for the same. Thanks, Bill. As you'll see here, and as you saw in Rafal's recent posts, there is a lot less emotional distress and mere dismissal---and more reasoning and argumentation---than earlier. A good sign. > On 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Besides, I had previously outlined my reasoning pretty >> clearly. If I lived in France, and if there existed a >> clear distinction between my ancestors who were French >> and had been living there a millenium or so, and if I >> valued greatly the French (and of course, Western) >> traditions that were and are so at odds with what happens >> in *every* Muslim controlled country, then it follows that >> my people and I must expel the Muslims or else run the >> exceedingly severe risk of losing those very traditions; >> and worse, very possibly having to live or have our >> children live under Sharia. > > 1) You don't live in France. Please see the first word of the sentence that begins "If I lived in France, and..." > 2) You assume there is a clear distinction between 'old' French > citizens and 'new' French citizens. Please see the first word in the phrase in the first sentence that begins "if there existed a clear distinction..." It isn't just in discussions of extremely hypothetical thought experiments concerning identity that people have such trouble with that little two letter word. > 3) You greatly value French tradition and civilization. Damn. See the phrase that begins "if I valued greatly..." (although your guess is pretty good---I do happen to value the parts of French civilization that overlap the western in general, but the above logic does not depend on it). > 4) You therefore want to expel all Muslims from France. Well---literally I said that (under those assumptions that had all those "if"s in them) we *must* expel them whether we wanted to or not. > So all this attacking human rights is merely a 'thought experiment' > for your intellectual amusement and the disruption of the extropy > list. It should not be possible to disrupt a list where people like to think with thought experiments. Frankly, don't people attend to so-called interesting lists *because* it disrupts thought? As my topology professor used to say, you can seldom learn anything important without first becoming confused. > Sometimes you so-called 'libertarians' make me hurt my ribs with > laughing so much. Oh. *That* kind of disruption. Sorry. Most people sort of like that :-) > Just about every point above contradicts the principles you claim to hold dear. I admitted the tradeoffs: violate a principle now in exchange for reducing the risk of losing that principle and far, far more in the future. > You don't really value French tradition, as you have lectured us > before about how the Western systems of government should be scrapped > in favor of a libertarian system. Come now. It's all relative. Besides, I would never say "scrapped". Our governments should gradually be *reformed*, even corruption itself needs to be slowly excised from the system. But be they as they may be, current western governments, institutions, and traditions are vastly superior. > But you still want to initiate force against law-abiding citizens > because you suspect that many years in the future they 'might' spoil a > society that you want to scrap anyway. You suppose that I want to *scrap* rather than *improve* our western societies? Odd. Anyway, you are right to emphasize that Muslims *might* wreck our very slowly evolved and much prized western traditions. They might also not. They might assimilate, after all. There may be a singularity or other big tech breakthrough first. It's all about weighing risks, just as in everything else. > Therefore you should also agree that the French should expel all > 'libertarians' because they recommend dismantling the French system of > government and destroying centuries of tradition. The logic is not exactly parallel (as you surely know), because the libertarians in France are really a part of the traditional French embracing of liberty, fraternity, and so on. Compared to how a Muslim state is run, what separates the French libertarians from their socialist friends is very minor indeed. Lee From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 17:07:02 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:07:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904141007u26d33e96xeb194f8998959e8f@mail.gmail.com> Why not just "On the world stage, this means trying to help all societies acquire the institutions that deliver the goods", without "Western"? In practice I agree that the Western civilization has produced a lot of good things that should be made available to other civilization. But I do not agree that all that is Western is good, and all that is not Western is bad. Perhaps we also have a few lessons to learn from others. On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Eschatoon Magic wrote: > >> Thanks Lee for this very smart observation. > > Well, thank you, but in places it was rather badly written, I'm afraid. > >> Many of "us" are nice people... because we can afford it. In the past, >> when we could not afford it, we were not nice. > > Yes, but to be more precise, being nice can arise > out of habit. For example, it might take a nice, > and healthy and wealthy person in our society > many months of extremely grueling conditions to > change over. > > And I believe I did state that the converse sadly > isn't true: some comfortable people and some comfortable > groups have been surprisingly wicked. > >> Many fellow human >> beings born in other cultures still cannot afford being nice, and they >> are not nice. Many fellow human beings born in _our_ culture still >> cannot afford being nice, and they are not nice. Simple as that. > > Yes, though speaking about individuals, it is the exceptions > to this rule that are quite interesting. Sometimes you'll > find someone who's had a very rough go of it, but somehow > manages to have amazingly great empathy for others. > > Born with a lot of it, I guess. > >> It follows that we should do our very best to give everyone the >> possibility to be a nice person. > > On the world stage, this means trying to help all societies > acquire the Western institutions that deliver the goods. > > Within nations, this means attempting to rub out subcultures > (the cultures, of course, not the people in them) that nourish > viciousness. > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 17:11:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:11:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Revolutions In-Reply-To: <233962.28316.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <233962.28316.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E4C3C0.4040104@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > Well, some of it might be that the terms are loaded. > I participate in a Left-Libertarian group... > > By the way, isn't it more accurate to say the Earth > goes around the solar system's barycenter? Yes, I guess so. One could demur by saying that the Earth *also* goes around the sun---but then, the Earth also goes around Mercury and Venus. We are really interesting in revolutions. The moon inarguably revolves around the Earth because the barycenter of the Earth/moon system is *in* the Earth. Much as I hate to admit it, you may be irresistibly forcing us to admit that the Earth *revolves* around the barycentric point between the Sun and Jupiter, which does lie outside the Sun. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 14 17:19:01 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:19:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "...but anyone who is still a socialist by age 40" In-Reply-To: <1239672565.29217.565.camel@hayek> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> <1239672565.29217.565.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49E4C585.5070807@rawbw.com> Fred C. Moulton wrote: > This page shows various versions and attributions > http://www.geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html > > Scroll down and there is discussion of likely origin of phrase. Thanks. Nice page. That seems to nail it: Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - Fran?ois Guisot (1787-1874) although young people unacquainted with history B.C. (Before Clinton), might be perplexed at the claim that it takes someone so long to register Democratic. So credit should perhaps be shared with A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head. - Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) although we libertarians would quibble with that, and dispute that still the modern meaning was absent. So I guess Clemenceau wins: Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) Lee > I have not verified the info on the page but it is a good place to > start. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 14 17:32:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:32:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090414122941.0870fac0@satx.rr.com> At 10:05 AM 4/14/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >a *rational* response ... more reasoning and argumentation Perhaps it's worth mentioning that "rationalization" is exactly *not* any of those things. It's the process of cooking up fake "reasons" for an emotional response. It's not superior to the alternative, it goes with it. Damien Broderick From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Apr 14 17:35:58 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:35:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] space based solar power Message-ID: This made the news all the way from papers in California to radio stations in Chicago. http://www.next100.com/2009/04/space-solar-power-the-next-fro.php http://earth2tech.com/2009/04/13/pge-seeking-solar-in-space-seriously/ http://www.businessinsider.com/california-utility-goes-to-outer-space-for-solar-power-2009-4 http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/04/13/daily10.html Keith From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 18:01:35 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:01:35 +0000 Subject: [ExI] space based solar power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: > This made the news all the way from papers in California to radio > stations in Chicago. > Yea, it's all over Google. A lot of PR for a company that doesn't even have a website. (I don't call one page a website). One report claimed 6 employees. It's all vaporware. One comment on the Wall Street Journal blog said: * David wrote: I don?t believe for one second that Solaren will deliver even 1 watt of electricity in 2016 using this technology. So I?m curious about PG&E?s real motivation for pursuing this. I?m guessing that they?re finding it much more difficult to meet CA?s renewable energy requirements than they ever imagined. If they get this approved, they don?t have to do anything for six years and can just keep pointing to the promise of Solaren to meet their requirements. When 2016 rolls around and it all goes bust, they can say it wasn?t their fault, beg forgiveness (which they will receive), and get the targets reset. Solaren gets to point to their contract with PG&E to attract investor money, which they will invest in stuff like sports cars, houses, and vacations. ----------- BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 18:02:27 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:02:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] space based solar power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: > This made the news all the way from papers in California to radio > stations in Chicago. > Yea, it's all over Google. A lot of PR for a company that doesn't even have a website. (I don't call one page a website). One report claimed 6 employees. It's all vaporware. One comment on the Wall Street Journal blog said: * David wrote: I don?t believe for one second that Solaren will deliver even 1 watt of electricity in 2016 using this technology. So I?m curious about PG&E?s real motivation for pursuing this. I?m guessing that they?re finding it much more difficult to meet CA?s renewable energy requirements than they ever imagined. If they get this approved, they don?t have to do anything for six years and can just keep pointing to the promise of Solaren to meet their requirements. When 2016 rolls around and it all goes bust, they can say it wasn?t their fault, beg forgiveness (which they will receive), and get the targets reset. Solaren gets to point to their contract with PG&E to attract investor money, which they will invest in stuff like sports cars, houses, and vacations. ----------- BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 18:25:27 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:25:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West Message-ID: <480839.86594.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Why not just "On the world stage, > this means trying to help all > societies acquire the institutions that deliver the goods", > without > "Western"? > > In practice I agree that the Western civilization has > produced a lot > of good things that should be made available to other > civilization. > But I do not agree that all that is Western is good, and > all that is > not Western is bad. Perhaps we also have a few lessons to > learn from > others. I thought two of the quintessential Western traits -- dating back to the Ancient Greeks -- were 1) to be self-critical and 2) to learn from others. Think of Herodotus and Hippocrates. (To be sure, I doubt Westerners had or have a monopoly on these traits. It's perhaps more accurate to say these traits tend to be more extreme, historically and currently, among those in the West. I grant that probably many if not most in the West do not adhere to these traits and just sheepish follow whatever fads are current.) Regards, Dan From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 18:29:56 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:29:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > On 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > I admitted the tradeoffs: violate a principle now in > exchange for reducing the risk of losing that principle > and far, far more in the future. > I think we need some *real* libertarians to chime in here, as you don't seem to talking proper 'libertarianese'. ;) Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of force now, based on a speculation that damage might occur many many years in the future? Surely not. Much else might happen between now and that future date. > Come now. It's all relative. Besides, I would never say "scrapped". > Our governments should gradually be *reformed*, even corruption > itself needs to be slowly excised from the system. But be they > as they may be, current western governments, institutions, and > traditions are vastly superior. > I'm all in favor of that and I'm not a libertarian. But I've never before heard libertarians say that the present western governments are pretty good and just need gradually and slowly reformed and corruption removed. They talk about the very minimum of government, not quite 'scrapping' (although they would like that really). > You suppose that I want to *scrap* rather than *improve* > our western societies? Odd. Libertarians want to *improve* government by removing as much of it as possible. I call that scrapping the present systems of government. > Anyway, you are right to > emphasize that Muslims *might* wreck our very slowly > evolved and much prized western traditions. They might > also not. They might assimilate, after all. There may > be a singularity or other big tech breakthrough first. > It's all about weighing risks, just as in everything > else. > If you (as a libertarian) want to initiate force and expel Muslims because there is an 'guesstimated' possibility that they might change the system of government many years in the future, then in my opinion exactly the same logic should be applied to libertarians. Of course this shouldn't be done, because what you are suggesting is not libertarian. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 18:31:30 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:31:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Transcension_and_null_hypotheses/was_Re=3A__Where?= =?utf-8?b?4oCZcyBteSBib2R54oCZcyBDb250cm9sIFBhbmVsPw==?= Message-ID: <269532.9478.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/13/09, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/4/14 John K Clark : > > If I?m right then a blind man in a fog bank could > detect the > > existence of ET. So where the hell is he? It seems to > me that either we?re > > the first or there is a hidden disaster of some sort > that slaps down all > > intelligent races when they get too smart. > > There's another possibility, which is that before ETs get > to space > travel, they find something else which makes the whole > endeavor moot. > Perhaps there are doors to other universes hidden in the > subatomic > particles, something like that? Hopefully something less > banal than > that. Anyway, the filter is always interpreted as > destructive, but it needn't be so. I don't think it's always interpreted as destructive and this idea -- usually called "transcension" -- has been treated before. (Damien?:) > And, of course, there's the possibility that we are looking > at > something comprehensively engineered, but are currently too > stupid & > ignorant to be able to figure that out. What would an > engineered > universe look like, if we go beyond trite space opera? If, > before you > colonize the galaxy, you first engineer yourself out of > Middle > World[1], then your mega engineering might look to the > primitives like > very strange rules of physics that almost make sense but > not quite. > Somehow that seems familiar :-) Perhaps, but for primitives, what tests could be done? I wouldn't want this to be the null hypothesis: the reason evidence of ETI is not detected is because ETI are too advanced for humans to detect. Would you? In my mind such a null hypothesis would turn searching for ETI into something akin to what Creationism is to biology: saving the hypothesis regardless of the data. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 18:35:35 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:35:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Aristos/was Re: are all cultures equivalent? Message-ID: <170188.93233.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Mon, Apr > 13, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Damien Broderick > wrote: > > At 09:41 PM 4/13/2009 +0200, you wrote: > > Isn't aristocracy and wealth an oxymoron? :-) > > > > -- > > Stefano Vaj > > > > > I thought it was a pleonasm. Maybe not in > Italy. > > > My joke concerned the fact that a primary concern for the > accumulation of personal wealth does not really qualify you > for a "government of the best"... :-) I thought you were playing off something that too. Rule by the wealthy is plutocracy -- if one wants to be precise. Of course, with aristocrats and putative aristocracies, IIRC, it wasn't so much the best by some objective standard, but merely traditional elites (or people awed by such*) self-proclaiming their rule best. Regards, Dan * Some paleocons argue for aristocracy and monarchy because of the chance element in breeding -- I reckon giving their supposed divinity the last word in who rules. Kind of strange because actual aristocracies based on lineage seem to put a premium on making sure breeding is anything but chance, no? From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 18:36:02 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:36:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "...but anyone who is still a socialist by age 40" In-Reply-To: <49E4C585.5070807@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> <1239672565.29217.565.camel@hayek> <49E4C585.5070807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904141136o1177ec32g376fb4d551e33097@mail.gmail.com> I think to be [insert ANY one-size-fits-all political formula here] at 21 is a proof of want of head. On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Fred C. Moulton wrote: > >> This page shows various versions and attributions >> http://www.geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html > >> >> >> Scroll down and there is discussion of likely origin of phrase. > > Thanks. Nice page. That seems to nail it: > > ? Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; > ? to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. > ? ? ? - Fran?ois Guisot (1787-1874) > > although young people unacquainted with history B.C. > (Before Clinton), might be perplexed at the claim > that it takes someone so long to register Democratic. > > So credit should perhaps be shared with > > ? A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart; > ? a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head. > ? ?- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) > > although we libertarians would quibble with that, and > dispute that still the modern meaning was absent. > > So I guess Clemenceau wins: > > ? Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart; > ? to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. > ? ?- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) > > Lee > >> I have not verified the info on the page but it is a good place to >> start. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 19:25:14 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:25:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative Message-ID: <716038.19979.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, BillK wrote: > >? On 4/14/09, Lee Corbin > wrote: > >? I admitted the tradeoffs: violate a principle > now in > >? exchange for reducing the risk of losing that > principle > >? and far, far more in the future. > > > > I think we need some *real* libertarians to chime in here, > as you > don't seem to talking proper 'libertarianese'.? ;) > > Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of force > now, based > on a speculation that damage might occur many many years in > the > future? Surely not. Much else might happen between now and > that future > date. Not in my book. This, in fact, is typically how statists argue: give up some freedom now for later on -- or trade off freedom for security. If one is going to do this setting aside of libertarian principles whenever there's a hypothetical risk -- no matter how unlikely -- then Eduard Bernstein (German socialist who argued explicitly for curtailing freedom now for a better society later) and FDR might as well be considered libertarians. Also, just on a purely semantic level, if anyone believes that's the right thing to do -- setting aside the principles -- then she or he should not be called a libertarian. Why they continue to use the label is beyond me. This is kind of like pacifists who advocate for war. :) > >? Come now. It's all relative. Besides, I would > never say "scrapped". > >? Our governments should gradually be *reformed*, > even corruption > >? itself needs to be slowly excised from the > system. But be they > >? as they may be, current western governments, > institutions, and > >? traditions are vastly superior. > > > > I'm all in favor of that and I'm not a libertarian. > But I've never before heard libertarians say that the > present western > governments are pretty good and just need gradually and > slowly > reformed and corruption removed. They talk about the very > minimum of > government, not quite 'scrapping' (although they would like > that > really). There are minarchists, who want an absolute minimal government. I do not believe that's possible. I believe that libertarianism is anarchic. But, regardless, minarchy and anarchy are not anything like current welfare statism (really just fascism, but no one uses that term correctly today). > >? You suppose that I want to *scrap* rather than > *improve* > >? our western societies? Odd. > > Libertarians want to *improve* government by removing as > much of it as > possible. I call that scrapping the present systems of > government. There's also a difference seen, among libertarians, between society and the state. Scrapping government -- dismantling the state -- is NOT the same as scrapping society. Regards, Dan From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Apr 14 19:09:38 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:09:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <480839.86594.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <480839.86594.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090414150938.0zz5gwx3wg4kso48@webmail.natasha.cc> Well said -- to the both of you. Natasha Quoting Dan : > > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Eschatoon Magic wrote: >> Why not just "On the world stage, >> this means trying to help all >> societies acquire the institutions that deliver the goods", >> without >> "Western"? >> >> In practice I agree that the Western civilization has >> produced a lot >> of good things that should be made available to other >> civilization. >> But I do not agree that all that is Western is good, and >> all that is >> not Western is bad. Perhaps we also have a few lessons to >> learn from >> others. > > I thought two of the quintessential Western traits -- dating back to > the Ancient Greeks -- were 1) to be self-critical and 2) to learn > from others. Think of Herodotus and Hippocrates. (To be sure, I > doubt Westerners had or have a monopoly on these traits. It's > perhaps more accurate to say these traits tend to be more extreme, > historically and currently, among those in the West. I grant that > probably many if not most in the West do not adhere to these traits > and just sheepish follow whatever fads are current.) > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 14 19:51:46 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:51:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What happened to SL4? References: Message-ID: <1D313DE137EA446DAE0304083706E2E7@MyComputer> The list has been down for about a month, sl4.org too. John K Clark From clementlawyer at hotmail.com Tue Apr 14 20:06:39 2009 From: clementlawyer at hotmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:06:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [Cosmic Engineers] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha news update In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904140504p4ab3974dvebd4f3e244cd3ccf@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904132327.n3DNRDBL003211@mercury.wolfram.com> <580930c20904140426v4c4c503fh2ffd671fec52fbcd@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904140504p4ab3974dvebd4f3e244cd3ccf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Giulio, We've had over 50,000 visitors to the site the past two days and last night had over 100 people trying to download the 60MB Wolfram audio file at the same time. The server has been reset to allow more visitors now and we'll hopefully be able to meet the demands. Best regards, James James Clement, J.D., LL.M. Publisher h+ Magazine Http://www.hplusmagazine.com > Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:04:15 +0200 > From: eschatoon at gmail.com > To: cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com > CC: Transumanisti at yahoogroups.com; extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] [Cosmic Engineers] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha news update > > Alpha looks like a very ambitious project, way beyond what has been > tried so far. But Stephen Wolfram is one of he smartest person around > and has a track record of really impressive achievements. He develoepd > the first versions of Mathematica almost entirely by himself, and I am > still slowly digesting A New kind of Science. > > Too bad the H+mag site is not working atm, Rucker is one of my > favorite writers. I look fwd to reading /listening to their exchange > on Alpha. > > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > From: Wolfram|Alpha Team > > Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:27 AM > > Subject: Wolfram|Alpha news update > > To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com > > > > > > Thanks again for your interest in Wolfram|Alpha. > > > > We are excited by the great headway our team is making as we > > prepare for Wolfram|Alpha's launch in May. > > > > Recently, Stephen shared insight into the upcoming release with > > science writer Rudy Rucker. We hope you will check out his > > article as well as the podcast of their conversation: > > http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth > > > > We look forward to sharing more news with you soon. > > > > Best regards, > > > > > > The Wolfram|Alpha Team > > > > You received this email because you signed up on our > > Wolfram|Alpha preview page. It was sent from an unmonitored email > > address, so please do not reply to this email address. > > > > > > > > -- > > Stefano Vaj > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cosmic Engineers" group. > > To post to this group, send email to cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cosmic-engineers+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com > > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cosmic-engineers?hl=en > > -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- > > > > > > > > -- > Eschatoon Magic > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon > aka Giulio Prisco > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 20:20:33 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:20:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <687604.32314.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <687604.32314.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike wrote: >> The best of times were these. > > All of you have to stop falling into this nostalgia funk. ?You're intelligent and creative enough to come up with new ideas and bounce them off each other. ?Why not focus on that and transcend this depressive reminiscing? I have been rereading Accelerando, which thoroughly mines the Extropian list of the early 90s for ideas. There actually were not more than a couple of dozen ideas over a 6 year period of time, so one every three months would do it. Lots of new ideas, reformulating sociology in terms of evolutionary psychology, cortical column simulation as in Conway's Life as a path to AI, and using gravity gradient "space anchors" as a way to counter light pressure effects on power satellites. But these topics don't generate discussion here. Keith From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 20:28:28 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:28:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What happened to SL4? Message-ID: <147796.89201.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, John K Clark wrote: > The list has been down for about a > month, sl4.org too. We escaped. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 20:40:14 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:40:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future Message-ID: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Dan > > wrote: > > > > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike > wrote: > >> The best of times were these. > > > > All of you have to stop falling into this nostalgia > funk. ?You're intelligent and creative enough to come up > with new ideas and bounce them off each other. ?Why not > focus on that and transcend this depressive reminiscing? > > I have been rereading Accelerando, which thoroughly mines > the > Extropian list of the early 90s for ideas.? There > actually were not > more than a couple of dozen ideas over a 6 year period of > time, so one > every three months would do it. > > Lots of new ideas, reformulating sociology in terms of > evolutionary > psychology, cortical column simulation as in Conway's Life > as a path > to AI, and using gravity gradient "space anchors" as a way > to counter > light pressure effects on power satellites. > > But these topics don't generate discussion here. Let's try! What's wrong with evolutionary psychology? To me, some of it seems like a rehash of earlier attempts to physicalize consciousness. Comments? Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 14 20:42:31 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:42:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] space based solar power Message-ID: <265320.27775.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, BillK wrote: > On 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: > > This made the news all the way from papers in > California to radio > >? stations in Chicago. > > Yea, it's all over Google. A lot of PR for a company that > doesn't even > have a website. (I don't call one page a website). One > report claimed > 6 employees. > It's all vaporware. > > One comment on the Wall Street Journal blog said: > > ? ? *? David wrote: > I don?t believe for one second that Solaren will deliver > even 1 watt > of electricity in 2016 using this technology. So I?m > curious about > PG&E?s real motivation for pursuing this. I?m > guessing that they?re > finding it much more difficult to meet CA?s renewable > energy > requirements than they ever imagined. If they get this > approved, they > don?t have to do anything for six years and can just keep > pointing to > the promise of Solaren to meet their requirements. When > 2016 rolls > around and it all goes bust, they can say it wasn?t their > fault, beg > forgiveness (which they will receive), and get the targets > reset. > Solaren gets to point to their contract with PG&E to > attract investor > money, which they will invest in stuff like sports cars, > houses, and > vacations. Well, it's nice to dream... Regards, Dan From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Apr 14 21:26:59 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:26:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090414172659.xwnl96jfc4w0k8cg@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Dan : > > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Dan >> >> wrote: >> > >> > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike >> wrote: >> >> The best of times were these. >> > >> > All of you have to stop falling into this nostalgia >> funk. ?You're intelligent and creative enough to come up >> with new ideas and bounce them off each other. ?Why not >> focus on that and transcend this depressive reminiscing? >> >> I have been rereading Accelerando, which thoroughly mines >> the >> Extropian list of the early 90s for ideas.? There >> actually were not >> more than a couple of dozen ideas over a 6 year period of >> time, so one >> every three months would do it. >> >> Lots of new ideas, reformulating sociology in terms of >> evolutionary >> psychology, cortical column simulation as in Conway's Life >> as a path >> to AI, and using gravity gradient "space anchors" as a way >> to counter >> light pressure effects on power satellites. >> >> But these topics don't generate discussion here. > > Let's try! What's wrong with evolutionary psychology? To me, some > of it seems like a rehash of earlier attempts to physicalize > consciousness. > Comments? ... I was just reading the first few pages of _Social Darwinism in American thought_ ... I think Keith's analysis is certainly less than accurate. In fact I could mine this list easily and find discussion on his above-list. Nonetheless let's kick it to the curb and discuss anything other than the OctoMom's broad, in deference to the year of Darwin. Natasha From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 14 22:18:32 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:18:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <20090414172659.xwnl96jfc4w0k8cg@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090414172659.xwnl96jfc4w0k8cg@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090414171703.087dd7b0@satx.rr.com> At 05:26 PM 4/14/2009 -0400, Natasha wrote: >Nonetheless let's kick it to the curb and discuss anything other than >the OctoMom's broad, Golly, the OctoMom's a lesbian? But you're right, that really is a private matter between two consenting broads. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Apr 14 22:31:24 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:31:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090414171703.087dd7b0@satx.rr.com> References: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090414172659.xwnl96jfc4w0k8cg@webmail.natasha.cc> <7.0.1.0.2.20090414171703.087dd7b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20090414183124.sorxqox0u88sgg44@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Damien Broderick : > At 05:26 PM 4/14/2009 -0400, Natasha wrote: > >> Nonetheless let's kick it to the curb and discuss anything other than >> the OctoMom's broad, > > Golly, the OctoMom's a lesbian? But you're right, that really is a > private matter between two consenting broads. I'm not going to brood over it. Natasha From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 00:09:27 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:09:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904141007u26d33e96xeb194f8998959e8f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904100338o73a1eb28nef26579722c860f0@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100350m2780ec8ak415129b5daa99ce7@mail.gmail.com> <49E2C9D8.1080108@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904130210u340ecb49gefb5220a06092dc6@mail.gmail.com> <49E3E56C.4000404@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904141007u26d33e96xeb194f8998959e8f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E525B7.6010705@rawbw.com> Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Why not just "On the world stage, this means trying to help all > societies acquire the institutions that deliver the goods", without > "Western"? Yeah, I only meant it as an additional adjective, not a qualifier. (We'll have to ask some Language major what the exact terminology is.) It just so happens that almost all the institutions that "deliver the goods" are Western (and their derivatives, e.g. Japan, of course). Dan wrote > I thought two of the quintessential Western traits -- dating back to > the Ancient Greeks -- were 1) to be self-critical and 2) to learn from > others. Think of Herodotus and Hippocrates. (To be sure, I doubt > Westerners had or have a monopoly on these traits. It's perhaps more > accurate to say these traits tend to be more extreme, historically and > currently, among those in the West. I grant that probably many if not > most in the West do not adhere to these traits and just sheepish > follow whatever fads are current.) Yes, self-criticism in pretty Western all right, but on the other hand, surely no one elevated self-criticism to the heights advocated by Mao. Every neighborhood cell in his reign had to undergo extremely intense "self-criticism sessions" in which anyone at all, IIRC, could be accused of being insufficiently Red or insufficiently obedient to the path Mao laid down. As for learning from others, yes, I admit that that too is a pretty Western trait. The Eurpoeans were extremely eager to learn from the Arabs and later the Chinese---but those cultures had no reciprocal interest. (East Asia and India eventually came around.) No, what I meant by the Western institutions that "deliver the goods" was free-market capitalism, rule of law, and very high regard for private property. Well---at least we *used* to highly regard all three... Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 00:20:18 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:20:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49E52842.6090400@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: Er, first I must apologize to Bill for misreading his comments when I suggested that he pay more attention to my word "if" that set off some of my claims, e.g., "if I were a Frenchman". When he replied "but you are not a Frenchman...", I should have merely replied "so what?". Sorry. >> On 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >> I admitted the tradeoffs: violate a principle now in >> exchange for reducing the risk of losing that principle >> and far, far more in the future. > > I think we need some *real* libertarians to chime in here, as you > don't seem to talking proper 'libertarianese'. ;) Hmm. Guess so. At best I think of myself as "half-libertarian", they so often being oblivious to the dependence of their doctrines on a certain level of cultural development, and their being oblivious (in so many cases) to existential entire threats to the hard-won traditions that made their doctrines at all feasible. > Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of force now, based > on a speculation that damage might occur many many years in the > future? Surely not. Much else might happen between now and that future > date. I would agree that "No, those principles do not", and am (literally) advocating unprincipled conduct. :-) E.g., it goes against principle (as well as law) to break into your neighbor's house and take things, but if his house is on fire, that's different. >> You suppose that I want to *scrap* rather than *improve* >> our western societies? Odd. > > Libertarians want to *improve* government by removing as much of it as > possible. I call that scrapping the present systems of government. Oh, okay. Honest word usage difference. >> Anyway, you are right to >> emphasize that Muslims *might* wreck our very slowly >> evolved and much prized western traditions. They might >> also not. They might assimilate, after all. There may >> be a singularity or other big tech breakthrough first. >> It's all about weighing risks, just as in everything >> else. > > If you (as a libertarian) want to initiate force and expel Muslims > because there is an 'guesstimated' possibility that they might change > the system of government many years in the future, then in my opinion > exactly the same logic should be applied to libertarians. Well, I won't dismiss it or rule it out completely. If Libertarians are posing enough of a threat (e.g. spreading anti-conscription propaganda when the country is being invaded by a Hitler), then they have to go. Thanks for the non-insulting most honorable argumentation, sahib. Lee > Of course this shouldn't be done, because what you are suggesting is > not libertarian. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 03:03:23 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:03:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ray Kurzweil interviewed on VBS.TV Message-ID: <2d6187670904142003i5612f5fdpe5d083b4530c3d82@mail.gmail.com> Ray Kurzweil interviewed on VBS.TV... http://digg.com/d1obov "Today on VBS, Ray Kurzweil tells us about his vision of the Singuarlity?a point around 2045 when computers will acquire full-blown artificial intelligence and technology will infuse itself with biology. His theorieshave all sorts of supporters, detractors, and critics, but do you even remember what life was like before three-year-olds had cell phones and you actually had to remember facts instead of relying on the internet? That was only 10 years ago. If Kurzweil is right, we'll have supercomputers more powerful than every human brain on the planet combined within a few decades. Despite being perceived as an extreme optimist, Kurzweil is the first to admit that this technology could very quickly bring an end to the world as we know it. Stuff like gray goois a concern, but a biological terrorist attack could happen tomorrow that is based on the very same type of technology he touts as the harbingers of the unimaginable future. He believes we'll exist in a permanent virtual/"real"-reality hybrid. It makes us think about future people spending all day auto-mastubrating to polygons with the genital equivalent of the Power Glove. But we're sick like that, and if Ray is right unenlightened pigs like us won't be around in 40 years. Everyone will be hyper-intelligent, shapeshifting nonbiological humans who can live forever. It's a bummer, a blessing, and a mind-fuck all at the same time. That's about as much as we can explain on our own. Unless you're really religious or dumb, watch on to have your brain melted. Once you're done, check out *Vice* magazine's interview with Ray Kurzweilin our Technology Issue to get socked over the head with more insights from the Great Beyond. And if you're still jonesing for more Kurzweil, be sure to catch the new documentary *Transcendent Man *, premiering in late April. As always, you can head over to Dell Loungefor even more supplemental material." ROCCO CASTORO -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 04:12:59 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:12:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Ray Kurzweil interviewed on VBS.TV In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904142003i5612f5fdpe5d083b4530c3d82@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904142003i5612f5fdpe5d083b4530c3d82@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240904142112n478ae970tdb8fc244fd275219@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/14 John Grigg : > http://digg.com/d1obov > time. That's about as much as we can explain on our own. Unless you're > really religious or dumb, watch on to have your brain melted. "really religious or dumb" - haha... what about the really religious AND dumb ? Aside from that comment, I thought it was interesting that it was written "technology will infuse itself with biology" rather than what I expect will be biology (including humans) infuse itself (and others) with technology. Or maybe I'm being too much a word nerd? From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 05:32:02 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:32:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090414122941.0870fac0@satx.rr.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090414122941.0870fac0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E57152.2050407@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:05 AM 4/14/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> a *rational* response ... more reasoning and argumentation > > Perhaps it's worth mentioning that "rationalization" is exactly *not* > any of those things. It's the process of cooking up fake "reasons" for > an emotional response. Well, wikipedia says that in psychology, rationalization is Rationalization (psychology), the process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process > It's not superior to the alternative, it goes with it. I agree totally that it's a "cooking up" process. But the usual usage appears to be truth-irrelevant, though I admit to using it in the cynical way that I often substitute "propaganda" for "education". I'm pretty sure that the left hemisphere is constantly "cooking things up". This is most noticeable as I'm falling asleep. I hear nonsense strings. Do you hear voices too? When I was young, it was disjointed images that would pop into my head just before I went under. Now it's bizarre word phrases. I've written a few down. One was "We all know the story of F. Santia". I've been tempted to do a web search and to try to see who F. Santia was, and just what my left hemisphere was assuming "we" knew. Lee P.S. See my upcoming post, "The Chattering Hemisphere". From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Apr 15 05:48:10 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:48:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E57152.2050407@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090414122941.0870fac0@satx.rr.com> <49E57152.2050407@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090415004013.0230e600@satx.rr.com> At 10:32 PM 4/14/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >>>a *rational* response ... more reasoning and argumentation >>Perhaps it's worth mentioning that "rationalization" is exactly >>*not* any of those things. It's the process of cooking up fake >>"reasons" for an emotional response. > >I agree totally that it's a "cooking up" process. But the >usual usage appears to be truth-irrelevant Au contraire. "Knave, why did you take those tarts?" "Ah, I saw them piled up in the open window and feared that four and twenty blackbirds would swoop down and steal them." "What BULLSHIT! I just saw you eating them yourself!" "Well, I reasoned that you wouldn't want them back after I'd--" "Shut up, you rascal! That's a flagrant rationalization, even if you do end up convincing yourself that it was your real motive." Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 05:51:05 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:51:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090414171703.087dd7b0@satx.rr.com> References: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090414172659.xwnl96jfc4w0k8cg@webmail.natasha.cc> <7.0.1.0.2.20090414171703.087dd7b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E575C9.6060501@rawbw.com> Damien (the irrepressible) Broderick wrote: > At 05:26 PM 4/14/2009 -0400, Natasha wrote: > >> Nonetheless let's kick it to the curb and discuss anything other than >> the OctoMom's broad, > > Golly, the OctoMom's a lesbian? But you're right, that really is a > private matter between two consenting broads. I was going to say in my last post, but unfortunately hit "send" too fast, that the role of the right hemisphere is very often also to reign in the confabulations of the left hemisphere, and keep it from free-associating all over the place in fits of meandering random verbal recklessness. Hmm, something reminded me of that here, but I've already forgotten what. Bad hippocampus, bad hippocampus! Lee From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 06:00:17 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:00:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <418610.97237.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Keith Henson wrote: snip >> But these topics don't generate discussion here. > > Let's try! ?What's wrong with evolutionary psychology? ?To me, some of it seems like a rehash of earlier attempts to physicalize consciousness. > > Comments? This kind of shallow response is what has me about to sign off this mailing list To have responded at all you had an email program up, Yahoo to be specific. Could you open one more tab and find out something about the topic? In Yahoo, the third tab leads you here: http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html The short form is that behavioral traits have been subjected to natural selection just as physical ones have been. In some cases the selection in the past has been so intense that certain behaviors (such as capture-bonding) are as universal as sight, walking.and talking. Of course, to apply this principle to social behavior you need understand what the modern gene centered formulation of evolution is and for that you must have read and understood _The Selfish Gene_, or equal works and understand inclusive fitness (William Hamilton's work). Then you can apply EP in an attempt to understand human social behavior raging from war to BDSM. Keith From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 07:44:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:44:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: References: <687604.32314.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E5905C.7060503@rawbw.com> Keith Henson wrote: > Lots of new ideas, reformulating sociology > in terms of evolutionary psychology, One thing that occurs to me about that is: what is wanted most is *time* for people to get used to what has been discovered (mostly in the 90's). One sees ignorance of EP almost everywhere. But I don't know what more there is to say about it here. > cortical column simulation as in Conway's > Life as a path to AI, Ah, what's that? I would be interested in anything having to do with Life. Lee P.S. For those who haven't read about it, Conway's cellular automaton, known for some reason as the "Game" of Life, is well described on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life > and using gravity gradient "space > anchors" as a way to counter > light pressure effects on power satellites. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 09:19:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:19:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904150219s3770a9f7w3215bf428bf0e1e6@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:29 PM, BillK wrote: > Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of force now, based > on a speculation that damage might occur many many years in the > future? Surely not. What about the international scene? Should such principle be extended to all historical facts? -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 11:02:39 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:02:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Extro List- Past/Future In-Reply-To: References: <687604.32314.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904150402v223c2cd7l7a66940468e6c7f@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > I have been rereading Accelerando, which thoroughly mines the > Extropian list of the early 90s for ideas. ?There actually were not > more than a couple of dozen ideas over a 6 year period of time, so one > every three months would do it. Why, at least something was generated beyond the reinforcement of a very minoritarian subculture amongst its participants... :-) Seriously, a concern has been repeatedly raised about the real usefulness of spending time on mailing lists which are almost exclusively read by transhumanists, thus concentrating on preaching to the choir, hair-splitting, or debates which do not directly concern our supposedly shared transhumanist agenda. Now, writing (a) novel(s) is certainly a good way of making an actual, productive use of such exchanges. Echoing the ideas debated therein in blogs, in external, special interest fora, in articles would also be one, and so would be actively engaging in recruiting more people, and more diverse people, for those lists My wonder is how many of us really keep a balance between chatting here in order to understand better what a shared position on X or Y might be - or at least where we have to agree to disagree - and doing some *actual* work for one's own ideas, elsewhere. -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 13:29:15 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:29:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych/was Re: The Extro List- Past/Future Message-ID: <263221.66943.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Dan > > wrote: > > > > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Keith Henson > wrote: > > snip > > >> But these topics don't generate discussion here. > > > > Let's try! ?What's wrong with evolutionary > psychology? ?To me, some of it seems like a rehash of > earlier attempts to physicalize consciousness. > > > > Comments? > > This kind of shallow response is what has me about to sign > off this mailing list I was baiting you... I reckon few here have a sense of humor... Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 13:42:48 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:42:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West Message-ID: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Eschatoon Magic wrote: > > > Why not just "On the world stage, this means trying to > help all > > societies acquire the institutions that deliver the > goods", without > > "Western"? > > Yeah, I only meant it as an additional adjective, not a > qualifier. (We'll have to ask some Language major what > the exact terminology is.) > > It just so happens that almost all the institutions that > "deliver the goods" are Western (and their derivatives, > e.g. Japan, of course). > > Dan wrote > > > I thought two of the quintessential Western traits -- > dating back to? > the Ancient Greeks -- were 1) to > be self-critical and 2) to learn from > > others.? Think of Herodotus and > Hippocrates.? (To be sure, I doubt > > Westerners had or have a monopoly on these > traits.? It's perhaps more > > accurate to say these traits tend to be more extreme, > historically and > > currently, among those in the West.? I grant that > probably many if not > > most in the West do not adhere to these traits and > just sheepish > > follow whatever fads are current.) > > Yes, self-criticism in pretty Western all right, but > on the other hand, surely no one elevated self-criticism > to the heights advocated by Mao. Every neighborhood cell > in his reign had to undergo extremely intense > "self-criticism > sessions" in which anyone at all, IIRC, could be accused > of > being insufficiently Red or insufficiently obedient to the > path Mao laid down. Mao was a disciple of what Western ideology? Also, these self-criticism sessions are not really like the signature trait of Western self-critical attitude. The former is merely following an external model -- specifically, conforming to a totalitarian ideology -- that's the hallmark of cult behavior the world over. It's not really, to that extent, self-criticism. It's function is social: conformity to the community however defined. The latter is usually toxic to that kind of conformity. Don't you agree? > As for learning from others, yes, I admit that that too is > a pretty Western trait. The Eurpoeans were extremely eager > to learn from the Arabs and later the Chinese---but those > cultures had no reciprocal interest. (East Asia and India > eventually came around.) I would have stated, to be precise, "most people in those societies" "had no reciprocal interest." > No, what I meant by the Western institutions that "deliver > the goods" was free-market capitalism, rule of law, and > very high regard for private property. Well---at least > we *used* to highly regard all three... I would agree with these Western institutions. They would, however, in my mind, no go along with some of the proposals made by some here about treating certain individuals merely because of their religious beliefs and not because of some particular actions they've actually taken (remember that quaint view of "innocent until proven guilty" and also of matters of law dealing with actions and NOT beliefs?). Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 13:49:39 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:49:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative Message-ID: <812129.36544.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:32 PM 4/14/2009 -0700, Lee > wrote: > > >>> a *rational* response ... more reasoning and > argumentation > > >> Perhaps it's worth mentioning that > "rationalization" is exactly *not* any of those things. It's > the process of cooking up fake "reasons" for an emotional > response. > > > > I agree totally that it's a "cooking up" process. But > the > > usual usage appears to be truth-irrelevant > > Au contraire. "Knave, why did you take those tarts?" "Ah, I > saw them piled up in the open window and feared that four > and twenty blackbirds would swoop down and steal them." > "What BULLSHIT! I just saw you eating them yourself!" "Well, > I reasoned that you wouldn't want them back after I'd--" > "Shut up, you rascal! That's a flagrant > rationalization, even if you do end up convincing yourself > that it was your real motive." I agree with Damien here: when most people use "rationalization" they mean a reason offered that is anything but the real motive or reason for something. It's offered up merely as a pretext or to justify something and is a form of moral cover for something the person using it knows is wrong. Now, to be sure, Lee and others might be using the term to mean something else. Think of how, say, Marxists might talk about "rationalizing" production. They don't mean making excuses for it, but make it less chaotic. (Leave aside their economic theories are wrong and their policies, put into practice, tend to make production less rational or irrational.) Also, I fear, given some of the ways of looking at things here, some are engaging in "just so" reasoning: if something sounds good enough -- makes sense to someone -- than it's true or close enough not to matter. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 13:52:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:52:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Limits to the libertarian principle/was Re: Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative Message-ID: <968126.37649.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:29 PM, > BillK > wrote: > > Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of > force now, based > > on a speculation that damage might occur many many > years in the > > future? Surely not. > > What about the international scene? Should such principle > be extended > to all historical facts? I believe so, but did you have a particular case in mind where you think the principle would not be applicable? Someone mentioned having a draft if the country were invaded -- something libertarians should be against... I mean they should be against any draft (or other form of enslavement) as it initiates force. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 14:26:33 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:26:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Evo-psych Message-ID: <400283.39623.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > Quoting Dan : > > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Dan > >> > >> wrote: > >> > > >> > --- On Mon, 4/13/09, spike > >> wrote: > >> >> The best of times were these. > >> > > >> > All of you have to stop falling into this > nostalgia > >> funk. ?You're intelligent and creative enough to > come up > >> with new ideas and bounce them off each other. > ?Why not > >> focus on that and transcend this depressive > reminiscing? > >> > >> I have been rereading Accelerando, which > thoroughly mines > >> the > >> Extropian list of the early 90s for ideas.? > There > >> actually were not > >> more than a couple of dozen ideas over a 6 year > period of > >> time, so one > >> every three months would do it. > >> > >> Lots of new ideas, reformulating sociology in > terms of > >> evolutionary > >> psychology, cortical column simulation as in > Conway's Life > >> as a path > >> to AI, and using gravity gradient "space anchors" > as a way > >> to counter > >> light pressure effects on power satellites. > >> > >> But these topics don't generate discussion here. > > > > Let's try!? What's wrong with evolutionary > psychology?? To me, some? of it seems like a > rehash of earlier attempts to physicalize? > consciousness. > > Comments? > > ... I was just reading the first few pages of _Social > Darwinism in American thought_ ... > > I think Keith's analysis is certainly less than > accurate.? In fact I could mine this list easily and > find discussion on his above-list.? Nonetheless let's > kick it to the curb and discuss anything other than the > OctoMom's broad, in deference to the year of Darwin. Heck, I'd like to discuss engineering projects that could be done now on the cheap. Recall, many years ago, I brought up the topic of flooding the East African Rift. Granted, this won't do much to forward techno-progress; it could be done with an army of people with shovels and picks.* But it would lead to major -- and I hope positive -- changes in the region's climate and ecology. It'd also be a demonstration of how the planet could be easily reshaped. (Of course, reversing flooding in that area would be much, much harder. This is why I'd like to see the idea discussed.**) Regards, Dan * All that as to be done, if I'm right here, is open it up slightly near the northern end to allow seawater to "quickly" flood the Rift. The process would likely take years to complete. (Current seepage is too slow to do much more than create a salt lake near the northern end.) ** I'd also be afraid of losing a lot of fossils in the process. I think this might be ameliorated by something like a fleet autonomous rovers that do fossil hunting in the region. They could sample and photograph the region at close range and place the data on the web to do something like a "mechanical turk" process (i.e., like with Mars photos, people can just browse through the photos looking for interesting things, including fossils). From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 15 14:50:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:50:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Spreading beneficial ideas and institutions/was Re: The Evils of the West Message-ID: <565079.20583.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Lee > Corbin > wrote: >> On the world stage, this means trying to help all >> societies >> acquire the Western institutions that deliver the >> goods. > > Historical experience should show that such external "help" > is a > recipe for disaster - including to some extent for the > "helpers". There is a time honored way that beneficial ideas and institutions spread that seems to avoid or at least minimize these problems. This is to spread them via peaceful informal trade to allow them to diffuse. This allows individuals to decide what to accept or borrow on a local level. (Sure, there are network effects in many cases. If all your neighbors suddenly start using a different money, then this makes it very hard for you to not switch.:) This is much better, IMO, than using the IMF or the military to force feed foreigners ideas or institutions. Also, the ideas and institutions that many seem to cherish -- free markets, individualism, freedom of expression, religious tolerance, property rights -- all start out in this informal, diffuse fashion. It's not like some semi-fascist empire came in and imposed them on Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages in the name of helping its victims. Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 15:16:09 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:16:09 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <716038.19979.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <716038.19979.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/15 Dan : > Not in my book. ?This, in fact, is typically how statists argue: give up some freedom now for later on -- or trade off freedom for security. ?If one is going to do this setting aside of libertarian principles whenever there's a hypothetical risk -- no matter how unlikely -- then Eduard Bernstein (German socialist who argued explicitly for curtailing freedom now for a better society later) and FDR might as well be considered libertarians. How did Bernstein argue for curtailing freedom? His main differentiating feature from the Leninists was that he did not agree with violent revolution and curtailing of democratic rights. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 17:37:20 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:37:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904151037g22b8890cl4ec5d7b95038a7fa@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 3:42 PM, Dan wrote: > Mao was a disciple of what Western ideology? Why, inasmuch as marxism is certainly a western ideology I would have no doubt about that. Even though the Chinese cultural-revolution "self-criticism" may probably have been influenced in a few specific traits by the ch'an tradition as well. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 17:38:38 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:38:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Limits to the libertarian principle/was Re: Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <968126.37649.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <968126.37649.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904151038q236efbco2f9ad917f63cf8a8@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Dan wrote: > I believe so, but did you have a particular case in mind where you think the principle would not be applicable? ?Someone mentioned having a draft if the country were invaded -- something libertarians should be against... ?I mean they should be against any draft (or other form of enslavement) as it initiates force. I was concerned here with your personal position on the subject, in order to understand better the general context of your recent posts. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 14 20:56:25 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:56:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904100201j8e203f4g77452c3a329d09e8@mail.gmail.com> <49DF2B0E.9070901@libero.it> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> Il 14/04/2009 12.24, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/14 John K Clark: >> >> >>> The "Zero" is a Indian or Indochina invention. >>> They [Islam] are only involved in the transmission of the >>> concept to west Europe >> I know but I was trying to be generous; I figured I'd get enough flack as it >> is. And I'm sure that sometime in the last 800 years Islam has done >> something that is worth more than a bucket of warm spit, it must have; but >> I'll be damned if I can think of an example at the moment. > > On the basis of what you consider worthwhile, you could probably write > off most of the world's population over most of history. Most of the world population don't boast their accomplishments when they have nothing worth to boast. Muslims are desperate to show Islam is worth something so often they make up the most incredible claims. Like Muslims discovered America before Colombo or others so absurd that I have not the gut to rewrote here. They are a dying religion, without any accomplishment worth to show. But in the same time their religion teach them that it is Allah will that cause this. They can be dualistic, but too much dualism is unbearable. So defences kick in and some leave Islam, some stop believing, some start to do more of the same, other become self-destructive. It is surely terrible to be teach that you are the best, the master's religion, the people that must rule over the unbelievers and discover that you are poor, ignorant, despised, incapable to do anything worth to be sold to other. You came out of the desert when westerns discovered oil, you become independent from the Turks when the western helped you and defeated the Turks, you become rich when the western bought your oil. And you know that when the oil will be depleted, or no more requested, you will return in the desert to herd camels and goats. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 14 21:23:29 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:23:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Ketman In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904122219n387e9e1dl878b6f42f3aab5a7@mail.gmail.com> <49E34D53.30000@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E4FED1.80905@libero.it> Il 14/04/2009 12.36, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/14 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> We can not police and we are not expected to police the Muslims to >> differentiate the good and the evils. This is their duty. They can do it >> much better than us. >> What I would expect from them is a clear, unequivocal, take of distances >> from the people advocating violence against kafir, apostates, Jihad, >> Shaaria and so on. > > Why can't we police the Muslims? Should we have special police and > special laws for every religious, racial, and political group? In Italian there is a say: "Ci sei o ci fai?" The "policing" I'm speaking is not done by the police or by the government; it is done by the people. In this case, the Muslims. If in a Mosque there are hate preachers, the good people must complain with the head of the Mosque to show the preacher the exit door. If the head of the mosque is too tepid or support the hate preacher, the good people go to another mosque without hate preachers. If they stay, they are showing approval or indifference to hate preaching or are opportunists (like the current POTUS). What a Negro must think of the people going to a church where a racist pastor shout racist words against Negroes? I think the Negro would think the same a kafir would think of the Muslims going to a Mosque where an Imam shout hate words against kafirs. If the Christian congregation have the duty to kick out the racist pastor, the Muslim congregation have the duty to kick out the hateful Imam. If they don't they can not complain if the people brand them as racists, intolerable, dangerous. But now, too often, the Muslims are silent or rally around the hate preacher or deflect the critics. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Apr 15 20:04:22 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:04:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Opinions on Capitalism vs. Socialism In-Reply-To: <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> References: <365161.35727.qm@web36506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49D51FF2.3030100@libero.it> <7641ddc60904022125j3d423f9dof00e9d0954ef58ad@mail.gmail.com> <1238734806.5478.805.camel@hayek> <49D727C7.2000204@rawbw.com> <1238911196.5478.1012.camel@hayek> <49DAE7B3.1060606@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90904070030v10f8c5b6te31094fd7b5017af@mail.gmail.com> <6d342ad70904070344k42abe8fjb6deb7f9661ec6f9@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090410155518.022cba60@satx.rr.com> <49E3E228.6000602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090415150323.02670100@satx.rr.com> Another [ironic] perspective: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041402556.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR> Rush Builds A Revolution By Harold Meyerson Wednesday, April 15, 2009; A19 According to a Rasmussen poll released last week, 37 percent of Americans under age 30 prefer capitalism, 33 percent prefer socialism and 30 percent are undecided. Among all Americans, 53 percent prefer capitalism, 20 percent prefer socialism and 27 percent are undecided. How's that again? If you comb the annals of Americans' ideological preferences, you won't find figures like these. At socialism's apogee, presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs got 6 percent of the vote in the 1912 election. After that, it was pretty much all downhill -- until last week, anyway. Or consider this: In the first two decades of the 20th century, and again in the 1930s, there were substantial American socialist organizations that argued the case against capitalism. I recently came across some issues of a magazine that the League for Industrial Democracy, a group affiliated with the Socialist Party, published during the early '30s on the crises of capitalism and unemployment. Among its regular contributors were John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr. Today, America is home to no substantial socialist organizations, and virtually no public figures champion socialism's cause. So where do these numbers come from? Rasmussen didn't provide any data that clarify causality, but I think it's safe to infer that the havoc that Wall Street has wreaked upon the world over the past year and its reliance on American taxpayers to bail it out haven't exactly helped capitalism's cause. But there's more to these numbers. For one thing, they signal that the link between socialism and anti-Americanism has been weakened and, among the young, all but destroyed. The end of Soviet communism has meant that the United States no longer has a major adversary that professes to be socialist. The one remaining powerful Communist Party, China's, has opted for a capitalist economy. The violent threats to America today come from a branch of Islamic fundamentalists who wage war on all forms of modernity, socialism among them. And the actual existing socialists today are the social democrats who govern or are the chief opposition parties in Western Europe -- home to the nations with which we are most closely allied. The Soviet Union's collapse is surely responsible for some of the variations by age group that turn up in Rasmussen's polling: Thirty-somethings, while not quite so socialistic as 20-somethings, remain decidedly cooler on capitalism than their elders. The Left Bank of the Seine doesn't quite convey the terror that Stalin's gulag once inspired. Moreover, those Americans opting for socialism are doing so when socialists themselves aren't calling for, and don't believe in, the kind of revolutionary transformations -- the abolition of wage labor, say -- for which their forebears routinely campaigned in the days of Debs and the Depression. Today, the world's socialist and social democratic parties basically champion a more social form of capitalism, with tighter regulations on capital, more power for labor and an expanded public sector to do what the private sector cannot (such as providing universal access to health care). Which means there are real areas of overlap between European social democracy and American liberalism: The former has defined its Eden down to a form of social capitalism, while the latter, prompted by Wall Street's implosion, has upgraded its project to the creation of, well, a form of social capitalism. Doctrinal differences persist, but these overlaps certainly underpin Rasmussen's polling: While Republicans preferred capitalism to socialism 11 to 1, Democrats favored it by 39 percent to 30 percent. The data on the young are particularly telling. Twenty-somethings are more open to socialism -- or social capitalism -- than 30-somethings not only because they never lived through the Soviet threat but because the economy, during the years in which deregulatory policy and Wall Street financialization were at their height, hasn't worked very well for them. Americans under 29 scored well to the left of the general public in a recent survey by the Center for American Progress, and voters under 30 backed Barack Obama by a 34-point margin in November, 66 percent to 32 percent. The young may now disdain Wall Street -- but what do they know of socialism, past and present? Who even speaks of socialism in America today? The answer, of course, is the demagogic right. According to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and their ilk, Obama is taking America down the Socialist Road. As Benjamin Sarlin has noted on the Web site the Daily Beast, the talkmeisters of the right have linked a doctrine that never commanded much support in America to a president whose approval rating hovers around 60 percent and much higher than that among the young. Rush and his boys are doing what Gene Debs and his comrades never really could. In tandem with Wall Street, they are building socialism in America. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 23:22:24 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:22:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > --- On Tue, 4/14/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Yes, self-criticism in pretty Western all right, >> but on the other hand, surely no one elevated >> self-criticism to the heights advocated by Mao. >> Every neighborhood cell in his reign had to >> undergo extremely intense "self-criticism >> sessions" in which anyone at all, IIRC, could >> be accused of being insufficiently Red or >> insufficiently obedient to the path Mao laid down. > > Mao was a disciple of what Western ideology? Fellow by the name of K. Marx. Used to be really big in the Comintern circles. You've probably heard of him. Actually, here I was saying "but on the other hand" there was even more severe "self-criticism" than anything anticipated in the west. > Also, these self-criticism sessions are not > really like the signature trait of Western > self-critical attitude. The former is merely > following an external model -- specifically, > conforming to a totalitarian ideology -- > that's the hallmark of cult behavior the world over. > It's not really, to that extent, self-criticism. > It's function is social: conformity to the community > however defined. The latter is usually toxic to > that kind of conformity. Don't you agree? Yeah. >> No, what I meant by the Western institutions that "deliver >> the goods" was free-market capitalism, rule of law, and >> very high regard for private property. Well---at least >> we *used* to highly regard all three... > > I would agree with these Western institutions. > > They would, however, in my mind, not go along > with some of the proposals made by some here > about treating certain individuals merely because > of their religious beliefs and not because of > some particular actions they've actually taken > (remember that quaint view of "innocent until > proven guilty" and also of matters of law > dealing with actions and NOT beliefs?). Right. The extreme actions being suggested by "some people" here, such as expulsions of dangerous minorities, would in effect "rise above principle". But, as was argued, sometimes in history that seems to be the right thing to do (e.g. what Lincoln had to do to win, what FDR was afraid of, how the Catholics saved France from Protestants in 1572, etc.). Lee P.S. That latter seems unimportant to us, but it was *very* important to them. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 23:33:07 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:33:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090415004013.0230e600@satx.rr.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <49E4C25A.8050505@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090414122941.0870fac0@satx.rr.com> <49E57152.2050407@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090415004013.0230e600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49E66EB3.4040506@rawbw.com> Damien wrote: > At 10:32 PM 4/14/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >>>> a *rational* response ... more reasoning and argumentation > >>> Perhaps it's worth mentioning that "rationalization" is exactly *not* >>> any of those things. It's the process of cooking up fake "reasons" >>> for an emotional response. >> >> I agree totally that it's a "cooking up" process. But the >> usual usage appears to be truth-irrelevant > > Au contraire. "Knave, why did you take those tarts?" "Ah, I saw them > piled up in the open window and feared that four and twenty blackbirds > would swoop down and steal them." "What BULLSHIT! I just saw you eating > them yourself!... That's a flagrant rationalization, even if you do > end up convincing yourself that it was your real motive." Well, we disagree on word usage. That's all. Though I cannot resist reminding you of what the definition of "rationalization" appears to be: > > Well, wikipedia says that in psychology, rationalization is > > > > Rationalization (psychology), the process > > of constructing a logical justification for > > a decision that was originally arrived at > > through a different mental process But you may have just been having fun with your knavish example, and I can be *so* literal at times, alas. When honest, each of us thinks that he or she is making honest confabulations (if I dare risk another loaded word), i.e., coming up with what sound like good arguments for whatever it is that we want to persuade others or ourselves of. To revert to your usage of terms (for the sake of definitional peace), sometimes one is aware that he or she is deliberately (falsely) rationalizing, and sometimes not. People have told me of siblings who evidently really believed their most brazenly contrived false explanations of their own behavior. So it's possible that in principle there is no way to know with extremely high probability whether one is inventing things that are valid, or inventing explanations that are invalid. I think that for me, friends and critics are everything: I have the utmost respect for some thinkers I know, and it's *not* (I keep telling myself) because they think that *I* make sense most of the time. Oh---yes---I know! You see, they don't hesitate to call me on stuff that later on I acknowledge (if not right just then) that I was off-base about. So what I meant by the subject line: "Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative" could be rephrased as: Creating explanations and apparently rigorous or rational arguments (whether or not any self-deceit or plain deceit is involved) is superior to *not* affording any argument at all. Lee Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 23:36:21 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:36:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What Dan is that? (was Re: Evo-psych) In-Reply-To: <400283.39623.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <400283.39623.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E66F75.5020204@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > Heck, I'd like to discuss engineering projects > that could be done now on the cheap. Recall, > many years ago, I brought up the topic of > flooding the East African Rift.... Are you the Technotranscendence type Dan that used to frequent this list? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 15 23:44:23 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:44:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Spreading beneficial ideas and institutions/was Re: The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <565079.20583.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <565079.20583.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E67157.1010007@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > There is a time honored way that beneficial > ideas and institutions spread that seems to > avoid or at least minimize these problems. > This is to spread them via peaceful informal > trade to allow them to diffuse. Trade had nothing to do with it. People had been trading for thousands of years. I would argue that trade flourished far better under very anti-democratic Rome than it did under comparable freer states. The western institutions that we cherish took many hundreds of years to slowly develop, and it just one place. It probably was just a historical fluke which, if the singularity doesn't save us, will die out. What was key was a weird balance of power between the religious authority (the Pope), the kings, and the barons who could hole up in a castle (because of Europe's topography) and defy one or the other big powers. EVEN THEN, it took hundreds of years as King an parliament on one small island, and a tenuous relationship between a few folks in the Netherlands, before the really great institutions were activated on anything like a large scale. And if America had failed between 1776 and 1830, the whole idea of individual liberty might have seemed to everyone to be sadly infeasible. Lee > This allows individuals to decide what to accept or borrow on a local level. (Sure, there are network effects in many cases. If all your neighbors suddenly start using a different money, then this makes it very hard for you to not switch.:) This is much better, IMO, than using the IMF or the military to force feed foreigners ideas or institutions. < From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 07:50:29 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:50:29 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Evils of the West In-Reply-To: <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Right. The extreme actions being suggested by > "some people" here, such as expulsions of > dangerous minorities, would in effect "rise > above principle". But, as was argued, sometimes > in history that seems to be the right thing to > do (e.g. what Lincoln had to do to win, what > FDR was afraid of, how the Catholics saved > France from Protestants in 1572, etc.). > Your examples are, of course, examples of wartime ferocity. Your original discussion was about initiating a peacetime atrocity. You'll have to declare war on Muslims first, for your original suggestion to be implemented and supported by the population. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 12:07:42 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:07:42 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/15 painlord2k at libero.it : > Most of the world population don't boast their accomplishments when they > have nothing worth to boast. > > Muslims are desperate to show Islam is worth something so often they make up > the most incredible claims. Like Muslims discovered America before Colombo > or others so absurd that I have not the gut to rewrote here. Most cultures, nations, even small towns make grandiose claims about how good they are or what outstanding world figures they have produced. In fact, even great nations make grandiose claims of intrinsic superiority and use this to morally justify adding to their empire by conquering weaker nations. > They are a > dying religion, without any accomplishment worth to show. And the accomplishments of other religions are? > But in the same > time their religion teach them that it is Allah will that cause this. They > can be dualistic, but too much dualism is unbearable. So defences kick in > and some leave Islam, some stop believing, some start to do more of the > same, other become self-destructive. > > It is surely terrible to be teach that you are the best, the master's > religion, the people that must rule over the unbelievers and discover that > you are poor, ignorant, despised, incapable to do anything worth to be sold > to other. You came out of the desert when westerns discovered oil, you > become independent from the Turks when the western helped you and defeated > the Turks, you become rich when the western bought your oil. And you know > that when the oil will be depleted, or no more requested, you will return in > the desert to herd camels and goats. I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous; it just isn't any more ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most other religions, like Christianity. It is *secularism* that has made the Christian world a nicer place, and secularism will eventually make the Islamic world a better place also. Liberal Muslims will turn around and say, like liberal Jews and Christians, that God didn't really mean it when he said that you have to stone adulterers and Sabbath-breakers. Having said all this, it sounds like you just don't like Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, and no evidence is going to change your mind, any more than Hitler could have been convinced by any evidence purporting to show that the Jews were benign. -- Stathis Papaioannou From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 13:00:25 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:00:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To all racists here Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> Hi there. Could you perhaps, you know, try to talk also of other things besides your hatred for one or another ethnic group? Not that I am proposing a ban or something. Feel free to spam the list as much as you like, we will just continue to ignore you. I just thought I would let you know that I find your racist rants BORING. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 16 13:39:53 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:39:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What Dan is that? Message-ID: <874306.44877.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Dan wrote: >> Heck, I'd like to discuss engineering projects >> that could be done now on the cheap.? Recall, >> many years ago, I brought up the topic of flooding >> the East African Rift.... > > Are you the Technotranscendence type Dan > that used to frequent this list? I've never left the list. I'm just using a different email account now. Of course, my level of participation has varied over the years. And I've broken free of my handlers. Horrors! :) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 16 13:44:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:44:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] To all racists here Message-ID: <588020.52755.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Hi there. Could you perhaps, you > know, try to talk also of other > things besides your hatred for one or another ethnic > group? > > Not that I am proposing a ban or something. Feel free to > spam the list > as much as you like, we will just continue to ignore you. I > just > thought I would let you know that I find your racist rants > BORING. I think they are not racist per se, but just anti a specific religious group -- though someone did mention Arabs disparaging at one point. (Are Arabs considered a racial-ethnic group or a linguistic group?) But that said I agree with your sentiment and think we should focus more on other topics. What about my low tech scheme to flood the Rift Valley? Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 14:18:00 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:18:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] To all racists here In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/16 Eschatoon Magic : > Hi there. Could you perhaps, you know, try to talk also of other > things besides your hatred for one or another ethnic group? > > Not that I am proposing a ban or something. Feel free to spam the list > as much as you like, we will just continue to ignore you. I just > thought I would let you know that I find your racist rants BORING. Does anyone ever get moderated or told to stop it for being off topic for the list? I can't remember it happening very often. Discussions about personal identity is the only thing that immediately comes to mind, and that is (I take it) because many people are sick of it rather than because it's off topic. -- Stathis Papaioannou From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 14:47:03 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:47:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Call for Extropy List Moderators Message-ID: <140FD0E38BC24054A36299788F449700@DFC68LF1> "We will ask moderators to enforce list rules, and to encourage posting more in line with the distinct flavor and intended purposes of this list." (Max More 9:41 a.m., April 17, 2009) If you would like to work with us to encourage a wide range of transhumanist topics which reflect an extropic perspective, please email me off list. If you would like to work with us to extricate non-productive discourse, please email me off list. No one is currently breaking list rules, other than some over postings. However, list rules state that discussions are of an extropic perspective. Many thanks, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 16:08:53 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:08:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] To all racists here In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904160908n1e079d1ame70dec457f6ce3da@mail.gmail.com> Posters have been moderated in the past, and maybe still are. Not my style though, it is so simple to ignore spammers. On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/16 Eschatoon Magic : > >> Hi there. Could you perhaps, you know, try to talk also of other >> things besides your hatred for one or another ethnic group? >> >> Not that I am proposing a ban or something. Feel free to spam the list >> as much as you like, we will just continue to ignore you. I just >> thought I would let you know that I find your racist rants BORING. > > Does anyone ever get moderated or told to stop it for being off topic > for the list? I can't remember it happening very often. Discussions > about personal identity is the only thing that immediately comes to > mind, and that is (I take it) because many people are sick of it > rather than because it's off topic. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 16:15:28 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:15:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70904140701w1fa198b1lc51eefe8a7e7002c@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E49311.2040100@kurtz-fernhout.com> <55ad6af70904140701w1fa198b1lc51eefe8a7e7002c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <16D71098DA234E55BFEB8D0F30B9A538@DFC68LF1> I took the test. http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/06/Brain-Age Before I release my brain's age, I'll try it again (just to make sure). Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 9:01 AM To: diybio at googlegroups.com; kanzure at gmail.com; ExI chat list; World Transhumanist Association Discussion List Subject: [ExI] Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul D. Fernhout Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:43 AM Subject: FYI: Experimental Man To: Bryan Bishop http://www.experimentalman.com/ "This website is designed to be a resource for people wanting to learn more about personalized medicine - the tailoring of diagnostics and health care to individuals - and its implications. It features the results of one man's extensive testing of his genes, environmental impacts, brain and body, along with commentary, analysis and musings about the usefulness and the impact of this information on individual human beings like you. The effort is to explain and humanize a new wave of science that is likely to profoundly change our vision of our health, and who we are." --Paul Fernhout _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 16:18:02 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:18:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70904131309l6028853ble388fca68e3db4b@mail.gmail.com> References: <55ad6af70904131207i37ecc8b4n4de8debb3caf8188@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70904131309l6028853ble388fca68e3db4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8327E99DF3EB4274BBA447FA33D244D9@DFC68LF1> How would you explain this idea of one type of bio-artifical eovlution as it relates to the human progeny? Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 3:09 PM To: ExI chat list; kanzure at gmail.com Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) Kicking it up a notch. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bryan Bishop Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:07 PM Subject: DIY DNA synthesis (more) To: diybio at googlegroups.com, kanzure at gmail.com Hey all, I sent an email to a friendly polymer-advocate and figure it should also be archived here for prosperity's sake. I'm glad someone liked the idea of do-it-yourself DNA synthesis. Here's the (unedited) email-- Hey David, So I was up this morning again doing some reading on ways that we could do DIY DNA synthesis. I've produced a bibliography of interesting papers relevant to the idea. For some reason when I first came across DNA synthesis, I assumed it was only solid-phase, but I'm glad to find out that there are photolabile-group-deprotection (etc.) methods that make it possible to synthesize genomes via photolithography. BibTeX bibliography: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/bibliographies/DIY-DNA-synth.bib Now, a friend of mine- the one on campus here building a reprap- suggested using LCDs as a reprogrammable photomask. There are many papers that have talked about doing this, and a few that actually demonstrate it. The oldest papers go back into the late 1980s where they were talking about electro-optical adaptive phase masks and such. Anyway. That's pretty neat, but it requires this terribly large lense to make it work. But .. in my literature search .. I once found a paper describing micromolding in microchannels via capillary force. In other words, the polymers literally crawl up the channels and then cure. There has even been a paper on doing this for making microemitters (organic/polymer LEDs). But the problem with this method is that it requires 10^-6 torr for the vacuum deposition process of the metal electrode or something. Yikes. [[as it turns out, Hong H Lee and friends have a cathode contact metal transfer method that can be used here, but it seems to also require gnarly chemicals]] Other papers talk about using ink-jet printers to print out OLEDs, which is fine, but they still sometimes require those metal contacts. Maybe there's a way around this? What I would like to be able to do is print out a PCB pattern from my printer and use an ink-jet compatible polymer to draw the LEDs. And then have a matrix-addressable-array of my tiny microemitters (they don't have to be *too* tiny, and they don't have to last forever)- so that I could rapidly switch the electronics on/off so that I can activate light in different regions, or ideally control each LED individually all at once. Anyway, that's just basic electronics. Maybe you have some ideas or general directions in which to point me? An electrodeless light-emitting diode may *sound* impossible or crazy, or mad and crazy, but that's what I'm here for :-). Ink-jet-printablephosphorescent organic light-emitting-diode devices http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JSIDE80 00016000012001229000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes I don't have access to that paper. Are you able to get it? So, if there's a way to do LCD-based synthesis without the lense, that would be ideal. But alternatively, printing out an array of LEDs isn't entirely terrible, as long as the color "just so happens to be" the right wavelength for the photocurible DNA synthesis steps. Blah. This is getting complicated. But other than that, things sound like they are about to get interesting, especially if you're able to "print out" genomes from an inkjet printer (more or less). - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 16 16:20:55 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:20:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] technology and culture dynamics in Islam In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E75AE7.1070700@libero.it> Il 14/04/2009 6.41, John Grigg ha scritto: > My question for the list members is why did Islamic culture, which in > medieval times had a technological and cultural heyday that greatly > surpassed Europe, fall so short in the intervening centuries that > lead up to the present era? First, Islam come from Arabia on the back of warriors of many tribes united for the first time in history. The technological, cultural and economic level of the region was very low. The breakthrough was, IMHO, possible only because the Persian and the Byzantine had mauled each other for over a century of wars. Byzantine was the winners of these war, but their religious politics made the populations of Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia not very supportive of their rule. The populations of the places considered the invasion a way to free themselves from external rulers and heavy taxes. With the conquest of Persia and all the M.E., the Arabs controlled many large urban centres where technology and science and culture at large were very developed for the standard of the times. They don't tried very hard to islamicize the dhimmified populations, because this would severely reduce the taxes they could levy of them. This happenend in the East as in the West, with the Hindus. They were too much to be all killed and killing them all (as they are heathens and not "people of the Book") would make the conquest worthless (no slaves, no taxes). This lasted until the Crusades, when the Turks migrated in the M.E. and adopted Islam. The Turks take on the Byzantine (that called for help in the West Europe causing the Crusades and large migrations there) and the Hindus again (Tamerlane conducted many military campaigns that spanned from Byzantium to India and destroyed many "not enough Islamic" muslims in his path). After centuries of this pressure, the Christians and the Jews under Islam domination were always more impoverished and in lower numbers. This caused the reduction of free / unorthodox thinkers. The more famous were Avicenna and Averroe, but their attempt to reconcile Islam and Reason was rejected and Al-Ghazali with "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" won the argument rejecting Reason. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers#Legacy > Al-Ghazali's insistence on a radical divine immanence in the natural > world has been posited as one of the reasons that the spirit of > scientific inquiry later withered in Islamic lands. If "Allah's hand > is not chained", then there was no point in discovering the alleged > laws of nature. For example: > > ...our opponent claims that the agent of the burning is the fire > exclusively;? this is a natural, not a voluntary agent, and cannot > abstain from what is in its nature when it is brought into contact > with a receptive substratum. This we deny, saying: The agent of the > burning is God, through His creating the black in the cotton and the > disconnexion of its parts, and it is God who made the cotton burn and > made it ashes either through the intermediation of angels or without > intermediation. For fire is a dead body which has no action, and what > is the proof that it is the agent? Indeed, the philosophers have no > other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, > when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only a > simultaneity, not a causation, and, in reality, there is no other > cause but God. > I have read it was among other things, the Mongol invasions that > devastated entire kingdoms, and also the rise of Muslim theocracies > over the secular states. The problem within Islam is that is based on the Quran and Mohammed life (Hadit, Sira, Shaaria). These are so full of contradictions that it is impossible to rationalize them. The main problem is that the Quran is considered the "Word" of Allah, increated like Allah. But Mohammed had not a good memory (like many liars), so he introduced the sura about "The abrogator and the abrogated" that, to put it simple, say that what came after is better that what came first, Allah know best, don't ask more or else... So, the only way to rationalize this was to use dualism. But dualism is not very conductive to science. Science is about truth. And the truth must be one and not self contradictory. The Muslims conquered so many rich civilizations and their wealth, but they was not able or willing to upkeep them. Rothbard wrote that capital goods are like other goods that need to be replaced with the time as they are consumed. The intellectuals are like capital goods, if you don't invest enough resources in them your capital decrease with the time (as the goods are consumed). So, with the time, the intellectual capital of Islam depleted itself. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 16 16:48:31 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:48:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man Message-ID: <911214.45187.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > I took the test. > http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/06/Brain-Age > > > Before I release my brain's age, I'll try it again (just to > make sure). Haven't taken it yet, but I wonder how the time of day it's taken and other conditions influence the results. I can imagine someone with a youthful brain taking it under really bad conditions and at the wrong time concluding her brain is not so youthful -- and someone with a not so youthful brain taking it under ideal conditions and concluding, in comparison with the former person, that his brain is in good shape (or better than hers). Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 16 16:48:46 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:48:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> Message-ID: <49E7616E.7010709@libero.it> Il 16/04/2009 14.07, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/15 painlord2k at libero.it: >> They are a >> dying religion, without any accomplishment worth to show. > And the accomplishments of other religions are? Christianity changed the attitude about manual labour. This is, for what I know, very different from the other major religions. The attitude to manual labour changed because Jesus was a carpenter so it would be impossible to disparage his work. In Christianity, the manual labour is a way of salvation. Maybe not the preferred, but a way. > I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous; it just isn't any more > ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most other religions, like > Christianity. That you can not or want not see the differences will not change the fact that there are differences between the major religions. From where do you think come the "created equal with innate rights"? > It is *secularism* that has made the Christian world a > nicer place, and secularism will eventually make the Islamic world a > better place also. Liberal Muslims will turn around and say, like > liberal Jews and Christians, that God didn't really mean it when he > said that you have to stone adulterers and Sabbath-breakers. But, secularism is a feature of Christianity, like it or not, from the starting point. The Caesar / God thing. The other religions never did this distinction. Muslims can not do what you say and call themselves Muslims. This because their founder not only talk the talk but walk the walk. Where Jesus told "Who is without sin launch the first stone" and them told the adulterers "Go and don't sin any more", Mohammed killed the adulterer (male) that confessed to him his sin (he ignored him three times, then he killed him). Than, try to explain how Allah / Mohammed don't really mean it. > Having said all this, it sounds like you just don't like Muslims, I explain the reasons. > especially Arab Muslims, and no evidence is going to change your mind, Neither your. > any more than Hitler could have been convinced by any evidence > purporting to show that the Jews were benign. Or like leftists before the WW2 could not be convinced that Nazi ideology was worst than capitalism and democracies. Or like leftist before the fall of the Wall, that were touting the superiority of socialism in USSR and China. But thank you to comparing me to Hitler. It show your lack of arguments and the fall-back to damage-control mode / attack the messenger as the message is too hard to confute. I tried to talk hard facts, Islamic texts, history and so on. You talk stereotypes, gossips, opinions unsupported. There was any fact I brought up that someone was able to refute? I think not. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Apr 16 17:23:40 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:23:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904101113v632fa29ah4ab4914d945ced78@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer><49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> Message-ID: <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> "Stathis Papaioannou" > I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous All religions are ridiculous but some are more ridiculous than others. > it just isn't any more ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most other > religions I disagree. In the present day I think Islam causes more evil and keeps more people backward than any other religion on the planet even though it is not the largest. I don't see how else to explain that even though they have a huge amount of natural recourses all the poorest countries in the world are Islamic. They are about a billion strong but have produced remarkably few scientists of distinction, or inventors, or artists, or good businessmen. They produce very few books that the non Islamic world think is worth reading and they read even fewer books by non Moslems. All this is not an opinion this is a fact and needs an explanation. I believe one reason is than more people take Islam seriously than other religions. Really seriously! They believe it to such a fanatical degree it would even put to shame the faith that dwellers in the Bible Belt of the USA have for their particular brand of mumbo jumbo. > Liberal Muslims will [.] Ah the Liberal Muslim, a wonderful but illusive creature some believe is related to the Lock Ness Monster, others say the Abominable Snowman. > it sounds like you just don't like Muslims, especially Arab Muslims Do you find them loveable? > no evidence is going to change your mind, any more than Hitler could have > been convinced by any evidence purporting to show that the Jews were > benign. The Extropian List is well known for being a bastion of political correctness, I mean we all know that all cultures are equal and none are inherently evil; so it is with a heavy heart I must say that from your above statement it almost seems like you don't like Nazi culture very much. John K Clark From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 18:21:22 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:21:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Races, cultures and religions (EP) Message-ID: Discussing the specifics of religions is not really useful. Understanding why humans have them at all might be. See "Evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war." In this context it doesn't matter what the founders said, they can all foster behavior as vicious as the situation calls for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_II There really are races and they differ. The reason for the divergence in the last 60k years is Darwinian selection in a Malthusian environment. The culture at the time determined what traits were being selected. Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian. The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively successful groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing their share of the population, while other groups produced less, so that their share declined. But unusually in England, this selection for men was based on economic success from at least 1250, not success in violence as in some other pre-industrial societies. The richest male testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the middle ages. At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more ?capitalist? attitudes. The highly capitalistic nature of English society by 1800 ? individualism, low time preference rates, long work hours, high levels of human capital ? may thus stem from the nature of the Darwinian struggle in a very stable agrarian society in the long run up to the Industrial Revolution. The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality. http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf You need a background in modern evolution and evolutionary psychology to really appreciate this work. Keith Henson From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 18:39:26 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:39:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] technology and culture dynamics in Islam In-Reply-To: <49E75AE7.1070700@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> <49E75AE7.1070700@libero.it> Message-ID: If Islam is a cultural bug (and hopefully not a botnet), how can we hack it to make it get with the program and stop being such a bloody nuisance? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu Apr 16 18:48:59 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:48:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Races, cultures and religions (EP) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Discussing the specifics of religions is not really useful. Understanding why humans have them at all might be. ?See "Evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war." In this context it doesn't matter what the founders said; all religions can foster behavior as vicious as the situation calls for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_II There really are races and they differ. ?The reason for the divergence in the last 60k years is Darwinian selection in a Malthusian environment. ?The culture at the time determined what traits were being selected. Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian. The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively successful groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing their share of the population, while other groups produced less, so that their share declined. But unusually in England, this selection for men was based on economic success from at least 1250, not success in violence as in some other pre-industrial societies. The richest male testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the middle ages. At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more ?capitalist? attitudes. The highly capitalistic nature of English society by 1800 ? individualism, low time preference rates, long work hours, high levels of human capital ? may thus stem from the nature of the Darwinian struggle in a very stable agrarian society in the long run up to the Industrial Revolution. The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality. http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf You need a background in modern evolution and evolutionary psychology to really appreciate his work. Keith Henson From kanzure at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 18:50:47 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:50:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) In-Reply-To: <8327E99DF3EB4274BBA447FA33D244D9@DFC68LF1> References: <55ad6af70904131207i37ecc8b4n4de8debb3caf8188@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70904131309l6028853ble388fca68e3db4b@mail.gmail.com> <8327E99DF3EB4274BBA447FA33D244D9@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904161150vd0e6c67q6c39e121fdcf85de@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > How would you explain this idea of one type of bio-artifical eovlution as it > relates to the human progeny? Have you heard of Hugh Rienhoff? article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-02/ff_diygenetics?currentPage=all his site: http://www.mydaughtersdna.org/ Google Tech Talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WOaQhjWmRU "Nobody can say for sure what lies ahead for Beatrice, because no one really knows what's wrong with her. Hugh has taken her to see some of the nation's finest medical experts in hopes of finding a diagnosis, but the doctors have all been baffled by the girl's strange array of symptoms. This has left her in a sort of diagnostic purgatory, making her illness all the more fearsome and traumatic. Families facing this kind of medical uncertainty are often paralyzed by their distress. But rather than give in to his anguish, Hugh Rienhoff made an extraordinary decision: He would dig into Beatrice's genetic code and find the answer himself. A biotechnology consultant by day, Rienhoff has been an avid student of clinical genetics since he earned his medical degree nearly 30 years ago. Now he has used this expertise to transform his Bay Area home into a makeshift genetics lab. Surrounded by his children's artwork and bookshelves loaded with his wife's political literature, Rienhoff set about sequencing a number of Beatrice's genes, preparing samples using secondhand equipment and turning to public databases to interpret the results. On the desk in his attic workspace are a pair of white binders stuffed with charts detailing 20,000 of Beatrice's base pairs; the data for nearly 1 billion can be accessed from a nearby PC. Whenever he has a spare moment, Rienhoff sequesters himself in this cluttered, carpeted room and sifts through his daughter's DNA, one nucleotide at a time. He is hunting for the single genetic quirk responsible for Beatrice's woes?an adenine in place of a guanine, perhaps, or an extra cytosine in a key location. If he can find the culprit, he figures, maybe he can find a treatment, too." In this case, it's a father using DNA sequencing to hunt down single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), i.e. single points of mutation in his daughter's genome, and then comparing them with the use of a bioinformatics database to what those nucleotides tend to be instead. Most of our genomes are mostly the same except for the SNPs. So, he's using some eyes and ears into his familial genome. Can we put some very tiny fingers in there to tweak things? I always thought of the "medical bay" in the Star Trek episodes as sort of like a really fancy kitchen. Almost every house, every apartment has a 'kitchen'. And now almost every house has support for computer tech. And automobiles. Why not also DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis? Health is kind of, important. What comes next if everyone has DNA synthesis in their homes or at least for their bodies? You have the ability to download genomes over the internet, or at least interesting new genes from the "blog feeds" (the "gene pool" gets somewhat more complicated). So, I can see this being interesting and worth working on. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 18:50:54 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:50:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] technology and culture dynamics in Islam In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> <49E75AE7.1070700@libero.it> Message-ID: <20090416145054.4yrqh9tk0kgo0ssk@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Dagon Gmail : > If Islam is a cultural bug (and hopefully not a botnet), how can we > hack it to make it get with the program and stop being such a > bloody nuisance? Shall we move from this topic for a little while Dagon? I realize you are adding an investogatory spin into the theme, but it still is a bit tired and people seem to be bored with this general topic. Natasha From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 16 18:57:17 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:57:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <580930c20904140459h7356698eg14e3e18b326876bf@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E36888.7030408@libero.it> <580930c20904140459h7356698eg14e3e18b326876bf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E77F8D.7000706@libero.it> Il 14/04/2009 13.59, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > In fact, most muslim military attacks are perceived even by the most > fanatical jihadists as retaliatory or defensive in nature, not as a > step in a world domination plan. This is in the dualistic nature of Islam: Mecca : self defence prohibited Medina I: Self defence not-obligatory Medina II: Self defence obligatory (defensive jihad) Medina III: Aggression obligatory (offensive jihad) This is not so strange if you think that "oppression" is for a Muslims the fact that unbelievers exists. "Oppression" is a woman going out alone without a man to control her. "Oppression" is the sound of bells of a Church. So, be not fooled. Their "oppression" is not our "oppression". What, Hizbollah call "resistance" is resistance to the existence of Israel, not resistance to the occupation of the West bank, Gaza or part of the Lebanon. When they say that they don't want harm innocent, they are sincere; what is omitted is there are no innocents unbelievers. After they are formally invited to change their religion and have not do so, they are fair game. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 19:06:53 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:06:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] technology and culture dynamics in Islam In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <49E3DD60.4010609@rawbw.com> <2d6187670904132141y6614f533yd21f327c5b529249@mail.gmail.com> <49E75AE7.1070700@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/16 Dagon Gmail : > If Islam is a cultural bug (and hopefully not a botnet), how can we > hack it to make it get with the program and stop being such a > bloody nuisance? *What* to do is obvious from simple EP theory. Reduce the population growth to zero or at least below the growth of the local economy. *How* to do this is the hard question. Any ideas? (Releasing smallpox is not acceptable, though if pressed hard enough the Russians probably will.) Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 16 19:09:11 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:09:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E77F8D.7000706@libero.it> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E36888.7030408@libero.it> <580930c20904140459h7356698eg14e3e18b326876bf@mail.gmail.com> <49E77F8D.7000706@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416140810.02426330@satx.rr.com> At 08:57 PM 4/16/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: >When [Muslims] say that they don't want harm innocent, they are >sincere; what is omitted is there are no innocents unbelievers. >After they are formally invited to change their religion and have >not do so, they are fair game. Isn't that exactly your own attitude (and perhaps Lee's) to them? Damien Broderick From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 16 19:30:29 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:30:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) Message-ID: <828091.18856.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Have you heard of Hugh Rienhoff? > > article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-02/ff_diygenetics?currentPage=all > his site: http://www.mydaughtersdna.org/ [big snip] This brings up the interesting notion of more aggressive sequencing of the genomes of all known living things via DIYers. Just as a lot of astronomy -- well, spotting comets and asteroids and not stuff like looking for GRBs -- is done by amateur astronomers, why can't DIY genomicists (correct term) just sequence the DNA of local flaura, fauna, etc. and share results online? Or is this already being done? I think it might increase the pace of logging these genomes -- rather than having episodic announcements like "dog genome sequenced" in the big journals. Of course, there's the downside of quality control, but that shouldn't be a show-stopper in my opinion. Regards, Dan From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 16 19:39:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:39:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Chattering Hemisphere Message-ID: <49E78974.70009@rawbw.com> Jill Taylor, PhD (in brain science, no less), wrote some very interesting passages in her book, "My Stroke of Insight". Here is a publisher's description: On the morning of December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in the left side of her brain. A neuroanatomist by profession, she observed her own mind completely deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life, all within the space of four brief hours. As the damaged left side of her brain--the rational, grounded, detail- and time-oriented side--swung in and out of function, Taylor alternated between two distinct and opposite realties: the euphoric nirvana of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace; and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized Jill was having a stroke, and enabled her to seek help before she was lost completely. However, on page 32 she wrote Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as "brain chatter". It is that voice reminding you to pick up bananas on your way home and that calculating intelligence that knows when you have to do your laundry. There is vast individual variation in the speed at which our minds function. For some, our dialog of brain chatter runs so fast that we can barely keep up with what we are thinking (!) Others of us think in language so slowly that it takes a long time for us to comprehend. So she says here and in a couple of other places that before her stroke this chatter was virtually non-stop. Now I'm not that way, and have never been, (although I become more so with age). Since both hemisphere are necessary (I gather) for almost all thought, the left one is doing something that doesn't involve words when I work on chess problems and often when I do math. I think that there are many other situations too that go non-verbal, but haven't pinned them down yet. Is what she's relating partly a woman thing? What about you? Are you hearing brain chatter virtually all the time? (My guess is that some very, very verbal people, e.g. many Ashkenazi highly Orthodox Jews, somehow do almost all their thinking with words strongly involved, while non-visualizers (of every persuasion) do so less, e.g. Feynman did a lot of visual thinking, and most extremely smart people use *all* brain modes). Love to hear what you think, or what you hear. :) Lee From kanzure at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 19:52:15 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:52:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more) In-Reply-To: <828091.18856.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <828091.18856.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904161252k76702ed4oe42072746303cd94@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Dan wrote: > --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: >> Have you heard of Hugh Rienhoff? >> >> article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-02/ff_diygenetics?currentPage=all >> his site: http://www.mydaughtersdna.org/ > > [big snip] > > This brings up the interesting notion of more aggressive sequencing of the genomes of all known living > things via DIYers. ?Just as a lot of astronomy -- well, spotting comets and asteroids and not stuff like > looking for GRBs -- is done by amateur astronomers, why can't DIY genomicists (correct term) just sequence > the DNA of local flaura, fauna, etc. and share results online? ?Or is this already being done? ?I think it might > increase the pace of logging these genomes -- rather than having episodic announcements like "dog genome > sequenced" in the big journals. ?Of course, there's the downside of quality control, but that shouldn't be > a show-stopper in my opinion. Look up "BioWeatherMap". http://bioweathermap.org/ "Ever wonder how the microbial communities living on cross-walk buttons in Boston compare to those in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or the cross-walk nearest your home? We're going to find out and you can get involved. Meet up at points around the city, swab crosswalk buttons with Q-tips, and bring the samples back to a central location. The samples will be sent for DNA sequencing. A few weeks later, receive analysis results and learn about the microbes that were living on the crosswalk button they swabbed. The data will be published on a map, so results for different crosswalk buttons can be compared." - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 20:32:57 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:32:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" Message-ID: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> I just finished a fairly quick read-through of this article. Some misquotes of data, but it is perceptible in taking on Haraway's use of cyborg to soften the blow of transhumanist technologies. Nonetheless, it is quite beclouding. Would anyone like to comment on the last sentence: "... transhumanism is at root not grounded simply in the embracing of technological promise (as say Kaku suggests) but rather in a radical demythologised lifeworld, incapable of supporting moral discourse." Natasha From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 20:42:18 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:42:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" In-Reply-To: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <580930c20904161342l586056ccmdeafc111e0a320c3@mail.gmail.com> I missed the original reference to the article or you are pointing at it for the first time? :-/ On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:32 PM, wrote: > I just finished a fairly quick read-through of this article. ?Some misquotes > of data, but it is perceptible in taking on Haraway's use of cyborg to > soften the blow of transhumanist technologies. Nonetheless, it is quite > beclouding. ?Would anyone like to comment on the last sentence: > > "... transhumanism is at root not grounded simply in the embracing of > technological promise (as say Kaku suggests) but rather in a radical > demythologised lifeworld, incapable of supporting moral discourse." > > > Natasha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 20:48:24 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:48:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" In-Reply-To: <580930c20904161342l586056ccmdeafc111e0a320c3@mail.gmail.com> References: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20904161342l586056ccmdeafc111e0a320c3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090416164824.q1ic740kgkgw0wgg@webmail.natasha.cc> Sorry, here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219641 I think the full article was posted to the WTA list. I'm not in my study, so I don't have the link at this hub. Please look through you inbox for WTA messages and see if you can grab the link. Quoting Stefano Vaj : > I missed the original reference to the article or you are pointing at > it for the first time? :-/ > > On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:32 PM, wrote: >> I just finished a fairly quick read-through of this article. ?Some misquotes >> of data, but it is perceptible in taking on Haraway's use of cyborg to >> soften the blow of transhumanist technologies. Nonetheless, it is quite >> beclouding. ?Would anyone like to comment on the last sentence: >> >> "... transhumanism is at root not grounded simply in the embracing of >> technological promise (as say Kaku suggests) but rather in a radical >> demythologised lifeworld, incapable of supporting moral discourse." >> >> >> Natasha >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 16 20:52:20 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:52:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Preserving Western Institutions and Values We Share Here In-Reply-To: References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49E79A84.6070602@rawbw.com> BillK wrote (in our wandering threads, this time in "Evils of the West") about expulsion as a phenomenon: > On 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Right. The extreme actions being suggested by >> "some people" here, such as expulsions of >> dangerous minorities, would in effect "rise >> above principle". But, as was argued, sometimes >> in history that seems to be the right thing to >> do (e.g. what Lincoln had to do to win, what >> FDR was afraid of, how the Catholics saved >> France from Protestants in 1572, etc.). > > Your examples are, of course, examples of wartime ferocity. They were, but Europe exhibits many that were not. For example, the expulsions of the Moriscos by Spain (bad idea) was one, and expulsions of non- Catholics by France (good idea) was another. First I should explain those two cases I just mentioned, that might perplex the rapid reader. So many of the talented craftsman in southern Spain happened to be Moriscos (Moorish converts to Catholicism but who did not assimilate), that expelling them while Spain had so few people relative to France simply weakened Spain too much. (Interestingly, Spain at this time for some reason did share one problem with us: falling birth rates.) France on the other hand, made a good move to remain Catholic by expelling the Protestants (or killing them---what I should insist is a much more genuine atrocity), or (mainly) driving them out with persecution, *even though* they were among the most productive citizens. The analogy is as follows: Nation France 1600s France today (or other western nation about to be overwhelmed by Muslims) Value Catholicism, the Freedom of religion, press, System the true religion legal rights of all kinds needing to be not ever so far exhibited in saved/defended any Muslim dominated country > Your original discussion was about initiating a peacetime atrocity. Expulsions happen a lot, and don't need wars. Here was Mirco's list: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-April/048941.html I never heard of mere expulsions described as 'atrocities'. A good example of an atrocity is when they just kill or maim a lot of people. In each and every case what is most important is is, *Does the action in the long run damage or help preserve the treasured values at the center of attention?* The risks are usually very great for a modern Western nation *because* one of its values is that it preserves (or tries to) the legal rights of all citizens. Earlier societies didn't have to face this dilemma. If a new drug that happened to make people into extremely violent and reckless marauders who no longer were at all productive, but just killed other people, and it were spreading like wildfire, should a country violate its own laws to suppress the spread of this drug, even though it was only being spread peaceably? What principle guides your response? > You'll have to declare war on Muslims first, for your original > suggestion to be implemented and supported by the population. I can't think of any expulsions where that was a necessary prerequisite, though the French Huguenots were *so* rich and well-organized that, practically, they'd been at real war with the Catholics for a long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugenot#End_of_persecution_and_restoration_of_French_citizenship So I don't see why a war would have to be declared, although certainly many Muslims living in Europe would see just *talk* of an expulsion as an act of war, since they already see even political cartoons that way. A key difference between expelling Moriscos, Jews, and Huguenots on the one hand, and for modern European nations to expel Muslims on the other, is that the latter are not nearly so economically and culturally valuable. Quite the reverse. This also is related, of course, to what to do about birth rates. The recent Russian experience helps to convince me that financial incentives are effective. In fact, France fell behind Germany in population in the 19th century ---with extremely bad consequences for all three wars since between them---by a mistake in the Napoleonic Code that kept down population growth in France. Lee P.S. Thanks for being past merely expressing revulsion, horror, and disgust. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 21:45:09 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:45:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Preserving Western Institutions and Values We Share Here In-Reply-To: <49E79A84.6070602@rawbw.com> References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> <49E79A84.6070602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: Every single cited example in this post plus the Rwandan genocide, the Cambodian Pol Pot experience, the current messes in Gaza and Darfur and other examples of wars/genocides are all mechanistic (wired in) responses to the perception of a bleak future by the populations involved. The perception ultimately stems from the population (or some sub segment of the population) growing faster than the economic growth rate. How to deal with this problem is interesting. Keith PS. How long will it take for the problem to become acute? And when is the latest date we can expect for the singularity? On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > BillK wrote (in our wandering threads, this time in > "Evils of the West") about expulsion as a phenomenon: > >> On 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >> >>> >>> ?Right. The extreme actions being suggested by >>> ?"some people" here, such as expulsions of >>> ?dangerous minorities, would in effect "rise >>> ?above principle". But, as was argued, sometimes >>> ?in history that seems to be the right thing to >>> ?do (e.g. what Lincoln had to do to win, what >>> ?FDR was afraid of, how the Catholics saved >>> ?France from Protestants in 1572, etc.). >> >> Your examples are, of course, examples of wartime ferocity. > > They were, but Europe exhibits many that were not. > For example, the expulsions of the Moriscos by > Spain (bad idea) was one, and expulsions of non- > Catholics by France (good idea) was another. > > First I should explain those two cases I just > mentioned, that might perplex the rapid reader. > > So many of the talented craftsman in southern Spain > happened to be Moriscos (Moorish converts to Catholicism > but who did not assimilate), that expelling them while > Spain had so few people relative to France simply > weakened Spain too much. > > (Interestingly, Spain at this time for some reason > did share one problem with us: falling birth rates.) > > France on the other hand, made a good move to remain > Catholic by expelling the Protestants (or killing > them---what I should insist is a much more genuine > atrocity), or (mainly) driving them out with > persecution, *even though* they were among the > most productive citizens. The analogy is as follows: > > Nation ? France 1600s ? ? ? ? ?France today (or other western > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? nation about to be > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? overwhelmed by Muslims) > > > Value ? ?Catholicism, the ? ? ?Freedom of religion, press, > System ? the true religion ? ? legal rights of all kinds > ? ? ? ? needing to be ? ? ? ? not ever so far exhibited in > ? ? ? ? saved/defended ? ? ? ?any Muslim dominated country > >> Your original discussion was about initiating a peacetime atrocity. > > Expulsions happen a lot, and don't need wars. Here was Mirco's list: > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-April/048941.html > > I never heard of mere expulsions described as 'atrocities'. > A good example of an atrocity is when they just kill or > maim a lot of people. > > In each and every case what is most important is is, > > ? *Does the action in the long run damage or help preserve > ? the treasured values at the center of attention?* > > The risks are usually very great for a modern Western > nation *because* one of its values is that it preserves > (or tries to) the legal rights of all citizens. > Earlier societies didn't have to face this dilemma. > > If a new drug that happened to make people into > extremely violent and reckless marauders who no > longer were at all productive, but just killed > other people, and it were spreading like wildfire, > should a country violate its own laws to suppress > the spread of this drug, even though it was only > being spread peaceably? What principle guides > your response? > >> You'll have to declare war on Muslims first, for your original >> suggestion to be implemented and supported by the population. > > I can't think of any expulsions where that was a necessary > prerequisite, though the French Huguenots were *so* rich > and well-organized that, practically, they'd been at real > war with the Catholics for a long time. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugenot#End_of_persecution_and_restoration_of_French_citizenship > > So I don't see why a war would have to be > declared, although certainly many Muslims > living in Europe would see just *talk* of > an expulsion as an act of war, since they > already see even political cartoons that way. > > A key difference between expelling Moriscos, > Jews, and Huguenots on the one hand, and for > modern European nations to expel Muslims on > the other, is that the latter are not nearly > so economically and culturally valuable. > Quite the reverse. > > This also is related, of course, to what to > do about birth rates. The recent Russian > experience helps to convince me that financial > incentives are effective. In fact, France fell > behind Germany in population in the 19th century > ---with extremely bad consequences for all three > wars since between them---by a mistake in the > Napoleonic Code that kept down population > growth in France. > > Lee > > P.S. Thanks for being past merely expressing > revulsion, horror, and disgust. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 16 21:54:09 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:54:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Preserving Western Institutions and Values We Share Here In-Reply-To: <49E79A84.6070602@rawbw.com> References: <849374.68177.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49E66C30.4080803@rawbw.com> <49E79A84.6070602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <20090416175409.y1kzm9t49w4gcsgg@webmail.natasha.cc> Lee and everyone, this is enough. Please do not post any more on this topic until Spike deals with the issues at hand. I trust this will be within 12 hours. Thank you, Natasha Quoting Lee Corbin : > BillK wrote (in our wandering threads, this time in > "Evils of the West") about expulsion as a phenomenon: > >> On 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >> >>> Right. The extreme actions being suggested by >>> "some people" here, such as expulsions of >>> dangerous minorities, would in effect "rise >>> above principle". But, as was argued, sometimes >>> in history that seems to be the right thing to >>> do (e.g. what Lincoln had to do to win, what >>> FDR was afraid of, how the Catholics saved >>> France from Protestants in 1572, etc.). >> >> Your examples are, of course, examples of wartime ferocity. > > They were, but Europe exhibits many that were not. > For example, the expulsions of the Moriscos by > Spain (bad idea) was one, and expulsions of non- > Catholics by France (good idea) was another. > > First I should explain those two cases I just > mentioned, that might perplex the rapid reader. > > So many of the talented craftsman in southern Spain > happened to be Moriscos (Moorish converts to Catholicism > but who did not assimilate), that expelling them while > Spain had so few people relative to France simply > weakened Spain too much. > > (Interestingly, Spain at this time for some reason > did share one problem with us: falling birth rates.) > > France on the other hand, made a good move to remain > Catholic by expelling the Protestants (or killing > them---what I should insist is a much more genuine > atrocity), or (mainly) driving them out with > persecution, *even though* they were among the > most productive citizens. The analogy is as follows: > > Nation France 1600s France today (or other western > nation about to be > overwhelmed by Muslims) > > > Value Catholicism, the Freedom of religion, press, > System the true religion legal rights of all kinds > needing to be not ever so far exhibited in > saved/defended any Muslim dominated country > >> Your original discussion was about initiating a peacetime atrocity. > > Expulsions happen a lot, and don't need wars. Here was Mirco's list: > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-April/048941.html > > I never heard of mere expulsions described as 'atrocities'. > A good example of an atrocity is when they just kill or > maim a lot of people. > > In each and every case what is most important is is, > > *Does the action in the long run damage or help preserve > the treasured values at the center of attention?* > > The risks are usually very great for a modern Western > nation *because* one of its values is that it preserves > (or tries to) the legal rights of all citizens. > Earlier societies didn't have to face this dilemma. > > If a new drug that happened to make people into > extremely violent and reckless marauders who no > longer were at all productive, but just killed > other people, and it were spreading like wildfire, > should a country violate its own laws to suppress > the spread of this drug, even though it was only > being spread peaceably? What principle guides > your response? > >> You'll have to declare war on Muslims first, for your original >> suggestion to be implemented and supported by the population. > > I can't think of any expulsions where that was a necessary > prerequisite, though the French Huguenots were *so* rich > and well-organized that, practically, they'd been at real > war with the Catholics for a long time. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugenot#End_of_persecution_and_restoration_of_French_citizenship > > So I don't see why a war would have to be > declared, although certainly many Muslims > living in Europe would see just *talk* of > an expulsion as an act of war, since they > already see even political cartoons that way. > > A key difference between expelling Moriscos, > Jews, and Huguenots on the one hand, and for > modern European nations to expel Muslims on > the other, is that the latter are not nearly > so economically and culturally valuable. > Quite the reverse. > > This also is related, of course, to what to > do about birth rates. The recent Russian > experience helps to convince me that financial > incentives are effective. In fact, France fell > behind Germany in population in the 19th century > ---with extremely bad consequences for all three > wars since between them---by a mistake in the > Napoleonic Code that kept down population > growth in France. > > Lee > > P.S. Thanks for being past merely expressing > revulsion, horror, and disgust. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From scerir at tiscali.it Thu Apr 16 22:34:39 2009 From: scerir at tiscali.it (scerir at tiscali.it) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:34:39 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] R: The Chattering Hemisphere Message-ID: <29896273.258291239921279769.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Jill telling here her story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU No, I do not 'hear' all that chattering (at least in Italian). There are interesting sports, like pistol target-shooting, in which you may think that both hemispheres play a role. Actually it is well known that any inner verbalization (chattering?) severely interferes with other processes like sights alignment, focus on the front sight, smooth trigger release at the right moment, holding the gun steadily, etc. So - as shooters say - the best shot is a sub-conscious 'surprise'. Arriva Tiscali Mobile! Acquista la tua SIM Tiscali a soli ?5 e scopri la semplicit? e la convenienza del nuovo servizio per il tuo cellulare. Passa a Tiscali Mobile http://abbonati.tiscali.it/promo/tiscalimobile/ From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 16 22:44:40 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:44:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Request for speaking venue suggestions in N. California during visit Message-ID: <200904162312.n3GNCnIW007180@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Spike most kindly invited me to come and stay with him. Most unkindly, I am going to do just that. You all know what fun it is to be in Spike's orbit. It's also been too long since I saw many of you in the Silicon Valley area. I don't have a date yet, but I'd like to come for a week or so, perhaps in June or July. Since I just sent revised versions of the chapters in my book proposal for THE PROACTIONARY PRINCIPLE to my agent (who is heading to the London Book Fair next week, where she will be showing it to potential publishers), I want to set up some talks on the subjects of the book. It would be a waste if I didn't give a talk while visiting N. Cal. I would be very grateful of any suggestions for venues or organizations, or any contacts at large companies who might be interested. Thanks for any ideas -- both for speaking and for having fun together. I'd be interested in getting together for chat over lunch or dinner, hiking, shooting, working out, and anything else fun and sociable. (Yes, working out IS fun.) Or, as Thomas Aquinas never said: Come let us extropize together. Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 23:28:28 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:28:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man In-Reply-To: <911214.45187.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <911214.45187.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <62c14240904161628o63a1e9b3tcd6cf46321329df6@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > I took the test. > > http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/06/Brain-Age > > > > > > Before I release my brain's age, I'll try it again (just to > > make sure). > > Haven't taken it yet, but I wonder how the time of day it's taken and other > conditions influence the results. I can imagine someone with a youthful > brain taking it under really bad conditions and at the wrong time concluding > her brain is not so youthful -- and someone with a not so youthful brain > taking it under ideal conditions and concluding, in comparison with the > former person, that his brain is in good shape (or better than hers). > > Take a left-right brain test before a day of work and after. In my case I went from 35/65 to 65/35 in the course of 9 hours. Does that invalidate the test or "prove" that the brain is really so adaptive that it can change significantly depending on task(s) ? Most likely the test itself is meaningless, the account creation is what pays the bills - every email collected is $$ to someone in a cross-marketing situation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 23:44:04 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:44:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" In-Reply-To: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <62c14240904161644o5969ace8nc3ac5fd6e5048296@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:32 PM, wrote: > I just finished a fairly quick read-through of this article. Some > misquotes of data, but it is perceptible in taking on Haraway's use of > cyborg to soften the blow of transhumanist technologies. Nonetheless, it is > quite beclouding. Would anyone like to comment on the last sentence: > > "... transhumanism is at root not grounded simply in the embracing of > technological promise (as say Kaku suggests) but rather in a radical > demythologised lifeworld, incapable of supporting moral discourse." > > "moral discourse" ? Is that like the confabulation of like-minded philosophies in diametric opposition to an other like-minded group? If so, then I think the problem would lie in the fact that beyond a basic premise the freedom to think and act in novel ways precludes much of the "us vs. them" that passes for what Haraway calls 'moral discourse.' Otherwise, I like the expression "radical demythologized lifeworld." :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 16 23:57:39 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:57:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> I just noticed the existence of this absurd book (an evaluation I make only on the basis of reviews): TECHNOPHOBIA!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technologies, by Daniel Dinello - University of Texas Press (2005). Here's a review: http://www.emcit.com/emcit128.php?a=23 Fear of the Future By Cheryl Morgan There are basically two ways to approach an academic study: one is to look at the material and come to conclusions based on what you find; the other is to start out with a theory and look for material that confirms it. Technophobia! by Daniel Dinello is a classic example of the latter. The thesis of the book is very simple. Dinello believes that science fiction is inherently technophobic, and that its purpose is to warn us about the evils of science and technology. OK folks, jaws up off the floor please. I?m being serious here. That is what the book is about. The story goes a little like this. Dinello opens up by stating his opposition to George W. Bush and the military-industrial complex, not to mention everything DARPA. He then goes on to talk about technoevangelists such as Ray Kurzweil. Unlike Joel Garreau in Radical Evolution, he appears to regard them as dangerous lunatics who Must Be Stopped. The rest of the book is devoted to finding examples from science fiction of just how awful the future will be if Kurzweil and his crazy friends are allowed to have their way. If this sounds a little froth at the mouth, I should point out that Dinello defines his title is a fairly restrained way: ---------- The book?s title, Technophobia, is meant to suggest an aversion to, dislike of, or suspicion of technology rather than an irrational, illogical or neurotic fear. ---------- He also admits: ---------- Of course, not all science fiction is technophobic, and not all scientists serve military-industrial interests ? just most. ---------- On the whole book is clearly and cogently argued. A solid case is made. But that doesn?t stop Dinello from concluding: ---------- In its devotion to technophobia, science fiction paints a repulsive picture of a future world where technology runs out of control and dominates all aspects of human behavior. Technology?s inherent structure requires suppression of human spontaneity and obedience to its requirements of order and efficiency. This extends the social controls initiated by the cybernetic ideological system. Asimov?s laws of robotic obedience have been reversed into technology?s laws for human submission. ---------- How, one might ask, can anyone come to such a bizarre conclusion? I know an awful lot of science fiction authors, and most of them are technophiles of one shade or another. Most fans I have talked to about Dinello?s ideas have reacted with astonishment and/or laughter. How can Dinello have misunderstood SF so badly? I read the whole book just to find out. One of ways in which you can come to this conclusion is, of course, to concentrate mainly on movies. The majority of the material in Dinello?s book is based on media SF rather than on the written word. For example, he very much approves of Michael Crichton (even though Crichton is a big favorite at the White House because of his support for the denial of global warming). ---------- [etc] From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri Apr 17 03:17:21 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:17:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] R: The Chattering Hemisphere In-Reply-To: <29896273.258291239921279769.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <29896273.258291239921279769.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <49E7F4C1.30807@rawbw.com> Serafino writes > Jill telling here her story > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU > > No, I do not 'hear' all that chattering (at least in Italian). Thanks for the link. It resembles the book in that the first part is the best. I find that for this video the first 20% is fine, (in fact, very good). Then she gets into "my right hemisphere is at one with the universe", "I am connected to everything in the universe". She flatly contradicts what Robert Ornstein, in the more thorough book "The Right Mind" says. He says that it's the *right* brain that exhibits negative emotions, e.g. disgust, hatred, annoyance, and so on and the left hemisphere exudes the positive emotions. I really liked her remark (old as it may be for many of you) that the right brain does parallel processing and the left brain serial processing. > There are interesting sports, like pistol target-shooting, > in which you may think that both hemispheres play a role. > Actually it is well known that any inner verbalization > (chattering?) severely interferes with other processes > like sights alignment, focus on the front sight, smooth trigger > release at the right moment, holding the gun steadily, etc. > So - as shooters say - the best shot is a sub-conscious 'surprise'. Nice example. She does mention in the book that mantras are said over and over in such a way that, in effect, (my words) the left hemisphere chatter has become inconsequential or meaningless. But I've never heard of mantras for archery or pistol target-shooting! Lee From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 04:07:58 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:07:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550904162107l420cd1e1tb51e321ea9684458@mail.gmail.com> Hmmm. It seems that Dinello has read very little SF but, as reviewer Morgan says, gets most of his SF evidence from video sources. On a brighter note, I'm wrapping up this semester teaching my first-ever course on Science Fiction and Fantasy. I've introduced my university students to some authors they've never heard of, including Vinge, Stross and Iain Banks. In my lectures, I've informed them of the concept of the Vingean Sinularity and Kurzweil's writings about it. Some loved it immediately, while others were frightened. Best of all, some who were initially frightened have changed their minds and embraced the Singular possibilities. There IS hope, folks! Regards, Mike LaTorra On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I just noticed the existence of this absurd book (an evaluation I make only > on the basis of reviews): > > TECHNOPHOBIA!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technologies, by Daniel > Dinello - University of Texas Press (2005). > > Here's a review: > > http://www.emcit.com/emcit128.php?a=23 > > > Fear of the Future > > > By Cheryl Morgan > > There are basically two ways to approach an academic study: one is to look > at the material and come to conclusions based on what you find; the other is > to start out with a theory and look for material that confirms it. > Technophobia! by Daniel Dinello is a classic example of the latter. The > thesis of the book is very simple. Dinello believes that science fiction is > inherently technophobic, and that its purpose is to warn us about the evils > of science and technology. > > OK folks, jaws up off the floor please. I?m being serious here. That is > what the book is about. The story goes a little like this. Dinello opens up > by stating his opposition to George W. Bush and the military-industrial > complex, not to mention everything DARPA. He then goes on to talk about > technoevangelists such as Ray Kurzweil. Unlike Joel Garreau in < > http://www.emcit.com/emcit119.shtml#Future>Radical Evolution, he appears > to regard them as dangerous lunatics who Must Be Stopped. The rest of the > book is devoted to finding examples from science fiction of just how awful > the future will be if Kurzweil and his crazy friends are allowed to have > their way. > > If this sounds a little froth at the mouth, I should point out that Dinello > defines his title is a fairly restrained way: > > ---------- > The book?s title, Technophobia, is meant to suggest an aversion to, dislike > of, or suspicion of technology rather than an irrational, illogical or > neurotic fear. > > ---------- > He also admits: > > ---------- > Of course, not all science fiction is technophobic, and not all scientists > serve military-industrial interests ? just most. > > ---------- > On the whole book is clearly and cogently argued. A solid case is made. But > that doesn?t stop Dinello from concluding: > > ---------- > In its devotion to technophobia, science fiction paints a repulsive picture > of a future world where technology runs out of control and dominates all > aspects of human behavior. Technology?s inherent structure requires > suppression of human spontaneity and obedience to its requirements of order > and efficiency. This extends the social controls initiated by the cybernetic > ideological system. Asimov?s laws of robotic obedience have been reversed > into technology?s laws for human submission. > > ---------- > How, one might ask, can anyone come to such a bizarre conclusion? I know an > awful lot of science fiction authors, and most of them are technophiles of > one shade or another. Most fans I have talked to about Dinello?s ideas have > reacted with astonishment and/or laughter. How can Dinello have > misunderstood SF so badly? I read the whole book just to find out. > > One of ways in which you can come to this conclusion is, of course, to > concentrate mainly on movies. The majority of the material in Dinello?s book > is based on media SF rather than on the written word. For example, he very > much approves of Michael Crichton (even though Crichton is a big favorite at > the White House because of his support for the denial of global warming). > > ---------- > [etc] > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aleksei at iki.fi Fri Apr 17 12:06:09 2009 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:06:09 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" In-Reply-To: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <1db0b2da0904170506n4fbdaff9l4ae14dca1a370d08@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:32 PM, wrote: > I just finished a fairly quick read-through of this article. ?Some misquotes > of data, but it is perceptible in taking on Haraway's use of cyborg to > soften the blow of transhumanist technologies. Nonetheless, it is quite > beclouding. ?Would anyone like to comment on the last sentence: > > "... transhumanism is at root not grounded simply in the embracing of > technological promise (as say Kaku suggests) but rather in a radical > demythologised lifeworld, incapable of supporting moral discourse." Just another humanities professor/whatever who has managed to pretty thoroughly detach his/her thoughts from reality. I wouldn't bother seriously commenting on folks who think transhumanism is e.g. "incapable of supporting moral discourse". In reality, the world is ever more technocratic, and such fools don't have sufficient influence that we would need to take them seriously, even though they hold high status within the anti-intellectual culture unfortunately so rampant within the humanities (which they are for the most part reducing to ranting kooks without real influence on what actually happens in the world -- before the powers that be take away their funding, and us westerners thereby join the smarter ever more successful and eventually dominant Asian countries who don't give much funding at all to such pseudo-academic clowns). One might observe them and talk to them for fun and laughs, but there is no serious reason to do so. (Except for people like James Hughes who strive to build "transhumanism lite" that also manages to recruit some of the sillier folks -- which recruitment and alliances I see as unnecessary; we should rather strive to be more connected to the smart no-nonsense Asians, who find our core ideas to be pretty obvious and normal.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 12:10:28 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:10:28 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <49E7616E.7010709@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <49E7616E.7010709@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/17 painlord2k at libero.it : > Christianity changed the attitude about manual labour. > This is, for what I know, very different from the other major religions. > The attitude to manual labour changed because Jesus was a carpenter so it > would be impossible to disparage his work. > In Christianity, the manual labour is a way of salvation. Maybe not the > preferred, but a way. That's probably one of the strangest Christian apologetics that I've heard. >> I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous; it just isn't any more >> ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most other religions, like >> Christianity. > > That you can not or want not see the differences will not change the fact > that there are differences between the major religions. > From where do you think come the "created equal with innate rights"? Certainly not from Christianity. >> It is *secularism* that has made the Christian world a >> nicer place, and secularism will eventually make the Islamic world a >> better place also. Liberal Muslims will turn around and say, like >> liberal Jews and Christians, that God didn't really mean it when he >> said that you have to stone adulterers and Sabbath-breakers. > > But, secularism is a feature of Christianity, like it or not, from the > starting point. The Caesar / God thing. The other religions never did this > distinction. As far as I'm aware all the nations in Europe took on Christianity as the official state religion, with "secular" laws reflecting Biblical laws, eg. laws regarding marriage, blasphemy and sexuality. It was certainly not OK for the king to convert to Islam, for example, on the grounds that church and state were separate. The problem with modern Islamic theocracies is, as Stefano and John have alluded to, that they take their religion seriously - as seriously as mediaeval Christian states did. But modern Islamic states such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia are about as secular as many Christian states. > Muslims can not do what you say and call themselves Muslims. This because > their founder not only talk the talk but walk the walk. It's the same with Christian fundamentalists who claim you can't really be a Christian unless you accept every word in the Bible as literal truth. But most Christians accept that at least some of the Bible is metaphor, or reflects the times in which it was written rather than stating eternal truths, or some other rationalisation that allows them to live modern life without doing a dozen things a day that would send them to Hell. > Where Jesus told "Who is without sin launch the first stone" and them told > the adulterers "Go and don't sin any more", Mohammed killed the adulterer > (male) that confessed to him his sin (he ignored him three times, then he > killed him). > > Than, try to explain how Allah / Mohammed don't really mean it. Most Jews don't agree these days that you should be killed for adultery, even though God clearly says in the Bible that you should. It is also clear that adultery is a sin in Islam but it is not so clear what the punishment in this life or the hereafter should be. Here are some quotes from various authorities taken from an Islamic website. But in any case, you need to keep in mind that until recently sodomy attracted the death penalty in many Christian countries. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503548032 "Allah says in the Qur?an, (And come not near unto adultery. Lo! it is an abomination and an evil way) (Al-Isra? 17: 32). (And the servants of the Beneficent) are those who do not invoke another god with Allah, and who do not?commit fornication/adultery, for whoever does that shall receive the penalty; for him shall the torment be doubled on the day of resurrection, and therein he shall abide forever, disgraced, save him who repents and believes and does good works; those, Allah shall change their misdeeds into good works. And Allah is Forgiving, Compassionate) (Al-Furqan: 68-70). The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ?Whoever guarantees me that he will guard his chastity, I will guarantee him Paradise? (Al-Bukhari). Abu Hurayrah reports that the Messenger of Allah said, ?No one commits adultery while still remaining a believer, for faith is more precious unto Allah than such an evil act!? In another version, it is stated, ?When a person commits adultery he casts away from his neck the bond that ties him to Islam; if, however, he repents, Allah will accept his repentance? (Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, An-Nisa?i and others). The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) further said: ?[Under Islamic laws in an Islamic state] It is not lawful to shed the blood of a Muslim except for one of three sins: a married person committing fornication, and in just retribution for premeditated murder, and [for sin of treason involving] a person renouncing Islam, and thus leaving the community [to join the enemy camp in order to wage war against the faithful].? (Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, and An-Nasa?i) During his ascension, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was escorted by Jibreel and shown different types of punishments meted out to those guilty of various major offenses. While recounting the various scenes shown to him, he said, ?Then Jibreel took me and we passed by a group of people with terribly inflated bodies emitting worst foul smells just like that of open sewers; when I enquired who they were, he replied, ?These are those who commit adultery!?? (Ibn Khuzaymah) The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ?Faith is like a shirt that Allah places on those He chooses; but whoever commits adultery his shirt will be taken off from him; if he were to repent sincerely, Allah will place it back on him.? (Al-Bayhaqi) ?There are three types of sinners that Allah will not speak to on the Day of Resurrection; neither He will purify them nor will He even look at them; rather they will suffer severe punishment: an older person who commits adultery, a king or ruler who lies to his subjects, and a poor person who acts arrogantly!? (Muslim and An-Nasa?i) ?When adultery becomes rampant in a nation Allah will expose them to His chastisement.? (Abu Ya`la) ?When promiscuous behavior becomes rampant in a nation, Allah will send upon them such (strange) diseases that their own ancestors never heard of.? (At-Tabarani) ?There are seven categories of people who will be granted protection under the shade of Allah on the Day when there is no other shade;? among them is a young person who is seduced by a woman of great beauty and wealth and yet he rejected her advances saying ?I fear Allah!?? (Al-Bukhari and Muslim) The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ?O mankind! Beware of fornication/adultery for it entails six dire consequences: three of them relating to this world and three to the next world. As for the three that are related to this world, they are the following: it removes the glow of one?s face, brings poverty, and reduces the life-span. As for its dire consequences in the next world they are: it brings down the wrath of Allah upon the person, subjects him to terrible reckoning, and finally casts him in hell-fire? (Al-Bayhaqi). -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 13:02:37 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:02:37 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/4/17 John K Clark : > "Stathis Papaioannou" > >> I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous > > All religions are ridiculous but some are more ridiculous than others. > >> it just isn't any more ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most other >> religions > > I disagree. In the present day I think Islam causes more evil and keeps more > people backward than any other religion on the planet even though it is not > the largest. I don't see how else to explain that even though they have a > huge amount of natural recourses all the poorest countries in the world are > Islamic. Not really. The poorest countries seem to be clustered in sub-Saharan Africa, which is more Christian than Muslim. > They are about a billion strong but have produced remarkably few > scientists of distinction, or inventors, or artists, or good businessmen. > They produce very few books that the non Islamic world think is worth > reading and they read even fewer books by non Moslems. All this is not an > opinion this is a fact and needs an explanation. I suspect you are mainly impressed by Europeans and Americans. What about Christian Africa, or South America, or India, or China? > I believe one reason is than more people take Islam seriously than other > religions. Really seriously! They believe it to such a fanatical degree it > would even put to shame the faith that dwellers in the Bible Belt of the USA > have for their particular brand of mumbo jumbo. Unless they have the misfortune of being stuck in a theocracy many nominal Muslims behave just like many nominal Christians. They don't pray five times a day, drink alcohol, fornicate, and feel only mildly guilty about it. > Ah the Liberal Muslim, a wonderful but illusive creature some believe is > related to the Lock Ness Monster, others say the Abominable Snowman. There are mostly secular states with a Muslim majority such as Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Iraq before the US invaded (boosting the stock of the religious crazies). It doesn't have to all be like Saudi Arabia. >> it sounds like you just don't like Muslims, especially Arab Muslims > > Do you find them loveable? Of the ones I've known, they show the same variations in character as anyone else. I haven't known any highly religious Arabs but I have known some Somalians so inclined, and in their simple certainty and sense of contentment they reminded me a lot of fundamentalist Christians. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 17 13:13:18 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:13:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Limits to the libertarian principle In-Reply-To: <968126.37649.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <968126.37649.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49E8806E.3060402@libero.it> Il 15/04/2009 15.52, Dan ha scritto: > --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:29 PM, BillK wrote: >>> Do Libertarian principles really allow initiation of >>> force now, based on a speculation that damage might occur >>> many many years in the future? Surely not. BillK, the problem is not the speculation, because we all speculate about the future, be it near of far. The problem is about how much damage we foresee and how probable it is to happen. It is about means and wills. Let say that the martians send a spaceship to a large asteroid and install an engine there that will move the asteroid en route of collision with the Earth in 100 years and it is large enough to kill of the life on Earth. Say we have no means to stop the asteroid to hit the Earth after they have installed the engine. Do we have the right to strike at them immediately? I think so. >> What about the international scene? Should such principle be >> extended to all historical facts? > I believe so, but did you have a particular case in mind where you > think the principle would not be applicable? Someone mentioned > having a draft if the country were invaded -- something libertarians > should be against... I mean they should be against any draft (or > other form of enslavement) as it initiates force. I would be against the draft, but only because it is initiation of force against not an invader but a third party not involved. How to penalize the defectors it another matter. Mirco From James.Hughes at trincoll.edu Fri Apr 17 13:59:08 2009 From: James.Hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:59:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Essay: "The hermeneutic challeng of genetic engineering: Habermas and the transhumanists" In-Reply-To: <1db0b2da0904170506n4fbdaff9l4ae14dca1a370d08@mail.gmail.com> References: <20090416163257.oiqbp6440s8wcw0k@webmail.natasha.cc> <1db0b2da0904170506n4fbdaff9l4ae14dca1a370d08@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8CF6A92CB628444FB3C757618CD280390B94CB29@exbe1.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> > people like James Hughes > who strive to build "transhumanism lite" The perfect complement for the calorie-restricted diet. J. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 17 14:31:29 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:31:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Mechanical Turk Message-ID: <805859.37129.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.mturk.com/mturk/ Has this been discussed here before? Regards, Dan See "Freedom Above or Tyranny Below" at: http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 17 14:34:46 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:34:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis Message-ID: <905083.86190.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Look up "BioWeatherMap". > > http://bioweathermap.org/ > > "Ever wonder how the microbial communities living on > cross-walk > buttons in Boston compare to those in San Francisco, or > Manhattan, or > the cross-walk nearest your home? We're going to find out > and you can > get involved. Meet up at points around the city, swab > crosswalk > buttons with Q-tips, and bring the samples back to a > central location. > The samples will be sent for DNA sequencing. A few weeks > later, > receive analysis results and learn about the microbes that > were living > on the crosswalk button they swabbed. The data will be > published on a > map, so results for different crosswalk buttons can be > compared." Three comments: 1. Neat. 2. I wonder if they can get discounted rates because of the many swabbings. 3. I'd like to see this done regularly -- maybe once a month -- and in many more locations. I'm sure, if it's successful and can be done on the cheap, it'll be done in more places and more frequently eventually. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 17 14:41:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:41:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Brain aging test/was Re: Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man Message-ID: <324028.43084.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Thu, Apr > 16, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Dan > wrote: > --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Natasha Vita-More > wrote: > > > I took the test. > > > http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/06/Brain-Age > > > Before I release my brain's age, I'll try it > again (just to > > make sure). > > Haven't taken it yet, but I wonder how the time > of day it's taken and other conditions influence the > results. ?I can imagine someone with a youthful brain > taking it under really bad conditions and at the wrong time > concluding her brain is not so youthful -- and someone with > a not so youthful brain taking it under ideal conditions and > concluding, in comparison with the former person, that his > brain is in good shape (or better than hers). > > Take a left-right brain test before a day of work and > after.? In my case I went from 35/65 to 65/35 in the course > of 9 hours.? Does that invalidate the test or > "prove" that the brain is really so adaptive that > it can change significantly depending on task(s) ? I don't think it invalidates it at all. It's about what I expected: under different conditions, brians work better or worse. Of course, for benchmarking, I'd like to find the optimal and average conditions. If the test is at all valid, then this could be used to gauge, over large populations, different interventions (e.g., supplements) and their impact on brain function.* > Most likely the test itself is meaningless, the account > creation is what pays the bills - every email collected is > $$ to someone in a cross-marketing situation. > That's one reason I didn't take the test. :) Regards, Dan * Was it here that was mentioned the report stating that people seem to peak cognitively in their mid-20s on average? I seem to recall such a report a few weeks ago and remember one comment on it being that this is when people tend to finish college so that the cognitive decline might just be most people slow down on learning new things. The take away being: keep learning new things intensively until your brain burns out. :) From mail at harveynewstrom.com Tue Apr 14 23:06:28 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:06:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Harvey's Mother Message-ID: <200904141906.29978.mail@harveynewstrom.com> As many of you know, my mother had been in failing health for several years. She passed away peacefully and comfortably Sunday night, two years beyond her doctors' "final" prognosis. I was able to make it to Florida to spend the final day with her. She was lucid and comfortable in good spirits. My family and I appreciate all your kind words and support. There will be a private service, and in lieu of flowers, you can send donations to the Cancer Care Center, 1430 S. Pine Street Melbourne, Florida 32901 or to your local charities. She did not believe in cryonics or most of the weird futurist ideas that I described to her. But she was always the most supportive and interested in my pursuits. Her illness distracted me from these pursuits while simultaneously emphasizing their importance. I am both depressed about our progress and emboldened renew. Life is good. Death is bad. We need to keep trying to make everything better. -- Harvey Newstrom From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Apr 15 15:35:27 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:35:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement Technologies Message-ID: This request is a bit late, and time is of the essence, but If you have recent or valued material on the uses of NBIC + robotics for human enhancement, I'd like to include your own research and the work you are doing (individually or with your organization/company) in my talk at "Beyond Darwin" conference in Valencia, Spain next week. Also, if you have any images that I might include in the presentation, these would be welcomed as well. If the presentation is published, I will, of course, obtain your permission for any ideas or material that you provide. You are welcome to email me off list if you like. Many thanks, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 17 16:21:24 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:21:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To all racists here In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> Ja, the moderator has been on business trips to the east coast every other week since the first of January, and every week for the past three, and will be back there again next week and the possibly following, so a lotta the stuff that woulda been dealt with offlist has been let go. Better times are coming. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stathis Papaioannou > Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 7:18 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] To all racists here > > 2009/4/16 Eschatoon Magic : > > > Hi there. Could you perhaps, you know, try to talk also of other > > things besides your hatred for one or another ethnic group? > > > > Not that I am proposing a ban or something. Feel free to > spam the list > > as much as you like, we will just continue to ignore you. I just > > thought I would let you know that I find your racist rants BORING. > > Does anyone ever get moderated or told to stop it for being > off topic for the list? I can't remember it happening very > often. Discussions about personal identity is the only thing > that immediately comes to mind, and that is (I take it) > because many people are sick of it rather than because it's off topic. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 17 17:12:35 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:12:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Extropians, I propose a temporary moratorium on all things having to do with the toughy topic of religion and culture. Let us take a step back just for a week, then when that week is over, may the new discussion may be more extropian and enlightening please. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 17 17:14:16 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:14:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Harvey's Mother In-Reply-To: <200904141906.29978.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <200904141906.29978.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <43B15EC7A5A44A20972C0F1C384ADAFB@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom > Subject: [ExI] Harvey's Mother > > As many of you know, my mother had been in failing health for > several years. > She passed away peacefully and comfortably Sunday night, two > years beyond her doctors' "final" prognosis.... > Harvey Newstrom So sorry to hear Harvey. May you have courage and strength from knowing your many friends are wishing you the best under the difficult circumstances. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Apr 17 17:29:03 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:29:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49E8BC5F.7040804@libero.it> Il 17/04/2009 15.02, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/4/17 John K Clark: >> "Stathis Papaioannou" >> >>> I don't disagree that Islam is ridiculous >> All religions are ridiculous but some are more ridiculous than >> others. >> >>> it just isn't any more ridiculous or intrinsically evil than most >>> other religions >> I disagree. In the present day I think Islam causes more evil and >> keeps more people backward than any other religion on the planet >> even though it is not the largest. I don't see how else to explain >> that even though they have a huge amount of natural resources all >> the poorest countries in the world are Islamic. > > Not really. The poorest countries seem to be clustered in > sub-Saharan Africa, which is more Christian than Muslim. Sub-Sahara Africa is Christian by less than a century. It went from around 2% of Christians in 1900 to roughly 30-40% now. Islam is a bit lower now, in Sub-Sahara Africa, but it was much more spread, for much more time than Christianity. But the big gain were against animism. Many places are very mixed. A century is a very short time span for changing without coercion the traditions and the culture of the populations. Then we have the problem of Africans being lower IQ than Arabs, Europeans and East Asians and native Americans. > I suspect you are mainly impressed by Europeans and Americans. What > about Christian Africa, or South America, or India, or China? South America is going well compared with the Middle East, Pakistan and Malaysia/Indonesia. India and China have done well compared with the M.E. Let's compare Pakistan and India? >> I believe one reason is than more people take Islam seriously than >> other religions. Really seriously! They believe it to such a >> fanatical degree it would even put to shame the faith that dwellers >> in the Bible Belt of the USA have for their particular brand of >> mumbo jumbo. > Unless they have the misfortune of being stuck in a theocracy many > nominal Muslims behave just like many nominal Christians. They don't > pray five times a day, drink alcohol, fornicate, and feel only mildly > guilty about it. The problems is not how they feel about themselves, but how other Muslims feels about them. Islam work so anyone is policing any other. Public deviation from the accepted norm is punished inside the family (for fear of social ostracism of the entire family groups or clan) and from outside the family. Then it is debatable what do you define a theocracy. Is Pakistan a theocracy? Technically not, but you can be put to death for "defaming the Prophet" with only a single witness. Usually the judges are threatened if the don't find the accused guilty and the accused, if found innocent by a court, it is anyway forced to flee to save his life and the lives of his family. Often the accused is killed during detention and no one know who did it. This type of laws are near ubiquitous in near all the Muslim. If it is not death, it is prison. And death will come from some militants. No need for the government to kill anyone, if the killing is done by someone else. it is enough to be inefficient in protecting the dissident. Then we have the laws that prevent people from changing their religion (from Islam to anything else) or that take away the right of people doing it. > There are mostly secular states with a Muslim majority such as > Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Iraq before the US invaded > (boosting the stock of the religious crazies). It doesn't have to all > be like Saudi Arabia. You are very uninformed. First Iraq had much more strict laws supporting Islam than people suppose. Saddam needed to appease the Sunni hard-liners and so he did. Under Saddam prostitutes could be sentenced to dead. Malaysia and Indonesia have freedom of religion? I would say hardly so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_religious_freedom_in_Malaysia#Scope_of_Islamic_law_in_Malaysia >> In April 2000, the state of Perlis passed a sharia law subjecting >> Islamic "deviants" and apostates to 1 year of "rehabilitation" >> (under the Constitution, religion, including sharia law, is a >> state matter). Leaders of the opposition Islamic party, PAS, have >> stated the penalty for apostasy ? after the apostates are given a >> period of time to repent and they do not repent ? is death. If these are the moderates Muslims in the moderate Malaysia, where Muslims are the 50% of the population.... I understand the Chinese of Singapore that seceded from Malaysia to continue to be the majority in their country. And we could compare the outcome of Malaysia with the outcome of Singapore after the independence; but I would be accused of being to harsh in my judgements. Then, Indonesia, the state with the largest Muslim population: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/04/18/editorial-religious-persecution.html >> Never mind what the Constitution and the state ideology Pancasila >> say -- that freedom of religion is guaranteed and that citizens are >> protected to practice their faith. Today, those are mere ornamental >> words. The reality on the ground is the state has started to >> persecute people for their religious beliefs. >> >> On Wednesday, a government panel decided that Ahmadiyah, a Muslim >> sect that has its origins in India but now has followers worldwide, >> including in Indonesia, is heretic and contravenes the tenets of >> Islam. The Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs -- >> comprising government prosecutors, police and officials of the >> religious affairs and home ministries -- issued a recommendation >> that Ahmadiyah, as a religious organization, be banned, along with >> all its activities. http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/is-there-a-liberal-secular-tolerant-muslim-country/ >> In June, 2007, three Sunday school teachers were released after >> two years in jail. They had allowed some Muslim children to attend >> a program with the full consent of their parents. According to a >> report by Bishop Martinus Situmorang, 108 Christian churches have >> been closed in Indonesia due to Islamic pressure from 2004 through >> 2007. Asia News reports ?Indonesian authorities have prevented the >> parish priest of Christ?s Peace Church in South Duri (West Jakarta) >> from celebrating mass.? According to Indonesia Matters, the >> Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, a peaceful sect which believes there was a >> prophet named ?Mirza Ghulam Ahmad? after Mohammed, has agreed to >> say they believe that Mohammed was the final prophet after all, in >> order to avoid being banned. Why would a peaceful sect be banned in >> a secular country? Also from Indonesia Matters, ?Indonesia remains >> on the ?Watch List? in the United States Commission on >> International Religious Freedom report for 2006.? I would question your sources, but you gave none to support your statements. >>> it sounds like you just don't like Muslims, especially Arab >>> Muslims >> Do you find them loveable? > Of the ones I've known, they show the same variations in character > as anyone else. I haven't known any highly religious Arabs but I > have known some Somalians so inclined, and in their simple certainty > and sense of contentment they reminded me a lot of fundamentalist > Christians. Citing Neo talking to The Architect: "You didn't answer the question." Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Apr 17 17:40:38 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:40:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904121118l6f42ff50t9bac3108c2c530c@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer><49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> Message-ID: <96929E6C5E424DA38B4E1D169107E750@MyComputer> "Stathis Papaioannou" > I suspect you are mainly impressed by Europeans and Americans. Yes that's true if you include the Japanese, and I suspect you are no different from me in that regard or you wouldn't be on a list of this sort. > What about Christian Africa What about it? I can't think of anything very interesting to come out of Africa, except of course for the Human Race. > or South America Perhaps you'd like to start a thread about all the marvelous things of Extropian intellectual interest that originated in South America; I don't think I'm up to the task. > or India, or China? India and China are not Islamic and are starting to come into their own, but even so you're right, most of the people I personally admire are still working in the USA or Europe; the non Islamic parts of Asia are taking off like a rocket so in a few years that could change. I wonder why some people feel compelled to defend every culture in the world from criticism (except their own) even though I feel certain they find many of them to be dull or abhorrent. I think you can still be a good person even after you say "in my personal opinion culture X sucks". Yea yea I know, the standard response is that if I really got to know them I'd start to admire them, but I'm the world's greatest expert on me and I think it more likely that the more I knew about some cultures the more I'd think they suck. John K Clark From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 18:22:04 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:22:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] To all racists here In-Reply-To: <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> Message-ID: <2d6187670904171122tb8e7471k18560fbbf5d2142a@mail.gmail.com> Spike wrote: >Better times are coming. * "Give us a king to lead us,"** (1 Samuel 8:1-22)* *Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife ? chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here." **A world is supported by four things ... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing ... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition! **Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality... and fall. **Muad'Dib's teachings have become the playground of scholastics, of the superstitious and the corrupt. He taught a balanced way of life, a philosophy with which a human can meet problems arising from an ever-changing universe. He said humankind is still evolving, in a process which will never end. He said this evolution moves on changing principles which are known only to eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such an essence? Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class ? whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy. **You will learn the integrated communication methods as you complete the next step in your mental education. This is a gestalten function which will overlay data paths in your awareness, resolving complexities and masses of input from the mentat index-catalogue techniques which you have already mastered. **Your initial problem will be the breaking tensions arising from the divergent assembly of minutiae/data on specialized subjects. Be warned. Without mentat overlay integration, you can immersed in the Babel Problem, which is the label we give to the omnipresent dangers of achieving wrong combinations from accurate information. ** Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation? * * Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. Spike, for the next time you go riding on your motorcycle... lol This is a Warhammer 40k tech-priest quote... When uttering the incantation, mark well that the rod is upon and not within the intake. The second incantation should not be uttered until all the fumes have come forth, then the way shall be clear for the sacred words to penetrate unto the heart of the engine. If the mounting be hot say the third rune, if it be cold the fourth rune is more appropriate. For then the wrath of the engine will be aroused...* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri Apr 17 18:26:34 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:26:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Harvey's Mother In-Reply-To: <200904141906.29978.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <200904141906.29978.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <51728.12.77.168.218.1239992794.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Sympathy on the loss of your mother. Good to hear it was peaceful. It is difficult to grok *being* the older generation. Been there, am living it myself. Regards, MB From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Apr 17 18:46:07 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:46:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Kings need not apply here In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904171122tb8e7471k18560fbbf5d2142a@mail.gmail.com > References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> <2d6187670904171122tb8e7471k18560fbbf5d2142a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090417134318.02578c18@satx.rr.com> At 11:22 AM 4/17/2009 -0700, John Grigg wrote: >"Give us a king to lead us," (1 Samuel 8:1-22) "Give us a king to behead." (me) Well, not really. No need to be cruel. Give the guy a small pension if he can't find an honest job, and send him packing. Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 19:11:46 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:11:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2009/4/17 spike : > > ?Extropians, I propose a temporary moratorium on all things having to do with > the toughy topic of religion and culture.? Let us take a step back just for > a week, then when that week is over, may the new discussion may be more > extropian and enlightening please. Spike, another suggestion would be to raise the discussion to the EP meta level. What common features of religious culture contribute to the problems? To what extent are the underlying problems genetic? (i.e., Gregory Clark's work.) To what extent are the problem a closed positive feedback loop? (High population growth, bleak prospects, xenophobic memes, war or related unrest) Given ghodlike powerz (or advanced nanotechnology) what could be done to fix the problems? Given no major technology jump and no energy supplies beyond fossil fuel, how long till there is a collapse back to a malthusian world? Given current trends how long till the situation boils over? Is there a "time constant" to social movement? For example the Sri Lankan civil war may be winding down. Is this related to a reduced rate of population growth? "Origins of the Sri lankan civil war is highlighted by the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. According to Jonathan Spencer, a social anthropologist from the School of Social and Political Studies of the University of Edinburgh[1], the Sri Lankan Civil War is an outcome of how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period, with the political struggle between minority Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past.[2][3]" You need to ask, "What induced the majority government to act this way?" My guess is population pressure, and that different peoples don't have a problem living together if the future looks good. If you Google for "population trends of sri lanka" you get a pointer to page 271 of a thesis. Anyone know how to get parts of that thesis? As an EP based bet, the unrest and war started in a time of falling income per capita when future economics looked bleak. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 19:56:59 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:56:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/17/09, Keith Henson wrote: > As an EP based bet, the unrest and war started in a time of falling > income per capita when future economics looked bleak. > The trouble is that EP doesn't explain everything and doesn't fit all wars. According to Encyclop?dia Britannica the Sri Lankan troubles originated right at the start of independence in 1948 with an unrepresentative government.victimizing a minority and later including much nepotism and corruption. In fact the troubles escalated at a time of economic growth. Quote: The liberalization policies succeeded initially. Stimulated by a substantially enhanced level of foreign aid and investment, the economy became buoyant, recording, up to about 1984, real growth rates of about 6 percent per annum. Thereafter, however, there was a marked deceleration of growth, caused mainly by the disruptive effects of the ethnic conflict on economic activity. --------- Similar points apply to other situations, like the victimization of the Northern Ireland Catholic minority. Of course you have the win - win argument, that wars start because: 1) times are getting hard, or 2) times are good, but everybody is worried about future hard times. That covers all times, I think. You win the argument. ;) BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 17 17:10:43 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:10:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! Message-ID: <825137.4590.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > I just noticed the existence of this > absurd book (an evaluation I make only on the basis of > reviews): > > TECHNOPHOBIA!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman > Technologies, by Daniel Dinello - University of Texas Press > (2005). [snip] I prefer to read the book, but it strikes me that Dinello, if the review is accurate, is guilty of assuming that most SF writers agree with his views. I've seen this pattern before in otherwise intelligent people -- where they presume that someone else, usually someone they admire, obviously agrees with their moral or political (or even aesthetic) beliefs. One rather funny case is a close friend of mine who feels all the films of Kubrick evince a benevolent sense of life -- meaning that the world and life they depict is cherry and successful, the good win and the bad don't, all the pain is transient, etc. (My friend was influenced by Rand and her views on art.) I don't know about you, but I don't get that from watching, e.g., "The Killing" or "2001: A Space Odyssey." Regards, Dan From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 17 19:59:31 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:59:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: Re: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics > > 2009/4/17 spike : > > > > ?Extropians, I propose a temporary moratorium on all things > having to > > do with the touchy topic of religion and culture... > > Spike, another suggestion would be to raise the discussion to > the EP meta level... Keith Good idea Keith. Let us go meta, and think about the big picture here. We all know the specifics, so let us view the current situation from the point of view of an alien intelligence, looking at the current situation from the outside, completely uninvolved personally, not needing food and land to survive, but rather as a detached being studying humanity. Seek extropy. The actual names of specific religions or cultures may not even be needed. spike From moulton at moulton.com Fri Apr 17 20:02:29 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:02:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1239998549.6910.994.camel@hayek> I did a bit of investigation and I think this URL gets the entire thing. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/uploads/approved/adt-NWU20050111.134706/public/02Whole.pdf They do have some restrictions on the first page. Fred On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 12:11 -0700, Keith Henson wrote: ... > > If you Google for "population trends of sri lanka" you get a pointer > to page 271 of a thesis. > > Anyone know how to get parts of that thesis? From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 17 19:13:16 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:13:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! Message-ID: <7122.38542.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 4/17/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Hmmm. It seems that Dinello has > read very little SF but, as reviewer Morgan says, gets most > of his SF evidence from video sources. > ? > On a brighter note, I'm wrapping up this semester > teaching my first-ever course on Science Fiction and > Fantasy. I've introduced my university students to some > authors they've never heard of, including Vinge, Stross > and Iain Banks. In my lectures, I've informed them of > the concept of the Vingean Sinularity and Kurzweil's > writings about it. Some loved it immediately, while others > were frightened. Best of all, some who were initially > frightened have changed their minds and embraced the > Singular possibilities. Congratulations! Will you be putting your lectures online? I actually took a science fiction course in college, but it didn't even acknowledge anyone after 1960. And I didn't go to college in 1961! Have you heard Michael Drout's lectures on science fiction -- "From Here to Infinity: An Exploration of Science Fiction Literature"? I enjoyed them. The link at his page to these lectures doesn't work: http://michaeldrout.com/ Regards, Dan From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 17 20:13:06 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:13:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... References: Message-ID: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> ... > > Spike, another suggestion would be to raise the discussion > to the EP meta level... Keith > > Good idea Keith. Let us go meta, and think about the big > picture here... spike For instance, here's an idea. Think of the most recent *big things* which I will define as a scientific discovery or technological development which changed everything, such that if that were to be taken away now, society as we know it would not operate correctly. Here are the ones I thought of: running water, reliable electric power and internal combustion engines. We would likely all agree here that if any of these three were to suddenly break down, society as we have known it would suffer greatly. There are subcategories which might be treated separately, such as electronics being a subcategory of electric power. Our society would sort of operate without all our electronics, but it would certainly gum up the works, ja? Now think about this. As recently as 1900, most had no indoor plumbing and almost no one had electric power or used internal combustion engines. Now we have a hard time imagining life without these things. I did not include modern medicine on this list, for altho some would be in immediate trouble without it, the majority would scarcely notice it missing, at least until the next time we were sick. If the internet suddenly went down, many of us would suffer greatly, but life would go on. So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big thing coming? spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 20:48:04 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:48:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] proposed moratorium on religion topics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 12:56 PM, BillK wrote: > On 4/17/09, Keith Henson wrote: > >> ?As an EP based bet, the unrest and war started in a time of falling >> ?income per capita when future economics looked bleak. >> > > > The trouble is that EP doesn't explain everything and doesn't fit all wars. > > According to Encyclop?dia Britannica the Sri Lankan troubles > originated right at the start of independence in 1948 with an > unrepresentative government.victimizing a minority And why did they start victimizing a minority at that particular time? Is there anything in common with this and the other cases we know well? Also, once started wars and similar social unrest have a life of their own. In electronics terms there is a big hysteresis in the equations. Consider the effect of Perle Harbor.on the US population as an example. >and later including > much nepotism and corruption. > In fact the troubles escalated at a time of economic growth. > Quote: > The liberalization policies succeeded initially. Stimulated by a > substantially enhanced level of foreign aid and investment, the > economy became buoyant, recording, up to about 1984, real growth rates > of about 6 percent per annum. Thereafter, however, there was a marked > deceleration of growth, caused mainly by the disruptive effects of the > ethnic conflict on economic activity. > --------- Is this an aggregate for the whole country? In other words, does it apply to the people in the minority areas? You have to look at the outlook of the people who started the fighting. It could be (and in this case probably was) both sides who are feeling squeezed. It is just that the majority group can usually impose on or even wipe out the minority. Rwanda for example. > Similar points apply to other situations, like the victimization of > the Northern Ireland Catholic minority. > > Of course you have the win - win argument, that wars start because: > 1) times are getting hard, or > 2) times are good, but everybody is worried about future hard times. > > That covers all times, I think. You win the argument. ?;) This model, derived from stone age evolutionary pressures, is either true or it is not. You can show it is not by an example of a country that was not attacked starting a war where they had decent economic expectations for the future. The model didn't fit the US Civil war until you take into account the expected loss of slaves if they stayed in the Union. They were, of course, correct in how much of the economy depended on slaves. The war in Iraq would never have been accepted by the US population except for being actually attacked and then being lied to. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but the US population was convinced by politicians that they did. Of course behavioral switches and traits evolved in stone age groups can't be expected to work well in the modern era, but the counter of places with low birth rates and decent economic prospects keep the war switches off. The other prediction is that people in war situations make stupid decisions. More stupid than normal that is. Plenty of examples there, and the reason is that the interest of a warrior and his genes diverge. Genes win. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 20:52:52 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:52:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: On 4/17/09, spike wrote: > So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big thing > coming? > Well, if you let me go back about only ten years, I'd suggest the mobile phone. Ten years ago, few people used the heavy brick-like mobile phones. Now they are absolutely indispensable from about age 8 onwards. People cannot imagine life without their phone. Any film over ten years old has had the plot ruined by kids saying, "Why doesn't he just phone for help?". But I suppose you want something even newer than that? :) BillK From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Fri Apr 17 20:47:09 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:47:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Races, cultures and religions (EP) Message-ID: <681208.93025.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Keith, do you know of any discussion of Clark's work in relation to non-European cultures? After all, Japanese society for many centuries had the merchants (Heimin) at the bottom of the social scale, as they did not produce any useful wealth unlike farmers and artisans but merely redistributed goods to where there was demand. Under such circumstances, you would think there was little or no selection for capitalistic traits while traits emphasised by the samurai class would have been favoured. Nonetheless, in the 19th and 20th centuries the Japanese took to capitalism very well and provided a thriving model of economic development. After the second world war, they were able to build a very free and democratic society. So, this would indicate that for the Japanese lack of genetic selection pressure for capitalist traits is less important than the lessons a culture can import from abroad. Tom From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 22:38:32 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:38:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kings need not apply here In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090417134318.02578c18@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> <2d6187670904171122tb8e7471k18560fbbf5d2142a@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090417134318.02578c18@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904171538n2c92a0ccr9fb6e2ce83304fd2@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:22 AM 4/17/2009 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > > "Give us a king to lead us," (1 Samuel 8:1-22) >> > > "Give us a king to behead." (me) > > Well, not really. No need to be cruel. Give the guy a small pension if he > can't find an honest job, and send him packing. > Ahh, but the problem is that the king has so many lobbyists in the capital (and so many gold coins to help "persuade" others), that we will never get rid of him! And even worse, if he actually does give up the kingship, he'll fall in with the infamous Wall Street Pirates, or become a CEO of a major chariot manufacturer that regularly demand bailouts... The job title or century may change, but not the type of person and the effect on society that they and their cronies have... John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 00:00:56 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:00:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: <62c14240904171700j628dff74l40916291ffba8d4c@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 4:13 PM, spike wrote: > > So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big thing > coming? > > In-home fabbers. They don't even need to be nanotechnology-powered magic. If the current generation of 3d printers/prototype machines were at or below the cost of a large-screen TV, it would change the way we see "everyday" items around the house. Make these devices capable of recycling their own output for source material on new products and they'll be replacing Wal-Mart for cheap goods we "gotta have" this moment and don't need the next. Hmm... maybe that won't cause large numbers to perish... :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 04:11:17 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:11:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Races, cultures and religions (EP) In-Reply-To: <681208.93025.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <681208.93025.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: There is extensive discussion of other cultures, especially Japan, in Clark's book "Farewell to Alms." You might be able to find it in a library or get a copy from Amazon. Keith On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Tom Nowell wrote: > > Keith, do you know of any discussion of Clark's work in relation to non-European cultures? After all, Japanese society for many centuries had the merchants (Heimin) at the bottom of the social scale, as they did not produce any useful wealth unlike farmers and artisans but merely redistributed goods to where there was demand. Under such circumstances, you would think there was little or no selection for capitalistic traits while traits emphasised by the samurai class would have been favoured. Nonetheless, in the 19th and 20th centuries the Japanese took to capitalism very well and provided a thriving model of economic development. After the second world war, they were able to build a very free and democratic society. So, this would indicate that for the Japanese lack of genetic selection pressure for capitalist traits is less important than the lessons a culture can import from abroad. > > Tom > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 04:28:53 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:58:53 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Kings need not apply here In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904171538n2c92a0ccr9fb6e2ce83304fd2@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90904160600o624c7698t2a1e2bb60182f904@mail.gmail.com> <3BFF9C278D8B4F4E95FC9E8C34BBED84@spike> <2d6187670904171122tb8e7471k18560fbbf5d2142a@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090417134318.02578c18@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670904171538n2c92a0ccr9fb6e2ce83304fd2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904172128l776017cfhf271aa9e289c2963@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/18 John Grigg : > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Damien Broderick > wrote: >> >> At 11:22 AM 4/17/2009 -0700, John Grigg wrote: >> >>> "Give us a king to lead us," (1 Samuel 8:1-22) >> >> "Give us a king to behead." (me) >> >> Well, not really. No need to be cruel. Give the guy a small pension if he >> can't find an honest job, and send him packing. > > Ahh, but the problem is that the king has so many lobbyists in the capital > (and so many gold coins to help "persuade" others), that we will never get > rid of him!? And even worse, if he actually does give up the kingship, he'll > fall in with the infamous Wall Street Pirates, or become a CEO of a major > chariot manufacturer that regularly demand bailouts... > > The job title or century may change, but not the type of person and the > effect on society that they and their cronies have... > > John? ; ) > The Frogs Desiring a King http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?2&TheFrogsDesiringaKing -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 04:40:19 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:40:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: Who said *ANYTHING* > about destroying anyone? How bizarre that you should choose > that word. ### Let's not get hypocritical here. Expelling 6 million people does involve destruction of lives on a large scale. They won't be accepted abroad - there is no country in the world willing to accept 6 million refugees. If you start rounding them up and fire up some crematoriums, maybe a few hundred thousand will get pity visas in the US and other places. Failing that, you could drop them off in international waters and leave them to fight the currents. Have you thought about these technicalities of your proposal - millions of innocent people rounded up and either kept indefinitely in concentration camps or actually killed, if you are serious about your "expelling"? So yes, I stand by my accusation that you want to destroy the lives of 6 million innocent people. ------------------------ > >> When I challenged you to run the numbers and to explain how a 6% >> minority with marginally higher procreation levels could become a >> majority in 25 years, you didn't. > > What? This is a matter of numbers for you? ### Yes, it is a matter of numbers. Everything is a matter of numbers for me. What matter is it for you? --------------------- Are you saying > that if they were a 40% minority that would tip the balance > in your thinking? This sounds misleading, to put it mildly. > Are you really grappling with the issues? Why don't you > give me some examples where you *would* expel some minority, > and I mean *expel*, not "destroy". ### Don't accuse me of being a liberal hypocrite. If I was a Croat with a 40% Serb minority and hundreds of thousands of armed and organized militias killing hundreds of people a day, and there was no chance of building a coalition of non-violent Serbs and Croats to control the madness, I would support ethnic cleansing, i.e. offering legal protection only to those who swear allegiance to a Croat protection service, refusing it to Serbs, and ruthlessly killing anybody proven to be involved with the militias, which over time would produce movement of Serbs to Serbian majority locations while concentrating Croats in their areas. If I was Shia and there were Sunni death squads infiltrating from other neighborhoods, I would support the idea of splitting the country into a Sunni and a Shia state. No Lee, I am not a dumb leftist weakling or something. I do understand that if there are insufficient resources (including time) to tell the innocent from the violent, the lives of some innocent people will be destroyed, unavoidably, and sweepingly destructive actions will happen, one way or another. As a libertarian, I want to minimize this destruction, and as a rational person I insist on having a quantitative description of facts that allow predictive modeling of the future. I am sorry to see it, but your proposal actually deliberately seeks to destroy and is not based on facts. ------------------ I do appreciate your argument > that according to you according to your numbers, the truly crucial > "us becoming a minority" wouldn't be going to happen for some time > (were I that hypothetical Frenchman I spoke of above). Indeed, the > singularity might happen first. ### Good, so you admit your math isn't worth a damn. This invalidates all else - if you build a chain of reasoning on quantitatively incorrect data, the reasoning is invalid. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 04:40:44 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:40:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904172140i2de7b1feo29998069f2cd25d7@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:18 AM, BillK wrote: > But you still want to initiate force against law-abiding citizens > because you suspect that many years in the future they 'might' spoil a > society that you want to scrap anyway. ### Bill, you nailed it. I mean, if Bill, who is a good guy but no libertarian, has to remind you of *non-initiation of violence*, then ... well, I have no more comments on this issue. Rafal From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 18 04:53:49 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:53:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <62c14240904171700j628dff74l40916291ffba8d4c@mail.gmail.com> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> <62c14240904171700j628dff74l40916291ffba8d4c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49E95CDD.8040404@rawbw.com> Mike Dougherty wrote: > spike wrote > > > > So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to > > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > > numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another > > big thing > > coming? Now the most interesting interpretation I have of Spike's idea, which I think he did imply, is what would kill a lot of people were it magically to fail. Spike mentioned "the ones I thought of: running water, reliable electric power and internal combustion engines. We would likely all agree here that if any of these three were to suddenly break down, society as we have known it would suffer greatly." I think that he should have combined the last two of his examples. I.e., suddenly without running water, millions around the world would die (I'd guess). Similarly, without electric power *and* the internal combustion engine, many millions would die. But if just one of the latter were to fail, I think that although greatly impoverished, few would die. Mike contributes to this: > In-home fabbers. They don't even need to be nanotechnology-powered > magic. If the current generation of 3d printers/prototype machines were > at or below the cost of a large-screen TV, it would change the way we > see "everyday" items around the house. Make these devices capable of > recycling their own output for source material on new products and > they'll be replacing Wal-Mart for cheap goods we "gotta have" this > moment and don't need the next. Hmm... maybe that won't cause large > numbers to perish... :) Well, I can imagine people becoming so dependent on what you suggest that indeed many people would die if it all suddenly broke down. For it could happen with matter compilers that a lot of people would move to where sun energy was cheap, set themselves up on an acre or so, and forget about the rest of the world. Then indeed many would perish should something happen to their matter compilers (though I may have taken liberties with your basic idea of fabbers). Lee From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 05:19:29 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:19:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <49E95CDD.8040404@rawbw.com> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> <62c14240904171700j628dff74l40916291ffba8d4c@mail.gmail.com> <49E95CDD.8040404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <62c14240904172219u71c1804clba70ca41f7a74113@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Well, I can imagine people becoming so dependent on what > you suggest that indeed many people would die if it all > suddenly broke down. For it could happen with matter > compilers that a lot of people would move to where sun > energy was cheap, set themselves up on an acre or so, > and forget about the rest of the world. Then indeed many > would perish should something happen to their matter > compilers (though I may have taken liberties with your > basic idea of fabbers). > You have the idea correct. I made the distinction that nano-magical machines aka matter compilers are a bit more advanced than today's 3D printers. Simply having a device that's capable of forming basic products like dishes for example would make it possible to "reprint" when fashion dictates plates should be square rather than round - without adding millions of round plates to landfills. It's getting a little old, but check this thing out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAt2xD1L8dw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 05:20:54 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:20:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > On 13 Apr, 2009, at 4:54, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> ### "Externalities" is just the kind of baloney that economists >> invented when their own research started going too far against their >> own prejudices. The anti-market bias afflicts most economists, too, >> they just learned how to clothe their antipathy in jargon. >> >> Rafal > > > Externalities, or externalized costs, are very real, not made-up jargon. ### I admit my comment was a bit over-the-top. Externalities are not entirely made up, there is a certain fact of the matter that is described by the term, yes, however, there is a big gap between the totally innocuous fact and the grandiose and confused schemes whipped up to deal with it. See below. ----------------- Let > me give you an example: Let's say I own a bit of land upstream from you. I > can poop in the river and for me, waste disposal is free. Much cheaper than > digging a latrine or building some hippie composting system. The water just > carries it downstream. ?Of course, by doing so, I've imposed some costs on > you. ?You now have to install a catch system to remove my waste from your > drinking water, and boil everything to kill the coliform bacteria. Of > course, it doesn't matter to ME, since I've externalized that cost. :) > > Economically, it makes a lot of sense for me to push that cost onto you. > What can compete with free, after all? But it doesn't mean that its the > right thing to do, so you are well within your rights to make sure there is > a Clean Water Act preventing me from pooping in the river and thus making > sure that I'm paying for my own waste disposal, rather than using the > fortunate happenstance of the river to force you to pay for it. > > There's a very good reason economists care about externalities, one that > seems obvious to me: precision. If you don't account for external costs, > then there is no consistency in your measurement system. It's like using a > balance without taring it each time. You have no idea how one thing compares > to anything in terms of its real cost, because you're not measuring the same > thing each time. ?Which, contrary to your assertion, means that > understanding externalities is vital to market economics - how can an agent > in the market make the best choice if there is no precise or accurate > counting of the cost? > ### Yes, you need to know all costs to reliably rank policies by efficiency. But as I said above, externalities are a very simple issue that gets abused well beyond its significance. There is an "externality" of some sort to absolutely anything that at least one human being may care about - even my breathing will be seen as an externality by the global warming lunatic fringe crowd, since my mere physiological existence imposes a certain carbon footprint. Almost any interaction between any two parties, whether commercial or not, produces some externalities impinging in some way on somebody else. This is uncontroversial. But this simple observation is used as an ad hoc justification for convoluted scheming that is completely unjustified by the facts. In the example you give above, yes, there is an externality imposed by shitting in the stream, at least as long as somebody who cares lives downstream. It can be dealt with by describing the property rights relevant to the stream, and letting involved parties hammer out deals. As per Coase's theorem, an efficient outcome can be achieved as long as transaction costs are sufficiently low. Yet, most economists, just like regular folks, have an anti-market bias which is only partially mitigated by their exposure to the workings of the economy, and they seize the externality as a pretext to support harebrained schemes, like carbon offsets, fishing quotas, environmental legislation, and yes, the Clean Water Act, instead of pointing to the tried-and-true method, free trade. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 05:25:01 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:25:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What Dan is that? In-Reply-To: <874306.44877.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <874306.44877.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904172225p1f440517m5029b40354eb63bf@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >> Dan wrote: >>> Heck, I'd like to discuss engineering projects >>> that could be done now on the cheap.? Recall, >>> many years ago, I brought up the topic of flooding >>> the East African Rift.... >> >> Are you the Technotranscendence type Dan >> that used to frequent this list? > > I've never left the list. ?I'm just using a different email account now. ?Of course, my level of participation has varied over the years. ?And I've broken free of my handlers. ?Horrors! ?:) ### You are the Dan who greatly contributed to my becoming a raving anarcho-capitalist? Good seeing you around again. Rafal From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sat Apr 18 05:11:16 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:11:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Really? Message-ID: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but decided against it:) I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been recently discussed. Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because they don't fit into what we have "decided" as the norm? That doesn't sound very Extropian. War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best scenarios" have been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea behind a progressive idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads to the benefit of the whole, not the chosen few. Just an opinion:) Anna __________________________________________________________________ Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 18 05:11:39 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:11:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] life after people In-Reply-To: References: <681208.93025.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7162A90250AE4CE4BB88718A3CEEA1E4@spike> Did anyone see this? http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=70292&v=All http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People Its a documentary on what would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared. I didn't see it, but I know of a modern structure that would be around for perhaps longer than the pyramids. It is a special aircraft bunker on the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama for assembling rockets, specifically designed to contain explosions in the event that one of the solid rocket motors somehow ignites and then ignites the other motors in there. Everyone inside perishes of course, but people outside wouldn't know anything was up. The building was designed to withstand any tornado or earthquake which is needed since the building contains all those rocket motors. It is in the middle of a vast expanse of solid concrete that was once an airforce runway. Since there is very little blowing dust in that very moist environment, I could easily imagine the inside of that bunker would look somewhat similar in ten thousand years as it does today. All the rubber would be gone, the foam in the office chairs turned to dust, the vinyl seat covers vaporized, etc, but that concrete shell would hold up and keep the stuff inside dry and the various beasts outdoors. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 05:57:28 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:57:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] life after people In-Reply-To: <7162A90250AE4CE4BB88718A3CEEA1E4@spike> References: <681208.93025.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <7162A90250AE4CE4BB88718A3CEEA1E4@spike> Message-ID: <2d6187670904172257i1810565bt76bef9923e424a9a@mail.gmail.com> I remember watching that documentary and really enjoying it due to the excellent CGI work, that brought the narration to life. I would definitely recommend it to you. As I watched it, I thought of myself living in such a world (maybe after just a few centuries of humanity being gone), with a faithful canine companion, and one surviving supermodel (very affectionate) to be my mate. : ) But I don't want the scenario with the cannibalistic super-mutants pursuing us... Today in a used book store I came across a Robert Silverberg novel about chimps evolving to full sentience when a meteorite/radiation storm destroys humanity. He is one of my favorite writers. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 06:00:46 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:00:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? In-Reply-To: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904172300s746aa081w6768dff1384168da@mail.gmail.com> Muslim hardliners and extremists living within western nations are a definite challenge to our values and legal systems, and it is still a big *?* as to whether the West is truly up to the challenge. Will we simply capitulate, or instead overreact with violence and injustice, or will we take a firm yet just course of action? John On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Anna Taylor wrote: > > I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but decided against > it:) I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been recently > discussed. Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because they > don't fit into what we have "decided" as the norm? That doesn't sound very > Extropian. War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best > scenarios" have been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea > behind a progressive idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads > to the benefit of the whole, not the chosen few. > > Just an opinion:) > Anna > > > > > __________________________________________________________________ > Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet > Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at > http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 06:06:32 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:06:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904172300s746aa081w6768dff1384168da@mail.gmail.com> References: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <2d6187670904172300s746aa081w6768dff1384168da@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904172306q628ef894i872851203b29e0e9@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:00 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Muslim hardliners and extremists living within western nations are a > definite *challenge* to our values and legal systems, and it is still a > big *?* as to whether the West is truly up to the *challenge*. > > Dang it!!! I need my dyslexia implant... John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 06:19:25 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:19:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Brain aging test/was Re: Fwd: FYI: Experimental Man In-Reply-To: <324028.43084.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <324028.43084.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904172319q209fc6e2s4107f618b90e8524@mail.gmail.com> Dan wrote: > * Was it here that was mentioned the report stating that people seem to > peak cognitively in their mid-20s on average? I seem to recall such a > report a few weeks ago and remember one comment on it being that this is > when people tend to finish college so that the cognitive decline might just > be most people slow down on learning new things. The take away being: keep > learning new things intensively until your brain burns out. :) > > I took the military's ASVAB test earlier this week and it was very interesting to do so, because I had taken it well over a decade ago in highschool. I did not study for it (thinking it covered so many topics that it would be useless to do so, a mistake on my part) and by the end I actually had a mild headache from the concentration and effort required on my part. Ironically, my composite score was only two points lower than my highschool result, when much of the material covered was fresh in my head! lol John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Apr 18 11:11:17 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:11:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] space based solar power Message-ID: <234574.87822.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I read the article on the company signing a deal with a California utility about space solar power. When I saw the sums involved, I knew this was vapourware. It's far less than the sums involved in getting people 100km up for space tourism, let alone the hundreds of billions mentioned in Keith's figures. They also mention in the article that they're talking to "united launch alliance" - who are far from being economical cut-price operators. I went to my local library to read "New Scientist" and maybe see if any of the economics/politics magazines had anything interesting, but all the ones I liked were being read. So, I picked up "Flight International" and it turned out they had a space tourism special. http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/04/14/325018/special-report-space-tourism.html The interview with the guy running Virgin Galactic included the figure of $250m to $350m to fully develop and build the craft and have everything running to get people 100km up. Virgin aren't thrilled at having to develop the craft but seeing as there aren't any manufacturers to buy from, they're having to "do a Howard Hughes" (manufacture a craft and operate an airline using it). Virgin are also conscious of how people say "I'll believe it when I see it" so they'll be taking one of their craft to the Oshkosh experimental air show to let people see the hardware. The article also points out that Virgin's strength is in market research and tapping currently unmet demands, which is how they figured out the size of the space tourism market to begin with. I'm glad to see that space tourism (if only the 100km up, Neil Armstrong in an X-15 style of flight) is actually coming to market. Hopefully other space businesses will figure out a way to become reality rather than paper proposals. Tom From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 13:22:56 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:22:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <49E8BC5F.7040804@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> <49E8BC5F.7040804@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/4/18 painlord2k at libero.it : >> Unless they have the misfortune of being stuck in a theocracy many >> nominal Muslims behave just like many nominal Christians. They don't >> pray five times a day, drink alcohol, fornicate, and feel only mildly >> guilty about it. > > The problems is not how they feel about themselves, but how other > Muslims feels about them. Islam work so anyone is policing any other. > Public deviation from the accepted norm is punished inside the family > (for fear of social ostracism of the entire family groups or clan) and > from outside the family. This is how Christianity started off also, with very severe punishments for things like blasphemy and sodomy. But in Europe, the population came to take less and less notice of the Church, leading to a more secular society, followed by a belated liberalisation of the Church for fear that they would become increasingly irrelevant. There have been setbacks, such as the rise of the fundamentalists in the US, but generally the trend has been one of increasing secularisation. -- Stathis Papaioannou From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Apr 18 13:33:31 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:33:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Moving Forward (was RE: Really?) In-Reply-To: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <900896.19765.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6FD345BDA92B4D71B16C1917F3FFFEBA@DFC68LF1> Hi Ann, we are trying to move beyond this dent. While I agree with what you say, continuing to post on it only promotes further discussion. Everyone, please give it a rest. Best wishes, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anna Taylor Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:11 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] Really? I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but decided against it:) I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been recently discussed. Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because they don't fit into what we have "decided" as the norm? That doesn't sound very Extropian. War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best scenarios" have been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea behind a progressive idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads to the benefit of the whole, not the chosen few. Just an opinion:) Anna __________________________________________________________________ Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet ExplorerR 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From brentn at freeshell.org Sat Apr 18 15:03:59 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:03:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <577B7EAF859541929AC0C81648AB04E0@spike> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 18 Apr, 2009, at 1:20, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > It can be dealt with by > describing the property rights relevant to the stream, and letting > involved parties hammer out deals. Which is, in a real sense, what the Clean Water Act does. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 15:34:03 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:34:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > > On 18 Apr, 2009, at 1:20, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> ?It can be dealt with by >> describing the property rights relevant to the stream, and letting >> involved parties hammer out deals. > > Which is, in a real sense, what the Clean Water Act does. > ### Not really. You can't call other users of your lake and agree to start dumping garbage - the EPA goons will prevent you from doing that no matter what owners of the lake want. Regulation preempts trade. Rafal From pjmanney at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 16:06:26 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:06:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt Message-ID: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> Sometimes, you need to get a larger perspective to see that context is everything. Maybe Haidt's book should be require reading before anyone is allowed to post again. PJ http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/morals-authority-1099.print Morals Authority By: Tom Jacobs Jonathan Haidt is hardly a road-rage kind of guy, but he does get irritated by self-righteous bumper stickers. The soft-spoken psychologist is acutely annoyed by certain smug slogans that adorn the cars of fellow liberals: "Support our troops: Bring them home" and "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." "No conservative reads those bumper stickers and thinks, 'Hmm - so liberals are patriotic!'" he says, in a sarcastic tone of voice that jarringly contrasts with his usual subdued sincerity. "We liberals are universalists and humanists; it's not part of our morality to highly value nations. So to claim dissent is patriotic - or that we're supporting the troops, when in fact we're opposing the war - is disingenuous. "It just pisses people off." The University of Virginia scholar views such slogans as clumsy attempts to insist we all share the same values. In his view, these catch phrases are not only insincere - they're also fundamentally wrong. Liberals and conservatives, he insists, inhabit different moral universes. There is some overlap in belief systems, but huge differences in emphasis. In a creative attempt to move beyond red-state/blue-state clich?s, Haidt has created a framework that codifies mankind's multiplicity of moralities. His outline is simultaneously startling and reassuring - startling in its stark depiction of our differences, and reassuring in that it brings welcome clarity to an arena where murkiness of motivation often breeds contention. He views the demonization that has marred American political debate in recent decades as a massive failure in moral imagination. We assume everyone's ethical compass points in the same direction and label those whose views don't align with our sense of right and wrong as either misguided or evil. In fact, he argues, there are multiple due norths. "I think of liberals as colorblind," he says in a hushed tone that conveys the quiet intensity of a low-key crusader. "We have finely tuned sensors for harm and injustice but are blind to other moral dimensions. Look at the way the word 'wall' is used in liberal discourse. It's almost always related to the idea that we have to knock them down. "Well, if we knock down all the walls, we're sitting out in the rain and cold! We need some structure." Haidt is best known as the author of The Happiness Hypothesis, a lively look at recent research into the sources of lasting contentment. But his central focus - and the subject of his next book, scheduled to be published in fall 2010 - is the intersection of psychology and morality. His research examines the wellsprings of ethical beliefs and why they differ across classes and cultures. Last September, in a widely circulated Internet essay titled Why People Vote Republican, Haidt chastised Democrats who believe blue-collar workers have been duped into voting against their economic interests. In fact, he asserted forcefully, traditionalists are driven to the GOP by moral impulses liberals don't share (which is fine) or understand (which is not). To some, this dynamic is deeply depressing. "The educated moral relativism worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the way 50 percent of America thinks, and stereotypes about out-of-touch elitist coastal Democrats are basically correct," sighed the snarky Web site Gawker.com as it summarized his studies. But others - including many fellow liberal academics - have greeted Haidt's ideas as liberating. "Jonathan is a thoughtful and somewhat flamboyant theorist," says Dan McAdams, a Northwestern University research psychologist and award-winning author. "We don't have that many of those in academic psychology. I really appreciate his lively mind." "Psychology, as a field, has lots and lots of data, but we don't have very many good new ideas," agrees Dennis Proffitt, chairman of the University of Virginia psychology department. "They are rare in our field, but Jon is full of good new ideas." An unapologetic liberal atheist, Haidt has a remarkable ability to describe opposing viewpoints without condescension or distortion. He forcefully expresses his own political opinions but understands how they are informed by his underlying moral orientation. In an era where deadlocked debates so often end with a dismissive "you just don't get it," he gets it. Four years ago, he recalls, "I wanted to help Democrats press the right buttons because the Republicans were out-messaging them. "I no longer want to be a part of that effort. What I want to do now is help both sides understand the other, so that policies can be made based on something more than misguided fear of what the other side is up to." Haidt's journey into ethical self-awareness began during his senior year of high school in Westchester County, N.Y. "I had an existential crisis straight out of Woody Allen," he recalls. "If there's no God, how can there be a meaning to life? And if there's no meaning, why should I do my homework? So I decided to become a philosophy major and find out the meaning of life." Once he began his studies at Yale, however, he found philosophy "generally boring, dry and irrelevant." So he gradually gravitated to the field of psychology, ultimately earning his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. There he met several influential teachers, including anthropologist Alan Fiske and Paul Rozin, an expert on the psychology of food and the emotion of disgust. Fascinated by Rozin's research, Haidt wrote his dissertation on moral judgment of disgusting but harmless actions - a study that helped point the way to his later findings. As part of that early research, Haidt and a colleague, Brazilian psychologist Silvia Koller, posed a series of provocative questions to people in both Brazil and the U.S. One of the most revealing was: How would you react if a family accidentally ran over its own dog, then cooked it and ate it for dinner? "There were differences between nations, but the biggest differences were within social classes within each nation," Haidt recalls. "Students at a private school in Philadelphia thought it was a little gross, but it wasn't harming anyone; their attitude was rationalist and harm-based. But when you moved down in social class or into Brazil, morality is based not on just harm. It's also about loyalty and family and authority and respect and purity. That was an important early finding." On the strength of that paper, Haidt went to work for Richard Shweder, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Chicago who arranged for his postdoc fellow to spend three months in India. Haidt refers to his time in Bhubaneshwar - an ancient city full of Hindu temples that retains a traditional form of morality with rigid cast and gender roles - as transformative. "I found there is not really a way to say 'thank you' or 'you're welcome' (in the local language)," he recalls. "There are ways of acknowledging appreciation, but saying 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' didn't make any emotional sense to them. Your stomach doesn't say 'thank you' to your esophagus for passing the food to it! What I finally came to understand was to stop acting as if everybody was equal. Rather, each person had a job to do, and that made the social system run smoothly." Gradually getting past his reflexive Western attitudes, he realized that "the Confucian/Hindu traditional value structure is very good for maintaining order and continuity and stability, which is very important in the absence of good central governance. But if the goal is creativity, scientific insight and artistic achievement, these traditional societies pretty well squelch it. Modern liberalism, with its support for self-expression, is much more effective. I really saw the yin-yang." After returning to the U.S., Haidt accepted a position at the University of Virginia, where he immediately began challenging his fellow researchers. They were using data from upper-middle-class American college students to draw sweeping conclusions about human nature. Proffitt remembers him arguing "with some passion" that they needed to widen their scope. "Jon recognizes that diversity is not just the politically correct thing to do - it's also the intelligent thing to do," he says. "Seeing things from multiple perspectives gives you a much better view of the whole." In January 2005 - shortly after President Bush won re-election, to the shock and dismay of the left - Haidt was invited by a group of Democrats in Charlottesville, Va., to give a talk on morality and politics. There, for the first time, he explained to a group of liberals his conception of the moral world of cultural conservatives. "They were very open to what I was saying," he says. "I discovered there was a real hunger among liberals to figure out what the hell was going on." Haidt's framework of political morality can be traced back to a dispute between two important thinkers: Shweder, who would go on to become his mentor, and legendary Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. In his 1981 volume The Philosophy of Moral Development, Kohlberg essentially argued that other moral systems are mere stepping-stones on a path that will eventually lead the entire world to embrace Western humanist values. Reviewing the book for the journal Contemporary Psychology, Shweder politely but effectively tore that notion apart. Citing his extensive research on traditional Indian culture, Shweder pointed out the inconsistencies and lack of convincing evidence behind Kohlberg's arguments. Agreeing with philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Shweder asserted - and continues to assert - that a range of ethical systems have always coexisted and most likely always will. In a 1997 paper co-written with three colleagues, he broke down primal moral impulses into a "big three": autonomy, community and divinity. Haidt found Shweder's ideas persuasive but incomplete. Agreeing with evolutionary theorist James Q. Wilson, he concluded that any full view of the origins of human morality would have to take into account not only culture (as analyzed by anthropologists) but also evolution. He reasoned it was highly unlikely humans would live by moral rules unless they played a role in improving the species' survivability - perhaps by allowing us to live together peacefully in larger and larger groups. "Morality is not just about how we treat each other, as most liberals think," he argues. "It is also about binding groups together and supporting essential institutions." With all that in mind, Haidt identified five foundational moral impulses. As succinctly defined by Northwestern University's McAdams, they are: * Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. * Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. * In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad. * Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life. * Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad. Haidt's research reveals that liberals feel strongly about the first two dimensions - preventing harm and ensuring fairness - but only grudgingly acknowledge the other three. Conservatives, on the other hand, are drawn to loyalty, authority and purity, which liberals tend to think of as backward or outdated. People on the right acknowledge the importance of harm prevention and fairness but not with the same energy or passion as those on the left. Libertarian essayist Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute - one of many self-reflective political thinkers who are intrigued by Haidt's hypothesis - puts it this way: "While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like 'Show Tunes' will turn down the bass and 'Hip Hop' will turn it up, but neither turns it off. "Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment and justification. If you're a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have purity and in-group pushed up to 11. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned in-group way down and harm way up." McAdams was first exposed to these ideas about three years ago, when he heard Haidt speak at a conference. Around that same time, he was analyzing information he had compiled from interviews with 150 highly religious middle-aged Americans - men and women from across the political spectrum who had described in detail the ways they find meaning in their lives. Realizing this was an excellent test case for Haidt's theories, McAdams started comparing the comments of self-described liberals and conservatives. Sure enough, "Conservatives spoke in moving terms about respecting authority and order," he found. "Liberals invested just as much emotion in describing their commitment to justice and equality. Liberals feel authority is a minor-league moral issue; for us, the major leaguers are harm and fairness." It's hard to play ball when you can't agree who deserves to be a big leaguer. Of Haidt's five moral realms, the one that causes the most friction between cosmopolitan liberals and traditionalist conservatives is purity/sanctity. To a 21st-century secular liberal, the concept barely registers. Haidt notes it was part of the Western vocabulary as recently as the Victorian era but lost its force in the early 20th century when modern rules of proper hygiene were codified. With the physical properties of contamination understood, the moral symbolism of impurity no longer carried much weight. But the impulse remains lodged in our psyches, turning up in both obvious and surprising ways. You can hear strong echoes of it when the pope rails against materialism, insisting we have been put on Earth to serve a loftier purpose than shopping until we drop. It can also be found in the nondenominational spiritual belief that we all contain within us a piece of the divine. (Although it's usually used in a tongue-in-cheek way in our society, the phrase "my body is a temple" is reflective of the purity/sanctity impulse.) "The question is: Do you see the world as simply matter?" Haidt asks. "If so, people can do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt other people. Or do you see more dimensions to life? Do you want to live in a higher, nobler way than simply the pursuit of pleasure? That often requires not acting on your impulses, making sacrifices for others. It implies a reverence - which is a nonrational feeling - towards human life." Consider two letters to the editor in a recent issue of the Ventura (Calif.) Breeze. The weekly newspaper has been chronicling a controversy about a 19th-century cemetery that gradually fell into disrepair and, since the early 1960s, has been used as a dog park. Some descendents of the people buried there are demanding that it be restored as a proper burial place. "Why is there even a debate?" wrote one angry resident. He referred to the park as "this holy ground" and admonished city officials: "Your values and judgment need some serious realignment." But a second reader looked at the controversy from a more practical perspective, noting that public funds are limited in these tough economic times. Besides, he added, "the park is full of life now, and I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but life is for the living." Both arguments are rooted in firm moral beliefs. It's just that for the first correspondent, purity/sanctity is paramount, while for the second it's of minimal importance. Not surprisingly, Haidt's data suggests purity/sanctity is the moral foundation that best predicts an individual's attitude toward abortion. It also helps explain opposition to gay marriage. "If you think society is made up of individuals, and each individual has the right to do what he or she wants if they aren't hurting anybody, it's unfathomable why anyone would oppose gay marriage," he says. "Liberals assume opponents must be homophobic. "I know feelings of disgust do play into it. When you're disgusted by something, you tend to come up with reasons why it's wrong. But cultural conservatives, with their strong emphasis on social order, don't see marriage primarily as an expression of one individual's desire for another. They see the family as the foundation of society, and they fear that foundation is dissolving." Haidt doesn't want religious fundamentalists dictating public policy to ensure it lines up with their specific moral code. Even if you perceive purity as a major-league issue, it doesn't have to be on steroids. But he argues it is important that liberals recognize the strength that impulse retains with cultural conservatives and respect it rather than dismissing it as primitive. "I see liberalism and conservatism as opposing principles that work well when in balance," he says, noting that authority needs to be both upheld (as conservatives insist) and challenged (as liberals maintain). "It's a basic design principle: You get better responsiveness if you have two systems pushing against each other. As individuals, we are very bad at finding the flaws in our own arguments. We all have a distorted perception of reality." Spend some time reading Haidt, and chances are you'll begin to view day-to-day political arguments through a less-polarized lens. Should the Guantanamo Bay prison be closed? Of course, say liberals, whose harm/fairness receptors are acute. Not so fast, argue conservatives, whose finely attuned sense of in-group loyalty points to a proactive attitude toward outside threats. Why any given individual grows up to become a conservative or a liberal is unclear. Haidt, like most contemporary social scientists, points to a combination of genes and environment - not one's family of origin so much as the neighborhood and society whose values you absorbed. (Current research suggests that peers may actually have a stronger impact than parents in this regard.) In his quest to "help people overcome morally motivated misunderstandings," Haidt has set up a couple of Web sites, www.civilpolitics.org and www.yourmorals.org. At the latter, you can take a quiz that will locate you on his moral map. For fun, you can also answer the questions you think the way your political opposite would respond. Haidt had both liberals and conservatives do just that in the laboratory, and the results are sobering for those on the left: Conservatives understood them a lot better than they understood conservatives. "Liberals tend to have a very optimistic view of human nature," he says. "They tend to be uncomfortable about punishment - of their own children, of criminals, anyone. I do believe that if liberals ran the whole world, it would fall apart. But if conservatives ran the whole world, it would be so restrictive and uncreative that it would be rather unpleasant, too." The concept of authority resonates so weakly in liberals that "it makes it difficult for liberal organizations to function," Haidt says. (Will Rogers was right on target when he proclaimed, "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat.") On the other hand, he notes, the Republicans' tendency to blindly follow their leader proved disastrous over the past eight years. "Look how horribly the GOP had to screw up to alienate many conservatives," muses Dallas Morning News columnist and BeliefNet blogger Rod Dreher, an Orthodox Christian, unorthodox conservative and Haidt fan. "In the end, the GOP, the conservative movement and the nation would have been better served had we on the right not been so yellow-dog loyal. But as Haidt shows, it's in our nature." Like Wilkinson, Dreher doesn't fit cleanly into the left-right spectrum; he reports that taking Haidt's test (showing he scored high on certain liberal values but also on some conservative ones) helped him understand why. He's appreciative of that insight and admiring of the way the psychologist is able to set aside the inherent prejudice we all share in favor of our own moral outlook. "It's hard for any of us to get outside our own heads and perform acts of empathy with people we don't much like," he notes. In higher education, as in so many other fields, the best way to negotiate a pay raise is to get a competing offer. Not infrequently, an academic will entertain an offer from an institution he or she isn't really interested in joining, specifically so he can get a salary offer, take it back to his current employer and demand it be matched. Haidt found himself in just that situation a few years back. But as he explained to Proffitt, his department chair, he was uncomfortable with the notion of lying to gain leverage. "He told me, 'I know that if I was offered the position, I could get a big raise here. But I study ethics! I can't do that! That would be wrong!' He felt he wouldn't be playing fair with the people from the other university, who were putting out money and effort to recruit him." "That game is played by a lot of people, but Jon would not," Proffitt says. "He elected not to do that on purely ethical grounds. That decision cost him at least $30,000 a year." But was he guided by the harm/care instinct? Or fairness/reciprocity? Or did the conservative value of in-group loyalty, which tends to lie dormant in liberals such as Haidt, emerge under these unusual circumstances and convince him to be true to his school? The most likely answer is "all of the above." The point is Haidt realized the wrongness of that behavior in his gut and acted on instinct. In making such decisions, he is setting a rigorous moral example for his son, Max, who turns 3 in July. Haidt would be pleased if, by the time Max gets to secondary school, the study of ethics is part of the curriculum. "If I had my way, moral psychology would be a mandatory part of high-school civics classes, and civics classes would be a mandatory part of all Americans' education," he says. "Understanding there are multiple perspectives on the good society, all of which are morally motivated, would go a long way toward helping us interact in a civil manner." Shweder cheers him on in that crusade. "I think this is terribly important," he says. "People are not going to converge on their judgments of what's good or bad, or right and wrong. Diversity is inherent in our species. And in a globalized world, we're going to be bumping into each other a lot." Whether they're addressing the U.S. Congress or U.N. General Assembly, Haidt has astute advice for policy advocates: Frame your argument to appeal to as many points as possible on the moral spectrum. He believes President Obama did just that in his inaugural address, which utilized "a broad array of virtue words, including 'courage,' 'loyalty,' 'patriotism' and 'duty,' to reach out and reassure conservatives." Haidt notes that the environmental movement was started by liberals, who were presumably driven by the harm/care impulse. But conservative Evangelical Christians are increasingly taking up the cause, propelled by the urge to respect authority. "They're driven by the idea that God gave man dominion over the Earth, and keeping the planet healthy is our sacred responsibility," he notes. "If we simply rape, pillage, destroy and consume, we're abusing the power given to us by God. "The climate crisis and the economic crisis are interesting, because neither has a human enemy. These are not crises that turn us against an out-group, so they're not really designed to bring us together, but they can be used for that. I hope and think we are ready, demographically and historically, for a less polarized era." But that will require peeling off some bumper stickers. Contrary to the assertion adhered onto Volvos, dissent and patriotism are very different impulses. But Haidt persuasively argues that both are essential to a healthy democracy, and the interplay between them - when kept within respectful bounds - is a source of vitality and strength. "Morality," he insists, "is a team sport." From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 18 17:26:22 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:26:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> Excellent PJ thanks. I have been a fan of this idea since I first heard of it about a year ago. This is exactly what I have been thinking about with regards to our endless and pointless debates about the general eastern/western values. We go on about how two cultures view the other as filled with abomination. Haidt's theory offers an explanation for why it is that way. Numbering the five moral impulses: 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad. 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life. 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad. In general, the notion is that western society is approximately evenly divided into two groups. The western liberal or left would rank moral impulses 1 and 2 higher than the other three, while the western conservatives rank all five about evenly. In very general in my view, the eastern traditionalist view ranks 3, 4 and 5 well above 1 and 2. It looks to me as though it would make the eastern traditionalist the moral counterpart of the western liberal, and would make the western conservative into a moderate between the other two. If that is the case, then I am puzzled why there apparently is more enmity between the western conservative and the eastern traditionalist than between the western liberal and the eastern traditionalist. Why? How? Do explain, without using the names of any particular religion or creed, but rather seeing this as a cultural and sociological phenom. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of PJ Manney > Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 9:06 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt > > Sometimes, you need to get a larger perspective to see that > context is everything. Maybe Haidt's book should be require > reading before anyone is allowed to post again. > > PJ > > http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/morals-authority- > 1099.print > > Morals Authority > ... From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 18 17:43:36 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:43:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt Message-ID: <90FEBDAD119648B7B05164DB5A9E0CFA@spike> > ...As part of that early research...posed questions... One of the most revealing was: How would you react if a family accidentally ran over its own dog, then cooked it and ate it for dinner? That is a good one. After I stopped laughing (why did I stop laughing?) I realized this is a hell of a good question. I live in a neighborhood which is over half Vietnamese, most of whom are first generation Americans, who have no problem devouring dogs, or anything else that once moved. Scarfing the squashed pet would obviate having to slay some other farm beast to provide the family sustenance, indirectly saving that creature, so for that reason it would be not merely ethicially permissible to serve Fido-sandwiches for dinner, it would be immoral to do otherwise. To bury perfectly good meat is wasting food, which is morally wrong. Furthermore, think of all the horse meat that this particular canine will no longer devour, saving those graceful vegetarian beasts from the slaughterhouse. The fact that the meal is mildly *compressed* should bother no one who has ever eaten spam. That this lunch once did tricks and slept with the children is also irrelevant considering it's current condition. spike From brentn at freeshell.org Sat Apr 18 19:00:16 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:00:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> On 18 Apr, 2009, at 11:34, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Brent Neal > wrote: >> >> On 18 Apr, 2009, at 1:20, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >>> >>> It can be dealt with by >>> describing the property rights relevant to the stream, and letting >>> involved parties hammer out deals. >> >> Which is, in a real sense, what the Clean Water Act does. >> > ### Not really. You can't call other users of your lake and agree to > start dumping garbage - the EPA goons will prevent you from doing that > no matter what owners of the lake want. Regulation preempts trade. > Because you can't gain agreement from users of the lake that are 100 years in the future, nor can you recompensate them. You can agree to start dumping nuclear waste in the lake and -permanently- destroy the lake. What amount of money do you consider to be ample recompensation for that? Give me a number that isn't fabricated whole cloth and your reasoning behind it. The EPA "goons" are in the right on this. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 19:32:21 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:32:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP Message-ID: I know Natasha doesn't want this discussed, but it's a good idea *at the proper level.* > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Anna Taylor wrote: >> >> I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but decided against >> it:) I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been recently >> discussed. Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because they >> don't fit into what we have "decided" as the norm? That doesn't sound very >> Extropian. War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best >> scenarios" have been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea >> behind a progressive idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads >> to the benefit of the whole, not the chosen few. Extropians are concerned with the future. We therefore need models of what is going to happen. The technological singularity is a simple model of exponentially increasing computation. At some point in the not so distant future a typical desktop computer will exceed the processing capacity of a human brain. This is a relatively simple model Models with feedback are more complicated. I have been a student of system dynamics since the early 1970s. On top of this I have been interested in gene based evolution (Dawkins, Hamilton and co.) since the early 80s and in memetics since the mid 80s. I got into evolutionary psychology (Barkow, Cosmides, Tooby, etc.) in the 90s. Genes, evolutionary psychology, and fundamental biology based on physics and chemistry provide insight into the system dynamics models. An area with a growing population and a limited and irregular production of food is a formula for disaster. The disaster could take the form of famine, but is more likely to result in human conflict. (Rwanda, Darfur). 2009/4/17 John Grigg : > Muslim hardliners and extremists living within western nations are a > definite challenge to our values and legal systems, The question here is *why* we have such people at all? If we know what social conditions generates religious extremists of all stripes then we can see if there are fundamental ways to solve the problems. This is not a new problem. As we have been discussing recently we have good history of similar events in our historical past. We can to some extent validate models against the past. > and it is still a big > *?* as to whether the West is truly up to the challenge. It may be that we don't need to solve the problem, or rather that one model (the singularity) can be expected to overrun other problems. >Will we simply > capitulate, or instead overreact with violence and injustice, or will we > take a firm yet just course of action? Don't forget that western European culture isn't the only one with this problem. It may become acute in Russia before it does in France. If we want to understand what is going on, we have to build models. The models are numbers intense. Perhaps we need something like a wiki where pages of graphical information feed into the overall dynamic models. Keith > John > > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Anna Taylor wrote: >> >> I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but decided against >> it:) ?I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been recently >> discussed. Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because they >> don't fit into what we have "decided" as the norm? ?That doesn't sound very >> Extropian. ?War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best >> scenarios" have been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea >> behind a progressive idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads >> to the benefit of the whole, not the chosen few. >> >> Just an opinion:) >> Anna >> >> >> >> >> ? ? ?__________________________________________________________________ >> Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet >> Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at >> http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 20:26:19 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:26:19 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/18/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Extropians are concerned with the future. We therefore need models of > what is going to happen. The technological singularity is a simple > model of exponentially increasing computation. At some point in the > not so distant future a typical desktop computer will exceed the > processing capacity of a human brain. This is a relatively simple > model > > Models with feedback are more complicated. I have been a student of > system dynamics since the early 1970s. On top of this I have been > interested in gene based evolution (Dawkins, Hamilton and co.) since > the early 80s and in memetics since the mid 80s. I got into > evolutionary psychology (Barkow, Cosmides, Tooby, etc.) in the 90s. > Genes, evolutionary psychology, and fundamental biology based on > physics and chemistry provide insight into the system dynamics models. > > An area with a growing population and a limited and irregular > production of food is a formula for disaster. The disaster could take > the form of famine, but is more likely to result in human conflict. > (Rwanda, Darfur). > Agreed. But Europe doesn't fit into this scenario. Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor countries. The basic EP scenario, hard times = war, doesn't apply for every war. Alexander the Great didn't conquer the known world because Greece was starving. He and his army did it because they could. They wanted the power and the glory and the plunder. The British Empire didn't spread around the world because Britain was starving. They (and other European countries) did it to plunder third world countries that were unable to resist greater force of arms. The same reasons apply to all the great empire expansions. If you were powerful enough to start with, then greed for more power and plunder and capturing slaves drove the expansion. Just as good times may lead to empire wars of expansion, but doesn't have to, so hard times can lead to wars of desperation, but doesn't have to. Humans are complex creatures. Hard times can lead to many different options. Yes, sometimes a war of desperation. But it may lead to many other paths. Starvation, a reducing population, reducing birth rate, lifestyle changes to make do with less, a time of invention to devise new survival techniques, emigration (temporary or permanent) to many other countries, and so on... To say that EP proves that hard times = war is far too simplistic. BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 21:30:10 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:30:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Canonizer may be the answer... (Was Re: Really? and EP) Message-ID: <2d6187670904181430i36763abapc09abad4bd37767b@mail.gmail.com> John Grigg wrote: >Will we simply > capitulate, or instead overreact with violence and injustice, or will we > take a firm yet just course of action? Keith Henson replied: Don't forget that western European culture isn't the only one with this problem. It may become acute in Russia before it does in France. If we want to understand what is going on, we have to build models. The models are numbers intense. Perhaps we need something like a wiki where pages of graphical information feed into the overall dynamic models. >>> I think Brent Allsop's Canonizer website may be "just what the doctor ordered" in terms of figuring out how to approach this problem. http://canonizer.com/ John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 22:20:57 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:20:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:26 PM, BillK wrote: > On 4/18/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> ?Extropians are concerned with the future. ?We therefore need models of >> ?what is going to happen. ?The technological singularity is a simple >> ?model of exponentially increasing computation. ?At some point in the >> ?not so distant future a typical desktop computer will exceed the >> ?processing capacity of a human brain. ?This is a relatively simple >> ?model >> >> ?Models with feedback are more complicated. ?I have been a student of >> ?system dynamics since the early 1970s. ?On top of this I have been >> ?interested in gene based evolution (Dawkins, Hamilton and co.) since >> ?the early 80s and in memetics since the mid 80s. ?I got into >> ?evolutionary psychology (Barkow, Cosmides, Tooby, etc.) in the 90s. >> ?Genes, evolutionary psychology, and fundamental biology based on >> ?physics and chemistry provide insight into the system dynamics models. >> >> ?An area with a growing population and a limited and irregular >> ?production of food is a formula for disaster. ?The disaster could take >> ?the form of famine, but is more likely to result in human conflict. >> ?(Rwanda, Darfur). >> > Agreed. But Europe doesn't fit into this scenario. They don't today. But how long would it take for a major weather disruption to result in serious famine in Europe? The inordinately widespread Russian famine of 1891-92 is thought to have been the result of a volcanic eruption. > Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor countries. > > The basic EP scenario, hard times = war, doesn't apply for every war. That is *not* what I said. It is more complicated. Perception of hard times a-coming turns up the gain on xenophobic memes. Unless that perception changes (like the rains come back) then the xenophobic memes lead into war, and very often what we would call really stupid wars. > Alexander the Great didn't conquer the known world because Greece was > starving. He and his army did it because they could. They wanted the > power and the glory and the plunder. Greece at that time was always in a mess for food. Read Diamond on this and the very similar problems the Myans had. Marching a good fraction of the population off to war was one way to keep the population down. It's not like Alexander knew where his impulse to do locus-like conquests came from, but the psychological mechanisms are wired in. > The British Empire didn't spread around the world because Britain was > starving. "Anthony Wrigley and Roger Schofield?s analysis of years of crisis mortality?which they define as years when the crude death rate was at least 10 percent above a twenty-five-year moving average?in England between the 1540s and the 1860s also suggests that both the size and duration of crises declined gradually over time, although it indicates further subsistence crises associated with significant excess mortality as late as 1728?30 and 1740?42." http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8857.html Food was a major concern. >They (and other European countries) did it to plunder third > world countries that were unable to resist greater force of arms. New world and old world had very different interactions. Disease was the reason the Europeans were able to take the new world and it's what kept them out of Africa, at least in the long term. > The same reasons apply to all the great empire expansions. If you were > powerful enough to start with, then greed for more power and plunder > and capturing slaves drove the expansion. At least in North America, it was more after land for farming that drove the natives out. The same thing seems to have happened in prehistoric times in China. > Just as good times may lead to empire wars of expansion, but doesn't > have to, so hard times can lead to wars of desperation, but doesn't > have to. > > Humans are complex creatures. Here is our major disagreement. I think humans have relatively simple behavioral switches. >Hard times can lead to many different options. > Yes, sometimes a war of desperation. > But it may lead to many other paths. Starvation, a reducing > population, reducing birth rate, lifestyle changes to make do with > less, a time of invention to devise new survival techniques, > emigration (temporary or permanent) to many other countries, and so > on... Of course people always moved to unoccupied land if they could. But they filled up the world a *long* time ago. Moving into another tribe's territory would start a war if the people there were also up against the wall. > To say that EP proves that hard times = war is far too simplistic. I wish you would quit putting words in my mouth. Keith > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 18 22:56:06 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:56:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > ... > > Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor > countries... Keith > Certainly. We currently use farm land in a lotta wasteful ways, such as growing grain to feed to cattle for beef, as a good example, or my own farm which is currently employed growing lawn grass seed. One of the things I hope modern humanity has going in its favor is that we have options for producing food far more efficiently than we do currently. What ways? If we ancticipated widespread food shortages, what could be done? One of the things I had in mind was using the grain currently used to feed beasts and use it for human food. The type of grain used for cattle feed is not considered human-usable, but I can imagine our attitudes would change dramatically if many were faced with starvation. We have plenty of wetlands currently being protected by the EPA. Surely in times of severe food shortage, all that would go out the window. These lands could perhaps be converted to rice cropland. Rice has a big advantage of being easily processed for long term storage. Same with beans. Rice and beans together make a complete protein, so populations can survive on little else, at least for a while. We could theoretically institute strict birth control policies (China did it, perhaps still does). spike From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 03:05:15 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:05:15 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> Message-ID: 2009/4/19 spike : > > > Excellent PJ thanks. ?I have been a fan of this idea since I first heard of > it about a year ago. ?This is exactly what I have been thinking about with > regards to our endless and pointless debates about the general > eastern/western values. ?We go on about how two cultures view the other as > filled with abomination. ?Haidt's theory offers an explanation for why it is > that way. > > Numbering the five moral impulses: > > 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. > > 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain > rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. > > 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of > threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; > betrayal is bad. > > 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order > is necessary for human life. > > 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. > Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, > are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits > of lust and greed are all bad. > > > In general, the notion is that western society is approximately evenly > divided into two groups. ?The western liberal or left would rank moral > impulses 1 and 2 higher than the other three, while the western > conservatives rank all five about evenly. > > In very general in my view, the eastern traditionalist view ranks 3, 4 and 5 > well above 1 and 2. ?It looks to me as though it would make the eastern > traditionalist the moral counterpart of the western liberal, and would make > the western conservative into a moderate between the other two. ?If that is > the case, then I am puzzled why there apparently is more enmity between the > western conservative and the eastern traditionalist than between the western > liberal and the eastern traditionalist. > > Why? ?How? ?Do explain, without using the names of any particular religion > or creed, but rather seeing this as a cultural and sociological phenom. The Western liberal's attitude towards Eastern traditionalists is softened by 2, while the conservative's attitude is hardened by 3. -- Stathis Papaioannou From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 05:07:51 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:07:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Brent Neal wrote: > On 18 Apr, 2009, at 11:34, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Brent Neal wrote: >>> >>> On 18 Apr, 2009, at 1:20, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >>>> >>>> ?It can be dealt with by >>>> describing the property rights relevant to the stream, and letting >>>> involved parties hammer out deals. >>> >>> Which is, in a real sense, what the Clean Water Act does. >>> >> ### Not really. You can't call other users of your lake and agree to >> start dumping garbage - the EPA goons will prevent you from doing that >> no matter what owners of the lake want. Regulation preempts trade. >> > > Because you can't gain agreement from users of the lake that are 100 years > in the future, nor can you recompensate them. ### The hypothetical users 100 years in the future do not exist, and even if they came into existence, they do not have a property claim on the lake, therefore they cannot have a claim to recompensation. They may however eventually buy it from present owners. The expectation that they may be interested in buying the lake is a way for the present generation to include the utility of future generations in our trades, suitably discounted. If I expect that I can sell the lake for a higher price in 20 years as long as I keep it clean, I may choose to keep it clean so as to realize profits. This process is amplified especially if financial intermediaries with very long time horizons are involved - like insurance companies and private banks (their time horizons are much longer than the ones exhibited by e.g. government bureaucracies or government-regulated banks). In this way, polycentric, decentralized trade enables maximization of utility over long time periods, not possible with more brittle, monopolistic approaches. --------------------------- You can agree to start dumping > nuclear waste in the lake and -permanently- destroy the lake. What amount of > money do you consider to be ample recompensation for that? ### Let me reiterate - only owners of the lake have a claim to restitution if the lake is destroyed by third parties. Third parties, and especially only hypothetically existing humans of the future, do not have any claims at all. Present owners of an object, such as a cheeseburger, an Escher drawing, or a lake, may elect to permanently destroy their property - this is implicit in their rights of ownership. They may conclude that they are better off if they transform the lake into a nuclear waste repository and collect payments (let's assume here they invented a method for keeping the waste there, in safe containers, similar to the cooling pools currently used to store waste in nuclear power plants). Their economic calculations are nobody's business. ----------------- > > The EPA "goons" are in the right on this. ### Obviously, the EPA is not seeking agreement from future generations nor does it strive to maximize utility over the whole set of present and future entities, so you cannot claim that possibility that people would exist in the future in any way justifies the existence of the EPA. On the contrary, since the EPA imposes enormous costs on us, and delays progress, it is an insufferable, immoral imposition and a nest of minions of Belial himself. 'Nuff said. Rafal From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 05:44:20 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:44:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> Message-ID: <8F643F1B7A0348B28BF3C33143ACA97F@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > ... > > > > Numbering the five moral impulses: > > > > 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to > relieve suffering. > > > > 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have > > certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. > > > > 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group > and be wary > > of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are > > virtues; betrayal is bad. > > > > 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social > hierarchy; social > > order is necessary for human life. > > > > 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. > > Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of > chastity and > > piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated > > character traits of lust and greed are all bad. .... > > The Western liberal's attitude towards Eastern > traditionalists is softened by 2, while the conservative's > attitude is hardened by 3... Stathis Papaioannou Do numbers 1 and 2 still apply to those who have numbers 1 and 2 not just turned down, but rather turned off? Does tolerance extend to the intolerant? If so, does not the tolerant realize this ultimately is a losing strategy? spike From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun Apr 19 07:20:20 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:20:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moving Forward (was RE: Really?) Message-ID: <919324.65647.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> My apology. --- On Sat, 4/18/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > From: Natasha Vita-More > Subject: [ExI] Moving Forward (was RE: Really?) > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Received: Saturday, April 18, 2009, 9:33 AM > Hi Ann, we are trying to move beyond > this dent.? While I agree with what you > say, continuing to post on it only promotes further > discussion. > > Everyone, please give it a rest. > > Best wishes, > Natasha > > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] > On Behalf Of Anna Taylor > Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:11 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] Really? > > > I thought of starting this post off with a metaphor but > decided against it:) > I'm really disappointed with the dialogue that has been > recently discussed. > Really...do we have to kick people out of countries because > they don't fit > into what we have "decided" as the norm?? That doesn't > sound very Extropian. > War, memes that create "me like attitude" and "I know best > scenarios" have > been repeated behavior since the dawn of men. The idea > behind a progressive > idea is the memes that create positive energy and leads to > the benefit of > the whole, not the chosen few. > > Just an opinion:) > Anna > > ? > > > ? ? ? > __________________________________________________________________ > Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new > Internet ExplorerR > 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at > http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 09:11:13 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:11:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/18/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Of course people always moved to unoccupied land if they could. But > they filled up the world a *long* time ago. Moving into another > tribe's territory would start a war if the people there were also up > against the wall. > We are discussing present day problems not hunter gatherer tribes. Emigration today means the young men (usually) spreading out among the 20 nearby countries and working for minimum wages. Much to the delight of the receiving countries. This reduces the population in the 'hard times' country and the young emigrants send money back home to help their families. It's a win - win situation. > > To say that EP proves that hard times = war is far too simplistic. > > > I wish you would quit putting words in my mouth. > Great! we agree then. Hard times does not = war necessarily. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 09:19:59 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:19:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/19/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Obviously, the EPA is not seeking agreement from future > generations nor does it strive to maximize utility over the whole set > of present and future entities, so you cannot claim that possibility > that people would exist in the future in any way justifies the > existence of the EPA. On the contrary, since the EPA imposes enormous > costs on us, and delays progress, it is an insufferable, immoral > imposition and a nest of minions of Belial himself. 'Nuff said. > > Obviously the ruthless selfish strip-mining owners out for a quick profit are not seeking agreement from future generations. Nor do they strive to maximize utility over the whole set of present and future entities (but that's their right because they own the land). Since the destructive owners impose enormous recovery costs on us after they move on, they are an insufferable, immoral imposition and a nest of minions of Belial himself. 'Nuff said. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 09:47:40 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:47:40 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <8F643F1B7A0348B28BF3C33143ACA97F@spike> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> <8F643F1B7A0348B28BF3C33143ACA97F@spike> Message-ID: <85A773D4-8719-40BC-B9CA-F483E12FBD2F@gmail.com> On 19/04/2009, at 3:44 PM, "spike" wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> > Do numbers 1 and 2 still apply to those who have numbers 1 and 2 not > just > turned down, but rather turned off? Does tolerance extend to the > intolerant? If so, does not the tolerant realize this ultimately is a > losing strategy? Only those with antisocial personality disorder have 1 and 2 turned off, and even then it is possible to gain advantage by behaving well towards them in the way it is sometimes possible to obtain advantage through good behaviour in business. But morality is not about whether a strategy is winning or losing. --Stathis Papaioannou From dharris234 at mindspring.com Sun Apr 19 10:15:43 2009 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:15:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt on morality In-Reply-To: <90FEBDAD119648B7B05164DB5A9E0CFA@spike> References: <90FEBDAD119648B7B05164DB5A9E0CFA@spike> Message-ID: <49EAF9CF.40804@mindspring.com> spike wrote: >> ...As part of that early research...posed questions... One of the mostrevealing was: How would you react if a family accidentally ran over its own dog, then cooked it and ate it for dinner? ... That this lunch once did tricks and slept with the children is also irrelevant considering it's current condition. >> >> >> Ah, but could you push the logic to eating a family member who was accidentally killed? It seems the logic is the same, but an emotional basis of morality even more apparent. I also encountered Haidt's work a year ago, initially in this scholarly paper: faculty.virginia.edu/*haidt*lab/articles/*haidt*.*graham*.2007.when-*morality*-opposes-justice.pdf . I too was fascinated by the concepts, and have been trying to test and use them. I'm searching for test cases, like how I'd feel about a business that grew human stem cells to make dog food. Or how I'd feel about patriotism if America were invaded by people or creatures with very different values. And I'm trying to imagine how and whether I could invoke principles 3-5 in speeches about some policies without being hypocritical about my usage. - David Harris, Palo Alto From brentn at freeshell.org Sun Apr 19 14:18:32 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:18:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 19 Apr, 2009, at 1:07, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Present owners of an object, such as a cheeseburger, an Escher > drawing, or a lake, may elect to permanently destroy their property - > this is implicit in their rights of ownership. They may conclude that > they are better off if they transform the lake into a nuclear waste > repository and collect payments (let's assume here they invented a > method for keeping the waste there, in safe containers, similar to the > cooling pools currently used to store waste in nuclear power plants). > Their economic calculations are nobody's business. Fortunately, there is another remedy. If we're going to postulate the "libertopia" that you are suggesting here, then I and my like-minded friends can resolve this by evicting you from your property by force of arms in order to prevent you from destroying that value. This will make sense when the cost of the police action is less than our economic valuation of the destruction you and the other property owners are causing. Now, economics also tells us that there is such a thing as competitive advantage. In general, governments have a competitive advantage in military matters, because of the need for pooled purchasing power in order to fund police forces. I and my like-minded friends would thus be well-advised to choose to delegate that power and responsibility to a government that we elect for that purpose. Some government officials, realizing that there are a lot of people out there who would choose to engage in aggressive externalization of costs in the environmental arena due to ignorance or malevolence, would likely establish a standing committee to understand when an externality is being imposed and to ensure that the participating members have their economic interests protected. Last I heard, we called that the EPA. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 15:26:57 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:26:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I just noticed the existence of this absurd book (an evaluation I make only > on the basis of reviews): > > TECHNOPHOBIA!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technologies, by Daniel > Dinello - University of Texas Press (2005). You are missing a few beats. :-) Has been repeatedly discussed on this list, namely in June and in January. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 15:54:38 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:54:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Making Rationalizations is Superior to the Alternative In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904190854m2180ff8ej9bafabb097e2a179@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Let's not get hypocritical here. Expelling 6 million people does > involve destruction of lives on a large scale. They won't be accepted > abroad - there is no country in the world willing to accept 6 million > refugees. In fact, this is *exactly* what Europe is expected to do by the "immigrationist" party, with only a difference of one or two orders of magnitude. But of course I admit that destructions of lives is already in place, both in the transfer phase and at the destination, involving both immigrants and natives, and this situation is hardly going to improve. -- Stefano Vaj From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Apr 19 16:06:19 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:06:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> So in other words, for all of us who missed these discussions, I guess we are expected to spend hours and hours to go mining in the log files for June and January in an attempt to digest, summarize, and quantify everything said so we can know what everyone believes about this book concisely and quantitatively? I guess we should attempt to google for all the transhumanst blog postings on such an issue...? Am I the only one that wishes we could have a concise collaboratively developed summary of what everyone that discussed this book believes about it stated someplace? Wouldn't it be helpful if some transhumanists that actually read it could summarize their findings and beliefs about it in a way that everyone that agreed with the person could effectively sign the petition or join the camp indicating this is what transhumanists believe about this book? And am I the only one that would like to also know what all non transhumanists and what true blue technophobs thought about such books, all concicely stated and quantitatively measured, without having to attempt to digest a gazilion blogs and notes group postings? I think having this kind of concise and quantitative reputation information about a bunch of things like this could really change the world. At least when questions like this come up, we could at least provide a canonized URL so people could easily get up to speed with what all transhumanists believed on this issue. That's why we're working on canonizer.com Brent Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> I just noticed the existence of this absurd book (an evaluation I make only >> on the basis of reviews): >> >> TECHNOPHOBIA!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technologies, by Daniel >> Dinello - University of Texas Press (2005). >> > > You are missing a few beats. :-) > > Has been repeatedly discussed on this list, namely in June and in January. > > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 16:08:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:08:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] are all cultures equivalent?. In-Reply-To: <49E8BC5F.7040804@libero.it> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <72760212BDA64801BCCF0001FB24BDA5@MyComputer> <49E363C8.2060204@libero.it> <49E4F879.60207@libero.it> <30694E154FA04865983194417B727151@MyComputer> <49E8BC5F.7040804@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904190908y3da453a6l516c4a5496efa3ec@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:29 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > Sub-Sahara Africa is Christian by less than a century. I had a number of such discussions with catholic fundamentalists, trying to getting credit for "western achievements", starting with the cathedrals, and the truth is that it is relatively easy to compare Europe without christianism and christianism out of Europe. Not only we used to build the Parthenon or the Pantheon before any christian ever set foot on European soil, and simply went on with Notre-Dame and Westminster. But even discounting more recently christianised countries, areas which were christianised before Europe or at the same time did not develop anything similar. See Ethiopia, for instance. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 16:16:21 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:16:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning Message-ID: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> On a lighter note, showing that after all muslim countries may well be less bioluddite than many christians are: <> http://uaeinteract.com/docs/Dubai_scientists_create_first_cloned_camel_and_call_her_Injaz/35218.htm -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 16:45:12 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:45:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 2:11 AM, BillK wrote: > On 4/18/09, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Of course people always moved to unoccupied land if they could. ?But >> ?they filled up the world a *long* time ago. ?Moving into another >> ?tribe's territory would start a war if the people there were also up >> ?against the wall. >> > > We are discussing present day problems not hunter gatherer tribes. You cannot understand the evolved psychological mechanisms humans have without taking into account the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. For example, the common traits for capture-bonding (Patty Hearst, Elizabeth Smart) makes no sense without taking into account past evolutionary selection pressures. > Emigration today means the young men (usually) spreading out among the > 20 nearby countries and working for minimum wages. Much to the delight > of the receiving countries. This reduces the population in the 'hard > times' country and the young emigrants send money back home to help > their families. > It's a win - win situation. In some cases and at some times, yes. World wide or over longer time scales it is an unmitigated disaster, if for no other reason, the population sink fills up. Consider the slide of Mexico into Somali like conditions. >> ?> To say that EP proves that hard times = war is far too simplistic. >> >> >> I wish you would quit putting words in my mouth. >> > > Great! we agree then. Hard times does not = war necessarily. Sure. If a disaster comes on fast enough there isn't time for xenophobic memes to build up. As an example, the Irish famine of 1845.. Also, perception of "hard times" is very much relative. When people who have been living at a fairly high level (the former American middle class) take a serious economic hit with poor future prospects for their children, this theory predicts they will become more susceptible to xenophobic memes (often religious) and more supportive of external wars and internal pogroms--for example against homosexuals. Question for you. Was what hppened in Rwanda a war? Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 16:50:24 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:50:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> Message-ID: <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > So in other words, for all of us who missed these discussions, I guess we > are expected to spend hours and hours to go mining in the log files for June > and January in an attempt to digest, summarize, and quantify everything said > so we can know what everyone believes about this book concisely and > quantitatively? Come on, it was just a bland joke, especially owing to the fact that Damien seems to follow this list quite closely!! As to its content, I think the author may have a point there, even though the truth is of course much more nuanced than how he presents it. SF has been and is inspirational to many transhumanists, yet the explicit intentions of its authors, especially as far as movies are concerned, are often exactly at the opposite end of the spectrum regarding one's attitude towards technology and possible posthuman changes. Who cares about the authors' intentions, OTOH? :-) And yet other people have noted important exceptions, both in the Golden Age SF (say, Anderson, Heinlein, Lafferty, Harness) and in modern days. A case in point being a recent antology, *Transhuman*. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at hotmail.com Sun Apr 19 17:10:32 2009 From: clementlawyer at hotmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:10:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning In-Reply-To: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Stefano, You might have missed this Islamic cloning article from earlier this week: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/news/iranian-scientists-claim-they-have-cloned-goat Best regards, James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Apr 19 17:00:14 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:00:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: From: Stefano Vaj To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List ; ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 9:16 AM Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning > On a lighter note, showing that after all muslim countries may well be > less bioluddite than many christians are: > Dubai scientists create first cloned camel and call her Injaz posted on 14/04/2009 And how about this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqXUpCnJ47M From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 17:18:21 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:18:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904191018y830f008ha4fe8484d3bbc079@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/19 James Clement > You might have missed this Islamic cloning article from earlier this week: > > http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/news/iranian-scientists-claim-they-have-cloned-goat > > Yes. It is not a world first, since this was achieved in other four countries, but shows that they are rather aggressive in this field. BTW, speaking of human reproduction, I believe that according to orthodox muslim views, an embryo gets a soul only between one and three months after the fecondation took place, so that from abortion to stem cells to embryo selection to human reproductive cloning no real "religious" problems should arise... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 16:57:37 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:57:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <25BE421FA1DD40D5B7128E7CF7028A11@spike> > ... > Keith Henson > ... > this theory predicts they will become more susceptible to > xenophobic memes (often religious) and more supportive of > external wars and internal pogroms--for example against homosexuals. ... > Keith Keith this one goes against my intuition. In times of increasing scarcity because of overpopulation, it seems the homosexuals would be our friends, with an expected backlash towards heavy breeders. I can think of only one good historical example where any culture really embraces and promotes homosexuality: modern Hollywood Inc. But that culture is more oriented to plenty, or rather gross excess (the best kind). Puzzling. Doesn't this seem opposite what we would expect? spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 17:42:52 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:42:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <25BE421FA1DD40D5B7128E7CF7028A11@spike> References: <25BE421FA1DD40D5B7128E7CF7028A11@spike> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:57 AM, spike wrote: > >> ... >> Keith Henson >> ... >> this theory predicts they will become more susceptible to >> xenophobic memes (often religious) and more supportive of >> external wars and internal pogroms--for example against homosexuals. > ... >> Keith > > Keith this one goes against my intuition. ?In times of increasing scarcity > because of overpopulation, it seems the homosexuals would be our friends, > with an expected backlash towards heavy breeders. Rationality has nothing to do with it. If the pre WW II Germans had been rational they would have used the Jews as a resource to invent war devices instead of expelling or killing them. Same with the Cambodians in killing off the educated. In such times xenophobic, often religious, memes build up to kill the different ones. Besides, heavy breeders produce the warrior (cannon fodder) class. Even today that is true. It's the ruling/leader class that is opposed to methods (birth control, abortion) to limit the fertility of the lower classes. But I really doubt they are doing this for rational reasons. >I can think of only one > good historical example where any culture really embraces and promotes > homosexuality: modern Hollywood Inc. Classical Greece. >But that culture is more oriented to > plenty, or rather gross excess (the best kind). ?Puzzling. ?Doesn't this > seem opposite what we would expect? Sorry, I am not sure I understand what you are getting at. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 19 19:33:58 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:33:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> On 19 Apr, 2009, at 1:07, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >Present owners of an object, such as a cheeseburger, an Escher >drawing, or a lake, may elect to permanently destroy their property - >this is implicit in their rights of ownership. They may conclude that >they are better off if they transform the lake into a nuclear waste >repository and collect payments (let's assume here they invented a >method for keeping the waste there, in safe containers, similar to the >cooling pools currently used to store waste in nuclear power plants). Oh, and while we're assuming that, let's assume that they also invented a method for making everyone immortal by breathing radioactive fumes, and brightening their teeth. These waste dumpers deserve the Nobel prize! Damien Broderick From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Apr 19 20:07:25 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:07:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> Stefano, I apologize, I don't think I have enough context to know what you are talking about, I don't yet even really know what this book is about. But I desperately do want to know what you are talking about, and I'd sure like to know what all other similarly morally intelligent minds are saying about this kind of stuff, even though I don't have enough time to follow things even as much as Damian does. We sure don't have enough time to try to dig through the logs to see what we missed. I'd imagine you don't have enough time, now, to help me out? Maybe give me a sumary of the conversations that have transpired, tell me what the book is about, and how you and all other intelligent transhumanists think we should morally interpret such information, all in a context where all other people with a different POV can concisely and quantitatively weigh in on the issue? Sorry, as usual, I'm probably butting in where it isn't a good place to do so. I just wish I had more time so I wasn't missing so many great conversations by so many morally intelligent people that I've really learned to trust. I really wish I did have the time to dig through the logs and know concisely and quantitatively what you all think on all these kinds of moral issues. Brent Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > So in other words, for all of us who missed these discussions, I > guess we > > are expected to spend hours and hours to go mining in the log files > for June > > and January in an attempt to digest, summarize, and quantify > everything said > > so we can know what everyone believes about this book concisely and > > quantitatively? > > Come on, it was just a bland joke, especially owing to the fact that > Damien seems to follow this list quite closely!! > > As to its content, I think the author may have a point there, even > though the truth is of course much more nuanced than how he presents > it. SF has been and is inspirational to many transhumanists, yet the > explicit intentions of its authors, especially as far as movies are > concerned, are often exactly at the opposite end of the spectrum > regarding one's attitude towards technology and possible posthuman > changes. Who cares about the authors' intentions, OTOH? :-) > > And yet other people have noted important exceptions, both in the > Golden Age SF (say, Anderson, Heinlein, Lafferty, Harness) and in > modern days. A case in point being a recent antology, /Transhuman/. > -- > Stefano Vaj > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 20:02:20 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:02:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fbi expands dna database In-Reply-To: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> This looks to me like it violates 4th amendment rights. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=2 Why isn't this causing widespread outrage? It appears to be slipping quietly under the radar. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 20:23:08 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:23:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] fbi expands dna database In-Reply-To: <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> Message-ID: On 4/19/09, spike wrote: > This looks to me like it violates 4th amendment rights. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=2 > > Why isn't this causing widespread outrage? It appears to be slipping > quietly under the radar. > Ve haf the technology now. If you fly, you know that everybody is already a terrorist suspect and will be treated accordingly. Rights? Hah! Now everybody is a suspect criminal as well. You just haven't been caught yet. Or possibly, you haven't committed a crime yet, but we will get ready for when you do. There is no escape. Build more prisons! It's an expanding industry. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 19 20:27:57 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:27:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419152219.024803c8@satx.rr.com> At 05:26 PM 4/19/2009 +0200, you wrote: >Has been repeatedly discussed on this list, namely in June and in January. > >-- >Stefano Vaj Oh. That would include the thread [ExI] Defeatist Science Fiction Writers Stefano Vaj Mon Jun 16 13:44:30 UTC 2008 etc. And I see I commented at the time (and then forgot): This is nonsense. I see at amazon he's praised for his extensive bibliography; I have to wonder how much of it is sci-fi (mostly drivel) and how much sf (the pure quill). It's obvious that one major device available to the astute sf writer or editor (and about the only one available to the dickheads) is: given novum X, what can go wrong as a result? Who gets hurt by this? It's a classic narrative ploy in a commercial market. On top of that, there's the dystopian strain running through and adjacent to sf, where bulking up the aspects of current trends we dislike makes for an exciting tale with added moralizing vitamins for those who wish to feel improved. For all his madcap energy, Phil Dick did this a lot, which makes it easy to conscript and bastardize/dumb-down his stories into action movies full of Bad Things coming to get us, and at the same time hail and canonize him from within an academy where the word "anxiety" remains a touchstone to Deep Thought. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 20:50:55 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:50:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> Message-ID: <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Maybe... tell me what the book is > about? Why, the book is about the author's thesis that SF, far from being a glorification of technoscience as it is often deemed to be, is as a genre a grand warning against its dangers, or even its unavoidably catastrophic consequences. In *Technophobia!* Dinelli collect a huge number of persuasive examples to this effect, which he picks mostly from cinematographic SF, but to a large extent also from SF literature. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 21:06:38 2009 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:06:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90904120940y482d09can106d2be7ee27ca3@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4902d9990904191406o3b1840a7r90bb08a60ee3889@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > even my breathing will be seen as an > externality by the global warming lunatic fringe crowd, since my mere > physiological existence imposes a certain carbon footprint. No it doesn't. Mere physiological existence is carbon-neutral. Your food sources may require fossil fuels (for example, to make fertilizers or to drive tractors around), and therefore have a carbon footprint, but that must be attributed to farming and not to breathing. Alfio > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 21:19:10 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:19:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sci-fi with pathos, was: RE: TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj ... >Why, the book is about the author's thesis that SF, far from being a glorification of technoscience as it is often deemed to be, is as a genre a grand warning against its dangers, or even its unavoidably catastrophic consequences...Stefano Vaj A decade ago when many of us still went to the video store to rent movies, I noticed the genres divided such that there was a section called sci-fi/horror. There was no Sci-fi/comedy or sci-fi/chick or sci-fi/romance. Romance and comedy went together well, but not sci-fi and comedy or sci-fi and romance. Why? Damien wrote a good sci-fi with comedy mixed in, altho it isn't primarily a comedy, just has some hilarious stuff in it, Transcension. Damien wrote another one which I cannot recall the name (Damien, which please?) where the scientist Dr. Paul (who?) and his friend are trying to concentrate on the business at hand, important stuff, but they are both so horny they can't think straight. They have no birth control devices (rather not in the standard sense) but they make do with what they have, which makes for a most hilarious scene. Sci-fi with feelings: well there is Contact, the movie version, altho it could be just me, since I have had a desperate crush on Jodi Foster since we were about ten. Another would be both Cocoon movies, lostsa good intergenerational stuff. spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 21:24:55 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:24:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191424r3b8848b0y6e8039639cf9d6cb@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:19 AM, BillK wrote: > Obviously the ruthless selfish strip-mining owners out for a quick > profit are not seeking agreement from future generations. Nor do they > strive to maximize utility over the whole set of present and future > entities (but that's their right because they own the land). > Since the destructive owners impose enormous recovery costs on us > after they move on, they are an insufferable, immoral ?imposition and > a nest of minions of Belial himself. 'Nuff said. ### Obviously, since they own the lake, they do not impose any restoration costs on anybody but themselves, should they change their minds and want to reverse their actions. But why should anybody want to restore a radioactive waste dump? A dump is more useful as a dump, isn't it? Since as I assume you read my previous post, you also realize that by striving to maximize their long-term profit, owners implicitly include future generations in their economic calculation, as I wrote, to a much higher extent than the EPA, who care only about preserving their power over us. Waste-dumping lake owners are not minions of Belial (who is the lord of Earth demons, not water demons), they are servants of Mammon, and thus very respectable folks. I note that this discussion may have triggered your sacredness detector. You feel that the purity of an idyllic lake was breached, a sin that cannot be outweighed by mere money counting. I took some of Haidt's tests, and it looks like this particular pillar of morality is almost entirely absent from my mind. A lake, even a beautiful one, is not sacred - only human desires are (sort of). Analyzing our desires (such as the desire to argue here using computers that use electricity that is made in power plants that cause some damage to lakes) is the bedrock of my approach. It's fine to turn a lake into a grotesque inferno glowing with Cherenkov radiation, if needed to support your internet pastime, Bill. But of course, in a real market economy the most beautiful lakes would be the least likely to be turned into dumps, since you can get more money by renting a beautiful lake to tourists. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 21:46:17 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:46:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > On 19 Apr, 2009, at 1:07, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> Present owners of an object, such as a cheeseburger, an Escher >> drawing, or a lake, may elect to permanently destroy their property - >> this is implicit in their rights of ownership. They may conclude that >> they are better off if they transform the lake into a nuclear waste >> repository and collect payments (let's assume here they invented a >> method for keeping the waste there, in safe containers, similar to the >> cooling pools currently used to store waste in nuclear power plants). >> Their economic calculations are nobody's business. > > > Fortunately, there is another remedy. If we're going to postulate the > "libertopia" that you are suggesting here, then I and my like-minded friends > can resolve this by evicting you from your property by force of arms in > order to prevent you from destroying that value. This will make sense when > the cost of the police action is less than our economic valuation of the > destruction you and the other property owners are causing. ### Ah, so you reject the legitimacy of the notion of individual property rights. Fine, since this implies you cannot make an ownership claim to your house and body (remember, you just rejected this type of right), I and my friends will help ourselves to whatever we like. Only cunning and ruthlessness will decide who survives, just like in the old days in the jungle. I hope you understand that once you give yourself the license to trample over the lives of others, and you build the social infrastructure (stormtroopers, the IRS, the Gestapo, the EPA), you are opening more cans of worms than you want to deal with. Are you sure you would applaud a SWAT team sent to impose your notions of water purity on other people? That same SWAT team could be used to deal with your own notions of e.g. religious freedom, should the team's actual political sponsors have a grudge against you. ------------------------- > > Now, economics also tells us that there is such a thing as competitive > advantage. In general, governments have a competitive advantage in military > matters, because of the need for pooled purchasing power in order to fund > police forces. I and my like-minded friends would thus be well-advised to > choose to delegate that power and responsibility to a government that we > elect for that purpose. ?Some government officials, realizing that there are > a lot of people out there who would choose to engage in aggressive > externalization of costs in the environmental arena due to ignorance or > malevolence, would likely establish a standing committee to understand when > an externality is being imposed and to ensure that the participating members > have their economic interests protected. > > Last I heard, we called that the EPA. > ### But we already established that the owners are not externalizing anything. If they did, you could sue them for damaging your property and obtain just restitution for actual losses suffered which is the proper and honest way of dealing with externalities. But they dump in their own lake. And you are still ready to kill them for that. Are you sure you are on the right side here? Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 19 21:50:39 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:50:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> At 02:19 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > >Damien wrote a good sci-fi with comedy >mixed in, altho it isn't primarily a comedy, just has some hilarious stuff >in it, Transcension. Thanks for the nod, Spike. I'll now do my usual irritating sf-writer thing of insisting that I have *never* written "sci fi" (which is the journalistic term sf people repurpose to mean "crap pseudo-science fiction", including almost all movies and TV with space/monster/future/Blob trappings). Nobody here will take the least notice, but hey. THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, in my view, is sf, not sci fi. BABYLON 5 was clunky sf, lifted straight from the sf magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. STAR WARS is pure sci fi. (It's surely relevant that the premier sf writers' organization is SFWA, not SciFiWA, and almost all the Year's Best books use SF/sf in the title or introductions.) >Damien wrote another one which I cannot recall the name (Damien, which >please?) where the scientist Dr. Paul (who?) and his friend are trying to >concentrate on the business at hand, important stuff, but they are both so >horny they can't think straight. They have no birth control devices (rather >not in the standard sense) but they make do with what they have, which makes >for a most hilarious scene. POST MORTAL SYNDROME, by me and Barbara Lamar. It was online for a year as a free download, but I expect it will be available soon from a small press who are bringing out some of my old novels and a couple of new short story collections. Self-Indulgent Notifications will flood this list and others when that happens. >Sci-fi with feelings: well there is Contact, the movie version The great, memorable, written sf-with-feelings-that-make-you-cry story is "Flowers for Algernon" which made a pretty awful Cliff Robertson movie (as CHARLY) decades ago and a quite touching Matthew Modine TV version more recently: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210044/ From the 1950s are the People stories by Zenna Henderson (also made into a fairly good, modest TV movie). Connie Willis's DOOMSDAY BOOK is guaranteed to put a lump in the most cynical throat. Damien Broderick From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 21:52:21 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:52:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 19 Apr, 2009, at 1:07, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> Present owners of an object, such as a cheeseburger, an Escher >> drawing, or a lake, may elect to permanently destroy their property - >> this is implicit in their rights of ownership. They may conclude that >> they are better off if they transform the lake into a nuclear waste >> repository and collect payments (let's assume here they invented a >> method for keeping the waste there, in safe containers, similar to the >> cooling pools currently used to store waste in nuclear power plants). > > Oh, and while we're assuming that, let's assume that they also invented a > method for making everyone immortal by breathing radioactive fumes, and > brightening their teeth. These waste dumpers deserve the Nobel prize! ### In these difficult discussion I always try to carve reality at the joints, so as to avoid all kinds of emotional and other interference while analyzing issues point by point. The assumption of lack of radioactive spread which would damage the property of third parties is necessary while we discuss whether lake owners have the right to do whatever they please with it. If we tried discuss the question of accidental damage to others (i.e. torts) while at the same time grappling with the very notion of property rights, it would totally overwhelm our cognitive capacities, wouldn't you think? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:00:06 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:00:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <4902d9990904191406o3b1840a7r90bb08a60ee3889@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <4902d9990904191406o3b1840a7r90bb08a60ee3889@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191500x1f310f06je11fd883fcfc392a@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: > >> even my breathing will be seen as an >> externality by the global warming lunatic fringe crowd, since my mere >> physiological existence imposes a certain carbon footprint. > > > No it doesn't. Mere physiological existence is carbon-neutral. Your > food sources may require fossil fuels (for example, to make > fertilizers or to drive tractors around), and therefore have a carbon > footprint, but that must be attributed to farming and not to > breathing. > ### Yes it does. Of course, if I breathe, I release carbon dioxide, which would otherwise be locked up in something else. That's why lunatic fringe greenies excitedly talk about the coming die-off of billions of humans after oil runs out (just read some Jeremy Rifkin garbage). Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:07:59 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:07:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/19/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### In these difficult discussion I always try to carve reality at the > joints, so as to avoid all kinds of emotional and other interference > while analyzing issues point by point. The assumption of lack of > radioactive spread which would damage the property of third parties is > necessary while we discuss whether lake owners have the right to do > whatever they please with it. If we tried discuss the question of > accidental damage to others (i.e. torts) while at the same time > grappling with the very notion of property rights, it would totally > overwhelm our cognitive capacities, wouldn't you think? > It is rather a rash assumption that the lake owners stay on the property after they have consumed every easily obtainable resource from it. Once they have obtained a quick profit, it makes good business sense for them to leave the wasteland behind and move on to strip mine the next piece of land that they can obtain at a reasonable price. All perfectly logical. They buy, they make a profit, they dump, they move on, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Of course they still own the trail of destruction, so it is nobody else's business what condition it is in. You think? Everyone else just has to live in an environment of slag heaps. Sounds like a nice libertarian world. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 22:15:16 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:15:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sci-fi with pathos, was: RE: TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net><580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <468E2B8EF0A447CA8AE15D0778F8B9E3@spike> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 2:19 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: [ExI] sci-fi with pathos, was: RE: TECHNOPHOBIA! > > > ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > ... > > ...SF... a genre a grand warning against its > dangers, or even its unavoidably catastrophic > consequences...Stefano Vaj > > ...There was no Sci-fi/comedy or sci-fi/chick or sci-fi/romance... spike To continue, it seems there should be more SF/chick stuff out there. I don't mean just more gratuitous nudity in SF. Well, on second thought more gratuitous nudity would be fine too. In Contact, the romance wasn't the main point of the story, but the periodic attraction between Palmer Joss and Dr. Arroway really adds a lot to the story and attracts major acting talent. They understated way they did it in that film reminds me a lot of the way real romance goes for many people. It gave the film a nice authenticity. Contrast Kirk's many meaningless flings such as the nearly fatal attraction with the crazy green chick (ewww... ref. Whom Gods Destroy, season 3 episode 14, stardate 5718.3) and that exactly one time Spock got horny and all hell broke loose. If he doesn't pon farr T'Pring, he will die you see, ask any Vulcan. (ref. T'Pring, Spock's Betrothed, season 2, episode 1, stardate 3372.7 and ohhh I am such a hopeless geek.) SF should have some chick stuff mixed in with the cool technology and such. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:19:51 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:19:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fbi expands dna database In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> Message-ID: <2d6187670904191519q52a6f358kf30a762387c91e4e@mail.gmail.com> BillK wrote: Now everybody is a suspect criminal as well. You just haven't been caught yet. Or possibly, you haven't committed a crime yet, but we will get ready for when you do. There is no escape. Build more prisons! It's an expanding industry. >>> And the advancing "countdown to The Singularity" technology is going to be put to use spying on the law abiding citizenry for matters of "national security." "1984" and "Brave New World" may happen yet... There was a Mad TV (a comedy variety show) skit where two politicians are trying to outdo each other in their "tough on crime" election commercials. Finally, they get to the extreme point where they are saying heinous criminals were once children, and so we must lock up all kids before they possibly grow up to get away with committing crimes! And of course Southpark has had some good episodes about stuff like this. I went through an airport security checkpoint several months ago and was picked out for extra screening. I found it humorous when I was told it was completely random and that I should not take it personally. I was wearing a "scary" biker-type t-shirt and jeans. But later when I flew home and dressed up a bit, another guy not so well dressed was pulled aside. I guess bad guys always dress down... What I find really amusing is the prospect that only cops and law enforcement officials are trustworthy! lol They of course only have to sign in, and then board with their weapon. And then there is the matter of how many cops only seem to trust other cops. Considering all the police corruption going on, I would think an honest cop would find a good percentage of his fellow officers very suspect. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at hotmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:32:51 2009 From: clementlawyer at hotmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:32:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sci-fi with pathos, was: RE: TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <468E2B8EF0A447CA8AE15D0778F8B9E3@spike> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net><580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <468E2B8EF0A447CA8AE15D0778F8B9E3@spike> Message-ID: Spike, I'm thinking that JJ Abram's new version of Star Trek is meant to do exactly that - appeal to the teenies with hip, virile young Spocks, Kirks, etc. Einsurance has a newish trailer for the movie: http://www.esurance.com/Welcome/Landing/startrek/welcome.aspx?promoid=StarTrekHP Best, James Clement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:37:46 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:37:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:07 PM, BillK wrote: > Once they have obtained a quick profit, it makes good business sense > for them to leave the wasteland behind and move on to strip mine the > next piece of land that they can obtain at a reasonable price. ### That's the whole point - supply and demand. If there is a high demand for pretty views, the price of unspoiled land will be high, and the greedy bastards won't be able to buy anything to strip-mine at a reasonable price. -------------------- > > All perfectly logical. They buy, they make a profit, they dump, they > move on, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Of course they still > own the trail of destruction, so it is nobody else's business what > condition it is in. You think? ### If it makes economic sense to restore stuff, they will. You see, in a market economy the customer (i.e. you) is the real master. You demand pristine beauty, and are willing to buy it, they will bend over backwards to deliver. ------------------- > > Everyone else just has to live in an environment of slag heaps. > Sounds like a nice libertarian world. ### I am actually a bit of an expert on slag heaps, since I grew up playing on them. They were about 150 ft high, stretching for miles, burning for years, with red-hot cracks spewing sulfurous fumes. One day I melted the soles of my sneakers there. And all that was under a socialist regime. In a libertarian world there would be exactly as many slag heaps and exactly as many beautiful lakes as customers desire which means the richer you are, the more beauty you buy and the fewer nasty slag heaps are left. Rafal From moulton at moulton.com Sun Apr 19 22:27:24 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:27:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fbi expands dna database In-Reply-To: <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> <48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> Message-ID: <1240180044.6910.1443.camel@hayek> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 13:02 -0700, spike wrote: > > This looks to me like it violates 4th amendment rights. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=2 > > Why isn't this causing widespread outrage? It appears to be slipping > quietly under the radar. When you say "under the radar" exactly what radar are you talking about? Media? Civil Liberties groups? J. Random Person? The reason I ask is because I have seen other news stories about this so it is not like this is the first time I have heard about it and I think various Civil liberties groups have been on this. For example ACLU has a comment http://www.aclu.org/crimjustice/gen/39207prs20090330.html Back in May of 2008 the EFF talked about it when it was first being proposed: http://www.eff.org/action/protectdna So if anyone who is signed up for the EFF email would have known about it long ago. I highly recommend getting the EFF email. That along with a couple of blogs such as http://www.reason.com/blog/ and http://www.boingboing.net/ are pointers to all kinds of similar stuff. For example the reason blog was all over the story about the corrupt and incompetent medical examiner in Mississippi for a long time before anything was done. The reason blog has also been good about gathering up stories on War on Drug raids that are just stupid. As for the radar of J. Random Person well I am tempted to say something condescending and snarky but I will practice some self restraint. If you are asking why J. Random Person is not upset even if they know about it; well that is an interesting question. Fred > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 22:40:15 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:40:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net><580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick ... > > Thanks for the nod, Spike. I'll now do my usual irritating > sf-writer thing of insisting that I have *never* written "sci > fi"... Oops, thanks for the correction. I vaguely recalled that from last time, but I couldn't remember the correct term. I am sooo tragically not hip. >... STAR WARS is pure sci fi. So it gets into one of those things like how to define "western" as a genre. My father in law loves Louis Lamour, but to me the stories are so two dimensional, almost clownish, they and the entire genre might as well be called Harelquin-romances-for-men. I really liked Steinbeck's East of Eden, but he argued that wasn't a western at all. I don't see why not. It is set in California from 1865 to 1917, it has horses, cattle, whore houses, expanding businesses, historical and geographical authenticity, Steinbeck's own family history subtly written into it (oddly enough), everything that makes for a really good western but without the hackneyed corny nonsense. > (It's surely relevant that the premier sf writers' > organization is SFWA, not SciFiWA, and almost all the Year's > Best books use SF/sf in the title or introductions.) Cool SF it is. Anything SF always reads San Francisco to me, but I will get over it. > > >Damien wrote another one which I cannot recall the name > (Damien, which > >please?) where the scientist Dr. Paul (who?) and his friend ... > > POST MORTAL SYNDROME, by me and Barbara Lamar. It was online > for a year as a free download... Please sir, what is the point of giving away your valuable labors? Is the local grocery store offering any free downloads? > ... > Self-Indulgent Notifications will flood this list and others > when that happens... Self indulgent? Sounds like others-indulgent to me. See above comment. > The great, memorable, written sf-with-feelings-that-make-you-cry > story is "Flowers for Algernon"... Read it twice, liked it both times. > ...which made a pretty awful > Cliff Robertson movie (as CHARLY)... Saw it, liked it better than another truly awful FfA film adapation called Lawnmower Man. I am told Lawnmower Man isn't as bad as it's sequel, but I spared myself that one. decades ago and a quite > touching Matthew Modine TV version more recently: > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210044/ > Thanks! This looks really good. spike From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Apr 19 22:41:29 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:41:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EBA899.8090305@comcast.net> Stefano, Oh, now things are starting to make a lot more sense to me. Thanks for the help. So I assume you, or some transhumanists have read it? I won't have time to read it, but I sure think it would be great to have a short concise statement by some transhumanist so that when any Luddite friends (or whoever) of mine throw this book at me, I have an easy, compelling and powerful response? Brent Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > Maybe... tell me what the book is > > about? > > Why, the book is about the author's thesis that SF, far from being a > glorification of technoscience as it is often deemed to be, is as a > genre a grand warning against its dangers, or even its unavoidably > catastrophic consequences. > > In /Technophobia!/ Dinelli collect a huge number of persuasive > examples to this effect, which he picks mostly from cinematographic > SF, but to a large extent also from SF literature. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:43:39 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:43:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <4902d9990904191524m44bd0307ia9df63d8e38883ad@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <49BAAD84FA1540F58672753FA37E2482@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <4902d9990904191406o3b1840a7r90bb08a60ee3889@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191500x1f310f06je11fd883fcfc392a@mail.gmail.com> <4902d9990904191524m44bd0307ia9df63d8e38883ad@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191543w4844e439vc7f0545a4604de66@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > The carbon you release breathing was ### Alfio, you are trying to argue reasonably against an extremist environmentalist position that I quoted and of course do not hold myself - I guess I should be clearer when I am just reporting what others think. Eco-fascists are not reasonable. You can send an email to Rifkin and see what happens. Rafal From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:47:10 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:47:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904191547i3a9ad624s12a468b886056ea3@mail.gmail.com> Spike wrote: To continue, it seems there should be more SF/chick stuff out there. I don't mean just more gratuitous nudity in SF. Well, on second thought more gratuitous nudity would be fine too. In Contact, the romance wasn't the main point of the story, but the periodic attraction between Palmer Joss and Dr. Arroway really adds a lot to the story and attracts major acting talent. They understated way they did it in that film reminds me a lot of the way real romance goes for many people. It gave the film a nice authenticity. Contrast Kirk's many meaningless flings such as the nearly fatal attraction with the crazy green chick (ewww... ref. Whom Gods Destroy, season 3 episode 14, stardate 5718.3) and that exactly one time Spock got horny and all hell broke loose. If he doesn't pon farr T'Pring, he will die you see, ask any Vulcan. (ref. T'Pring, Spock's Betrothed, season 2, episode 1, stardate 3372.7 and ohhh I am such a hopeless geek.) SF should have some chick stuff mixed in with the cool technology and such. >>> It is a common critique of science fiction that the genre was practically "asexual" in the '20's through '50's, or at the very best had very trite and gender-stereotyping romances. I remember being told that one classic sf novel of the fifties had the brave spacefleet grand admiral of humanity coming home to his wife after his great victory against alien forces, and showing his affection by giving her a new oven! And the novel ends on that note. Philip Jose Farmer was famous/notorious for helping introduce sexuality into sf. And this brought him both acclaim and early in his career, some rejection. But as you bring up, often sex and romance in sf was shown in a very adolescent way (just look at some of the cover artwork from years past, or even some from today, lol). But then what you are really talking about is the desire for well drawn and realistic characterization (that shows the various facets of human beings, including romantic attraction, etc.,). I feel science fiction/speculative fiction must first and foremost be well-written literature (and nowadays it generally is...). Damien, please chime in here. You know vastly more about these subjects than I do. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 22:53:53 2009 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:53:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191543w4844e439vc7f0545a4604de66@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090413012233.024a5ac0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <4902d9990904191406o3b1840a7r90bb08a60ee3889@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191500x1f310f06je11fd883fcfc392a@mail.gmail.com> <4902d9990904191524m44bd0307ia9df63d8e38883ad@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191543w4844e439vc7f0545a4604de66@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4902d9990904191553t69c84cf2i92086162a4f13704@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: >> >> The carbon you release breathing was > > ### Alfio, you are trying to argue reasonably against an extremist > environmentalist position that I quoted and of course do not hold > myself - I guess I should be clearer when I am just reporting what > others think. Eco-fascists are not reasonable. You can send an email > to Rifkin and see what happens. oops, I actually misinterpreted you position and didn't see the irony, sorry. Btw, I once read one of Rifkin's book ("The hydrogen economy" or something like that) and, while I don't really agree with his positions, didn't find the central theme of small-scale energy production unreasonable. Alfio From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 19 22:56:18 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:56:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Islamic Cloning In-Reply-To: <580930c20904191018y830f008ha4fe8484d3bbc079@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20904191018y830f008ha4fe8484d3bbc079@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EBAC12.4050007@libero.it> Il 19/04/2009 19.18, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > BTW, speaking of human reproduction, I believe that according to > orthodox muslim views, an embryo gets a soul only between one and > three months after the fecondation took place, so that from abortion > to stem cells to embryo selection to human reproductive cloning no > real "religious" problems should arise... From what I remember, it is not a problem, for them. From Bukhari (34:432) Volume 3, Book 34, Number 432: > Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri: > > that while he was sitting with Allah's Apostle he said, "O Allah's > Apostle! We get female captives as our share of booty, and we are > interested in their prices, what is your opinion about coitus > interrupt us?" The Prophet said, "Do you really do that? It is better > for you not to do it. No soul that which Allah has destined to exist, > but will surely come into existence. The part important is this "No soul that which Allah has destined to exist, but will surely come into existence." This tell us that any child born is born only because Allah will. So, if they want, they can justify abort at any time before the birth. They could justify an abort after the birth with a sura of the Quran: 18.65 to 18:81. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 19 22:59:38 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:59:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419174752.0248f998@satx.rr.com> At 03:40 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > POST MORTAL SYNDROME, by me and Barbara Lamar. It was online > > for a year as a free download... > >Please sir, what is the point of giving away your valuable labors? Is the >local grocery store offering any free downloads? No, we were paid by COSMOS, who used the free download serialized version as an attractant to their website. Other stories (also paid for, and rather well) are posted there after they appear in the magazine. (Luckily for USians and UKians, since COSMOS is mostly available in all its slick paper glory only in Oz). There are also some stories on the website original to the site. All are compensated. But why didn't we sell POST MORTAL SYNDROME to a major book publisher first, and then to Hollywood? Beats the hell outta me. My big-time agent of the time fell out with me over his disinclination to represent the book (he didn't think I'd make enough so his cut would be worth the effort). Some major Aussie publishers (HarperCollins and Penguin, e.g.) knocked it back, although they'd done some of my earlier books. Once it went up there were in excess of 100,000 hits, which isn't terrific on a global scale but it shows a few people liked it enough to keep reading. Our commercial mistake (which we understood as we wrote the book, and did it deliberately, gritting our teeth) was to present a transhuman technology--viral-vectored genetic enhancement/rejuvenation--as a feature rather than a horrendous Crichtonesque bug. Insufficiently Technophobic! People only want to read or see everything smashed and ruined by science! Waddaya mean, make life better? Sigh. Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 22:50:13 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:50:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sci-fi with pathos, was: RE: TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net><580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <468E2B8EF0A447CA8AE15D0778F8B9E3@spike> Message-ID: <2989243B885844F597E1A85A8FEA1EA2@spike> Spike, >I'm thinking that JJ Abram's new version of Star Trek is meant to do exactly that - appeal to the teenies... ....and middle aged guys who prefer women with *normal* skin tones who do not slay their men after copulation? http://www.esurance.com/Welcome/Landing/startrek/welcome.aspx?promoid=StarTr ekHP Best, James Clement Thanks James, that does look way cool! spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 19 23:18:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:18:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419181615.022ea670@satx.rr.com> At 06:37 PM 4/19/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >### I am actually a bit of an expert on slag heaps, since I grew up >playing on them. They were about 150 ft high, stretching for miles, >burning for years, with red-hot cracks spewing sulfurous fumes. One >day I melted the soles of my sneakers there. Yeah, but those were crappy socialist sneakers. If you'd been climbing libertarian slag heaps, your feet would have been fully protected by sturdy free market footwear! Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 19 23:14:32 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:14:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fbi expands dna database In-Reply-To: <1240180044.6910.1443.camel@hayek> References: <580930c20904190916j67902945t5862d2599c93be29@mail.gmail.com><48158F7A9BDC4DDB9C56D5C7A3DA7585@spike> <1240180044.6910.1443.camel@hayek> Message-ID: >...On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton ... > Subject: Re: [ExI] fbi expands dna database > > > On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 13:02 -0700, spike wrote: > > > > This looks to me like it violates 4th amendment rights. > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=2 > > > > Why isn't this causing widespread outrage? It appears to > be slipping > > quietly under the radar. > > When you say "under the radar" exactly what radar are you > talking about?... Well, mine. This is the first I had heard they were expanding it like this. ... > http://www.eff.org/action/protectdna So if anyone who is > signed up for the EFF email would have known about it long > ago. I highly recommend getting the EFF email... Thanks, I will get that now. I am a big fan of EFF. They were the ones who put up a ton of money for finding record primes. They have paid up thrice now. > > If you are asking why J. Random Person is not upset even if > they know about it; well that is an interesting question. > > Fred > It is. Consider a person who commits a felony. The felon is forever a suspect in subsequent felonies in the neighborhood, similar or otherwise. So for that paradoxical reason, if she resolves to go straight henceforth, it is actually to her advantage to be entered into the DNA database. If she doesnt resolve to go straight henceforth, well, then I do want her DNA in the database, to reduce the risk of some innocent person being convicted for her crimes. Prisons contain people who were wrongly convicted, but who may have been guilty of a previous similar crime. (I personally met such a person in a prison ministry during my misspent college years.) This should help those people, and perhaps free plenty who are currently wrongly convicted. On the other hand, it violates the fourth amendment. This is a moral dilemma, but when in doubt, I always assume the framers of the constitution knew what they were doing, and any power grab outside of that framework is dangerous. spike From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun Apr 19 23:46:07 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:46:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > From the 1950s are the People stories by Zenna Henderson (also made > into a fairly good, modest TV movie). > I didn't know that. Humph. Drawback of having no TV, I guess. I have the books, though. :) Regards, MB From aware at awareresearch.com Sun Apr 19 22:37:13 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:37:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 3:07 PM, BillK wrote: > On 4/19/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> ### In these difficult discussion I always try to carve reality at the >> ?joints, so as to avoid all kinds of emotional and other interference >> ?while analyzing issues point by point. The assumption of lack of >> ?radioactive spread which would damage the property of third parties is >> ?necessary while we discuss whether lake owners have the right to do >> ?whatever they please with it. If we tried discuss the question of >> ?accidental damage to others (i.e. torts) while at the same time >> ?grappling with the very notion of property rights, it would totally >> ?overwhelm our cognitive capacities, wouldn't you think? Doesn't this strike at the heart of the naive (pure) Libertarian stance? Isn't it almost always the case that real-world inefficiencies impair the pure, frictionless free transactions upon which the Libertarian dream depends? If so, mustn't we rely on an ever more efficient framework within which to conduct our "free" market bargaining? - Jef (who couldn't resist breaking his abstinence for this question.) From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 20 00:29:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:29:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> <53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419192827.0229ccc0@satx.rr.com> At 07:46 PM 4/19/2009 -0400, MB wrote: > > From the 1950s are the People stories by Zenna Henderson (also made > > into a fairly good, modest TV movie). > >I didn't know that. Humph. Drawback of having no TV, I guess. With Cap'n Kirk, no less: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon Apr 20 01:15:08 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:15:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419192827.0229ccc0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> <53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419192827.0229ccc0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <53913.12.77.169.75.1240190108.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > At 07:46 PM 4/19/2009 -0400, MB wrote: > >> > From the 1950s are the People stories by Zenna Henderson (also made >> > into a fairly good, modest TV movie). >> >>I didn't know that. Humph. Drawback of having no TV, I guess. > > With Cap'n Kirk, no less: > > > > Well I 'spect the presence of Cap'n Kirk would squelch it for me. I'd better stick with the books. ;) (Poor Mr. Shatner, he'll *always* be Cap'n Kirk in my mind.) Regards, MB From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 01:27:07 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:27:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191827h54cc3005p1756c8b6a9200eaf@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Aware wrote: > Doesn't this strike at the heart of the naive (pure) Libertarian > stance? ?Isn't it almost always the case that real-world > inefficiencies impair the pure, frictionless free transactions upon > which the Libertarian dream depends? ?If so, mustn't we rely on an > ever more efficient framework within which to conduct our "free" > market bargaining? > ### Well, the idea of using polycentric methods for the invention of laws and overall ordering of the society doesn't require frictionless transactions - the only condition needed to establish the superiority of a solution is the absence of better ones, not the achievement of in some way absolute perfection. Since I know that monopolistic production of law is extremely inefficient, all I need to posit is that the libertarian order is less bad, and it's very easy to find thousands of examples where bottom-up, non-violent solutions to problems (including coordination problems) are better than "solutions" imposed by fiat. The simplification I used in the present thread (absence of a tort complicating the situation) was necessary only because my interlocutors had problems with accepting the idea of inviolability of personal property, and it's very hard to talk about torts without first accepting property as a premise. Once you know how to think about property, torts can be dealt with by the polycentric system. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 01:33:29 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:33:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419181615.022ea670@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419181615.022ea670@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904191833g517ac192gf2d744444cdd39a3@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 06:37 PM 4/19/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> ### I am actually a bit of an expert on slag heaps, since I grew up >> playing on them. They were about 150 ft high, stretching for miles, >> burning for years, with red-hot cracks spewing sulfurous fumes. One >> day I melted the soles of my sneakers there. > > Yeah, but those were crappy socialist sneakers. If you'd been climbing > libertarian slag heaps, your feet would have been fully protected by sturdy > free market footwear! ### Sure. And libertarians would lease their slag heaps out to burning-lava-motocross enthusiasts. No human desire would remain unfulfilled, at a reasonable price (all liability for burned tires, singed hair, and death and dismemberment is assumed by the lessee). Heaven. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 01:50:29 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:20:29 +0930 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <53913.12.77.169.75.1240190108.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> <53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419192827.0229ccc0@satx.rr.com> <53913.12.77.169.75.1240190108.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904191850q43b57a74jc41686e46b4a82bc@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/20 MB : >> At 07:46 PM 4/19/2009 -0400, MB wrote: >> >>> > ?From the 1950s are the People stories by Zenna Henderson (also made >>> > into a fairly good, modest TV movie). >>> >>>I didn't know that. ?Humph. ?Drawback of having no TV, I guess. >> >> With Cap'n Kirk, no less: >> >> >> >> > > Well I 'spect the presence of Cap'n Kirk would squelch it for me. I'd better stick > with the books. ;) > > (Poor Mr. Shatner, he'll *always* be Cap'n Kirk in my mind.) > > Regards, > MB > Denny Crane! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 20 02:00:34 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:00:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <53913.12.77.169.75.1240190108.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com><580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com><49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net><580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com><49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net><580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com><53836.12.77.168.233.1240184767.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><7.0.1.0.2.20090419192827.0229ccc0@satx.rr.com> <53913.12.77.169.75.1240190108.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <8C67CA2B6ADA4D0B9FA9F076DD63AB51@spike> > > Well I 'spect the presence of Cap'n Kirk would squelch it for > me. I'd better stick with the books. ;) > > (Poor Mr. Shatner, he'll *always* be Cap'n Kirk in my mind.) > > Regards, > MB In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie Gordon starts out dumb, then gets really smart, then gets dumb again. What if they did Flowers for Algernon with Bill Shatner playing Charlie? Since he would only actually be *acting* for a third of the movie, would they still pay him for the whole thing? {8^D spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 20 02:15:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:15:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419211418.0242c2d8@satx.rr.com> > Well I 'spect the presence of Cap'n Kirk would squelch it for > me. I'd better stick with the books. ;) > MB Actually he's quite good in the role, as I dimly recall. Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 02:26:56 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:26:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419211418.0242c2d8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419211418.0242c2d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904191926i73ec062dtedb9c25f2990def0@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Well I 'spect the presence of Cap'n Kirk would squelch it for > > me. I'd better stick with the books. ;) > > > MB > > Actually he's quite good in the role, as I dimly recall. > > Did you ever see the film where he's targeted by a succubus for seduction and spiritual destruction, but he converts her over to the good side by his righteous example and love? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1965_film) And it's in Esperanto! John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 20 02:37:45 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:37:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904191926i73ec062dtedb9c25f2990def0@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419211418.0242c2d8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670904191926i73ec062dtedb9c25f2990def0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419213622.024a4638@satx.rr.com> At 07:26 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, JG wrote: >Did you ever see the film where he's targeted by a succubus for >seduction and spiritual destruction, but he converts her over to the >good side by his righteous example and love? No, but that's happened to me more than once. Well, "love" might be putting it a little too strongly. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 02:51:59 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:51:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419213622.024a4638@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419211418.0242c2d8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670904191926i73ec062dtedb9c25f2990def0@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419213622.024a4638@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904191951j17964abfm9bd27651a8d5cc84@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:37 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 07:26 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, JG wrote: > > Did you ever see the film where he's targeted by a succubus for seduction >> and spiritual destruction, but he converts her over to the good side by his >> righteous example and love? >> > > No, but that's happened to me more than once. Well, "love" might be putting > it a little too strongly. > > I can already see the plot of your next novel... A charming and witty Aussie sf and fantasy writer is targeted by various succubi who find him stubbornly irresistible. He uses his secular humanist viewpoint, great native intelligence, and skills as a cocksman to convince them they are actually *not* demons (all evidence to the contrary), and due to losing faith in their powers and origin, they become irreversibly human! And to the great consternation of the writer, an angel shows up at the end of the story to say that the wordsmith has been an instrument in God's hands. John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aware at awareresearch.com Mon Apr 20 01:48:24 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:48:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191827h54cc3005p1756c8b6a9200eaf@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191827h54cc3005p1756c8b6a9200eaf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Aware wrote: > >> Doesn't this strike at the heart of the naive (pure) Libertarian >> stance? ?Isn't it almost always the case that real-world >> inefficiencies impair the pure, frictionless free transactions upon >> which the Libertarian dream depends? ?If so, mustn't we rely on an >> ever more efficient framework within which to conduct our "free" >> market bargaining? >> > ### Well, the idea of using polycentric methods for the invention of > laws and overall ordering of the society doesn't require frictionless > transactions - the only condition needed to establish the superiority > of a solution is the absence of better ones, not the achievement of in > some way absolute perfection. Since I know that monopolistic > production of law is extremely inefficient, all I need to posit is > that the libertarian order is less bad, and it's very easy to find > thousands of examples where bottom-up, non-violent solutions to > problems (including coordination problems) are better than "solutions" > imposed by fiat. The simplification I used in the present thread > (absence of a tort complicating the situation) was necessary only > because my interlocutors had problems with accepting the idea of > inviolability of personal property, and it's very hard to talk about > torts without first accepting property as a premise. Once you know how > to think about property, torts can be dealt with by the polycentric > system. Thanks Rafal. I see no disagreement at this level of detail or principle, but I expect we'd reach an impasse of differing interpretation at the level of individual versus group agency implied by the polycentric "overall ordering" mentioned above. - Jef From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 03:47:41 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:17:41 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904192047p6e254dbfr96d2399c1f8d6b24@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/19 spike : > > > Excellent PJ thanks. ?I have been a fan of this idea since I first heard of > it about a year ago. ?This is exactly what I have been thinking about with > regards to our endless and pointless debates about the general > eastern/western values. ?We go on about how two cultures view the other as > filled with abomination. ?Haidt's theory offers an explanation for why it is > that way. > > Numbering the five moral impulses: > > 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. > > 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain > rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. > > 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of > threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; > betrayal is bad. > > 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order > is necessary for human life. > > 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. > Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, > are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits > of lust and greed are all bad. > > > In general, the notion is that western society is approximately evenly > divided into two groups. ?The western liberal or left would rank moral > impulses 1 and 2 higher than the other three, while the western > conservatives rank all five about evenly. > > In very general in my view, the eastern traditionalist view ranks 3, 4 and 5 > well above 1 and 2. ?It looks to me as though it would make the eastern > traditionalist the moral counterpart of the western liberal, and would make > the western conservative into a moderate between the other two. ?If that is > the case, then I am puzzled why there apparently is more enmity between the > western conservative and the eastern traditionalist than between the western > liberal and the eastern traditionalist. > > Why? ?How? ?Do explain, without using the names of any particular religion > or creed, but rather seeing this as a cultural and sociological phenom. > > spike > Straightforwardly, both Western Conservatives and Eastern Traditionalists rate 3 very highly, and neither are in each other's in-groups. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 04:07:24 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:37:24 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <8F643F1B7A0348B28BF3C33143ACA97F@spike> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> <8F643F1B7A0348B28BF3C33143ACA97F@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904192107x19bd9372pd14731ea54c843ab@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/19 spike : > Do numbers 1 and 2 still apply Call these people "orange shoes" > to those who have numbers 1 and 2 not just > turned down, but rather turned off? Call these people "purple shoes" > Does tolerance extend to the > intolerant? ?If so, does not the tolerant realize this ultimately is a > losing strategy? > > spike Well, tolerance does apply, but only until the purple shoes try to force their views on the orange shoes. This wont seem fair, and will seem potentially harmful, so the orange shoes are spurred to action. Note though that it is different action from an in-group based, "don't tread on me" kind of reaction; arguments tend to be about justice and harm, not about "we don't like those people with their stupid purple shoes, they should have to wear orange shoes". Also, the orange shoes are certainly want to proselytise, at least, to the purple shoes, much to the consternation of the latter group! On the topic of losing strategy, remember this: "But if the goal is creativity, scientific insight and artistic achievement, these traditional societies pretty well squelch it." I think the liberal strategy is something like, let's throw out 3, 4, and 5 as moral bases; 3 and 4 conflict heavily with 1 and 2, and 5 is just an outmoded emotional impulse (also conflicting with 1 and 2 I guess, eg: caste systems can paint the lowest casts as unclean). It's heavily individualist. To want things to be fair/reciprocal is to give individuals a level playing field. To be concerned about harm is to give individuals an environment which is safe enough, and where individual interests wont be trumped by group interests. So it's the basis of the modern democratic capitalist society. Conflict between this kind of morality (groups that espouse it) and the inverse was mentioned above. In the absense of direct conflict, the liberal society wins, to the extent that "creativity, scientific insight and artistic achievement" matter. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 04:10:43 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:40:43 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904192047p6e254dbfr96d2399c1f8d6b24@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> <710b78fc0904192047p6e254dbfr96d2399c1f8d6b24@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904192110m5a1933bbxceb7151592074032@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/20 Emlyn : > 2009/4/19 spike : >> In very general in my view, the eastern traditionalist view ranks 3, 4 and 5 >> well above 1 and 2. ?It looks to me as though it would make the eastern >> traditionalist the moral counterpart of the western liberal, and would make >> the western conservative into a moderate between the other two. ?If that is >> the case, then I am puzzled why there apparently is more enmity between the >> western conservative and the eastern traditionalist than between the western >> liberal and the eastern traditionalist. > >> >> Why? ?How? ?Do explain, without using the names of any particular religion >> or creed, but rather seeing this as a cultural and sociological phenom. >> >> spike >> > > Straightforwardly, both Western Conservatives and Eastern > Traditionalists rate 3 very highly, and neither are in each other's > in-groups. Something I forgot to add, a topical XKCD: http://xkcd.com/569/ 3 is great for games, sucks for rl. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 04:14:27 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:14:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is anyone listening to Spike and Natasha? Message-ID: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> Hello my fellow Extro-teers, Both Spike and Natasha asked us to either stop talking about mundane and downward spiraling topics such as Arab immigrants in Western nations, or at least to look at it through the lens of extropic thinking. And so why does conversation continue as it has been, despite their exhortations? If we continue misbehaving they may feel forced to unleash Eugen Leitl on us, and we don't want that!! John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 05:14:53 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:14:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Is anyone listening to Spike and Natasha? In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I have it from reliable sources that these days Eugen has become mellow, tired and friendly. You have to do better than that to silence this orgy of something expletive something. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 05:28:54 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:28:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is anyone listening to Spike and Natasha? In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904192228g6318a542k339e7611292c2e78@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/19 Dagon Gmail > I have it from reliable sources that these days Eugen > has become mellow, tired and friendly. You have to > do better than that to silence this orgy of something > expletive something. Damn!!! Wait, how about Greg Burch? No...., he's far too busy being a powerhouse attorney and has not posted here in a long time. Or what about Keith Henson? But he might make everyone get an engineering degree before they are allowed to post here! hee John : ( -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 06:02:42 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:02:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191827h54cc3005p1756c8b6a9200eaf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904192302l2fa55e75iafd6333db3bf6dcd@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Aware wrote: > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Aware wrote: >> >>> Doesn't this strike at the heart of the naive (pure) Libertarian >>> stance? ?Isn't it almost always the case that real-world >>> inefficiencies impair the pure, frictionless free transactions upon >>> which the Libertarian dream depends? ?If so, mustn't we rely on an >>> ever more efficient framework within which to conduct our "free" >>> market bargaining? >>> >> ### Well, the idea of using polycentric methods for the invention of >> laws and overall ordering of the society doesn't require frictionless >> transactions - the only condition needed to establish the superiority >> of a solution is the absence of better ones, not the achievement of in >> some way absolute perfection. Since I know that monopolistic >> production of law is extremely inefficient, all I need to posit is >> that the libertarian order is less bad, and it's very easy to find >> thousands of examples where bottom-up, non-violent solutions to >> problems (including coordination problems) are better than "solutions" >> imposed by fiat. The simplification I used in the present thread >> (absence of a tort complicating the situation) was necessary only >> because my interlocutors had problems with accepting the idea of >> inviolability of personal property, and it's very hard to talk about >> torts without first accepting property as a premise. Once you know how >> to think about property, torts can be dealt with by the polycentric >> system. > > Thanks Rafal. ?I see no disagreement at this level of detail or > principle, but I expect we'd reach an impasse of differing > interpretation at the level of individual versus group agency implied > by the polycentric "overall ordering" mentioned above. ### More details? (if compatible with your wows of abstention from wasting time :) Rafal From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 20 06:13:52 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:13:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP) In-Reply-To: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> Message-ID: <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 20 06:45:39 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:45:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> BillK and Keith discuss the causes of war. BillK wrote: > On 4/18/09, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Extropians are concerned with the future. We therefore need models of >> what is going to happen. The technological singularity is a simple >> model of exponentially increasing computation. At some point in the >> not so distant future a typical desktop computer will exceed the >> processing capacity of a human brain. This is a relatively simple >> model... >> >> An area with a growing population and a limited and irregular >> production of food is a formula for disaster. The disaster could take >> the form of famine, but is more likely to result in human conflict. >> (Rwanda, Darfur). > > Agreed. But Europe doesn't fit into this scenario. > Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor countries. Agreed. > The basic EP scenario, hard times = war, doesn't apply for every war. Maybe we all agreed on that, too! > Alexander the Great didn't conquer the known world because Greece was > starving. He and his army did it because they could. They wanted the > power and the glory and the plunder. Suppose that we really do want an *explanation*. Question: would it suffice (using a time machine) to ask them? I.e., what if we could overhear Alexander and his courtiers? (Remember---we do have a lot of historical documentation to go by, I just don't know it.) But the question is complicated. Consider, for example, the Crusades. I'm pretty certain that they *only* talked about retrieving the holy lands from the infidels, and probably talked about glory and plunder, too. But that may not suffice for an *explanation*. We need to also consider that at this time the Viking memes (and people!) were rampant in western Europe, and that the birth rate was high, i.e., there were a lot of "second sons" ready and eager to take part. So one other underlying cause---not discussed by them, in all probability---was how the project did fit easily into their lives, and the lives of a lot of people they knew. But never underestimate the power of memes! For example, the reasons that at times spread from mind to mind. > The British Empire didn't spread around the world because Britain was > starving. They (and other European countries) did it to plunder third > world countries that were unable to resist greater force of arms. That's put a bit too harshly, though basically true. Their merchants wanted trade, their kings and ruling classes liked the money brought in from trade. They also liked the prestige that went along with it. It also became necessary to beat out the Dutch and Portuguese traders, and at the same time highly desirable to *control* the terminal points, partly to ensure peace. (Wars in far away India, for example, would dampen profits.) (Later they found that they could impose very profitable monopolies on the regions controlled, your greed, power, glory, and plunder.) But the urge for Empire remained very strong through the first half of the XX century, even though it was not very profitable any more. By this time, the Germans, the French, and the English were greatly enamored of maps that showed giant territories in Orange, Green, and Red, respectively. Prestige ended up (in this case) trumping profit! > The same reasons apply to all the great empire expansions. If you were > powerful enough to start with, then greed for more power and plunder > and capturing slaves drove the expansion. Not in *all* cases! Keith is indeed right about *some* cases. But WHY, for example, did white Americans want so much western land in in the 19th century? (1) if we were to ask them, most would say that they wanted a better life out west, and a better standard of living. (2) one underlying factor may have been to "be the first" and gain personal power and prestige (e.g. why did enough lawyers suddenly flock to California after 1846?). There may be other reasons for the westward expansion, but I cannot believe that anticipation of dire conditions or want of food were a part of the causation in this case. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 20 07:03:46 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:03:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jonathan Haidt In-Reply-To: References: <29666bf30904180906k4470cb7cqebc3b89af0c23b9e@mail.gmail.com> <167D6A69E7F34309863D03ECE7DE010B@spike> Message-ID: <49EC1E52.2090204@rawbw.com> Stathis wrote: > [Spike numbered Haidt's principles:] > >> 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. >> >> 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain >> rights that need to be upheld in social interactions. >> >> 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of >> threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; >> betrayal is bad. >> >> 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order >> is necessary for human life. >> >> 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. >> Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, >> are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits >> of lust and greed are all bad. >> >> >> In general, the notion is that western society is approximately evenly >> divided into two groups. The western liberal or left would rank moral >> impulses 1 and 2 higher than the other three, while the western >> conservatives rank all five about evenly. >> >> In very general in my view, the eastern traditionalist view ranks 3, 4 and 5 >> well above 1 and 2. It looks to me as though it would make the eastern >> traditionalist the moral counterpart of the western liberal, and would make >> the western conservative into a moderate between the other two. If that is >> the case, then I am puzzled why there apparently is more enmity between the >> western conservative and the eastern traditionalist than between the western >> liberal and the eastern traditionalist. >> >> Why? How? Do explain, without using the names of any particular religion >> or creed, but rather seeing this as a cultural and sociological phenom. > > The Western liberal's attitude towards Eastern traditionalists is > softened by 2, while the conservative's attitude is hardened by 3. Thanks, Stathis! You just saved me a lot of time and effort. That is, I could have thought of that. Well, probably. Maybe. :) > > Do numbers 1 and 2 still apply to those who have numbers 1 and 2 not just > > turned down, but rather turned off? > Only those with antisocial personality disorder have > 1 and 2 turned off, and even then it is possible to > gain advantage by behaving well towards them in the > way it is sometimes possible to obtain advantage > through good behaviour in business. This is actually *normal* business behavior, and *normal* behavior of people who are actually (hidden) sociopaths, but are so good at concealing their condition that practical practitioners like you don't even classify them as sociopathic (the way that the MRI scans do). List for easy reference: 1) Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering. 2) Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good 3) In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues. 4) Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy. 5) Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Spike again: > > Does tolerance extend to the intolerant? Apparently :-( > > If so, do not the tolerant realize this ultimately is a > > losing strategy? Arrogance mainly. They think that they can get their values to prevail in every country and every era, if they're just given enough time. "History is on their side." Well, a lot of people we hardly remember suffered from that delusion. But beyond arrogance is a complete lack of informed knowledge (or at least appreciation) of how hard it was (and is) to get (1) and (2) institutionalized in civilization. Oh, sure, earlier kings would claim they were all in favor of (1) and (2), but they couldn't develop the rule of law and respect for property that make "justice and fairness" possible. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 20 07:06:45 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:06:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is anyone listening to Spike and Natasha? In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904192114q21967942o9a8dc3c1aa8cf00@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EC1F05.4060907@rawbw.com> Well, I am listening and obeying meekly. But I'm already planning what I'm going to say when the trial period of one week is up! Still, the idea of going meta is very good, and we should all tilt our posts that way whenever possible. Lee John Grigg wrote: > Hello my fellow Extro-teers, > > Both Spike and Natasha asked us to either stop talking about mundane and > downward spiraling topics such as Arab immigrants in Western nations, or > at least to look at it through the lens of extropic thinking. And so > why does conversation continue as it has been, despite their exhortations? > > If we continue misbehaving they may feel forced to unleash Eugen Leitl > on us, and we don't want that!! > > John ; ) From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 07:46:50 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:46:50 +0000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191537r507d38e8u689202fe9549b797@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/19/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > In a libertarian world there would be exactly as many slag heaps and > exactly as many beautiful lakes as customers desire which means the > richer you are, the more beauty you buy and the fewer nasty slag heaps > are left. > Exactly. Let the poor live on slag heaps. I'm all right on my 100 acre ranch. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 08:07:14 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:07:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP) In-Reply-To: <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/19 Lee Corbin : > spike wrote: > > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > ... > > > Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor countries... > Keith > > Certainly. We currently use farm land in a lotta wasteful ways, such as > growing grain to feed to cattle for beef, as a good example, or my own farm > which is currently employed growing lawn grass seed. One of the things I > hope modern humanity has going in its favor is that we have options for > producing food far more efficiently than we do currently. > > What ways? If we ancticipated widespread food shortages, what could be > done? One of the things I had in mind was using the grain currently used to > > > I believe that you and Keith were talking about highly > unrealistic scenarios. Have a look at this curve for > corn production > > http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/articles.03/CornYldTrend2003.html > > A friend who's recently returned from a month on an Indiana or > Ohio farm tells me that they're *still* making large improvements, > and actually look forward to another factor of 2. And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy when up to the point farmers had to make do with 10% of the energy they now use? Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 08:08:25 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:08:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP) In-Reply-To: References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:07 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy > when up went up From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 08:29:41 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:29:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > BillK and Keith discuss the causes of war. snip > Suppose that we really do want an *explanation*. > > Question: would it suffice (using a time machine) to ask them? > I.e., what if we could overhear Alexander and his courtiers? > (Remember---we do have a lot of historical documentation > to go by, I just don't know it.) Generally this would be useless. It is in the interest of genes for the puppets (us) not to know why we are doing something as stupid as marching off to war. The interest of a person and his genes diverge in these situations. > But the question is complicated. Consider, for example, > the Crusades. I'm pretty certain that they *only* talked > about retrieving the holy lands from the infidels, and > probably talked about glory and plunder, too. But that > may not suffice for an *explanation*. There exist no exact transcription of Pope Urban II speech that started the Cursades, but Robert the Monk's version shows remarkable insight: ...] this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. snip Keith From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 08:45:15 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:45:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Generally this would be useless. It is in the interest of genes for > the puppets (us) not to know why we are doing something as stupid as > marching off to war. The interest of a person and his genes diverge > in these situations. > Humans don't need a reason to fight. They are the best fighters yet developed by evolution. Humans fight just for fun. Read the news. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 09:52:36 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:52:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <49EBA899.8090305@comcast.net> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <49EBA899.8090305@comcast.net> Message-ID: <580930c20904200252s17d2ae76s91b9a24fddcbf653@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > So I assume you, or some transhumanists have read it? Sure, I would never miss a book with such a title... >I won't have time to read it, but I sure think it would be great to have a short concise statement by some transhumanist so that when any Luddite friends (or whoever) of mine throw this book at me, I have an easy, compelling and powerful response? I have not much to add to what I have already said. Dinelli is probably right to some extent, even though it is a very one-sided argument and he omits to mention the many exceptions that exist, but this does not prevent transhumanists or more in general SF fans from getting nevertheless inspiration from a given SF scenario, or even to come to opposite conclusions. For instance, I remember that when I first saw The Forbidden Planet, I liked it, but at the same time it was rather automatic for me to reject out of hand the message that the loss of the science of the Krell was ultimately "a good thing for the humankind". -- Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 10:51:33 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:51:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904130154h7f2518f1y40927f208376cf4f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/20 Rafal Smigrodzki : > ### Ah, so you reject the legitimacy of the notion of individual > property rights. Fine, since this implies you cannot make an ownership > claim to your house and body (remember, you just rejected this type of > right), I and my friends will help ourselves to whatever we like. Only > cunning and ruthlessness will decide who survives, just like in the > old days in the jungle. Property law is very complex. There is no obvious or natural set of rules to determine who has the right to own what. For example, to most societies the idea that someone could own the air is absurd, and to some hunter gatherer societies the notion of owning land is equally absurd. And the good capitalists in the street I live in would take action against me if I decided to use my house as a brothel, since it is generally felt (rightly or wrongly) that this would ruin the amenity of the street, and is contrary to town planning laws. Like taxes, town planning laws and environment protection laws are something most people support (which is why they exist) but which most people would flout if there was a profit in it for them to do so and they could get away with it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon Apr 20 10:31:11 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:31:11 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] sf with pathos Message-ID: <989532.62133.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> While it may seem that technophobic SF sells better and has a big place in the market, there's a lot of genres which distort reality colossally in the name of book sales. If you read Dan Brown and his imitators, then history is a lie, most archaeologists are just making it up, but a lone handsome maverick genius can decipher some ancient riddle, decipher the secret meaning the ancient wisdom hinted at and find the buried treasure that will overturn our view of history in a couple of weeks. If you read a spy story, then either the government is evil and trying to enslave everybody and only a lone maverick can save the common man, or there are evil conspiracies everywhere but don't worry, one guy with a gun can kill all the bad guys with no consequences AND get the girl. If you read any story following the John Grisham vein, there is bound to be a miscarriage of justice or three but our brave lawyer will save the day (even though in reality miscarriages of justice often take decades to resolve). It's a wonder we have faith in ANY human institutions if we go by the example of fiction. It's probably helpful to the continued existence of civilisation that most people will just watch soap operas (exaggerated versions of their own emotional problems) and mass sports (contests designed to entertain) and game shows (ditto) and whatever Simon Cowell's presenting this week. Tom From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 13:58:02 2009 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:58:02 -0300 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: <06f301c9c1c0$06cf72b0$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> > So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big > thing > coming? New means of aerial transportation would be a big thing. Does enyone else agree that flying today is hell? I said that some time ago. Our means of communication improved drastically along the last decade or so, but our means of transportation got worse. From Natasha at natasha.cc Mon Apr 20 14:08:40 2009 From: Natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:08:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <06f301c9c1c0$06cf72b0$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> <06f301c9c1c0$06cf72b0$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <20090420100840.wcae17mtu8804wwo@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting "Henrique Moraes Machado \(CI\)" : >> So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to >> these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market >> penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large >> numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big thing >> coming? > > > New means of aerial transportation would be a big thing. Does enyone > else agree that flying today is hell? > I said that some time ago. Our means of communication improved > drastically along the last decade or so, but our means of > transportation got worse. I remember when I lived in Italy in 1975 and took trains to get around. Sometimes chickens, roosters, and even sheep were on the train. I feel the same way now with flying. It is sloppy, messy, uncomfortable, and unhealthy. And we also have to pay for our luggage, food ($3.00 US for a cookie, $4.00 US for crackers and cheese) and they flight attendants ask us to pick up our own trash!! Next they will ask us to take the pillows and blankets we use home to clean and send back to airlines. (Psst, I was just informed that this is ONLY American airlines.) Natasha From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 20 14:17:18 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:17:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP) In-Reply-To: <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Behalf Of Lee Corbin ... spike wrote: ...One of the things I hope modern humanity has going in its favor is that we have options for producing food far more efficiently than we do currently. What ways? If we ancticipated widespread food shortages, what could be done? One of the things I had in mind was using the grain currently used to I believe that you and Keith were talking about highly unrealistic scenarios. Have a look at this curve for corn production http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/articles.03/CornYldTrend2003.html ... Lee Cool, thanks Lee, that is a good paper. I don't have a reference for it, but a really interesting trend line for crops over that time span is to look at the amount of water use per kg of food production. While yield per acre climbs steadily, water use per kg remains the same. I am hoping to get rich off of that some day. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 14:19:01 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:19:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:45 AM, BillK wrote: snip > > Humans don't need a reason to fight. > > They are the best fighters yet developed by evolution. > > Humans fight just for fun. Read the news. This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of evolution. Humans who fought when the net advantage of fighting to their genes (including copies in relatives) was negative did not (statistically) become out ancestors. Have you read *any* of the major works in the field? Keith . From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon Apr 20 14:31:15 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:31:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:13 PM, spike wrote: > ... snip > So my question is this. ?What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? ?What is the next big thing? ?Is there another big thing > coming? My guess is an extension of the cell phone. Right now full internet access can be had but not a lot of people have it. That will become common to the point people will think they can't live without it. And the phone/access device will evolve in the direction of a full neural interface. My bet is that we are no more than 7 years from implanted phones. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 14:49:34 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:49:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: > This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of evolution. > > Humans who fought when the net advantage of fighting to their genes > (including copies in relatives) was negative did not (statistically) > become out ancestors. > > Have you read *any* of the major works in the field? > You think? Hey, I'm not the one who loves quoting that a few hundred years buying stuff in shops caused evolution in the English population to start the Industrial Revolution. :) Human have been fighting wars since humans began. And they have got really good at it. Try: http://www.physorg.com/news140174454.html Quote: Wars are costly in terms of lives and resources ? so why have we fought them throughout human history? In modern times, states may fight wars for a number of complex reasons. But in the past, most tribal wars were fought for the most basic resources: goods, territory, and women. These reproduction-enhancing resources prompted our ancestors to fight in order to pass down their family genes. With war as a driving force for survival, an interesting pattern occurred, according to a new study. People with certain warrior-like traits were more likely to engage in and win wars, and then passed their warrior genes down to their children, which ? on an evolutionary timescale ? made their tribe even more warrior-like. In short, humans seem to have become more aggressive over time due to war?s essential benefits. In their study, Stanford University scientists Laurent Lehmann and Marcus Feldman have presented a model showing that aggressive traits in males may have evolved as an adaptation to limited reproductive resources. Because tribal war serves as a method for appropriating territory and women, war may have driven the evolution of these traits. Today?s modern wars between large states, as opposed to tribal wars, don?t follow the same model. Rather, one of the most common explanations is that modern wars are fought when the benefits outweigh the costs, in a fairly rational way. But do the results of this study, showing that we are all offspring of conquerors, suggest an underlying primitive explanation for why we fight ?rational? modern wars? Though it may be an intriguing idea, Lehmann doesn?t think so. ?I don't think that our study helps in one way or another to understand war between states, but there are many interesting and relevant theories for understanding such wars that have been developed by economists and political scientists,? he said. More information: Lehmann, Laurent and Feldman, Marcus W. ?War and the evolution of belligerence and bravery.? Proceedings of The Royal Society B. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0842. ---------- BillK From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Mon Apr 20 15:08:42 2009 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:08:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <640689.86606.qm@web56501.mail.re3.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: > My guess is an extension of the cell phone. Right now full > internet > access can be had but not a lot of people have it. That > will become > common to the point people will think they can't live > without it. And > the phone/access device will evolve in the direction of a > full neural > interface. My bet is that we are no more than 7 years from > implanted > phones. > > Keith The *technology* for phone implants may well exist in 7 or so years, however, I am less inclined to figure that use of them will be widespread. Aside from body-modification hobbyists, most humans aren't particularly inclined to undergo unnecessary (meaning, non-lifesaving) surgery, and while it would be very nice, somehow I doubt we are going to have the problems of infection and foreign-material rejection solved within 7 years. My guess would be that "super-cellphones" might (rather than being implants) consist of very thin/small devices that adhere somehow to the skin, somewhere on the head/behind the ear, and perhaps take advantage of bone conduction or something like it in order to work. As convenient as an implant might be in some respects, I just can't see people being willing to cut themselves open and install something that they can't remove themselves and that would permit their boss to call them at 3 AM! - Anne From aware at awareresearch.com Mon Apr 20 15:52:43 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:52:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904192302l2fa55e75iafd6333db3bf6dcd@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090419142950.024a4360@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60904191452p1a1186dcq673846c2fe3a0792@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191827h54cc3005p1756c8b6a9200eaf@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904192302l2fa55e75iafd6333db3bf6dcd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> Thanks Rafal. ?I see no disagreement at this level of detail or >> principle, but I expect we'd reach an impasse of differing >> interpretation at the level of individual versus group agency implied >> by the polycentric "overall ordering" mentioned above. > > ### More details? (if compatible with your wows of abstention from > wasting time :) I'm talking about interpretation of independence versus interdependence, more subtle than generally conceived. Not in the single-tier sense which promotes regression to the mean, but in the hierarchical sense, in which (cultural) hierarchy is built up through hard-won selection for what works to preserve and exploit synergies over increasing context of interactions. Such an evolving hierarchical framework, in my view, supports increasing freedoms for those who work within it, but necessarily constitutes competition, even to the extent of being construed as coercion, by those outside its framework. My impression of the (pure, naive) Libertarian philosophy is that it aims to maximize individual liberty above all else, and that all other good will follow. My point, mainly on an information-theoretic basis, is that the inherent limitations of cognitive capacity of the nodes must give way to the increasing intelligence of the network that supports the nodes' increasing capacity and variety of self-expression. Whether we agree on this interpretation has practical consequences for best allocation of our limited resources with respect to maximizing growth in the direction of what most matters. - Jef From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 20 17:16:30 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:16:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sci fi, sci-fi, skiffy, syfy, SF, sf, s-f In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090419163331.022ebc80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420115745.024ad690@satx.rr.com> At 03:40 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > ... almost all the Year's > > Best books use SF/sf in the title or introductions.) > >Cool SF it is. Anything SF always reads San Francisco to me, but I will get >over it. That's one reason I prefer the lowercase form, "sf", which presumably nobody uses for the city. Science fiction veteran Robert Silverberg uses "s-f" , once common when the term of art was "science-fiction" rather than "science fiction". So it goes. Hi ho. The stupidest attempt at rebranding is the (ugh) SciFi Channel's change to Syfy, which they claim is pronounced exactly the same but is way cooler, and dispels all those loathsome earlier associations with geeky acned 40 year old virgins living in their parents' basement wearing stick-on Spock ears. Yeah, right. It never occurred to any of these disdainful marketing geniuses that Syfy would immediately be pronounced "syphy" with loathsome associations with syphilis. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 17:56:28 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:56:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Modest Proposal Message-ID: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> Some debate on and off-list has been in place concerning subjects and exchanges which are judged sensitive, irritating or simply repetitive and boring. See under Libertarianism/Capitalism vs the Rest of the World, identity-personality-continuity-"soul", Islam, atheism, immigration, US politics, etc. Now, while I am inclined to follow the thread of a discussion wherever it may lead like the next guy, I think that much of the related inconveniences would be drastically reduced, if not avoided altogether, should we decide to make a conscious effort to stay more on-topic. In other terms, I think that exchanges on *any* subject would be more interesting and "under control" if as a rule they were confined to what is directly pertinent to transhumanism and extropy, or allows to draw conclusions which be made expressly relevant by the author to the topics with which we are concerned here - often an easy enough exercise. In fact, there are plenty of other places to discuss the issues above "in general", amongst like-minded people, and irrespective of their relevance to the subject of the list. I do not know what the owners/moderators of the list may think of this... Stefano Vaj From dagonweb at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 18:18:59 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:18:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians Message-ID: It is plausible and arguable (but by no means certain) that somewhere between 2015 and 2035 a large percentage of current types of employability become redundant, if no acutely uneconomical, due to robotization, VR, telepresence and telecommuting and variants of nanotech. In other words, if suddenly (in the span of months) one major fast food franchise switches to full automation, can produce better and cheaper products almost immediately, and same niche franchises do the same, how will US/EU societies handle an influx of several *million* low-trained, now-skilled, low-education fringe value workers? Can millions of burgerflippers be retrained into diaperswappers fast enough (*and bear in mind many of you will in fact have their diapers changed by these ex Jack in the Box employees *) Likewise, to all libertarians out there, is a basic income paid from taxes categorically unacceptable, or at what stage would it be wise? Who believes these millions (*and my guess is a lot more, fast food isn't the only business that will be affected) can be retrained*? How about governments levying extra tax on people working over 40 hours. Or people working over 30 hours... in attempts to nutella the available work more evenly. What will happen in the third world where no such concepts such as welfare or social safety nets or basic income are politically valid? What if most of agriculture becomes a agrifactory business (greenhouses, "agricologies") overnight? What if it becomes *cheaper* and more efficient to produce crops very close to power generation infrastructures, in very large *automated* and sustainable buildings? How would such cheap automatic foodstuff production affect the employability of millions in the third world who will be "even more" unable to compete than they are now? Can the radical libertarian "*your own f****g responsibility, don't bother me with your whining as you starve*"-crowd please let me know at what levels of unemployment would they propose what kind of egalitarian measures...? Or would "euthanasia for the unemployable" be merciful? At 20% unemployment figures? At 30%? At 50%? Higher? How do you propose dealing with mass migrations of the ultra desperate? Electrified and poisoned razor wire, minefields, automated sentry guns and nerve gas? Xenophobes waging terrorism on third world countries to disrupt refugee flows? Or will this never happen? No personal attacks please, "for now". (Best source: marshall brain articles) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 18:26:57 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:26:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 7:49 AM, BillK wrote: > On 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of evolution. >> >> ?Humans who fought when the net advantage of fighting to their genes >> ?(including copies in relatives) was negative did not (statistically) >> ?become out ancestors. >> >> ?Have you read *any* of the major works in the field? >> > > You think? ?Hey, I'm not the one who loves quoting that a few hundred > years buying stuff in shops caused evolution in the English population > to start the Industrial Revolution. ?:) Thanks for totally misrepresenting the work of Dr Gregory Clark. I don't know how the rest of the list members feel about it, but it seems below the appropriate level of discourse. > Human have been fighting wars since humans began. And they have got > really good at it. > Try: ?http://www.physorg.com/news140174454.html > Quote: > ?Wars are costly in terms of lives and resources ? so why have we > fought them throughout human history? In modern times, states may > fight wars for a number of complex reasons. But in the past, most > tribal wars were fought for the most basic resources: goods, > territory, and women. > > These reproduction-enhancing resources prompted our ancestors to fight > in order to pass down their family genes. With war as a driving force > for survival, an interesting pattern occurred, according to a new > study. People with certain warrior-like traits were more likely to > engage in and win wars, and then passed their warrior genes down to > their children, which ? on an evolutionary timescale ? made their > tribe even more warrior-like. In short, humans seem to have become > more aggressive over time due to war?s essential benefits. Read the accounts of genocide between chimpanzee groups. I think it is hard to make the case that humans have become more aggressive over time. No human would live long in a city full of chimp gangs. But that's just *NOT* the way evolution works. Unlimited, non-modulated aggression, would rapidly be bred out of the race. Why? Because humans have to do many other things with their time to survive and reproduce, particularly acquiring food and mates. Human offspring require years of provisioning. Unless there is serious resource crisis, hunting (or later farming) to provide food for mates and kids is much more likely to spread a person's genes than going off to attack neighbors. All too often this resulted in the attackers dieing in droves because the attacked neighbors are just about certain to fight back, We don't have a lot of records of those times, but here is one: http://library.co.pinal.az.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=123K91362V10X.63274&profile=cooli&uri=link=3100026~!316636~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=subtab11&menu=search&ri=1&source=~!horizon&term=Maricopa+Wells+(Ariz.)%2C+Battle+of%2C+1857&index=PSUBJ > In their study, Stanford University scientists Laurent Lehmann and > Marcus Feldman have presented a model showing that aggressive traits > in males may have evolved as an adaptation to limited reproductive > resources. Because tribal war serves as a method for appropriating > territory and women, war may have driven the evolution of these > traits. It's not like humans or mammals in general need to evolve aggression, it goes back to fish--at least. What evolution will do is adjust when it is turned on and off to the level most likely to be reproductively successful over the long run. > > > Today?s modern wars between large states, as opposed to tribal wars, > don?t follow the same model. Rather, one of the most common > explanations is that modern wars are fought when the benefits outweigh > the costs, in a fairly rational way. But do the results of this study, > showing that we are all offspring of conquerors, suggest an underlying > primitive explanation for why we fight ?rational? modern wars? Though > it may be an intriguing idea, Lehmann doesn?t think so. > > ?I don't think that our study helps in one way or another to > understand war between states, but there are many interesting and > relevant theories for understanding such wars that have been developed > by economists and political scientists,? he said. > > More information: Lehmann, Laurent and Feldman, Marcus W. ?War and the > evolution of belligerence and bravery.? Proceedings of The Royal > Society B. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0842. These models are incomplete, they even admit it. They are not a system level model and they lack the framework provided by an evolutionary psychology approach. Dr. Clark's leading edge (and politically incorrect) work advances the point that a lot of the belligerence and aggressive traits were bred to a much lower level in stable agrarian societies over 20 plus generations. That's not to say that such people do not respond to belligerence and aggression appropriately, but it's not everyday behavior the way it is in the Yanamano. Keith From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 18:38:47 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:38:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bacterially induced megastructures In-Reply-To: <1583b1cb-c8a5-45be-95b0-0b33b8921b32@x1g2000prh.googlegroups.com> References: <1583b1cb-c8a5-45be-95b0-0b33b8921b32@x1g2000prh.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904201138o770cf508r7c88498253c78660@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:48 PM, mostromundo wrote: > Here's a neat little post from BLDGBLOG about using bacteria to > solidify sand into sandstone in about a week. It sounds like a pretty > neat use of biology, pile or pour some sand into the shape you want > and then flood it with the right bacteria, and in a week you have a > solid structure to live in! > > http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html That's a really beautiful post, the photographs and pictures are fantastic as well. "Clarifying the biochemical process through which his project could be realized, Larsson explained in a series of emails that his "structure is made straight from the dunescape by flushing a particular bacteria through the loose sand... which causes a biological reaction whereby the sand turns into sandstone; the initial reactions are finished within 24 hours, though it would take about a week to saturate the sand enough to make the structure habitable." The project ? a kind of bio-architectural test-landscape ? would thus "go from a balloon-like pneumatic structure filled with bacillus pasteurii, which would then be released into the sand and allowed to solidify the same into a permacultural architecture."" "I researched different types of construction methods involving pile systems and realised that injection piles could probably be used to get the bacteria down into the sand ? a procedure that would be analogous to using an oversized 3D printer, solidifying parts of the dune as needed. The piles would be pushed through the dune surface and a first layer of bacteria spread out, solidifying an initial surface within the dune. They would then be pulled up, creating almost any conceivable (structurally sound) surface along their way, with the loose sand acting as a jig before being excavated to create the necessary voids. If we allow ourselves to dream, we could even fantasise about ways in which the wind could do a lot of this work for us: solidifying parts of the surface to force the grains of sand to align in certain patterns, certain shapes, having the wind blow out our voids, creating a structure that would change and change again over the course of a decade, a century, a millenium." "A vast 3D printer made of bacteria crawls undetectably through the deserts of the world, printing new landscapes into existence over the course of 10,000 years..." What first came to mind when I saw this was ant and termite mounds. When studying ridiculously large ant mounds, what researchers do is pump some plaster throughout the entire structure and then let it sit. They then excavate it and look at the overall pattern. But using bacillus pasteurii might be more appropriate. I can't help but think of selective laser sintering, a method of printing 3D shapes. You have this giant bucket of "sand", you raster scan a laser and the polymer or 'sand' polymerizes or whatever special material you're using, and ultimately the result is the shape that you wanted. So, what about photoactivation of a regulatory circuit of this bacteria? Suppose you engineered a GRN in these bacteria such that the lithification only occured once a certain gene is activated by laser stimulation (chromophores?). Using a very specific wavelength of laser that can get through the atmosphere, you could use a laser in orbit to do selective laser sintering fabrication with deserts. You could literally do rapid prototyping of deserts- it would require a satellite in orbit, which is somewhat of a cost, although less costly than running a giant 3D printer around on the desert forever (rather than just positioning some mirrors up in orbit). "Bacteria Could Steady Buildings Against Earthquakes" http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Bacteria_Could_Steady_Buildings_Against_Earthquakes_999.html """ Soil bacteria could be used to help steady buildings against earthquakes, according to researchers at UC Davis. The microbes can literally convert loose, sandy soil into rock. When a major earthquake strikes, deep, sandy soils can turn to liquid, with disastrous consequences for buildings sitting on them. Currently, civil engineers can inject chemicals into the soil to bind loose grains together. But these epoxy chemicals may have toxic effects on soil and water, said Jason DeJong, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. The new process, so far tested only at a laboratory scale, takes advantage of a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus pasteurii. The microbe causes calcite (calcium carbonate) to be deposited around sand grains, cementing them together. By injecting bacterial cultures, additional nutrients and oxygen, DeJong and his colleagues found that they could turn loose, liquefiable sand into a solid cylinder. "Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone," DeJong said. Similar techniques have been used on a smaller scale, for example, to repair cracks in statues, but not to reinforce soil. The new method has several advantages, DeJong said. There are no toxicity problems, compared with chemical methods. The treatment could be done after construction or on an existing building, and the structure of the soil is not changed -- some of the void spaces between grains are just filled in. DeJong and his collaborators are working on scaling the method up to a practical size, and applying for funds to test the method in the earthquake-simulating centrifuge at UC Davis' Center for Geotechnical Modeling. The centrifuge is part of the national Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, funded by the National Science Foundation. A paper describing the work has been published in the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. The other authors are Michael Fritzges, a senior engineer at Langan Engineering, Philadelphia; and Klaus Nusslein, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation. """ Microbially Induced Cementation to Control Sand Response to Undrained Shear http://www.bgu.ac.il/geol/classes/hazard/Front/papers/DeJong2006.pdf And from another paper- Applications of microorganisms to geotechnical engineering for bioclogging and biocementation of soil in situ "Microbial Geotechnology is a new branch of geotechnical engineering that deals with the applications of microbiological methods to geological materials used in engineering. The aim of these applications is to improve the mechanical properties of soil so that it will be more suitable for construction or environmental purposes. Two notable applications, bioclogging and biocementation, have been explored. Bioclogging is the production of pore-filling materials through microbial means so that the porosity and hydraulic conductivity of soil can be reduced. Biocementation is the generation of particle-binding materials through microbial processes in situ so that the shear strength of soil can be increased. The most suitable microorganisms for soil bioclogging or biocementation are facultative anaerobic and microaerophilic bacteria, although anaerobic fermenting bacteria, anaerobic respiring bacteria, and obligate aerobic bacteria may also be suitable to be used in geotechnical engineering. The majority of the studies on Microbial Geotechnology at present are at the laboratory stage. Due to the complexity, the applications of Microbial Geotechnology would require an integration of microbiology, ecology, geochemistry, and geotechnical engineering knowledge." - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 20 17:09:10 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:09:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] life after people Message-ID: <165701.3533.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 4/18/09, spike wrote: > Did anyone see this? > > http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=70292&v=All I saw it last time they broadcast it. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People > > Its a documentary on what would happen if all humans > suddenly disappeared. > I didn't see it, but I know of a modern structure that > would be around for > perhaps longer than the pyramids.? It is a special > aircraft bunker on the > Redstone Arsenal in Alabama for assembling rockets, > specifically designed to > contain explosions in the event that one of the solid > rocket motors somehow > ignites and then ignites the other motors in there.? > Everyone inside > perishes of course, but people outside wouldn't know > anything was up. > > The building was designed to withstand any tornado or > earthquake which is > needed since the building contains all those rocket > motors.? It is in the > middle of a vast expanse of solid concrete that was once an > airforce runway. > Since there is very little blowing dust in that very moist > environment, I > could easily imagine the inside of that bunker would look > somewhat similar > in ten thousand years as it does today.? All the > rubber would be gone, the > foam in the office chairs turned to dust, the vinyl seat > covers vaporized, > etc, but that concrete shell would hold up and keep the > stuff inside dry and > the various beasts outdoors. I suspect, on Earth, some military bunkers might be left for long, long times. But regarding this particular facility, and the others, what sort of maintenance needs to be done to keep it going? In many cases, these facilities might survive being attacked by weapons, but a few decades of unchecked water seepage -- as I've heard of in missile silos -- would make short work of them. I was surprised, in the series, that there was no mention -- or I missed it -- of human artefacts off world. The lunar landers, assets in solar orbit (including some Apollo upper stages, no?), and interplanetary fly-by probes (Pioneers X and XI, Voyagers 1 and 2, that Pluto probe) are all likely to outlast the pyramids, IMO -- unless they smash into something. (Of course, I don't mean they'll be operational in 100K years.) I would also take issue with some of the predictions regarding species humans have introduced to various places. For instance, there's talk about most dogs dying out, but, IIRC, little mention of house cats. I think house would do reasonably well. Also, humans have introduced many other species that would probably indicate their presence and would not go away were humans to disappear. Overall, the show and the article in _Scientific American_ reminded me of Steven Howe's short story "Wrench and Claw." Anyone else here read it? Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 20 17:26:59 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:26:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] External costs Message-ID: <99223.73311.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Weighing in on this without reading all the posts... Externalities or external costs are not made up for purely ideological reasons. However, a problem arises in specifying just what are costs. After all, costs are subjective and one can't make objective comparisons between different individuals when it comes to costs (or to value in general; costs merely being values foregone in action*). The problem with modern, neoclassical talk about externalities -- even when informed by Coase -- is that it tends to think the policy-maker or economist can tabulate up the costs, make valid interpersonal comparisons, and formulate the correct -- e.g., welfare-maximizing -- decisions. Also, the scenario of polluting a river can be resolved, in a truly free market, by having property rights in the river. Having a government agency decide what constitutes pollution and the costs involved is just purely arbitrary. (It's also not a good proxy for private ownership of the river.) In fact, in general, problems of _negative_** externalities can be dealt with by assigning property rights (and assigning according to just appropriation -- not by government fiat). Regards, Dan * Which values? This depends on the actor and her view of the world -- hence the subjectivity. For the sake of modeling and to tease out results, of course, economists can assume certain types of actors. But, in applying these idealizations to real world situations, one must be careful -- careful especially not to pretend that real world actors are exactly like postulated ideal ones and also not to fault real world actors and institutions for not fitting some simplified model favored by a particular theorist. ** Positive externalities are not really a problem, since they violate no one's rights and the source of a positive externality can always decide to not provide it -- if it costs said source too much. Note that many economists often see this as a problem -- since they fear certain positive externalities will be underproduced due to free riders and the inability of the sources to recapture costs. (They usually call these public goods problems.) This, however, assumes that the right level of production can be known and that interferring in the market to obtain that level does not have serious unintended consequences. Were economists and policy-makers able to solve the problem of determining the right level of production, I submit, socialist command economies would work. That this is not the case -- and there are strong theoretical reasons for believing it's impossible as well as historical data to illustrate the follow -- should be obvious to all intelligent people by now. From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 20 20:08:30 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:08:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Cool thanks Stefano. In the mean time there is a ruling that has been made by those in position to do so: all further discussion of Muslim anything is over. Sorry, we need to take it elsewhere not associated with ExI. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stefano Vaj > Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 10:56 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] META: Modest Proposal > > Some debate on and off-list has been in place concerning > subjects and exchanges which are judged sensitive, irritating > or simply repetitive and boring. See under > Libertarianism/Capitalism vs the Rest of the World, > identity-personality-continuity-"soul", Islam, atheism, > immigration, US politics, etc... > Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 20 20:28:00 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:28:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> Dagon raises many important questions. My own answers (to the extent that they are answers and not wistful dreams or shocking errors) are given in THE SPIKE. In case anyone here hasn't read that pre-Kurzweil book--first edition 1997--here's a segment: The book continues... Damien Broderick From brentn at freeshell.org Mon Apr 20 20:58:21 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:58:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7F1C9290-E68F-4081-877C-4ED4489D4A65@freeshell.org> On 20 Apr, 2009, at 16:28, Damien Broderick wrote: > Dagon raises many important questions. My own answers (to the extent > that they are answers and not wistful dreams or shocking errors) are > given in THE SPIKE. In case anyone here hasn't read that pre- > Kurzweil book--first edition 1997--here's a segment: > *snip* Damien, Having not read your book (yet!), I find this excerpt very interesting. I'm particularly drawn to the notion of a Guaranteed Income, a concept that I've seen in other places, but not as well- described in the historiographical sense as you did here. It occurs to me that guaranteed income is a way of taking advantage of the Metcalfe's Law effect in the modern knowledge- and creativitiy-driven economy. (i.e., having 10% of people out of work makes the other 90% less productive as well.) B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 21:08:18 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:08:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] NASA Mars Mission Delay Message-ID: NASA Embarks On Epic Delay April 17, 2009 WASHINGTON?Top officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration unveiled plans this week for a comprehensive, multibillion-dollar delay?the agency's most ambitious postponement of cosmic exploration ever. The unprecedented delay has reportedly brought together the nation's foremost aerospace engineers, whose combined efforts have already added 18 months of rescheduled meetings to the daring mission. While he could not lock down any specifics regarding completion dates or construction deadlines, NASA associate administrator Christopher Scolese said this latest endeavor will be on a scale and time frame greater than anything the agency has attempted to put off before. "Delays of this magnitude were once the stuff of science fiction," Scolese told reporters during a noon press conference Monday that actually started around 3:15 p.m. "But now, thanks to a number of long-overdue technological advances, this historic delay will stretch the very limits of what humankind can push back indefinitely." According to NASA officials, the epic postponement will occur in three progressively longer stages. The first, predicted to last anywhere from three to five years and cost an estimated $13.8 billion, is tentatively scheduled to begin in late 2012. The second stage?which will ultimately be broken up into 14 smaller stages?will comprise a series of advanced timetable adjustments that, if successful, could delay human beings from exploring the outmost reaches of the known galaxy for decades to come. The third stage is largely theoretical at this point. And so on............... BillK From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 21:39:52 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:39:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bacterially induced megastructures In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70904201138o770cf508r7c88498253c78660@mail.gmail.com> References: <1583b1cb-c8a5-45be-95b0-0b33b8921b32@x1g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <55ad6af70904201138o770cf508r7c88498253c78660@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904201439i5d249dfaka21d12ef3824b0b4@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:48 PM, mostromundo wrote: >> Here's a neat little post from BLDGBLOG about using bacteria to >> solidify sand into sandstone in about a week. It sounds like a pretty >> neat use of biology, pile or pour some sand into the shape you want >> and then flood it with the right bacteria, and in a week you have a >> solid structure to live in! >> >> http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html > > What first came to mind when I saw this was ant and termite mounds. > When studying ridiculously large ant mounds, what researchers do is > pump some plaster throughout the entire structure and then let it sit. > They then excavate it and look at the overall pattern. But using > bacillus pasteurii might be more appropriate. > > I can't help but think of selective laser sintering, a method of > printing 3D shapes. You have this giant bucket of "sand", you raster > scan a laser and the polymer or 'sand' polymerizes or whatever special > material you're using, and ultimately the result is the shape that you > wanted. So, what about photoactivation of a regulatory circuit of this > bacteria? Suppose you engineered a GRN in these bacteria such that the > lithification only occured once a certain gene is activated by laser > stimulation (chromophores?). Using a very specific wavelength of laser > that can get through the atmosphere, you could use a laser in orbit to > do selective laser sintering fabrication with deserts. You could > literally do rapid prototyping of deserts- it would require a > satellite in orbit, which is somewhat of a cost, although less costly > than running a giant 3D printer around on the desert forever (rather > than just positioning some mirrors up in orbit). Wait, why would you have to be in orbit? Find yourself a mountain, or build a tower, and just project and draw under the horizon. This would be using the same mechanism of xy laser scanners that draw virtual grafitti on buildings, which I've mentioned previously here-- http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/msg/50fc34ff5d7adbc1 .. except in this case the light would be activating the regulatory circuits in the bacteria in the pattern that you describe. You would need a flat surface, unless you have a perfectly sloped terrain and know some basic trig, otherwise your result will be all skewed and weird-like. There's an interesting phenomena associated with deserts called singing sand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_sand "Singing sand, whistling sand or barking sand is sand that produces sounds of either high or low frequency under pressure. The sound emission is usually triggered by wind passing over dunes or by walking on the sand. The sound is generated by shear stress ... the most common frequency emitted seems to be close to 450 Hz. Singing sand dunes, an example of the phenomenon of singing sand, produce a sound described as roaring, booming, squeaking, or the "Song of Dunes". This is a natural sound phenomenon of up to 105 decibels lasting as long as several minutes that occurs in about 35 desert locations around the world. The sound is similar to a loud, low-pitch, rumble, and it emanates from the crescent-shaped dunes, or barchans. The sound emission accompanies a slumping or avalanching movement of the sand, usually triggered by wind passing over the dune or by someone walking near the crest. Examples of singing sand dunes include California's Kelso Dunes and Eureka Dunes, sugar sand beaches and Warren Dunes in southwestern Michigan, Sand Mountain in Nevada, the Booming Dunes in the Namib Desert, Africa, Porth Oer (also known as Whistling Sands) near Aberdaron in Wales, Indiana Dunes in Indiana, Barking Sands in Hawaii, and Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts." Here's a paper on working towards quantifying all this-- Surface elastic waves in granular media under gravity and their relation to booming avalanches http://www.pmmh.espci.fr/fr/morphodynamique/papers/A29_PhysRevE_75_016602.pdf "Due to the nonlinearity of Hertzian contacts, the speed of sound c in granular matter is expected to increase with pressure as P^(1/6). A static layer of grains under gravity is thus stratified so that the bulk waves are refracted toward the surface. The reflection at the surface being total, there is a discrete number of modes (both in the sagittal plane and transverse to it) localized close to the free surface. The shape of these modes and the corresponding dispersion relation are investigated in the framework of an elastic description taking into account the main features of granular matter: Nonlinearity between stress and strain and the existence of a yield transition. We show in this context that the surface modes localized at the free surface exhibit a waveguide effect related to the nonlinear Hertz contact. Recent results about the song of dunes are reinterpreted in light of the theoretical results. The predicted propagation speed is compared with measurements performed in the field. Taking into account the finite depth effects, we show that the booming instability threshold can be explained quantitatively by a waveguide cutoff frequency below which no sound can propagate. Therefore, we propose another look at a recent controversy, confirming that the song of dunes can well originate from a coupling between avalanching grains and surface elastic waves once the specificity of surface waves (we baptized Rayleigh-Hertz) is correctly taken into account." Why would this be useful? Well, what comes to mind is sonic sculptures, which are sometimes used in sonic gardens, either made out of bamboo, steel, wood, etc. http://www.singingbridges.net/about/ `"Singing bridges" is a sonic sculpture, playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments. To create this work I will amplify and record the sound of bridge cables around the world. Listening in to the secret voice of bridges as the inaudible vibrations in the cables are translated into sound.` http://www.marshallarts.ie/lyric.htm http://www.math.binghamton.edu/alex/kinetic.html and in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_sculpture What could we make, then? Giant vocal amplifiers? Whisper to the desert? Largest instance of RIAA copyright violations, ever imaginable? Making wind amplification tunnels for ultrasonic and hypersonic studies? Largest dog whistle ever? Basically this is like patterning really really giant brass instruments. Even if you could somehow miraculously pattern out individual instruments with individual tones per each structure, or something, I don't know how you would be able to play specific symphonies or musical pieces without using something other than sound and wind to block certain instruments for some period of time. Very large pneumatic sand circuits? Ok, ok, maybe housing for now per the original suggestion. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 20 23:28:20 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:28:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <640689.86606.qm@web56501.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <640689.86606.qm@web56501.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Anne Corwin wrote: > > --- On Mon, 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: > >> My guess is an extension of the cell phone. ?Right now full >> internet >> access can be had but not a lot of people have it. ?That >> will become >> common to the point people will think they can't live >> without it. ?And >> the phone/access device will evolve in the direction of a >> full neural >> interface. ?My bet is that we are no more than 7 years from >> implanted >> phones. >> >> Keith > > The *technology* for phone implants may well exist in 7 or so years, however, I am less inclined to figure that use of them will be widespread. Aside from body-modification hobbyists, most humans aren't particularly inclined to undergo unnecessary (meaning, non-lifesaving) surgery, and while it would be very nice, somehow I doubt we are going to have the problems of infection and foreign-material rejection solved within 7 years. These problems were solved clear back in the 1960 with pacemakers. > > My guess would be that "super-cellphones" might (rather than being implants) consist of very thin/small devices that adhere somehow to the skin, somewhere on the head/behind the ear, and perhaps take advantage of bone conduction or something like it in order to work. The skin irritation would be worse than having it under the skin >As convenient as an implant might be in some respects, I just can't see people being willing to cut themselves open and install something that they can't remove themselves and that would permit their boss to call them at 3 AM! Consider the metal people stick through various body parts for fashion accessories . . .. Kids at least would insist on the surgery to implant them leaving scars on their heads like the lacing on a football. And it certainly would generate problems when someone with an implant was arrested. The current police practice is to remove all the metal sticking out, even if they have to use bolt cutters. Would they cut them open to get the cell phone out? (Can't have prisoners talking through the jail walls.) Or woujld the cops just whack them with an EMP to burn 'em out? Keith > - Anne > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 21 00:47:44 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:47:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> It's passionately believed by many very intelligent people and studies confirming it are reported in respected Science journals, and the popular press is numinous, so Global Warming couldn't be junk science. Or could it? I decided to look a little more closely at some of this and was appalled at how obscenely shoddy much of it is. For example, everyone agrees that cities produce a localized "heat island" effects due to all that black asphalt and the larger the city the larger the effect. So if you're going to compare the temperature of New York City as it is now with 8 million people with what it was in the early 19'th century when it had 100 thousand people you're going to need a fudge factor, I'm sorry I should have said "correction factor", to compensate for this localized heating. This correcting factor is the product of two numbers, the population increase of the city times a constant. You may wonder how that constant was derived, well I'll tell you, it's a guess, a guess dreamed up by the experimenters, it's as simple as that. And surprise suprise it proves exactly what the experimenter want to prove, global warming is real. The scientific community wouldn't put with this sort of crap in any other area, but even it is not immune from political correctness. Imagine if a drug company submitted data on the safety and effectiveness of their new drug to the FDA and said "don't worry about the high rate of death; it's greatly reduced with a fudge factor of our own design". They'd be laughed out of town. There is another reason to suspect that this "correction factor" is not sufficient to correct for this heat island effect. Even after the correction New Your City still shows a very pronounced 5 degree F increase from 1822 to 2000, but Albany New York, a city that has grown much much more slowly and is only 140 miles away has actually COOLED by .5 degrees F during that same time. Don't you find that odd? For a global phenomena it's also odd that Alice Springs Australia has noticed no change of temperature from 1879 to now, or Christchurch New Zealand from 1864, or Rome Italy from 1811, or Kamenskue Siberia from 1949, or Death Valley California from 1930, or Paris France from 1757. The average temperature of West Point New York was 51 degrees F in 1826 and it's 51 degrees F now. Stuttgart Germany registered a temperature DECREASE from 1792. To be fair I should say that I cherry picked those numbers and that many paces do indeed claim that the temperature has increased; but this is supposed to be GLOBAL so the numbers I cite can't just be shrugged away with a wave of the hand. To be even fairer I should include Tokyo. Like New York City it records a HUGE temperature increase in the last century. Hmm, what do Tokyo and New York City have in common? I think it would be rather hard to dispute that the best maintained weather records over a large area come from the USA and yet they show the smallest increase in temperature. According to records in the USA from 1880 to today the temperature has increased by only a .6 degree Fahrenheit; it also shows that the hottest year of the 20's century was 1934. Does anybody think these numbers are consistent with the popular panic over global Warming? It is true and well reported that the glacier on Kilimanjaro is retreating, but it has been doing so since the early 19'th century. It is less well reported that glaciers in Iceland and Norway are advancing. The status of most of the other glaciers in the world is unknown as we only have good data on 79 of the worlds 160,000 glaciers. Well what about sea levels, you can't fake that. If temperatures are increasing then ice will melt and that water has to go someplace. The best evidence is that sea levels have increased about an inch and a half over the last 30 years; not very surprising as the sea has been rising about 6 inches a century for the last 6 thousand years, and MUCH faster than that in the previous 14000 years, the sea has risen 410 feet in the last 20 thousand years, a blink of an eye geologically. Face it folks, we're in a interglacial period and in all 4 of the previous interglacial periods during the last 420,000 years temperatures were warmer than they are now. And it's not just the data, theory sucks too. The IPCC predicted in 2007 that the sea will rise between 15 and 59 cm by 2100; so they admit their models are uncertain by 400% but I think they still grossly overestimate the accuracy of them. Clouds are absolutely critical to climate because they reflect solar radiation back out into space and solar energy is what drives the entire show. The thing is that the IPCC models don't know what to do with clouds, no idea at all, zero, not a clue. Will global warming make more clouds or fewer clouds? Nobody and I do mean NOBODY knows, not even approximately. Higher temperatures might (see below) put more water in the atmosphere, but higher temperatures also means the air can support more water before it is forced to form clouds. I have no idea who wins that tug of war, I don't have even a ghost of a clue, and neither does anybody else. And then there is the question of global dimming, nobody knows the cause but the evidence is clear that at any given air temperature it takes longer for water to evaporate now than it did 50 years ago. The IPCC Bozos tackled this further complication by simply ignoring it, just as they did for clouds. And so on the basis of this junk science we're supposed to spend hundreds of trillions of dollars and tell hundreds of millions of Chinese that they should repent from being prosperous due to that evil drug called coal and the only moral thing for them to do now is to now slip back into abject poverty. I've got to tell you, that doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. Oh and by the way, you could make a stronger case that Mars has warmed since 1977 than that the Earth has. John K Clark From brent.allsop at comcast.net Tue Apr 21 01:26:37 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:26:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> John, Yes, absolutely. The constant claims that there is some kind of "scientific consensus" are so obviosly mistaken. There are laughable attempts to measure such, such as the Manhattan Declaration Petition: http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22866/New_York_Global_Warming_Conference_Considers_Manhattan_Declaration.html And the Oregon Petition Project:: http://petitionproject.org/ where tens of thousands of researchers have formally their objection to claims of 'scientific consensus'. And check this wikipedia list of skeptics article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_warming_theory_skeptics where they use the fact that someone has successfully published a paper declaring their beliefs in a pear reviewed journal as the gating factor for who can be counted as a 'scientist'. But what makes this worthless is it is completely biased. Where is a competing article to stand in comparison so you can know if the number of people in this article is more or less than something for the other side of the story. I just get so sick of the eternal over and over again claims on both sides of the story: Yes there is a consensus, no there isn't, yes there is, no there isn't, a gazillion times all over the internet, everywhere you look. Yet nobody is doing any kind of rigorous attempt to back their claims up so we can know for sure. And of course, so many other fields suffer from just the reverse. Take the study of the mind for example. Nobody thinks there is any kind of scientific consensus at all in this field on anything at all. But I believe, and am betting that just the opposite is the case. There is a huge amount of scientific consensus on some very well accepted theories of consciousness. The open survey topics at canonizer.com on these topics are still just getting started and far from comprehensive, but already there are some clearly leading camps supporting theories and ideas of consciousness for which there is an astounding amount of scientific consensus amongst leading thinkers in the field. Brent Allsop John K Clark wrote: > It's passionately believed by many very intelligent people and studies > confirming it are reported in respected Science journals, and the > popular press is numinous, so Global Warming couldn't be junk science. > Or could it? > > I decided to look a little more closely at some of this and was > appalled at > how obscenely shoddy much of it is. For example, everyone agrees that > cities > produce a localized "heat island" effects due to all that black > asphalt and > the larger the city the larger the effect. So if you're going to > compare the > temperature of New York City as it is now with 8 million people with > what it > was in the early 19'th century when it had 100 thousand people you're > going > to need a fudge factor, I'm sorry I should have said "correction > factor", to > compensate for this localized heating. > > This correcting factor is the product of two numbers, the population > increase of the city times a constant. You may wonder how that > constant was > derived, well I'll tell you, it's a guess, a guess dreamed up by the > experimenters, it's as simple as that. And surprise suprise it proves > exactly what the experimenter want to prove, global warming is real. > > The scientific community wouldn't put with this sort of crap in any other > area, but even it is not immune from political correctness. Imagine if a > drug company submitted data on the safety and effectiveness of their > new drug to the FDA and said "don't worry about the high rate of death; > it's greatly reduced with a fudge factor of our own design". They'd be > laughed out of town. > > There is another reason to suspect that this "correction factor" is not > sufficient to correct for this heat island effect. Even after the > correction > New Your City still shows a very pronounced 5 degree F increase from > 1822 to > 2000, but Albany New York, a city that has grown much much more slowly > and > is only 140 miles away has actually COOLED by .5 degrees F during that > same > time. Don't you find that odd? > > For a global phenomena it's also odd that Alice Springs Australia has > noticed no change of temperature from 1879 to now, or Christchurch New > Zealand from 1864, or Rome Italy from 1811, or Kamenskue Siberia from > 1949, > or Death Valley California from 1930, or Paris France from 1757. The > average > temperature of West Point New York was 51 degrees F in 1826 and it's 51 > degrees F now. Stuttgart Germany registered a temperature DECREASE from > 1792. > > To be fair I should say that I cherry picked those numbers and that many > paces do indeed claim that the temperature has increased; but this is > supposed to be GLOBAL so the numbers I cite can't just be shrugged > away with > a wave of the hand. To be even fairer I should include Tokyo. Like New > York > City it records a HUGE temperature increase in the last century. Hmm, > what > do Tokyo and New York City have in common? > > I think it would be rather hard to dispute that the best maintained > weather > records over a large area come from the USA and yet they show the > smallest > increase in temperature. According to records in the USA from 1880 to > today > the temperature has increased by only a .6 degree Fahrenheit; it also > shows > that the hottest year of the 20's century was 1934. Does anybody think > these > numbers are consistent with the popular panic over global Warming? > > It is true and well reported that the glacier on Kilimanjaro is > retreating, > but it has been doing so since the early 19'th century. It is less well > reported that glaciers in Iceland and Norway are advancing. The status of > most of the other glaciers in the world is unknown as we only have > good data > on 79 of the worlds 160,000 glaciers. > > Well what about sea levels, you can't fake that. If temperatures are > increasing then ice will melt and that water has to go someplace. The > best > evidence is that sea levels have increased about an inch and a half > over the > last 30 years; not very surprising as the sea has been rising about 6 > inches > a century for the last 6 thousand years, and MUCH faster than that in the > previous 14000 years, the sea has risen 410 feet in the last 20 thousand > years, a blink of an eye geologically. Face it folks, we're in a > interglacial period and in all 4 of the previous interglacial periods > during > the last 420,000 years temperatures were warmer than they are now. > > And it's not just the data, theory sucks too. The IPCC predicted in 2007 > that the sea will rise between 15 and 59 cm by 2100; so they admit their > models are uncertain by 400% but I think they still grossly > overestimate the > accuracy of them. Clouds are absolutely critical to climate because they > reflect solar radiation back out into space and solar energy is what > drives > the entire show. > > The thing is that the IPCC models don't know what to do with clouds, > no idea > at all, zero, not a clue. Will global warming make more clouds or fewer > clouds? Nobody and I do mean NOBODY knows, not even approximately. > Higher temperatures might (see below) put more water in the atmosphere, > but higher temperatures also means the air can support more water before > it is forced to form clouds. I have no idea who wins that tug of war, I > don't have even a ghost of a clue, and neither does anybody else. > > And then there is the question of global dimming, nobody knows the > cause but > the evidence is clear that at any given air temperature it takes > longer for > water to evaporate now than it did 50 years ago. The IPCC Bozos > tackled this > further complication by simply ignoring it, just as they did for clouds. > > And so on the basis of this junk science we're supposed to spend > hundreds of > trillions of dollars and tell hundreds of millions of Chinese that they > should repent from being prosperous due to that evil drug called coal and > the only moral thing for them to do now is to now slip back into abject > poverty. > > I've got to tell you, that doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. > > Oh and by the way, you could make a stronger case that Mars has warmed > since > 1977 than that the Earth has. > > John K Clark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 02:21:51 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:21:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: snip > declaring their beliefs in a pear reviewed journal Typo, peer. snip > I just get so sick of the eternal over and over again claims on both sides > of the story: Yes there is a consensus, no there isn't, Who cares? No matter where you come down on this controversy, a very large, low cost source of energy to replace fossil fuels is a good idea. Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off back to one or two billion people is a good idea. Keith From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 02:22:13 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:52:13 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/21 Damien Broderick : > Dagon raises many important questions. My own answers (to the extent that > they are answers and not wistful dreams or shocking errors) are given in THE > SPIKE. In case anyone here hasn't read that pre-Kurzweil book--first edition > 1997--here's a segment: > [snip excellent presentation of the argument for universal income] Thanks for that, it's an excellent discussion. You've just expanded my reading list though, dammit. Here's something I wrote elsewhere replying to James Hughes talking about universal income: --------- The basic income guarantee worries me, because it's based on money. The market folks will complain "how do you set the level", and I can't help but agree with that. Money's a relative thing. How do you ensure that this income floor can achieve what you want it to achieve? There is a risk that the market will adjust to absorb that absolute floor and render it worthless. I assume here that what you want to achieve is that a person can live a dignified life without requiring financial input from elsewhere, eg: paid labour. Is that right? I think that if the current economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that money-centric view of the world is dangerous. It's got this relativist assumption at its heart, that there is no intrinsic value, only relative (culturally and socially defined) value. That core idea, run to its extreme, led us to a world where the western economies moved out of doing anything useful and into pure consumer consumption and a swollen parasitic financial class. Where smart people do banking instead of science. And it kind of has to. I like to compare how it views and rewards, for example, closed vs open software development. Closed development confers perceived relative advantage to a few (even if absolute value decreases), and so is highly rewarded, even when that value doesn't pan out. Open development increases absolute value for all, but struggles to provide relative difference, so is very poorly rewarded in comparison. But there is something absolute out there. That's what the instinct of a basic level of income comes from; that there is some level of absolute input each of us needs to live. I think what I'd prefer to see happen is that we look at what the basic needs of human life are, and try to provide them directly. Think food&water, power, clothing, housing (anything else?). I think in most of the wealthy countries (the obvious exception notwithstanding), a basic level of heathcare is free, and a basic level of education is free, and there's welfare if you can't work (well, if you can qualify and navigate the byzantine bureacracy). We could push further and make the basics of life free (food, water, power, etc). This idea has obvious problems, I'll admit. The most apparent is, who decides what these basics are, and what the levels are? I think that's hard in the short term, easy in the long term. In the short term we'd have to make a lot of arbitrary choices (eg: the foods provided might be heavily limited in amount and type, based mostly on bang for the buck), and those choices would be wrong for many people (we are really all quite different). In the long term, however, the goal would be to expand the diversity available and the amount available to each person as far as possible. So things would improve. In turn, there'd be incentive to do things more cheaply, to automate more, to be more clever, and an absolute benefit to that (contrasting with the current situation where automation in production just leads to job loss and disenfranchisement). Once you get this approach bootstrapped, it can form a virtuous cycle. You're freeing people from paid labour, and mostly people need to do things to find meaning. See eg: >From Ranks of Jobless, a Flood of Volunteers http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/nyregion/16volunteers.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=volunteer&st=cse So, what you potentially have is a lot of volunteers, who are going to quickly understand the value of this project to themselves and to humanity generally. Skilled volunteers means cheaper production. Cheaper production means more for more people. Which means less need for cash, and yet more volunteers, lather rinse repeat. I think we see everything through the lens of scarcity right now, and have lost sight that there are other ways to live. Lawrence Lessig talks about a Sharing Economy as well as the scarcity economy, and I think we can bring that out of the information world and into the rest of our lives, through a combination of subsidy, technology, and volunteerism (as we already do in such areas as healthcare and education). If we work on growing the sharing economy, and shrinking the scarcity part, technology like AGI and nanotech will stop looking like an economic threat and start looking like the incredible boon to mankind that it so clearly should be. --------- Since I wrote that, I feel more convinced that universal income doesn't quite solve the problem that it wants to solve. In particular, people get into debt, so easily! A lot of people with newfound universal income will immediately swap it, as balancing debt, in perpetuity, for some frivolous short term gain (extra cash, a holiday, a big car?). Of course individual choice is good, but you know this is going to happen en-masse almost immediately, and then the enterprise has failed before it has begun. I think what you really want to achieve is that people can live a dignified basic life pretty much regardless of other choices. That's what I think providing the basics of life for free would accomplish, and that would be something you couldn't trade away (or at least it should be difficult and inconvenient to do so, ideally uneconomical to do so). -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From brent.allsop at comcast.net Tue Apr 21 02:32:59 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:32:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904200252s17d2ae76s91b9a24fddcbf653@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <49EBA899.8090305@comcast.net> <580930c20904200252s17d2ae76s91b9a24fddcbf653@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49ED305B.2010502@comcast.net> Stefano, It seems to me like people that are argue anything like 'science is out of control', or that any loss of any kind of science is "a good thing for humankind" is very harmful, and even destructive of what could otherwise be - and thereby all such is immoral. It seems to me the arguments for such are very mistaken, unintelligent. It is sad to realize that by far the mojority of people subscribe to this kind of thinking. So for every 10 convesations, online and off, likely only one might involve a transhumanist that can point out the immoral errors in such thinking. But of course, this doesn't help much for the other 9 conversations that further promote this kind of thinking and blot out the few where some of us are involved. So, to the extent possible, I think we all need to work together, to find more powerful ways, to work as teams to better promote, and help people to better understand the moral truth about such thinking. And that is one of the motivations for canonizer.com - so we can work together as a team to rationally point out any mistaken thinking as a unified voice. Would you be willing to write up a short concise statement about your thinking on this book, even if it is only a sumary of what you have said on this list, then we could get it 'canonized' so we, and any others that wonder what transhumanists think of such, even if they haven't yet read it, can have such for a moral reference? I know I, for one, would sure make good use of such a valuable resource. Brent Allsop Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > >> So I assume you, or some transhumanists have read it? >> > > Sure, I would never miss a book with such a title... > > >> I won't have time to read it, but I sure think it would be great to have a short concise statement by some transhumanist so that when any Luddite friends (or whoever) of mine throw this book at me, I have an easy, compelling and powerful response? >> > > I have not much to add to what I have already said. Dinelli is > probably right to some extent, even though it is a very one-sided > argument and he omits to mention the many exceptions that exist, but > this does not prevent transhumanists or more in general SF fans from > getting nevertheless inspiration from a given SF scenario, or even to > come to opposite conclusions. > > For instance, I remember that when I first saw The Forbidden Planet, I > liked it, but at the same time it was rather automatic for me to > reject out of hand the message that the loss of the science of the > Krell was ultimately "a good thing for the humankind". > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 02:44:18 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:14:18 +0930 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904201944m33431eb5ra2c7ef0321b84bcb@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/18 spike : > ... >> > Spike, another suggestion would be to raise the discussion >> to the EP meta level... Keith >> >> Good idea Keith. ?Let us go meta, and think about the big >> picture here... spike > > For instance, here's an idea. ?Think of the most recent *big things* which I > will define as a scientific discovery or technological development which > changed everything, such that if that were to be taken away now, society as > we know it would not operate correctly. ?Here are the ones I thought of: > running water, reliable electric power and internal combustion engines. ?We > would likely all agree here that if any of these three were to suddenly > break down, society as we have known it would suffer greatly. ?There are > subcategories which might be treated separately, such as electronics being a > subcategory of electric power. ?Our society would sort of operate without > all our electronics, but it would certainly gum up the works, ja? > > Now think about this. ?As recently as 1900, most had no indoor plumbing and > almost no one had electric power or used internal combustion engines. ?Now > we have a hard time imagining life without these things. > > I did not include modern medicine on this list, for altho some would be in > immediate trouble without it, the majority would scarcely notice it missing, > at least until the next time we were sick. ?If the internet suddenly went > down, many of us would suffer greatly, but life would go on. > > So my question is this. ?What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? ?What is the next big thing? ?Is there another big thing > coming? > > spike The internet + mobile phones ( + a whole future of sundry devices) is the next big thing. We can't see the incredible social effects easily because we are too close to it. I agree with Keith, that implants will come surprisingly soon, but I think they are a continuation of something that has already started. Mike's suggestion of in-home fabbers can actually be seen as a tendril of the 'net; it's just an extension of the printer, after all. The unstated assumption behind that idea is a global social information network driving explosive production of designs of and for the fabbers. The printing press took a hundred years, more or less, to play out. We are in early, early days. Early! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From brent.allsop at comcast.net Tue Apr 21 02:58:59 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:58:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> Message-ID: <49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> Keith Henson wrote: >> I just get so sick of the eternal over and over again claims on both sides >> of the story: Yes there is a consensus, no there isn't, >> > > Who cares? I care desperately, for gazilions of what seems to me to be obvious and critical reasons. I have always cared about knowing as much as possible what all other people think. It's shocking to me to find out how many people, at least claim they don't care at all what everyone else thinks. Such just seems like a terrible, failing, and hateful philosophy to have, but I guess that's just me? Am I the only one that thinks this "I could care less what everyone else in the world thinks" philosophy is destroying our society? > No matter where you come down on this controversy, a very > large, low cost source of energy to replace fossil fuels is a good > idea. > > This is obviously a very good idea. And, because of your work, the people in the camp that think this way is likely growing very rapidly. But wouldn't it be a great boon to society to know, concisely and quantitatively, just how fast such an idea is catching on amongst world leading experts, relative to previoius good ideas, and so on? You've got some anecdotal evidence, such as the recent popular news stories that the idea is progress in all of our minds, but wouldn't having a more rigorous measure of such be far more valuable? And wouldn't it be great to know concicely and quantitatively who was in a different camp as a result of such news stories, and for what reasons, even if only to better know what you were up against, and so you could more powerfully see the mistakes that needed to be pointed out to everyone that held them? > Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off > back to one or two billion people is a good idea. > > Without knowing definitively who were in such camps, and knowing concicely all of their reasons for such, how can we ever work to correct such obviously terribly mistaken beliefs? It seems to me like most of the problems in this world are simple communication problems. There is no way for large groups of people to communicate concisely and quantitatively. And as long as people could care less about what everyone else is trying to say, this terribly destructive and war causing situation will remain. Brent Allsop From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 03:18:48 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:18:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] JG Ballard tributes Message-ID: <2d6187670904202018g1f07c3b7rb6edb767612aa14a@mail.gmail.com> I confess I own several of his books but have not yet read them. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8008098.stm John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 05:53:53 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:53:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Metalstorm firearms Message-ID: I am very impressed with how much better metalstorm weapons are when compared to cyclic mechanism weapons. These guns should be lighter, far more lethal and far more reliable than the current generation of weapons - possibly cheaper too. As such I wonder if any american citizens would consider buying these things, for whatever reason americans buy these Obeliskses, for any other reason than mass-hysteria, but you cant argue cultural preferances I suppose. Is the reason that americans buy firearms and shotguns and pistols because these have become culturally fixed archetypical shapes? Would a metalstorm gun be considered legal? Can a mom&pop business spring up making these things (and ammo required) in a small shop, and sue the government to be allowed to sell them? I mean - a metalstorm rifle looks easier to build than a kalashnikov. How would a society where people buy metalstorm rifles and handguns be different from the one you are in today. How lethal would these things evolve? (I think *very* lethal) - how can metalstorm rifles be "hacked" for rate of fire, ammo lethality. Can these be installed on homebred robotics easily? Anyone has a take on this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:02:09 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:02:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Homebrew Robotics Message-ID: In a few years (and I am talking - less than a decade) the first manufacturer will start selling robotics and robotics parts that are so simple and yet so rugged and versatile they can be mass-marketed, with demand in place. Now assume a robot weighing about as much as a dog, of similar size, able to traverse most of your home. Whereas the hardware frame of such a device should change much, the computer and software parts should evolve and upgrade very fast. It looks reasonable to assume that by 2025 we will be seeing an explosion of robotics manufacture, and an explosion in the price of raw materials used to manufacture them(I suppose we will need nanotech not to make things, but rather to recycle!) . So what if In 2025 I can walk in a store and for under 1000$ I have a small compact brain, limbs, a leg, all fitting in a suitcase. Helicopter parts, remote operation included ... What will that mean for - - smuggling drugs across a border - assassinating people - burglary into homes - paparazzi - doing meaningful labour from your home through telepresence - commuting I make a bold statement here - I think the society we are in will explosively change, in the span of a decade, even without pulling the djinn of AGI out of a bottle. Anyone has any wild, lateral ideas on how that change will occur? Any opportunities for second generation businesses? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:13:38 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:13:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:21 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > > Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off > back to one or two billion people is a good idea. > ### Why would you think this could happen (aside from the singularity happening)? You believe in peak oil? Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:26:45 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:26:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Metalstorm firearms In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/21/09, Dagon Gmail wrote: > I am very impressed with how much better metalstorm weapons are when > compared to cyclic mechanism weapons. These guns should be lighter, far > more lethal and far more reliable than the current generation of weapons - > possibly cheaper too. > How would a society where people buy metalstorm rifles and handguns be > different from the one you are in today. How lethal would these things evolve? > (I think *very* lethal) - > how can metalstorm rifles be "hacked" for rate of fire, ammo lethality. Can > these be installed on homebred robotics easily? > If this develops into a 'gun enthusiast' thread it will be terminated. :) But in reply to your query, you have to include the cost of ammunition. Current rounds cost roughly 1USD per shot. Shooting can quickly become an expensive hobby. (Especially if you like machine guns). In theory, shooting 1 million rounds in a minute sounds impressive, but only the military would spend money like that. And even they would only use it for very specific requirements. To me. it sounds like overkill for a burglar situation. ;) BillK From moulton at moulton.com Tue Apr 21 06:16:37 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:16:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 20:18 +0200, Dagon Gmail wrote: > Can the radical libertarian "your own f****g responsibility, don't > bother me with your whining as you > starve"-crowd please let me know at what levels of unemployment would > they propose what kind of > egalitarian measures...? Or would "euthanasia for the unemployable" be > merciful? > An intelligent person will realize that the above quote from your message is nonsense. Someone who was really interested in quality discourse on this list would not have posted it in the first place. Fred From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:36:46 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:36:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/20 Dagon Gmail : > > Or will this never happen? No personal attacks please, "for now". > > (Best source: marshall brain articles) ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. The amount of useful work that can be performed by humans is always larger than their ability to perform. As soon as one specific job is "destroyed" by technological change, another job opens. And the reasoning is quite simple - Jobs exist because they fulfill human desires but there are always more desires than there are resources (including humans) needed to make them come true. If an easier way of fulfilling a human desire is found, it will increase the amount of resources or decrease their use in fulfilling the desire. The extra resources are not destroyed - since there are always more desires available to soak up resources (including workers), the resources will be used to satisfy yet another unfulfilled desires, and not destroyed (i.e. sent to a concentration camp). This is why we don't have 98% unemployment even though close to 98% of jobs in farming have been destroyed by technological progress. I bet there were plantation owners worrying about the masses of dumb farm workers that would become unemployable with the advent of the steam threshing machine and such. The present robot scare is exactly as uninformed as the original Luddism, which was based on the same premise applied to English machine shops 300 years ago. Rafal does not means that the resources used to pay that particular worker From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:42:35 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:42:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Metalstorm firearms In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7641ddc60904202342g37c98a87jc7c1f0adef8e37c6@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:26 AM, BillK wrote: > On 4/21/09, Dagon Gmail wrote: >> I am very impressed with how much better metalstorm weapons are when >> compared to cyclic mechanism weapons. These guns should be lighter, far >> more lethal and far more reliable than the current generation of weapons - >> possibly cheaper too. > > >> How would a society where people buy metalstorm rifles and handguns be >> different from the one you are in today. How lethal would these things evolve? >> (I think *very* lethal) - >> how can metalstorm rifles be "hacked" for rate of fire, ammo lethality. Can >> these be installed on homebred robotics easily? >> > > If this develops into a 'gun enthusiast' thread it will be terminated. ?:) > > But in reply to your query, you have to include the cost of ammunition. > Current rounds cost roughly 1USD per shot. > Shooting can quickly become an expensive hobby. > (Especially if you like machine guns). ### 1 $ per shot? Where do you buy your ammo? I pay $12 for 50 rounds of 40s&w caliber ammo at Walmart. Maybe if you are into 50 cal sniper rifles.... that's another story. Rafal > > In theory, shooting 1 million rounds in a minute sounds impressive, > but only the military would spend money like that. And even they would > only use it for very specific requirements. To me. it sounds like > overkill for a burglar situation. ?;) > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Chief Clinical Officer, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From moulton at moulton.com Tue Apr 21 06:35:58 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:35:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Income and services for the underemployeed or unemployed In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1240295758.6910.1843.camel@hayek> I am changing the Subject since "plebeians" often has an implication of inferiority and that is not what this is about. On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 11:52 +0930, Emlyn wrote: ... > > Since I wrote that, I feel more convinced that universal income > doesn't quite solve the problem that it wants to solve. In particular, > people get into debt, so easily! A lot of people with newfound > universal income will immediately swap it, as balancing debt, in > perpetuity, for some frivolous short term gain (extra cash, a holiday, > a big car?). Of course individual choice is good, but you know this is > going to happen en-masse almost immediately, and then the enterprise > has failed before it has begun. > You have touched on a major point. Defining the problem to be addressed along with parameters which solutions must follow is important. The comment about persons making bad choices raises a whole lot of other questions. Some people have advocated that in exchange for universal income, health care and other services that people who get these services supply labor for the government. But this has some obvious problems to it. And as already mentioned who decides what is basic and what is not? Fred > I think what you really want to achieve is that people can live a > dignified basic life pretty much regardless of other choices. That's > what I think providing the basics of life for free would accomplish, > and that would be something you couldn't trade away (or at least it > should be difficult and inconvenient to do so, ideally uneconomical to > do so). > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:46:58 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:46:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/20 Rafal Smigrodzki : > >> ### Ah, so you reject the legitimacy of the notion of individual >> property rights. Fine, since this implies you cannot make an ownership >> claim to your house and body (remember, you just rejected this type of >> right), I and my friends will help ourselves to whatever we like. Only >> cunning and ruthlessness will decide who survives, just like in the >> old days in the jungle. > > Property law is very complex. There is no obvious or natural set of > rules to determine who has the right to own what. For example, to most > societies the idea that someone could own the air is absurd, and to > some hunter gatherer societies the notion of owning land is equally > absurd. And the good capitalists in the street I live in would take > action against me if I decided to use my house as a brothel, since it > is generally felt (rightly or wrongly) that this would ruin the > amenity of the street, and is contrary to town planning laws. Like > taxes, town planning laws and environment protection laws are > something most people support (which is why they exist) but which most > people would flout if there was a profit in it for them to do so and > they could get away with it. ### The main point of my paragraph is that once you agree on a method of generating property rights (be it polycentric, or other less smart ways) it is a very bad idea to break such laws, whatever their specific content might be. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 06:56:39 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:56:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] External costs In-Reply-To: <99223.73311.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <99223.73311.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904202356v5ceb009er10809ef2110ecc52@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Dan wrote: > ** ?Positive externalities are not really a problem, since they violate no one's rights and the source of a positive externality can always decide to not provide it -- if it costs said source too much. ### Not sure about that. This is one of the strongest arguments against anarchocapitalism that I know. The free rider problem in the provision of defense against large-scale territorial aggression is difficult, unless you for example introduce rogues who would allowed to prey on defectors and thus persuade them to buy bundled protection contracts. Tricky. I do think it's doable, that's why I am an anarchocapitalist, but it's not easy. Rafal From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 09:29:36 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:29:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <49ED305B.2010502@comcast.net> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090416185325.024dbac8@satx.rr.com> <580930c20904190826p7a05bc70x8ae8ac1410de5537@mail.gmail.com> <49EB4BFB.5080009@comcast.net> <580930c20904190950l71db4eeayd4722233a9f389e9@mail.gmail.com> <49EB847D.5070809@comcast.net> <580930c20904191350x28ffc3c5v96d0ef8e749fc120@mail.gmail.com> <49EBA899.8090305@comcast.net> <580930c20904200252s17d2ae76s91b9a24fddcbf653@mail.gmail.com> <49ED305B.2010502@comcast.net> Message-ID: <580930c20904210229s78fd0ee7qe2275e4a47d72ed5@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > It seems to me like people that are argue anything like 'science is out of > control', or that any loss of any kind of science is "a good thing for > humankind" is very harmful, and even destructive of what could otherwise be > - and thereby all such is immoral. I agree. > Would you be willing to write up a short concise statement about your > thinking on this book, even if it is only a sumary of what you have said on > this list, then we could get it 'canonized' so we, and any others that > wonder what transhumanists think of such, even if they haven't yet read it, > can have such for a moral reference? Sure, I will. -- Stefano Vaj From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 09:40:31 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:40:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Metalstorm firearms In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > If this develops into a 'gun enthusiast' thread it will be terminated. :) > > But in reply to your query, you have to include the cost of ammunition. > Current rounds cost roughly 1USD per shot. > Shooting can quickly become an expensive hobby. > (Especially if you like machine guns). > > In theory, shooting 1 million rounds in a minute sounds impressive, > but only the military would spend money like that. And even they would > only use it for very specific requirements. To me. it sounds like > overkill for a burglar situation. ;) > No. Right now metalstorm rounds costs a lot. But any MS round after massproduction will be cheaper than a copper shelled one. No. Metalstorm automatic weapons will be just as illegal as normal automatic ones, But metalstorm weapons with a 20-round pipe will be easily hacked from single shot into full auto (qf "hellstorm triggers") - plus a metalstorm device with an electric trigger **should** be cheaper than one with a mechanical, errorprone, maintaince keeping ycling trigger. Not to mention regular cleaning hassle. So... considering these trivialities, what are the longterm trends? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deimtee at optusnet.com.au Tue Apr 21 09:54:03 2009 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (deimtee) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:54:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Income and services for the underemployeed or unemployed In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49ED97BB.1090002@optusnet.com.au> Emlyn wrote: >--------- > >Since I wrote that, I feel more convinced that universal income >doesn't quite solve the problem that it wants to solve. In particular, >people get into debt, so easily! A lot of people with newfound >universal income will immediately swap it, as balancing debt, in >perpetuity, for some frivolous short term gain (extra cash, a holiday, >a big car?). Of course individual choice is good, but you know this is >going to happen en-masse almost immediately, and then the enterprise >has failed before it has begun. > > > A way to counter this would be to make bankruptcy easier to declare, and exempt some types of asset from bankruptcy confiscation - primarily the principal residence and one vehicle. It should also be impossible to re-assign payment of the basic income. Anybody who would then lend them money against future basic income is taking a suckers bet. If they have enough other assets to make a loan reasonable, then their debt is not a problem. -David. From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 10:30:42 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:00:42 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Income and services for the underemployeed or unemployed In-Reply-To: <49ED97BB.1090002@optusnet.com.au> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> <49ED97BB.1090002@optusnet.com.au> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904210330p2fbc0edfu637c512527b143d@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/21 deimtee : > Emlyn wrote: > >> --------- >> >> Since I wrote that, I feel more convinced that universal income >> doesn't quite solve the problem that it wants to solve. In particular, >> people get into debt, so easily! A lot of people with newfound >> universal income will immediately swap it, as balancing debt, in >> perpetuity, for some frivolous short term gain (extra cash, a holiday, >> a big car?). Of course individual choice is good, but you know this is >> going to happen en-masse almost immediately, and then the enterprise >> has failed before it has begun. >> >> > > A way to counter this would be to make bankruptcy easier to declare, and > exempt some types of asset from bankruptcy confiscation - primarily the > principal residence and one vehicle. > It should also be impossible to re-assign payment of the basic income. > Anybody who would then lend them money against future basic income is taking > a suckers bet. > If they have enough other assets to make a loan reasonable, then their debt > is not a problem. > > > -David. Does this actually work? I get the impression there was a lot of easy bankruptcy going on in the US just before the subprime thing hit. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From dharris234 at mindspring.com Tue Apr 21 10:32:33 2009 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:32:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homebrew Robotics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49EDA0C1.4010501@mindspring.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > In a few years (and I am talking - less than a decade) the first > manufacturer will > start selling robotics and robotics parts that are so simple and yet > so rugged and > versatile they can be mass-marketed, with demand in place. Now assume > a robot > weighing about as much as a dog, of similar size, able to traverse > most of your > home. Whereas the hardware frame of such a device should change much, the > computer and software parts should evolve and upgrade very fast. > ... > > Anyone has any wild, lateral ideas on how that change will occur? Any > opportunities > for second generation businesses? > > Yes! For years I attended the Homebrew Robotics meetings that used to occur at Alza in Palo Alto. Over and over I saw people make a humanoid-looking machine but prove unable to program it for anything useful. Consider building "teleoperators" that do things for owners at a distant location, by transmitting a lot of commands. Start with full use of human abilities and interests, and then start gradually automating tasks from the bottom up. Use WiFi and smart phones to transfer commands to devices. As for businesses, there are many people who are getting old and starting to need assistance with medical problems. Not only medical teleoperators, but also for self-care assistance. My father died recently, after a year of costly care to feed and clean him as he lost capacities. Watching him reminded me that something like 1/3 of our national (United States) medical costs are spent in the last year of life. That's big money for buying automated devices that save money! But be aware that the Japanese are working on personal care robots, and use what you can from their research. -- David Harris, Palo Alto, California. From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 10:59:11 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:59:11 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/21 Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:45 AM, BillK wrote: > > snip >> >> Humans don't need a reason to fight. >> >> They are the best fighters yet developed by evolution. >> >> Humans fight just for fun. Read the news. > > This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of evolution. > > Humans who fought when the net advantage of fighting to their genes > (including copies in relatives) was negative did not (statistically) > become out ancestors. Please excuse this very basic question, but how do you avoid coming to conclusions in EP about behaviours that don't have a heritable basis? Or do you simply assume that there aren't any such behaviours? -- Stathis Papaioannou From deimtee at optusnet.com.au Tue Apr 21 13:23:46 2009 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (deimtee) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:23:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Income and services for the underemployeed or unemployed In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904210330p2fbc0edfu637c512527b143d@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090420152015.024d1a30@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0904201922p568c9202vd8a59c5b025332a6@mail.gmail.com> <49ED97BB.1090002@optusnet.com.au> <710b78fc0904210330p2fbc0edfu637c512527b143d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EDC8E2.6070603@optusnet.com.au> Emlyn wrote: >2009/4/21 deimtee : > > >>Emlyn wrote: >> >> >> >>>--------- >>> >>>Since I wrote that, I feel more convinced that universal income >>>doesn't quite solve the problem that it wants to solve. In particular, >>>people get into debt, so easily! A lot of people with newfound >>>universal income will immediately swap it, as balancing debt, in >>>perpetuity, for some frivolous short term gain (extra cash, a holiday, >>>a big car?). Of course individual choice is good, but you know this is >>>going to happen en-masse almost immediately, and then the enterprise >>>has failed before it has begun. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>A way to counter this would be to make bankruptcy easier to declare, and >>exempt some types of asset from bankruptcy confiscation - primarily the >>principal residence and one vehicle. >>It should also be impossible to re-assign payment of the basic income. >>Anybody who would then lend them money against future basic income is taking >>a suckers bet. >>If they have enough other assets to make a loan reasonable, then their debt >>is not a problem. >> >> >>-David. >> >> > >Does this actually work? I get the impression there was a lot of easy >bankruptcy going on in the US just before the subprime thing hit. > > > I think it would work as long as lenders don't get bailed out :) It would make lending to someone against their basic income a losing proposition, as they could always walk away and start over if things got tough. Any lender who did that would swiftly run out of money, as people took their big holidays, gambling sprees, etc. then walked away from their debt. It also puts the onus back on the lender to properly vet the loans. (where it should be in my opinion) A side benefit is that, for financers, loans for productive investment would become much preferred over loans for consumer debt. I think this would be a major economic/investment stimulus. Of course, it doesn't help with the really bad cases where the loan security is functioning kneecaps. -David. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 21 13:15:48 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:15:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] JG Ballard tributes Message-ID: <389950.89655.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/20/09, John Grigg wrote: > I confess I own several of his books > but have not yet read them. > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8008098.stm I read two of his novels, _The Crystal World_ and _The Day of Creation_, and many of his short stories. I tried to read _Crash_ and _High Rise_, but couldn't get into them. I'm not a fan of his, though he descriptions are often quite good, IMHO. Regards, Dan From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 14:14:02 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:14:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> References: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> Message-ID: > > > On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 20:18 +0200, Dagon Gmail wrote: > > Can the radical libertarian "your own f****g responsibility, don't > > bother me with your whining as you > > starve"-crowd please let me know at what levels of unemployment would > > they propose what kind of > > egalitarian measures...? Or would "euthanasia for the unemployable" be > > merciful? > > An intelligent person will realize that the above quote from your > message is nonsense. Someone who was really interested in quality > discourse on this list would not have posted it in the first place. I agree that the above is "prejudicial" and "opinionated" and "argumental" but I do not agree it is nonsense. I have become embiterred about what I perceive to a general lack of human compassion in libertarians, my apologies about that. If you wish to wrestle my statement into discrediting the underlying message then shame on you. I agree the accusatory content in the above may be agressive not wise, but I maintain there are solid arguments for my expectations about above subset of people. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 14:14:05 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:14:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the > able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government > regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. I declare this statement ideology, almost as silly as stalinist rhetoric. Worse it is a dangerously naieve ideology - what you say is: "we dont need to look at effects of technological fallout because we will always know that government regulation is a worse cause for structural unemployment" It can be one. Or the other. Or both. Or neither. But - in the real world technology will have unprecedented effects. We had mass migrations of millions (in the US) based on cotton picking machines. And now you feel confident that technology will have no effects, "because governments are too blame?". > The amount of > useful work that can be performed by humans is always larger than > their ability to perform. And what if all available food costs money? And nobody is willing to hire any of the precious labour so you cant buy food? If this does not compute you are so decadently divorced from reality you may need therapy - in the form of having to visit at least several third world countries and having to live a week as a poor person in each. Nothing to worry about - at worst you will lose some body fat. Just be cautious to cook your water. If the water doesn't cost you money. Which you don't have. > As soon as one specific job is "destroyed" > by technological change, another job opens. And the reasoning is quite > simple - Jobs exist because they fulfill human desires but there are > always more desires than there are resources (including humans) needed > to make them come true. If an easier way of fulfilling a human desire > is found, it will increase the amount of resources or decrease their > use in fulfilling the desire. The extra resources are not destroyed - > since there are always more desires available to soak up resources > (including workers), the resources will be used to satisfy yet another > unfulfilled desires, and not destroyed (i.e. sent to a concentration > camp). And harry potter can evoke this magical spell by speaking "creatus amazingus"? Rafal, if you are going to be a fanatic, be sure to be less conspicuous about it. Christians claiming "jesus saves all" have become lacking in credibility too, because the day to day reality is so at odds with their claims . > This is why we don't have 98% unemployment even though close to 98% of > jobs in farming have been destroyed by technological progress. I bet > there were plantation owners worrying about the masses of dumb farm > workers that would become unemployable with the advent of the steam > threshing machine and such. The present robot scare is exactly as > uninformed as the original Luddism, which was based on the same > premise applied to English machine shops 300 years ago. Big mistake. I am not a Luddite. *I want all these jobs destroyed*, and most of all I want Rafal in the situation where he finds himself unemployable and everyone around him shake his head and say "get a job", claiming the free markets will solve it, as soon as we will have them implemented after those silly politicians come to their senses. When people like you start suffering any consequences in terms of acute misery, then we will finally see some change. Sure, free markets can solve a LOT of problems. But they aren't the perfect solution. Oh they do benefit some, and I see precisely those people defend them, by fire and sword. But my claim is that massrobotization AND A.I. and nano will be just too much, too fast to handle. Many people will go unemployed and really pissed off really fast. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 14:45:01 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:45:01 +1000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904172220i74d4c7e8vb409e68181ef121e@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki : > ### The main point of my paragraph is that once you agree on a method > of generating property rights (be it polycentric, or other less smart > ways) it is a very bad idea to break such laws, whatever their > specific content might be. But you could have property rights to an important natural structure such as a lake with agreed to restrictions on what you can do to it, as there are restrictions on what you can do with your house in most places. Preserving the natural environment is not less important than preserving the ambiance of a neighbourhood. -- Stathis Papaioannou From brent.allsop at comcast.net Tue Apr 21 14:53:43 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (brent.allsop at comcast.net) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:53:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! In-Reply-To: <580930c20904210229s78fd0ee7qe2275e4a47d72ed5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1279071552.3720081240325623892.JavaMail.root@sz0038a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> Stefano, This will be great! There are two parts to this. First we need an 'agreement statement' which is the root 'camp' for the topic. It is the basic facts about the book that everyone from any POV will agree with. We can also define the purpose of the topic, or basically ask the survey question: "what do people think of this book?". Then there would be the 'camp' statement, which is the POV of you and of as many transhumanists as possible. Use phrases like 'We think' instead of 'I think' since people like me will be joining the camp (deleagating my support to you). and it will bascially be the voice of all people in the 'camp'. In other words, if someone asks me what I think about the book, I can just proved the URL to the camp. Brent Allsop ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefano Vaj" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 3:29:36 AM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain Subject: Re: [ExI] TECHNOPHOBIA! On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > It seems to me like people that are argue anything like 'science is out of > control', or that any loss of any kind of science is "a good thing for > humankind" is very harmful, and even destructive of what could otherwise be > - and thereby all such is immoral. I agree. > Would you be willing to write up a short concise statement about your > thinking on this book, even if it is only a sumary of what you have said on > this list, then we could get it 'canonized' so we, and any others that > wonder what transhumanists think of such, even if they haven't yet read it, > can have such for a moral reference? Sure, I will. -- Stefano Vaj _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 15:02:00 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:02:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:59 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/21 Keith Henson wrote: >> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:45 AM, BillK wrote: >> >> snip >>> >>> Humans don't need a reason to fight. >>> >>> They are the best fighters yet developed by evolution. >>> >>> Humans fight just for fun. Read the news. >> >> This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of evolution. >> >> Humans who fought when the net advantage of fighting to their genes >> (including copies in relatives) was negative did not (statistically) >> become out ancestors. > > Please excuse this very basic question, but how do you avoid coming to > conclusions in EP about behaviours that don't have a heritable basis? > Or do you simply assume that there aren't any such behaviours? Natural behaviors are observed only in organisms. These organisms exist because of genes which are the elements of heredity. Underlying meme based behavior is a genetic layer for learning (being infected with) memes. Basic evolutionary principles lead to the conclusion that resistance to damaging or genetically fatal memes will evolve. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers#Communal_spiritual_family "The Shakers did not believe in procreation . . . " I would be most interested in examples of behaviors that don't have a heritable basis. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 15:26:06 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:26:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/21 Dagon Gmail : >> ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the >> able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government >> regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. > > I declare this statement ideology, almost as silly as stalinist rhetoric. > Worse it > is a dangerously naieve ideology - what you say is: > > But - in the real world technology will have unprecedented effects. We had > mass > migrations of millions (in the US) based on cotton picking machines. ### But did the cotton picker cause structural unemployement? People dying of hunger? No, it didn't. A few million people had to retrain and moved to better circumstances, everybody else got to wear cheaper clothes, all self-regulating processes without any government help. Nice you give an example in support of my "dangerously naive" statement. -------------------------------------- > > And what if all available food costs money? ### Well, how does that differ from today? ------------------------------- And nobody is willing to hire > any of the > precious labour so you cant buy food? ### Can you try to think your way through the scenario and describe how something like that could happen? Imagine - there is an abundance of everything (produced by robots), i.e. the food and shelter needed to keep a person alive cost an infinitesimal fraction of the resources available to the average person, and somehow nobody is willing to hire anybody to cater to their needs? How is that possible in a free economy? I am asking because I think you are not grasping the mechanism of allocation of resources by trade, and you are coming up with bizarre results, completely at odds with historical experience and its extrapolations. Remember, aside from the speed of change and the sheer stupendous abundance of resources, there is no difference between the robot story and the cotton picker story. Try to describe the mechanistic details of the mental model you are using to predict allocation of resources, and maybe you will be able to spot the missing link. --------------------------------------------- If this does not compute you are so > decadently > divorced from reality you may need therapy - in the form of having to visit > at least > several third world countries and having to live a week as a poor person in > each. ### Do you think that third world countries have market economies? You may be divorced from knowledge of the economy. ---------------------------- > > And harry potter can evoke this magical spell by speaking "creatus > amazingus"? > Rafal, if you are going to be a fanatic, ### Yeah, whatever. I see your rhetoric and I am not impressed. Where are your actual *arguments*? The dissection of my statement, telling precisely which premise or which inferential step you believe is wrong? --------------------- > Big mistake. I am not a Luddite. When people like you > start > suffering any consequences in terms of acute misery, then we will finally > see > some change. ### Just like a Luddite you see machines as a source of problems (they wanted to break machines, you seem to want to ... well, actually I don't really know what you want). But increasing productivity of capital is a *solution*, not a problem, and there is nothing anybody needs to do get hysterical about. "Acute misery", yeah, sure. And why would like *me* personally to suffer acute misery (here and in the paragraph on the third world countries)? Are you holding a grudge or something? -------------------------------- But my claim is that massrobotization AND A.I. > and nano will be just too much, too fast to handle. Many people will go > unemployed and really pissed off really fast. ### Again, you claim it will happen, but how? What is the mechanism by which robotization is supposed to cause mass sustained unemployment and poverty? No rhetoric please, just mechanisms? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 15:34:00 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:34:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904210834n2dfa280agf87e93118a41ec1f@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki : > >> ### The main point of my paragraph is that once you agree on a method >> of generating property rights (be it polycentric, or other less smart >> ways) it is a very bad idea to break such laws, whatever their >> specific content might be. > > But you could have property rights to an important natural structure > such as a lake with agreed to restrictions on what you can do to it, > as there are restrictions on what you can do with your house in most > places. Preserving the natural environment is not less important than > preserving the ambiance of a neighbourhood. ### Sure. You can structure property rights in many ways, and a good law will cater to the needs of those using it. How does that relate to the question of whether externalities are best dealt with by property/tort/contract/polycentric law vs. statutory/monopolistic law? Rafal From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 15:54:36 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:54:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Keith Henson wrote: >>> >>> I just get so sick of the eternal over and over again claims on both >>> sides >>> of the story: Yes there is a consensus, no there isn't, >>> >> >> Who cares? > > I care desperately, for gazilions of what seems to me to be obvious and > critical reasons. ?I have always cared about knowing as much as possible > what all other people think. > > It's shocking to me to find out how many people, at least claim they don't > care at all what everyone else thinks. ?Such just seems like a terrible, > failing, and hateful philosophy to have, but I guess that's just me? ?Am I > the only one that thinks this "I could care less what everyone else in the > world thinks" philosophy is destroying our society? Let me try this by analogy. Assume you live in a densely forested village downstream from a large earth dam which is leaking and expected to fail. Upwind there is a huge forest fire sweeping in. Rather than take steps to get out oft the mess, the inhabitants spend all their time arguing about the reality of one or the other of the upcoming disasters while moving out oft he valley will solve both problems. >> No matter where you come down on this controversy, a very >> large, low cost source of energy to replace fossil fuels is a good >> idea. >> > > This is obviously a very good idea. ?And, because of your work, the people > in the camp that think this way is likely growing very rapidly. ?But > wouldn't it be a great boon to society to know, concisely and > quantitatively, just how fast such an idea is catching on amongst world > leading experts, relative to previoius good ideas, and so on? ?You've got > some anecdotal evidence, such as the recent popular ?news stories that the > idea is progress in all of our minds, but wouldn't having a more rigorous > measure of such be far more valuable? ?And wouldn't it be great to know > concicely and quantitatively who was in a different camp as a result of such > news stories, and for what reasons, even if only to better know what you > were up against, and so you could more powerfully see the mistakes that > needed to be pointed out to everyone that held them? If you have any ideas about how to measure the spread of these concepts (most of which are decades old) please express them. >> Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off >> back to one or two billion people is a good idea. >> > > Without knowing definitively who were in such camps, and knowing concicely > all of their reasons for such, how can we ever work to correct such > obviously terribly mistaken beliefs? The belief "humans are a cancer on the earth" has religious aspects. Religions (being xenophobic memes) become more intense when the population perspective is for a bleak future. We may think this is an obviously terribly mistaken belief, but the people who hold such beliefs think otherwise. Converting them to a more optimistic outlook may be possible or it might be as difficult as converting Islamic believers into atheists. > It seems to me like most of the problems in this world are simple > communication problems. ?There is no way for large groups of people to > communicate concisely and quantitatively. It has been my experience that very few can even think quantitatively. In recent days critics of power satellites have said the energy payback will be terrible. If you calculate it for rockets, which are about as inefficient as you can get, the energy payback is around 100 days for lifting materials to GEO (at 5kg/kW). By the usual measure of such numbers (a number of years) that's extremely good. But it's possible I am the only one who has ever run that calculation and I don't think anyone has checked it. http://htyp.org/Hundred_dollars_a_kg/Note_1 >And as long as people could care > less about what everyone else is trying to say, this terribly destructive > and war causing situation will remain. Sometimes, as in the climate model debate, it really don't matter. A tiny fraction of the effort that has gone into those arguments would be enough to work out how to solve the much more serious energy problems, and with it the climate problem (if there is one) will be solved. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 16:02:27 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:02:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Thanks for totally misrepresenting the work of Dr Gregory Clark. I > don't know how the rest of the list members feel about it, but it > seems below the appropriate level of discourse. > Yoi think I should strive to attain the discourse level of your suggestion that I don't have a clue about evolution theory? You have misunderstood what your hero Dr Clark wrote. He is not a scientist. He's a historian. He was talking about *cultural* evolution. (Though he threw in a lot of 'maybes and 'perhaps' to confuse matters). > > These models are incomplete, they even admit it. They are not a > system level model and they lack the framework provided by an > evolutionary psychology approach. > > Dr. Clark's leading edge (and politically incorrect) work advances the > point that a lot of the belligerence and aggressive traits were bred > to a much lower level in stable agrarian societies over 20 plus > generations. That's not to say that such people do not respond to > belligerence and aggression appropriately, but it's not everyday > behavior the way it is in the Yanamano. > Dr Clark doesn't even have a model, far less an incomplete model. He is a story-teller. He has no scientific evidence at all for genetic changes causing the Industrial Revolution. He has some evidence for cultural transmission of ideas via rich middle-class families, but even this is confused by him ignoring all the other methods of cultural transmission like schools, churches, legal institutions, social tradition, etc. BillK From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 21 16:16:35 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:16:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites (was: Is Global Warming Junk Science?) References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com><400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer><49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net><49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> Message-ID: <2395E619734B4A289A004327CE6B1A50@MyComputer> "Keith Henson" > critics of power satellites have said the energy payback will be terrible. > If you calculate it for rockets, which are about as inefficient as you can > get, the energy payback is around 100 days for lifting materials to GEO > (at 5kg/kW). By the usual measure of such numbers (a number of years) > that's extremely good. But it's possible I am the only one who has ever > run that calculation and I don't think anyone has checked it. I don't see the point of checking your calculation because it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The reason putting something into geosynchronous orbit is so astronomically expensive is not because of the high cost of rocket fuel. John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 21 16:25:52 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:25:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <49EDF390.8010103@rawbw.com> Fred wrote > On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 20:18 +0200, Dagon Gmail wrote: > > Can the radical libertarian "your own f****g > > responsibility, don't bother me with your whining > > as you starve"-crowd please let me know at what > > levels of unemployment would they propose what kind of > > egalitarian measures...? Or would "euthanasia for the > > unemployable" be merciful? As Rafal pointed out, very similar concerns in the past over and over were found to be worries over nothing. > An intelligent person will realize that the above quote > from your message is nonsense. We need to rise above ad hominem, empty arguments, Fred. Basically, all you've said here is that the poster is stupid, and that anyone who resonates with his message is too. If his claim is nonsense, why didn't you attack *it* directly instead of him and his ilk? > Someone who was really interested in quality discourse > discourse on this list would not have posted it in the > first place. While I sympathize, I basically disagree with you because it did provoke intelligent discussion of what may indeed (despite our experience, and despite your and my judgments) prove to be a real problem. Dagon persists: > > I agree that the above is "prejudicial" and > > "opinionated" and "argumental [argumentative]" > > but I do not agree it is nonsense. I have > > become embittered about what I perceive to > > a general lack of human compassion in libertarians, It's not a lack of compassion, please rest assured on that point. It's merely an attempt to take the long view, and maximize well-being and minimize misery in the long run. Sure, the government could pass out $10,000 tomorrow to everyone (not that you or anyone is suggesting that), but it would *not* be compassionate as (I hope) you are able to see. > > If you wish to wrestle my statement into discrediting > > the underlying message then shame on you. So you *knew* that you'd be misunderstood. When this happens, PLEASE try toning down the button- pushing remarks and focus on presenting the rational arguments (that I know you do have, because it's not too hard to see them underneath your overly provoking rhetoric). > > I agree the accusatory content in the above may be > > aggressive not wise, Well---that's a signal to you, damn it, to rewrite! > > but I maintain there are solid arguments for my > > expectations about above subset of people. We shall see how "solid" are your judgments about Libertarians. I provided a counter-argument to your claims above, and so have several other people. Lee From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 16:30:36 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:30:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:21 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> >> Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off >> back to one or two billion people is a good idea. >> > ### Why would you think this could happen (aside from the singularity > happening)? You believe in peak oil? I think most people will agree that there is a finite amount of fossil energy. If you assume rising use of fossil fuel and rising difficulty to obtain it, then there will come a time of peak extraction. On the other hand, hydrocarbons (and oxygen from air) are a very convenient way to carry round energy. 50 years from now I could see a time when oil consumption is ten times what it is today. However, virtually all of it would by synthetic oil made with CO2 out of the air and energy from power satellites. Keith From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 21 16:25:18 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:25:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Neutral selection, anyone? was /Re: Really? and EP Message-ID: <187020.79168.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: > > 2009/4/21 Keith Henson > wrote: > >> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:45 AM, BillK > wrote: > >> > >> snip > >>> > >>> Humans don't need a reason to fight. > >>> > >>> They are the best fighters yet developed by > evolution. > >>> > >>> Humans fight just for fun. Read the news. > >> > >> This demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of > evolution. > >> > >> Humans who fought when the net advantage of > fighting to their genes > >> (including copies in relatives) was negative did > not (statistically) > >> become out ancestors. > > > > Please excuse this very basic question, but how do you > avoid coming to > > conclusions in EP about behaviours that don't have a > heritable basis? > > Or do you simply assume that there aren't any such > behaviours? > > Natural behaviors are observed only in organisms.? > These organisms > exist because of genes which are the elements of > heredity.? Underlying > meme based behavior is a genetic layer for learning (being > infected > with) memes.? Basic evolutionary principles lead to > the conclusion > that resistance to damaging or genetically fatal memes will > evolve. > For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers#Communal_spiritual_family > "The Shakers did not believe in procreation . . . " > > I would be most interested in examples of behaviors that > don't have a > heritable basis. But that's a loaded example. I would think some behaviors (surely, not all) are -- like it appears many genes are -- neutral in that they have little or no impact on the survival of the genes. (In fact, I would start off with neutrality as my null hypothesis were I testing EP hypotheses.) Regards, Dan From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 21 16:55:12 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:55:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EDFA70.6010805@rawbw.com> Rafal Smigrodzki---who does know how to present arguments unlike many people---wrote: > Dagon wrote: > >> [Rafal wrote:] >> >>> ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the >>> able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government >>> regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. That's true, but you didn't explain why. Here I may not be presenting *your* view, but here is *my* view of why you are right. The government regulation dampens free market activity (in mostly bad ways, though given that we're not all ready for total freedom, some regulation at this time seems optimal). Worse, the government largess and government regulation diminish people's incentives. >> I declare this statement ideology, almost as silly >> as stalinist rhetoric. Jesus. WHAT HAS RECENTLY HAPPENED TO EVERYONE ON THIS LIST? INSULTS, INSULTS, AND MORE EMPTY INSULTS AND PUT-DOWNS INSTEAD OF REASONED DISCOURSE. >> Worse it is a dangerously naive ideology How enlightening! Oh. Your interlocutor is naive. Hmm. That's real deep. >> And nobody is willing to hire any of the >> precious labour so you can't buy food? > > ### Can you try to think your way through the scenario and describe > how something like that could happen? Imagine - there is an abundance > of everything (produced by robots), i.e. the food and shelter needed > to keep a person alive cost an infinitesimal fraction of the resources > available to the average person, and somehow nobody is willing to hire > anybody to cater to their needs? How is that possible in a free > economy? Well, Rafal, let me take a swing. Right now there are a lot of people who just "get by" somehow. I don't know how they do it. In your scenario the phenomenon is magnified. Yes, there are still some things that completely unskilled labor can do---it's nice to have someone sit behind the desk at a motel, or to have effusive and charming "greeters" at the totally automated Wal-Mart. But the rich, i.e. those of the people who have skills so refined that the machines can't yet cope, very likely have no use for the hoi-polloi, and really don't want them around. Therefore, I claim, this is why few will be willing to hire, and that freely given charity will be rampant. >> If this does not compute you are so decadently >> divorced from reality you may need therapy Heh, heh. I leave that latest Dagon assault here for purposes of humor only. >> When people like you start suffering consequences >> in terms of acute misery, then we will finally >> see some change. > > ### Just like a Luddite you see machines as a source of problems (they > wanted to break machines, you seem to want to ... well, actually I > don't really know what you want). But increasing productivity of > capital is a *solution*, not a problem, and there is nothing anybody > needs to do get hysterical about. Just so. But exactly how it will all shake out isn't easy to see. >> But my claim is that mass-robotization AND A.I. >> and nano will be just too much, too fast to handle. >> Many people will go unemployed and really pissed >> off really fast. The poor and unemployed'll get by. Tremendous numbers of them already are. Since stuff will be so cheap, I expect voluntary charity to rise dramatically. > > ### Again, you claim it will happen, but how? What > is the mechanism by which robotization is supposed > to cause mass sustained unemployment and poverty? What about a sudden advent of affordable matter compilers? The prosperous among us shell out the $100,000 for one and suddenly the services of 60% of the population are no longer needed by the prosperous. Exactly why couldn't that happen (ignoring its improbability, i.e., taken as a purely theoretical possibility)? Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 21 16:59:54 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:59:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> At 08:02 AM 4/21/2009 -0700, Keith wrote: >I would be most interested in examples of behaviors that don't have a >heritable basis. It depends how generalized or indirect (approaching vacuity) you want that basis to be. If you say "The heritable basis for elective celibacy, clitoridectomy, extending the lips with larger and larger inserted plates, filing the teeth to points, foot-binding, teen suicide epidemics, spending years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars gaining a PhD in deconstruction is [sexual display/team player display/support for same-gene procreators/whatever]" it starts to look pretty indistinguishable from "God wills it" or "stochasticity". Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 18:42:14 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:42:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:02 AM, BillK wrote: > On 4/20/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> Thanks for totally misrepresenting the work of Dr Gregory Clark. ?I >> ?don't know how the rest of the list members feel about it, but it >> ?seems below the appropriate level of discourse. >> > > Yoi think I should strive to attain the discourse level of your > suggestion that I don't have a clue about evolution theory? Do you? Can you paraphrase Hamilton's rule? > You have misunderstood what your hero Dr Clark wrote. > He is not a scientist. ? He's a historian. > He was talking about *cultural* evolution. > (Though he threw in a lot of 'maybes and 'perhaps' to confuse matters). > I have no idea how you could read a paper such as "Genetically Capitalist? The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the Formation of Modern Preferences" and come to the conclusion Dr Clark was talking about cultural evolution. To be sure culture had evolved from hunter gatherers to settled agriculture. The best survival traits in this culture were rather different from those of hunter gatherers. Clark proposes (on the basis of extensive evidence) that there was an extensive genetic takeover in historical times of a different set of traits based on genetic selection. Here in Clark's words. Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian. The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively successful groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing their share of the population, while other groups produced less, so that their share declined. But unusually in England, this selection for men was based on economic success from at least 1250, not success in violence as in some other pre-industrial societies. The richest male testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the middle ages. At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more ?capitalist? attitudes. The highly capitalistic nature of English society by 1800 ? individualism, low time preference rates, long work hours, high levels of human capital ? may thus stem from the nature of the Darwinian struggle in a very stable agrarian society in the long run up to the Industrial Revolution. The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality. ************* How can you read into this that Dr Clark was talking about cultural evolution? snip Keith From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 21 19:04:31 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:04:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Human population growth before 1800 CE/was Re: Really? and EP Message-ID: <540073.32075.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Before 1800 all societies, including England, were > Malthusian. > The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such > societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively > successful > groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing > their > share of the population, while other groups produced less, > so that > their share declined. Do you mean that before 1800 CE, the human population was stable -- never rising or falling? That there pretty much the same number of humans from the beginning of the species until 1800 CE? Regards, Dan From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 19:06:31 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:06:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites (was: Is Global Warming Junk Science?) In-Reply-To: <2395E619734B4A289A004327CE6B1A50@MyComputer> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> <2395E619734B4A289A004327CE6B1A50@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:16 AM, John K Clark wrote: > "Keith Henson" > >> critics of power satellites have said the energy payback will be terrible. >> If you calculate it for rockets, which are about as inefficient as you can >> get, the energy payback is around 100 days for lifting materials to GEO >> (at 5kg/kW). ?By the usual measure of such numbers (a number of years) >> that's extremely good. ?But it's possible I am the only one who has ever >> run that calculation and I don't think anyone has checked it. > > I don't see the point of checking your calculation because it doesn't matter > if it's right or wrong. The reason putting something into geosynchronous > orbit is so astronomically expensive is not because of the high cost of > rocket fuel. Of course I agree with you. How would you go about reducing the cost? Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 19:17:16 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:17:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human population growth before 1800 CE/was Re: Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <540073.32075.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <540073.32075.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> Before 1800 all societies, including England, were >> Malthusian. >> The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such >> societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively >> successful >> groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing >> their >> share of the population, while other groups produced less, >> so that >> their share declined. > > Do you mean that before 1800 CE, the human population was stable -- never rising or falling? ?That there pretty much the same number of humans from the beginning of the species until 1800 CE? The quoted material is Dr. Clark's, not mine. Here is what he has to say: Before 1800 income per capita varied across societies and epochs, but there was no upward trend. A simple but powerful mechanism, the Malthusian Trap, kept incomes within a range narrow by modern standards. The average person in 1800 was no better off in material terms than the average person of 10,000 or 100,000 BC. snip The Malthusian Trap ? Economic Life to 1800 A spare but powerful economic model, which requires only three basic assumptions, and can be explained in graphs, explains why technological advance improved material living conditions only after 1800. The vast majority of human societies, from the original foragers of the African savannah, through settled agrarian societies until about 1800, had an economic life that was shaped and governed by one simple fact: in the long run births had to equal deaths. Since this same logic governs all animal species, until 1800, in this ?natural? economy, the economic laws for humans were the same as for all animal species. It is common to assume that the huge changes in the technology available to people, and in the organizational complexity of societies, between our ancestors of the savannah and Industrial Revolution England, must have improved material life even before modern economic growth began. But the logic of the natural economy implies that the material living standards of the average person in the agrarian economies of 1800 was, if anything, worse than for our remote ancestors. Women, over the course of their reproductive lives, can give birth to 12 or more children. Still in some current societies the average women gives birth to more than 6 children. Yet for the world before 1800 the number of children per woman that survived to adulthood was always just a little above 2. World population grew from perhaps 0.1 m. in 100,000 BC to 770 m. by 1800. But this still represents an average of 2.005 surviving children per woman before 1800. Even within successful preindustrial economies, such as those in Western Europe, long run rates of population growth were very small. Table 1 shows for a number of European countries population in 1300 and 1800, and the implied numbers of surviving children per woman. None of these societies deviated far from two surviving children per woman. Some force must be keeping population growth rates within rather strict limits over the long run. The Malthusian model supplies a mechanism to explain this long run population stability. There are just three assumptions: (Read the rest off Dr. Clark's website.) Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 19:44:07 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:44:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49EDFA70.6010805@rawbw.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <49EDFA70.6010805@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904211244p1bacfe2dkf6030ddb499c215d@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > In your scenario the phenomenon is magnified. Yes, > there are still some things that completely unskilled > labor can do---it's nice to have someone sit behind > the desk at a motel, or to have effusive and charming > "greeters" at the totally automated Wal-Mart. But > the rich, i.e. those of the people who have skills > so refined that the machines can't yet cope, very > likely have no use for the hoi-polloi, and really > don't want them around. > > Therefore, I claim, this is why few will be willing > to hire, and that freely given charity will be rampant. ### I would say charity might become exponential (more below). ------------------------- > > What about a sudden advent of affordable matter compilers? > The prosperous among us shell out the $100,000 for one > and suddenly the services of 60% of the population are > no longer needed by the prosperous. Exactly why couldn't > that happen (ignoring its improbability, i.e., taken > as a purely theoretical possibility)? > ### Cool, I am relieved to discuss matter compilers again! :) OK, so what if you have a 100,000$ matter compiler that can turn chaff into wheat buns with chocolate, and garbage into .... let's say, another matter compiler. What happens to the price of the compilers? (let's for now set aside the question of IP protection for simplicity's sake, and not mention using compilers to blow up stuff) After making some chocolate for yourself you would make a compiler each for your wife, and kids, just to keep them out of your hair. The kids would make compilers for their friends, who would make compilers for their parents. If the effective doubling rate of compiler-making is 1 day, in just 33 days everybody will have a compiler, for free. One might argue that this would result in "unemployment" but not in angry mobs of hungry desperados storming the strongholds where Dagon envisions us ruthless libertarian overlords trying to hide from the anger of the oppressed. Rafal From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 19:52:13 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:52:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 08:02 AM 4/21/2009 -0700, Keith wrote: > >> I would be most interested in examples of behaviors that don't have a >> heritable basis. > > It depends how generalized or indirect (approaching vacuity) you want that > basis to be. If you say "The heritable basis for elective celibacy, > clitoridectomy, extending the lips with larger and larger inserted plates, > filing the teeth to points, foot-binding, teen suicide epidemics, spending > years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars gaining a PhD in > deconstruction is [sexual display/team player display/support for same-gene > procreators/whatever]" it starts to look pretty indistinguishable from "God > wills it" or "stochasticity". Every evolved physical trait is the result of selection, either directly for the trait or as a side effect of something else that was selected (or in rare cases, random fixation of relatively neutral traits). Behavioral traits that depend on memes add another layer on physical traits with feedback between layers. And culture can act on a faster time scale than genes (though not always, consider lactose tollerance genes). But in the long term meme based behaviors will also be subjected to selection. With both genes and culture it is possible to see a non viable variation (like Shakers) in the process of dying out. Genetics seems likely to go obsolete in the singularity. I would worry more about smart people breeding themselves out of the gene pool if I thought the singularity were more than one or two generations in the future. Keith From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 21 19:59:58 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:59:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites (was: Is Global Warming Junk Science?) References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com><400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer><49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net><49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net><2395E619734B4A289A004327CE6B1A50@MyComputer> Message-ID: <4A577EDE0AE54899854BAA882BA0A28C@MyComputer> Me: >> The reason putting something into geosynchronous orbit is so >> astronomically expensive is not because of the high cost of rocket fuel. "Keith Henson" > Of course I agree with you.How would you go about reducing the cost? Use lunar materials, but you don't like that idea. A space elevator would be nice but I don't expect to see one anytime soon. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 21 20:17:35 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:17:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellites (was: Is Global Warming Junk Science?) Message-ID: <277104.49370.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Keith Henson" > > > Of course I agree with you.How would you go about > reducing the cost? > > Use lunar materials, but you don't like that idea. A space > elevator would be > nice but I don't expect to see one anytime soon. I would say: lunar or (inclusive) other off-world materials. Plenty of NEOs to mine. Of course, to be sure, there is far less data on their composition and structure -- as well as many other unknowns regarding them. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 21 20:07:53 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:07:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Human population growth before 1800 CE Message-ID: <503190.33436.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Dan > wrote: > > > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> Before 1800 all societies, including England, > were > >> Malthusian. > >> The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. > Such > >> societies were also Darwinian. Some > reproductively > >> successful > >> groups produced more than 2 surviving children, > increasing > >> their > >> share of the population, while other groups > produced less, > >> so that > >> their share declined. > > > > Do you mean that before 1800 CE, the human population > was stable -- never rising or falling? ?That there pretty > much the same number of humans from the beginning of the > species until 1800 CE? > > The quoted material is Dr. Clark's, not mine.? Oh, but you do realize -- and your further quote from Clark's site seems to show he realize -- human population grew before 1800 CE (Better to specify CE here, no?) and there was a definite upward trend in human population. Granted, this was slow and started to climb -- and climb more rapidly following the Agricultural Revolution* and then the Industrial Revolution -- and certainly after 1800 CE. (It seems from your other quotes that he was being a little fuzzy in "The average man or woman had 2 surviving children." 2.005 is greater than 2 and would allow, given enough time, for population to trend upward. I'm not sure this number is correct or that it held exactly for long spans of history. My guess is that there were upward spurts here and there followed by stabilization at some rate slightly greater than 2 -- viz., slightly greater than zero growth -- but this is not my field and I've not studied the matter closely.) Regards, Dan * Some might argue that this meant more people but living at a lower overall standard -- judged in leisure time and perhaps certain types of material per person. I've read arguments that pre-agricultural peoples had more leisure and are better off than agricultural peoples -- and that it was sheer numbers that drove the latter to replace the former. Then again, reading Keeley's _War before Civilization_ and work on human domestication -- er, gracilation :) it seems that pre-agricultural societies might have spent a lot more time in violent confrontations... Of course, it's subjective whether you prefer, say, a grain-based diet and basically peaceful, settled living vs. a non-grain diet and basically violent, nomadic living. :) From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 21 21:43:08 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:43:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] a fun headline Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421164057.022e4b40@satx.rr.com> Accused Craigslist killer remembered as 'nerdy science lover' Seattle Post Intelligencer - 15 minutes ago From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 21:54:26 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:54:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a fun headline In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421164057.022e4b40@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421164057.022e4b40@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904211454y73398169n3dc23c9b2a75ebf3@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > > Accused > Craigslist killer remembered as 'nerdy science lover' > > Seattle Post Intelligencer - 15 minutes ago I think it's about time for the government law enforcement agencies to start profiling ALL "nerdy science lovers!" They are obviously sexually repressed and ready to blow at any time! At the next transhumanist conference I attend I will be very wary... John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 21 22:45:11 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:45:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing: was RE: proposed moratorium... In-Reply-To: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> References: <081166AB41E24AB28906569CB812D4E4@spike> Message-ID: <49EE4C77.3000604@libero.it> Il 17/04/2009 22.13, spike ha scritto: > So my question is this. What is the next big thing that is analogous to > these, where almost no one uses it now, but after it makes market > penetration, to do without it would cause widespread panic or even large > numbers to perish? What is the next big thing? Is there another big thing > coming? Next big thing? Agree that a continual evolution and improvement of the cellphone, leading to an implantable cellphone, is very probable. But the "big thing" will be the ability to monitor the body and its functions / states. What I see is something like the BodyBug, but on steroids and implantable. This could very well melt with the implantable cellphone immediately or after. The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the Fitbit) satisfy another need / want of the people: awareness of their body conditions and feedback. A continuous feedback beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 23:24:27 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:24:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites (was: Is Global Warming Junk Science?) In-Reply-To: <4A577EDE0AE54899854BAA882BA0A28C@MyComputer> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <49ED3673.3040405@comcast.net> <2395E619734B4A289A004327CE6B1A50@MyComputer> <4A577EDE0AE54899854BAA882BA0A28C@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:59 PM, John K Clark wrote: > Me: >>> >>> The reason putting something into geosynchronous orbit is so >>> astronomically expensive is not because of the high cost of rocket fuel. > > "Keith Henson" > >> Of course I agree with you.How would you go about reducing the cost? > > Use lunar materials, but you don't like that idea. The idea is fine. The problem is what it takes in time and cost. I have not worked the numbers, but Dr. Peter J. Schubert and a bunch of his grad students did. "A cummulative investment of $1200B results in an annual factory output equivalent to 330 GW, which is sufficient to match EIA-projected growth rates (worldwide) for the first half of this century." I can send you the power point presentation about this if you want it, but this is 12 times the cost Jordin Kare estimates for the lasers and rockets for the pop up and push transport system, and at least 4 times the total investment we estimate to build power sats at this rate from the ground. >A space elevator would be > nice but I don't expect to see one anytime soon. Even if moving cable space elevators are *never* built, they are still useful as the gold standard for space transport. $0.15 for the energy and a share of the capital to put one up. At 5kg/kW, an elevator pays back the lift energy in about 3 days, rockets in about 100 days. Pop up and push takes ~1/5 the energy (fuel) for doing it with pure rockets, and ~5 times the power for an elevator. I.e., the rocket parts of the lift takes 20 days and the laser about 15 for energy payback. So if rockets cost ~$300/kg to GEO, it's within reason to expect pop up and push to cost ~$100/kg to GEO. If the structural part of power sats are made from Invar (35% nickel) they will exhaust the mines on earth in less than a decade at this production rate. Can you think of another source for nickel? Keith From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Tue Apr 21 23:14:13 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:14:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP Message-ID: <282254.53553.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Dr Clark's evidence for evolutionary changes in human behaviour leading to the Industrial revolution requires one big supposition - that 20 generations is enough time for behavioural traits to be selected in humans to a significant degree. In the PDF downloadable from Dr Clark's website, he mentions a paper suggesting that behavioural traits in wild dogs can be modified in as little as 8 generations, but without seeing the paper he's referring to I don't know how significant those changes are, and I don't know enough about human inheritance of behaviour to tell if this is extrapolable to humans over 20 generations or if Dr Clark is grasping at straws. What Dr Clark's research does show is that wealth is associated with higher reproductive success in part of England in a given time period - a time period that starts about the time a mostly barter economy gives way to a more money-based economy. However, there are competing models for the rise of the industrial revolution with historical evidence behind them. One school of thought is that Protestantism encouraged a diversity of thought and founded new educational institutions that encouraged inquiry into the new and weren't obsessed with traditional learning (and it's true that many of the early industrialists studied at Protestant academies because as non-conformists they couldn't study at Oxford or Cambridge, and the industrial revolution kicked off in Birmingham, a town with many non-conformist churches). Erik Reinert, in his work on www.othercanon.org is keen to demonstrate that the Italian city-states whose mercantilist wealth and institutions spurred on the Renaissance were copied by Henry VII; 250 years of mercantilist policies encouraging the development of manufacturing industry and developing wealth by making the best use of resources so as to minimise money given to foreigners for finished product may have been the crucial spur to the industrial revolution. Another explanation, and one I find a good story, is that the crucial development was trust. The anglo-saxon legal code based on contracts and a society based on loyalty, where oath-breaking would get you branded publically, formed a solid foundation for laws respecting personal property and allowing a strong basis for commerce. The early industrialists of England included a lot of Quakers, and the early Quakers were noted for bringing their accounts to church so their fellow worshippers could check the honesty of the accounts. By establishing a solid reputation for business ethics, this religious sect came to have a huge influence on British commercial life. Compare this to our current troubles in an age where huge financial instruments are only worth what people believe they are worth and people spent several years talking them into a bubble, "mis-stating" the accounts is rife (and the SEC has to frequently punish big corporations), and you see the difference between the current business culture and that of the industrial revolution. Tom From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 00:31:50 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:31:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <282254.53553.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <282254.53553.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Tom Nowell wrote: > > Dr Clark's evidence for evolutionary changes in human behaviour leading to the Industrial revolution requires one big supposition - that 20 generations is enough time for behavioural traits to be selected in humans to a significant degree. In the PDF downloadable from Dr Clark's website, he mentions a paper suggesting that behavioural traits in wild dogs can be modified in as little as 8 generations, but without seeing the paper he's referring to Google 20 generations foxes. First link is this: http://www.gmilburn.ca/2009/03/20/clever-as-a-fox/ > I don't know how significant those changes are, and I don't know enough about human inheritance of behaviour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study Lots of evidence for human inheritance of psychological traits. to tell if this is extrapolable to humans over 20 generations or if Dr Clark is grasping at straws. > What Dr Clark's research does show is that wealth is associated with higher reproductive success in part of England in a given time period - a time period that starts about the time a mostly barter economy gives way to a more money-based economy. Do you have a cite for that? Money had been around a *long* time, well over a thousand years before the period Clark was investigating. > However, there are competing models for the rise of the industrial revolution with historical evidence behind them. One school of thought is that Protestantism encouraged a diversity of thought and founded new educational institutions that encouraged inquiry into the new and weren't obsessed with traditional learning (and it's true that many of the early industrialists studied at Protestant academies because as non-conformists they couldn't study at Oxford or Cambridge, and the industrial revolution kicked off in Birmingham, a town with many non-conformist churches). > > Erik Reinert, in his work on www.othercanon.org is keen to demonstrate that the Italian city-states whose mercantilist wealth and institutions spurred on the Renaissance were copied by Henry VII; 250 years of mercantilist policies encouraging the development of manufacturing industry and developing wealth by making the best use of resources so as to minimise money given to foreigners for finished product may have been the crucial spur to the industrial revolution. > > Another explanation, and one I find a good story, is that the crucial development was trust. ?The anglo-saxon legal code based on contracts and a society based on loyalty, where oath-breaking would get you branded publically, formed a solid foundation for laws respecting personal property and allowing a strong basis for commerce. The early industrialists of England included a lot of Quakers, and the early Quakers were noted for bringing their accounts to church so their fellow worshippers could check the honesty of the accounts. By establishing a solid reputation for business ethics, this religious sect came to have a huge influence on British commercial life. Compare this to our current troubles in an age where huge financial instruments are only worth what people believe they are worth and people spent several years talking them into a bubble, "mis-stating" the accounts is rife (and the SEC has to frequently punish big corporations), and you see the?difference between the current business culture and that of the industrial revolution. None of these idea preclude genetic selection from having a big effect. For example, the emergence of Protestantism could have been the result of the same accumulations of traits that Clark thinks were selected in England. (Clark might have discussed this in his book.) I was motivated by the recent discussion on running the Huguenot out of France to read the wikipedia page. It was an economic disaster when they were driven out of France. Keith From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 01:23:56 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:53:56 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki : > The amount of > useful work that can be performed by humans is always larger than > their ability to perform. As soon as one specific job is "destroyed" > by technological change, another job opens. And the reasoning is quite > simple - Jobs exist because they fulfill human desires but there are > always more desires than there are resources (including humans) needed > to make them come true. If an easier way of fulfilling a human desire > is found, it will increase the amount of resources or decrease their > use in fulfilling the desire. The extra resources are not destroyed - > since there are always more desires available to soak up resources > (including workers), the resources will be used to satisfy yet another > unfulfilled desires, and not destroyed (i.e. sent to a concentration > camp). This is econ 101, and I think the really depressing thing is that you are right. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we passed the point long ago where most employed workers were doing anything real with their lives. I know that value is defined relatively in this context, so it is invalid to say what is real and not real value, but surely there is some difference between work which directly feeds another person, say, and work which is on the face of it entirely superfluous (eg: many faceless bureaucrat jobs in government and large industry)? Maybe tentatively you could say any particular job has a "reality coefficient", which is derived from how much impact would be felt by that job no longer being performed? Fuzzy. Sorry, this is difficult. I propose that pretty much all of the service industries are of this nature; they are in fact make work, magically appearing out of the ether based on a surfeit of labor that can do nothing else. I read that the hospitality industry is expanding here at the moment due to the availability of skilled workers coming out of the finance industry, for instance. I actually think most of the "creative" and professional jobs are also make work, but that's harder to argue. So, what I'm saying is yes, you are right that jobs get created. On the other hand, it is very difficult to argue that as a group, we'd be worse off if many of those jobs went unfilled. I would also posit that many people, given the choice between doing their jobs and not doing them, would choose not to do them, all else being equal (eg: if they were still able to live comparatively well). Now if you concede that this is all true, then we have a picture of many (most, I think) jobs really being about income redistribution. You do need a mechanism to allocate resources, of course. But, is making people perform what amounts to make-work really the best way to do that? I also assert, and we've been seeing some hints of this in the media recently, that absent paid employment, the useful people among us volunteer, likely doing something more fulfilling for them, and possibly at least as valuable for the group. Feel free to ignore this point, I don't feel that I can substantiate it. My worry is that we will get to a society of fully automated production, and yet we will still all be employed, in ever more unfulfilling and pointless paid work, with no mechanism to stop. Actually I should cut my verbiage short here, and ask, who sees this as a problem? Are there some people who see nothing wrong with this? It might shed some light on different world views; arguing about details will fail if we differ on something so fundamental. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 01:36:50 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:06:50 +0930 Subject: [ExI] StemCellsChina.com Message-ID: <710b78fc0904211836j2f5f4e63kd0be2b408fb0332a@mail.gmail.com> I ran across this site via an ad in gmail. I don't know what to make of it. Is this stuff real? http://www.stemcellschina.com/ Pretty bullish stuff. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From clementlawyer at hotmail.com Wed Apr 22 03:17:55 2009 From: clementlawyer at hotmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:17:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] StemCellsChina.com In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904211836j2f5f4e63kd0be2b408fb0332a@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904211836j2f5f4e63kd0be2b408fb0332a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Emlyn wrote: > I ran across this site via an ad in gmail. I don't know what to make > of it. Is this stuff real? > > http://www.stemcellschina.com/ > > Pretty bullish stuff. Emlyn, FYI, we're going to publish an interview in our next h+ Magazine about the Chinese company Beike Biotechnology in Guangdong Province. They've done over 5,000 stem-cell treatments on humans, many of whom are Americans. While they admit that the therapy doesn't work on every type of illness, they are nevertheless having some amazing results. I can't wait until such therapy is allowed here (currently the FDA claims regulation over stem cells, even where the stem cells are taken from your own body, cultured and put back into your body). We've published tons of news articles on both Betterhumans.com and hplusmagazine.com about people traveling abroad for successful stem-cell treatments. Best regards, James http://www.hplusmagazine.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at hotmail.com Wed Apr 22 04:39:41 2009 From: clementlawyer at hotmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:39:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: StemCellsChina.com In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904211836j2f5f4e63kd0be2b408fb0332a@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904211836j2f5f4e63kd0be2b408fb0332a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Emlyn wrote: > I ran across this site via an ad in gmail. I don't know what to make > of it. Is this stuff real? > > http://www.stemcellschina.com/ > > Pretty bullish stuff. Emlyn, FYI, we're going to publish an interview in our next h+ Magazine about the Chinese company Beike Biotechnology in Guangdong Province. They've done over 5,000 stem-cell treatments on humans, many of whom are Americans. While they admit that the therapy doesn't work on every type of illness, they are nevertheless having some amazing results. I can't wait until such therapy is allowed here (currently the FDA claims regulation over stem cells, even where the stem cells are taken from your own body, cultured and put back into your body). We've published tons of news articles on both Betterhumans.com and hplusmagazine.com about people traveling abroad for successful stem-cell treatments. Best regards, James http://www.hplusmagazine.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 05:27:05 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:27:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki > 2009/4/21 Dagon Gmail : > >> ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the > >> able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government > >> regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. > > > > I declare this statement ideology, almost as silly as stalinist rhetoric. > > Worse it > > is a dangerously naieve ideology - what you say is: > > > > > > But - in the real world technology will have unprecedented effects. We > had > > mass > > migrations of millions (in the US) based on cotton picking machines. > Amazing, you spasm back in faith based thinking. YES when millions of blacks became superfluous in the US south they had to leave or face severe consequences. Many did die, but many more ended up in squallor in ghettoes and poverty. Many moved north, to find jobs and found miserable factory jobs. You need only look at the state of blacks in US society now that even after a century these people are still largely a loathed underclass, especially when they still live in the projects. Just a few flame wars ago on this list did I read sentiments very close to wanting these people forcibly resettled, again, or worse, by armed bands of vigilantes. "Take back the city" was the motto. I label this "blaming the victim". But even if you can retrain the labor reserves, the question is on how fast you can retrain, again a topic which you conveniently scurry away from. Do you really have the near-papal faith that markets can re-integrate, without massive coercion, squallor, statism, trauma millions of people in under one or a few decade? Thats what will happen. If robotics achieve take-off in competetive edge, that very day McDonalds orders a million of these machines and the day after fires a million workers. Or as close to that as it can get away with. One such "simple repetitive work" industry needs to - and it then opens the store 24/7, at lower overhead, cleaner, more hygenic, safer and with more predictable products. Listen I know you probably will be safe. You will probably have a job that'll last decades before some machine starts pushing you out. But can you feel safe, or do you actually *care* if you end up in a society where economic value ends up in a small minority (even if you are in it...) and the majority has less economic value than it takes to lead a humane life (or ... buy basic necessities??), Are you sure your unswerving zealous faith in free markets will not produce a society with abundance in one places and sprawling' favella ghettoes a fewhundred meters away from that? I say this will happen FASTER in free markets than in any alternative. > ### But did the cotton picker cause structural unemployement? People > dying of hunger? No, it didn't. A few million people had to retrain > and moved to better circumstances, everybody else got to wear cheaper > clothes, all self-regulating processes without any government help. > Nice you give an example in support of my "dangerously naive" > statement. > > > And what if all available food costs money? > > > ### Well, how does that differ from today? > Oh good grief that is ignorant. Billions of people are caught in this trap. You have 10 dollar Food for one costs 8 dollar. Living for one costs 8 dollar. Health care costs 6 dollar. Education to have a chance at something better costs 20 dollar. What will you end up with? many people on top of one another in a ghetto. Eating inadequately and (ironically) becoming obese. With little or no expectation of improvement. > And nobody is willing to hire > > any of the > > precious labour so you cant buy food? > > ### Can you try to think your way through the scenario and describe > how something like that could happen? Imagine - there is an abundance > of everything (produced by robots), i.e. the food and shelter needed > to keep a person alive cost an infinitesimal fraction of the resources > available to the average person, and somehow nobody is willing to hire > anybody to cater to their needs? How is that possible in a free > economy? > It happens in most of the third world. The end result is millions of people living on top of each other, in miserable, crowded, violent conditions. Worse, we have examples it happened in Russia, in the 1990s. People fell back from a livable existence and (through external change) lost most economic power they had and fell back to a level of misery. Poeple living in the most expensive city of third world pensions and incomes. Very limited health care. As a result - massive desperation and drug abuse. > I am asking because I think you are not grasping the mechanism of > allocation of resources by trade, and you are coming up with bizarre > results, completely at odds with historical experience and its > extrapolations. Remember, aside from the speed of change and the sheer > stupendous abundance of resources, there is no difference between the > robot story and the cotton picker story. Try to describe the > mechanistic details of the mental model you are using to predict > allocation of resources, and maybe you will be able to spot the > missing link. I have examples of societies that do NOT cope and where many are effectively left excluded and on subsistence levels. People who do not have economic power can not buy goods. As a result markets start catering to those who do. Black markets fill up the gap, and criminal organizations thrive. You assert, for some reason, that people will always have oportunities. I agree - even in the worst of southamerican, african, russian, asian sprawls the poor locked in the societal lock-out are getting by with odd-jobs. But even you should notice that economic traffic on consequence completely bypasses them. Look I know I am violating your sacred beliefs by stating that baby jesus doesn't exist and never has. You will swear and protest and find arguments that the bible is in fact true. It is faith based reasoning you do, and reality is remarkably at odds with your convictions. But I sure hope you wont find yourself on the receiving end of this cycle of abuse and exclusion. > --------------------------------------------- > > If this does not compute you are so > > decadently > > divorced from reality you may need therapy - in the form of having to > visit > > at least > > several third world countries and having to live a week as a poor person > in > > each. > > ### Do you think that third world countries have market economies? You > may be divorced from knowledge of the economy. > Aha ! There pops up the convenient support theory construct that keeps you from realizing baby jesus of market economy is a lie. Yes I insist there will be market economies everywhere where people are given half a chance, and politicians will corrupt any system if given half a chance. As opposed to you I consider criminals and corruption a part of the cycle of supply and demand. There IS a demand for Yakuza. And I also consider unions and wellfare and democracy a part of the cycle of supply and demand. There IS a demand for societal insurance against poverty, even if these are elected to be obligatory for all members of said society. In a perfect world these are arranged as in a civilized country - if people are left too excluded, the percentage left out votes for socialist political parties. Wellfare levels rise. Deceny right wing politicians then do what it takes to make sure the economy, education levels increase, and push back wellfare, to keep the country competetive compared to other countries. > Big mistake. I am not a Luddite. > > > > When people like you > > start > > suffering any consequences in terms of acute misery, then we will finally > > see > > some change. > > ### Just like a Luddite you see machines as a source of problems (they > wanted to break machines, you seem to want to ... well, actually I > don't really know what you want). But increasing productivity of > capital is a *solution*, not a problem, and there is nothing anybody > needs to do get hysterical about. "Acute misery", yeah, sure. > > And why would like *me* personally to suffer acute misery (here and in > the paragraph on the third world countries)? Are you holding a grudge > or something? No I am not holding a grudge. I am convinced these machines will come. And I am convinced these machines will push out people from dehumanizing, worthless jobs they shouldnt have been doing anyways. As a result people will be unemployed in quantities far greater than societies can afford. This will create a self-amplifying underclass. In your world these people are left to fend for themself. In my world these people organize in unions and political parties and vote to TAX the part of society that does make money and TAKE that money to spread the wealth more evenly around. Wat I would propose is create a maximum income - above' which taxes are 99% - linked by constitution to a minimum income (I say about 50:1) and a basic income (about 100:1 or so). There is supply and demand for you. > But my claim is that massrobotization AND A.I. > > and nano will be just too much, too fast to handle. Many people will go > > unemployed and really pissed off really fast. > > ### Again, you claim it will happen, but how? What is the mechanism by > which robotization is supposed to cause mass sustained unemployment > and poverty? No rhetoric please, just mechanisms? People have limited skills and ability to do meaningful work. There is a limited demand for complex and highly rewarded work. People are left doing simple jobs and as a consequence cannot improve themselves. Large amounts of people are doing machinelike jobs. Machines become available, in the span of a decade (2015-2025) than can replace simple jobs. Simple jobs are replaced by machines. Pay for jobs decreases below the value of having machines do the job. People who do simple jobs can not find jobs that pay them enough to live humane existences US and EU society stratifies into a "rio de janearo model" Many will claim, like people always did "something like that will never happen here" Rightwing and "free market" ideologies blame the unemployed to secure their value systems. Left wing and "socialist" ideologies start implementing statist, wasteful bureaucracies Black markets fill the gap and large criminal syndicates develop. Society dehumanizes. We end up in a world where I do not want to live. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 05:31:37 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:31:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904211244p1bacfe2dkf6030ddb499c215d@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <49EDFA70.6010805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904211244p1bacfe2dkf6030ddb499c215d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > One might argue that this would result in "unemployment" but not in > angry mobs of hungry desperados storming the strongholds where Dagon > envisions us ruthless libertarian overlords trying to hide from the > anger of the oppressed. I sure hope you are right. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 05:38:36 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:38:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/22 Emlyn > 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki : > > The amount of > > useful work that can be performed by humans is always larger than > > their ability to perform. As soon as one specific job is "destroyed" > > by technological change, another job opens. And the reasoning is quite > > simple - Jobs exist because they fulfill human desires but there are > > always more desires than there are resources (including humans) needed > > to make them come true. If an easier way of fulfilling a human desire > > is found, it will increase the amount of resources or decrease their > > use in fulfilling the desire. The extra resources are not destroyed - > > since there are always more desires available to soak up resources > > (including workers), the resources will be used to satisfy yet another > > unfulfilled desires, and not destroyed (i.e. sent to a concentration > > camp). > > This is econ 101, and I think the really depressing thing is that you > are right. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we passed the point long ago > where most employed workers were doing anything real with their lives. > I know that value is defined relatively in this context, so it is > invalid to say what is real and not real value, but surely there is > some difference between work which directly feeds another person, say, > and work which is on the face of it entirely superfluous (eg: many > faceless bureaucrat jobs in government and large industry)? Maybe > tentatively you could say any particular job has a "reality > coefficient", which is derived from how much impact would be felt by > that job no longer being performed? Fuzzy. Sorry, this is difficult. > So the future will give everyone a chance to get by, by making virtual gold in WoW, to sell to people that do have a job (or the equivalent, ultra useless job) ? If you are right, it's a so-so future. If you are all wrong, a lot of people will be unable to get by, and too unlikeable to be given charity. Those will die, or worse linger on for years in abject misery. I sure hope that self-replicating matter compilers and cheap robotics are enough to provide people with food, shelter, safety and meaning. Because if this new economical balance can not, we are in for serious misery - until we can rewire the brains of those locked out ... the future may belong to those with wireheading treatments - those will win, sitting around all day in a small dingy apartment, eating dole yeast, grinning like idiots, doing nothing but being perfectly satisfied. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 05:41:23 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:41:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49EDF390.8010103@rawbw.com> References: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> <49EDF390.8010103@rawbw.com> Message-ID: So you *knew* that you'd be misunderstood. When this happens, PLEASE try toning down the button- pushing remarks and focus on presenting the rational arguments (that I know you do have, because it's not too hard to see them underneath your overly provoking rhetoric). I will try, and stick more to arguments. Please remind me if I again fall for the temptation to hiss in anger at a system and people that have kept people like me locked out for most of human history. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 05:45:37 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:15:37 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <1240294597.6910.1825.camel@hayek> <49EDF390.8010103@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904212245t797f3a8ar511662227fb22b98@mail.gmail.com> Who are you replying to here? 2009/4/22 Dagon Gmail : > So you *knew* that you'd be misunderstood. When > this happens, PLEASE try toning down the button- > pushing remarks and focus on presenting the > rational arguments (that I know you do have, > because it's not too hard to see them underneath > your overly provoking rhetoric). > > I will try, and stick more to arguments. Please remind me if I again fall > for the > temptation? to hiss in anger at a system and people that have kept people > like me locked out for most of human history. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 09:10:52 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:10:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904220210v62e8bd73l21572236d8ab770b@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > It depends how generalized or indirect (approaching vacuity) you want that > basis to be. If you say "The heritable basis for elective celibacy, > clitoridectomy, extending the lips with larger and larger inserted plates, > filing the teeth to points, foot-binding, teen suicide epidemics, spending > years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars gaining a PhD in > deconstruction is [sexual display/team player display/support for same-gene > procreators/whatever]" it starts to look pretty indistinguishable from "God > wills it" or "stochasticity". > Why, it is true that evolution after a fashion is "non-falsifiable" in a Popperian sense, since every genetically-influenced trait must have evolved, one way or another, so that it may true that it is per se more a worldview than a scientific theory. What are falsifiable, on the other hand, are theories concerning how a single trait has evolved and why. Now, some theories may be more far-fetched than other, other may seem at a time plausible to be then thoroughly confutated by subsequent hypothesis, but all in all this provides for a conceptual framework to understand and deal with the issues concerned which end up being more interesting that "God wills it". :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 10:38:26 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:38:26 +1000 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904210834n2dfa280agf87e93118a41ec1f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904180834s4761dd7fm138f56e25e6085ed@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210834n2dfa280agf87e93118a41ec1f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/22 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki : >> >>> ### The main point of my paragraph is that once you agree on a method >>> of generating property rights (be it polycentric, or other less smart >>> ways) it is a very bad idea to break such laws, whatever their >>> specific content might be. >> >> But you could have property rights to an important natural structure >> such as a lake with agreed to restrictions on what you can do to it, >> as there are restrictions on what you can do with your house in most >> places. Preserving the natural environment is not less important than >> preserving the ambiance of a neighbourhood. > > ### Sure. You can structure property rights in many ways, and a good > law will cater to the needs of those using it. How does that relate to > the question of whether externalities are best dealt with by > property/tort/contract/polycentric law vs. statutory/monopolistic law? It is ideal that laws are made and enforced at the most local level possible, but in some cases this will mean the state, national or international level. For example, when it comes to sexual behaviour, the ideal might be the level of the individual, i.e. no law at all. But when it comes to the destruction of the Earth, the ideal level is the international level. -- Stathis Papaioannou From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Wed Apr 22 10:36:44 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:36:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP (Keith Henson) Message-ID: <956735.60929.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Keith asked me for a citation about money expansion in the period Dr Clark is investigating. I've been reading The New Oxford History of England - Plantagenet England, by Michael Prestwich. At the start of chapter 16 (The management of land), he discusses why land changed from a rental system to a direct management style. I quote "particular stress had been laid on monetary inflation. The evidence for prices suggests that a particularly sharp price rise was taking place around 1200. The hundred years from around 1220 saw a steady rise, with considerable short-term fluctuations. The early fourteenth century, for example, witnessed a period of inflation fuelled by a sharp increase in the quantity of coin in circulation." I tried to find online the historical page which showed inflation and money supply in England which claimed that the money supply before the fourteenth century was very small, but I can't locate it again. (as an aside, I found this page http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/economic_trends/ET604CPI1750.pdf which details inflation from 1750 to now - 1750 to WWII is a factor of three, post WWII everything spirals up, as detractors of modern monetary policy like to point out.) Anyway, money and commerce change dramatically in the early part of the period Dr Clark researches. If he'd tried researching much earlier, he'd have probably found a lot less wills mentioning monetary amounts rather than land. Finally to address Dan's question about population growth - the world's population has been growing, and European population grew in the medieval period. However, every time a productivity increase was made, population expanded within a few generations to fill it (hence the "Malthusian trap"). Overall people were never significantly consuming more calories than the human historical average until post-1800, when productivity starts exceeding population growth in the western world. Tom From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 22 11:38:01 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:38:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EF0199.5020701@rawbw.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki > > > 2009/4/21 Dagon Gmail >: > >> ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the > >> able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government > >> regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology. First, it's true what Rafal says about Marshal Idea. He has no brain. He based one of his pieces, for example, on the hypothesis that a fast food joint could succumb to complete automation first by having the "superfluous" (Emlyn's term) job of manager replaced by a computer. Which totally demonstrated that he had no solid foundation about what managers do in fast food restaurants. They deal with the constant unexpected events, directing the lower labor to "attend to this", "attend to that". No---who'll be automated first are the people who do the most predictable jobs. His writings appear to be full of such misunderstanding. > > ### But - in the real world technology will > > have unprecedented effects. We had mass > > migrations of millions (in the US) based > > on cotton picking machines. > > Amazing, you spasm back in faith based thinking. > YES when millions of blacks became superfluous > in the US south they had to leave or face severe > consequences. No. They were merely *attracted* by better working conditions elsewhere. > Many did die, What? Look at the growth of the American black population. All during the last two centuries, there have been far more per-capita black births than white births. IN colonial times, blacks constituted about 1 in 4. Then thanks to huge immigration of whites from Europe, they declined to as little as 10% of the population. But black people are now at 13 or 14 percent, still despite a huge rise in the Hispanic and Asian populations. They're approaching the same 1 in 4 ratio of Colonial times. > but many more ended up in squallor in ghettoes > and poverty. Many moved north, to find jobs and > found miserable factory jobs. It beat what was available where they came from! > You need only look at the state of blacks in US > society now that even after a century these people > are still largely a loathed underclass, Oh, status among groups in *every* society arises from a number of considerations. In many countries, e.g. South America, merely having lighter skin affords prestige. Blacks have lower status in almost all countries, as do darker skin people in general. Blame the Divine Bastard, I guess. > especially when they still live in the projects. The Projects were created by government bureaucrats who took evolutionarily developed neighborhoods and replaced them (forcefully) with monstrosities that seem to have been *designed* to foster lack of community among the residents. Most of the projects have been torn down, thank goodness. > But even if you can retrain the labor reserves, > the question is on how fast you can retrain, > again a topic which you conveniently scurry > away from. Do you really have the near-papal > faith that markets can re-integrate, without > massive coercion, squallor, statism, trauma > millions of people in under one or a few decade? The Irish in American took about six generations to develop from (statistically speaking) lazy, drunk, and extremely combative types into ordinary Americans. They're incomes are at par. No, it's not easy for a group to change its ways. How many generations is it taking the American south to become fully productive? How long before it takes black people to recover from the government inflicted programs that rewarded destructive live styles, e.g., paying out 20 billion dollars per year (back when a billion was a lot of money) to inner city women to have as many children out of wedlock as they could. Unemployment is really much higher than has been reported. Quite a few people just stop looking. One of the reasons is that their incentives have been damaged very much by government largess. Being on welfare has become an ESS, though our western governments are evidently finally taking steps the last decade or so to curtail this. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 22 12:05:25 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:05:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EF0805.3080007@rawbw.com> Dagon also wrote > Thats what will happen. If robotics achieve > take-off in competitive edge, that very day > McDonalds orders a million of these machines It never happens in a single day. The buggy whip manufacturers slowly went out of business, remember. > Listen I know you probably will be safe. You > will probably have a job that'll last decades > before some machine starts pushing you out. > But can you feel safe, or do you actually Dagon, do you really have to *personalize* all these exchanges? Do you think that people here are never interested in the ideas for their own sakes? Please stop. > Are you sure your unswerving zealous faith > in free markets will not produce a society > with abundance in one places and sprawling' > favella ghettoes a few hundred meters away > from that? Scandinavian societies have *always* been more egalitarian, and that stems far more from their basic culture than from the lately adopted semi-socialist economics. The smorgasbord came from up there for a reason. On the contrary, very under capitalized societies in Latin America, for example, were extremely inequal---and this was *not* caused by rampant capitalism. > ### But did the cotton picker cause structural unemployement? People > dying of hunger? No, it didn't. A few million people had to retrain > and moved to better circumstances, everybody else got to wear cheaper > clothes, all self-regulating processes without any government help. > Nice you give an example in support of my "dangerously naive" > statement. Dagon wants a starker example. The enclosure acts in England forced hundreds of thousands off their lands---where it must be emphasized that they were living in unbelievable squalor already---into towns where there was factory work now to be had. There were transition costs that were indeed heavy, but in a couple of generations, the enormous wealth from English factories got much better dispersed among the people, and standards of living in England rose for the first time ever above Malthusian levels. > > And what if all available food costs money? > > > ### Well, how does that differ from today? > > Oh good grief that is ignorant. What? Are so many of you people *congenitally* incapable of exchanging posts at a sustained intellectual level without making such statements? WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO? PLEASE! > ### Can you try to think your way through the scenario and describe > how something like that could happen? Imagine - there is an abundance > of everything (produced by robots), i.e. the food and shelter needed > to keep a person alive cost an infinitesimal fraction of the resources > available to the average person, and somehow nobody is willing to hire > anybody to cater to their needs? How is that possible in a free > economy? > > It happens in most of the third world. The end result is millions of > people living on top of each other, in miserable, crowded, violent > conditions. Pray tell, just what examples do you have in mind? They're only "miserable" and crowded according to your standards. Talk to the people. They never had it so good. If you think that things are bad, try to find out how they lived 100 years ago. > Worse, we have examples it happened in > Russia, in the 1990s. People fell back from a > livable existence and (through external change) > lost most economic power they had and fell back > to a level of misery. These changes were made most unwillingly by the Soviet leaders. Their system simply wasn't working and they knew it. It will take generations for them to learn how to be capitalist again, not that *Russians* ever had great strengths in this area. It's wrong to blame their lack of rule of law and respect for private property on the disintegration of a system that wasn't working and was headed for even worse. It took the west hundreds of years to develop the wealth producing traditions and institutions. The countries of Eastern Europe, are recovering faster from socialism because they lived under it for a shorter time. > Poeple living in the most expensive city of > third world pensions and incomes. Very limited health care. Again, are you aware of what it was like 70 or 80 years ago? You seem to think that a smoothly functioning free-market society with relatively little corruption is just the natural state, and it gets disrupted by sinister forces. No, it takes many generations to break free of backwardness. That's why so many people in those countries would like to live in the U.S., but they can't get in. > ### Do you think that third world countries have > market economies? You may be divorced from > knowledge of the economy. I agree with Rafal about that. Lee > People have limited skills and ability to do meaningful work. > There is a limited demand for complex and highly rewarded work. > People are left doing simple jobs and as a consequence cannot improve > themselves. > Large amounts of people are doing machinelike jobs. > Machines become available, in the span of a decade (2015-2025) than can > replace simple jobs. > Simple jobs are replaced by machines. > Pay for jobs decreases below the value of having machines do the job. > People who do simple jobs can not find jobs that pay them enough to live > humane existences > US and EU society stratifies into a "rio de janearo model" > Many will claim, like people always did "something like that will never > happen here" > Rightwing and "free market" ideologies blame the unemployed to secure > their value systems. > Left wing and "socialist" ideologies start implementing statist, > wasteful bureaucracies > Black markets fill the gap and large criminal syndicates develop. > Society dehumanizes. We end up in a world where I do not want to live. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 22 12:15:00 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:15:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <282254.53553.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49EF0A44.4080804@rawbw.com> Keith writes > None of these idea preclude genetic selection from having a big > effect. For example, the emergence of Protestantism could have been > the result of the same accumulations of traits that Clark thinks were > selected in England. Evolution has hardly stopped. Clark was focusing on a small piece of a very large phenomenon: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/535971/ Lee From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 22 12:17:45 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:17:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP) In-Reply-To: References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> Il 20/04/2009 10.07, Keith Henson ha scritto: > 2009/4/19 Lee Corbin: >> spike wrote: >> A friend who's recently returned from a month on an Indiana or >> Ohio farm tells me that they're *still* making large improvements, >> and actually look forward to another factor of 2. > And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy > when up to the point farmers had to make do with 10% of the energy > they now use? I think talking about "10% of the energy they now use" is wrong (it is engineering thinking not economics thinking. And the problem is inherently economics. Energy is energy and, in some way, go tot he people able to pay for it, if it is not rationed. And, if it is rationed, it will go for the agriculture before it will go for anything other. My question, that I suppose is more useful, is about level of prices: 50% - 100% - 900% greater than now for energy. In any way, in the price of food go up (due a scarcity of energy available) people will be forced to pay more for the food and will have less for their own consumption of energy (car, home, etc.). Then the farmers will be able to buy more energy. Given that energy and food are linked together in a very short loop due the ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction of the energy production worldwide will cause the richer nations to use their riches to buy food and oil at higher prices. This is like syphoning the resources of others nations and shape the production to something we need , not something they need. We already cause something like this with the War on Drugs. This would be similar: nations like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria use much of their oil to buy stuff abroad and feed their people (directly or indirectly). Higher prices of oil imply higher prices of food (we sell the food, the drugs, the technology, etc.). So anything they gain selling less oil for more money, they lose for buying food at higher prices. Given that the majority of the Earth population is, now, living in cities, there is no way people could grow their own food if the prices are too high. So, the major effect of raising prices of food will be a mass starvation of the undeveloped nations (Africa, parts of Asia and South America). This would lead to lower birthrates and greater number of dead in these nations. It is not like they can continue to have 6-8 children per woman, anyway. Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 12:25:07 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:25:07 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/22 Keith Henson : > Natural behaviors are observed only in organisms. ?These organisms > exist because of genes which are the elements of heredity. ?Underlying > meme based behavior is a genetic layer for learning (being infected > with) memes. ?Basic evolutionary principles lead to the conclusion > that resistance to damaging or genetically fatal memes will evolve. > For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers#Communal_spiritual_family > "The Shakers did not believe in procreation . . . " > > I would be most interested in examples of behaviors that don't have a > heritable basis. In a sense all behaviour has a heritable basis since all behaviour is generated by the brain and the brain is generated by the genetic code. However, it may be that particular behaviours are not differentially heritable in a way that natural selection can act on. For example, it is sometimes speculated that homosexuality may have been preserved in human populations because homosexual individuals make good aunts and uncles, preserving some of their genes in the nieces and nephews cared for. But it could just be that homosexuality is a side-effect of having the sort of complex brain that we do, and even though it is maladaptive it was easier for evolution to leave it alone and take a loss than to try to redesign the brain from scratch. -- Stathis Papaioannou From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed Apr 22 12:27:38 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:27:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49EF0D3A.4080509@rawbw.com> Keith writes > Every evolved physical trait is the result of selection, either > directly for the trait or as a side effect of something else that was > selected (or in rare cases, random fixation of relatively neutral > traits). Yes. > Genetics seems likely to go obsolete in the singularity. I would > worry more about smart people breeding themselves out of the gene pool > if I thought the singularity were more than one or two generations in > the future. Oh, it's happening already. Take the percentage of white and black people who are capable of doing the most intellectually demanding work. All this whining about how our schools are doing such a bad job is misdirected. Asians seem to be doing just fine in our schools. The sad fact is that the U.S. has to import smart people from overseas (not Mexico) to fill the really challenging technical jobs. Thirty years ago the chess tournaments I put on for kids were made up almost exclusively of white kids. With a few exceptions here and there, they weren't all that hot as chess players. When I put on chess tournaments for kids now in Northern California, practically all the kids are Asian. Blacks have completely disappeared. There are fewer Mexicans than there used to be. Not only that, the Asian kids are just simply *better*. They just naturally see chess combinations and even the way they move the pieces is noticeably different (i.e., you could walk into some chess tournament I run where the kids are wearing masks, and if I had six white kids and six black kids there, you would very quickly learn to spot from body language and the way that the pieces are snapped into place, who was who. Even *ten* years ago, a white kid I knew mentioned that he went to a math competition here in the bay area, and out of a hundred or so kids there, he was the only white. That's just the reality. Go to the elementary classrooms yourself, and try to talk to kids about math or chess or something, if you don't believe me. Now it's *EXTREMELY* unfashionable to point these things about, but either you are afraid of the truth or you're not. Lee From kanzure at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 12:41:23 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:41:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_=5Btt=5D_The_underground_world_of_?= =?windows-1252?q?=93neuroenhancing=94_drugs?= In-Reply-To: <20090422070352.GK10925@leitl.org> References: <20090422070352.GK10925@leitl.org> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904220541i6dc018b5s579bedf8e110918c@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eugen Leitl Date: Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 2:03 AM Subject: [tt] The underground world of ?neuroenhancing? drugs To: tt at postbiota.org http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all Brain Gain The underground world of ?neuroenhancing? drugs. by Margaret Talbot April 27, 2009 Every era has its defining drug. Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for our efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture. Keywords Neuroenhancing Drugs; Neuroenhancers; Students; Adderall; Stimulants; Smart Drugs; Underground A young man I?ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn?t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn?t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. ?Trite as it sounds,? he told me, it seemed important to ?maybe appreciate my own youth.? Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible. Adderall, a stimulant composed of mixed amphetamine salts, is commonly prescribed for children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But in recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers: drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted. (Such use is ?off label,? meaning that it does not have the approval of either the drug?s manufacturer or the Food and Drug Administration.) College campuses have become laboratories for experimentation with neuroenhancement, and Alex was an ingenious experimenter. His brother had received a diagnosis of A.D.H.D., and in his freshman year Alex obtained an Adderall prescription for himself by describing to a doctor symptoms that he knew were typical of the disorder. During his college years, Alex took fifteen milligrams of Adderall most evenings, usually after dinner, guaranteeing that he would maintain intense focus while losing ?any ability to sleep for approximately eight to ten hours.? In his sophomore year, he persuaded the doctor to add a thirty-milligram ?extended release? capsule to his daily regimen. Alex recalled one week during his junior year when he had four term papers due. Minutes after waking on Monday morning, around seven-thirty, he swallowed some ?immediate release? Adderall. The drug, along with a steady stream of caffeine, helped him to concentrate during classes and meetings, but he noticed some odd effects; at a morning tutorial, he explained to me in an e-mail, ?I alternated between speaking too quickly and thoroughly on some subjects and feeling awkwardly quiet during other points of the discussion.? Lunch was a blur: ?It?s always hard to eat much when on Adderall.? That afternoon, he went to the library, where he spent ?too much time researching a paper rather than actually writing it?a problem, I can assure you, that is common to all intellectually curious students on stimulants.? At eight, he attended a two-hour meeting ?with a group focussed on student mental-health issues.? Alex then ?took an extended-release Adderall? and worked productively on the paper all night. At eight the next morning, he attended a meeting of his organization; he felt like ?a zombie,? but ?was there to insure that the semester?s work didn?t go to waste.? After that, Alex explained, ?I went back to my room to take advantage of my tired body.? He fell asleep until noon, waking ?in time to polish my first paper and hand it in.? I met Alex one evening last summer, at an appealingly scruffy bar in the New England city where he lives. Skinny and bearded, and wearing faded hipster jeans, he looked like the lead singer in an indie band. He was ingratiating and articulate, and smoked cigarettes with an ironic air of defiance. Alex was happy enough to talk about his frequent use of Adderall at Harvard, but he didn?t want to see his name in print; he?s involved with an Internet start-up, and worried that potential investors might disapprove of his habit. After we had ordered beers, he said, ?One of the most impressive features of being a student is how aware you are of a twenty-four-hour work cycle. When you conceive of what you have to do for school, it?s not in terms of nine to five but in terms of what you can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals in a variety of realms?social, romantic, sexual, extracurricular, r?sum?-building, academic commitments.? Alex was eager to dispel the notion that students who took Adderall were ?academic automatons who are using it in order to be first in their class, or in order to be an obvious admit to law school or the first accepted at a consulting firm.? In fact, he said, ?it?s often people??mainly guys??who are looking in some way to compensate for activities that are detrimental to their performance.? He explained, ?At Harvard, at least, most people are to some degree realistic about it. . . . I don?t think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. I think they?re aiming to be among the best. Or maybe not even among the best. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise.? He went on, ?Everyone is aware of the fact that if you were up at 3 A.M. writing this paper it isn?t going to be as good as it could have been. The fact that you were partying all weekend, or spent the last week being high, watching ?Lost??that?s going to take a toll.? Alex?s sense of who uses stimulants for so-called ?nonmedical? purposes is borne out by two dozen or so scientific studies. In 2005, a team led by Sean Esteban McCabe, a professor at the University of Michigan?s Substance Abuse Research Center, reported that in the previous year 4.1 per cent of American undergraduates had taken prescription stimulants for off-label use; at one school, the figure was twenty-five per cent. Other researchers have found even higher rates: a 2002 study at a small college found that more than thirty-five per cent of the students had used prescription stimulants nonmedically in the previous year. Drugs such as Adderall can cause nervousness, headaches, sleeplessness, and decreased appetite, among other side effects. An F.D.A. warning on Adderall?s label notes that ?amphetamines have a high potential for abuse? and can lead to dependence. (The label also mentions that adults using Adderall have reported serious cardiac problems, though the role of the drug in those cases is unknown.) Yet college students tend to consider Adderall and Ritalin benign, in part because they are likely to know peers who have taken the drugs since childhood for A.D.H.D. Indeed, McCabe reports, most students who use stimulants for cognitive enhancement obtain them from an acquaintance with a prescription. Usually, the pills are given away, but some students sell them. According to McCabe?s research team, white male undergraduates at highly competitive schools?especially in the Northeast?are the most frequent collegiate users of neuroenhancers. Users are also more likely to belong to a fraternity or a sorority, and to have a G.P.A. of 3.0 or lower. They are ten times as likely to report that they have smoked marijuana in the past year, and twenty times as likely to say that they have used cocaine. In other words, they are decent students at schools where, to be a great student, you have to give up a lot more partying than they?re willing to give up. The BoredAt Web sites?which allow college students to chat idly while they?re ostensibly studying?are filled with messages about Adderall. Posts like these, from the BoredAtPenn site, are typical: ?I have some Adderall?I?m sitting by room 101.10 in a grey shirt and headphones?; ?I have Adderall for sale 20mg for $15?; ?I took Adderall at 8 p.m., it?s 6:30 a.m. and I?ve barely blinked.? On the Columbia site, a poster with an e-mail address from CUNY complains that her friends take Adderall ?like candy,? adding, ?I don?t want to be at a disadvantage to everyone else. Is it really that dangerous? Will it fuck me up? My grades weren?t that great this year and I could do with a bump.? A Columbia student responds, ?It?s probably not a good idea if you?re not prescribed,? but offers practical advice anyway: ?Keep the dose normal and don?t grind them up or snort them.? Occasional dissents (?I think there should be random drug testing at every exam?) are drowned out by testimonials like this one, from the BoredAtHarvard site: ?I don?t want to be a pusher or start people on something bad, but Adderall is AMAZING.? Alex remains enthusiastic about Adderall, but he also has a slightly jaundiced critique of it. ?It only works as a cognitive enhancer insofar as you are dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand,? he said. ?The number of times I?ve taken Adderall late at night and decided that, rather than starting my paper, hey, I?ll organize my entire music library! I?ve seen people obsessively cleaning their rooms on it.? Alex thought that generally the drug helped him to bear down on his work, but it also tended to produce writing with a characteristic flaw. ?Often, I?ve looked back at papers I?ve written on Adderall, and they?re verbose. They?re belaboring a point, trying to create this airtight argument, when if you just got to your point in a more direct manner it would be stronger. But with Adderall I?d produce two pages on something that could be said in a couple of sentences.? Nevertheless, his Adderall-assisted papers usually earned him at least a B. They got the job done. As Alex put it, ?Productivity is a good thing.? Last April, the scientific journal Nature published the results of an informal online poll asking whether readers attempted to sharpen ?their focus, concentration, or memory? by taking drugs such as Ritalin and Provigil?a newer kind of stimulant, known generically as modafinil, which was developed to treat narcolepsy. One out of five respondents said that they did. A majority of the fourteen hundred readers who responded said that healthy adults should be permitted to take brain boosters for nonmedical reasons, and sixty-nine per cent said that mild side effects were an acceptable risk. Though a majority said that such drugs should not be made available to children who had no diagnosed medical condition, a third admitted that they would feel pressure to give ?smart drugs? to their kids if they learned that other parents were doing so. Such competitive anxieties are already being felt in the workplace. Recently, an advice column in Wired featured a question from a reader worried about ?a rising star at the firm? who was ?using unprescribed modafinil to work crazy hours. Our boss has started getting on my case for not being as productive.? And on Internet forums such as ImmInst, whose members share a nerdy passion for tweaking their cognitive function through drugs and supplements, people trade advice about dosages and ?stacks??improvised combinations?of neuroenhancers. (?Cut a tablet into fourths and took 25 mg every four hours, 4 times today, and had a great and productive day?with no side effects.?) In one recent post, a fifty-two-year-old?who was working full time, studying for an advanced degree at night, and ?married, etc.??wrote that after experimenting with modafinil he had settled on two daily doses of a hundred milligrams each. He believed that he was ?performing a little better,? adding, ?I also feel slightly more animated when in discussion.? Not long ago, I met with Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his office, which is tucked inside the labyrinthine Penn hospital complex. Chatterjee?s main research interests are in subjects like the neurological basis of spatial understanding, but in the past few years, as he has heard more about students taking cognitive enhancers, he has begun writing about the ethical implications of such behavior. In 2004, he coined the term ?cosmetic neurology? to describe the practice of using drugs developed for recognized medical conditions to strengthen ordinary cognition. Chatterjee worries about cosmetic neurology, but he thinks that it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery has; in fact, with neuroenhancement it?s harder to argue that it?s frivolous. As he notes in a 2007 paper, ?Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.? At school and at work, the usefulness of being ?smarter,? needing less sleep, and learning more quickly are all ?abundantly clear.? In the near future, he predicts, some neurologists will refashion themselves as ?quality-of-life consultants,? whose role will be ?to provide information while abrogating final responsibility for these decisions to patients.? The demand is certainly there: from an aging population that won?t put up with memory loss; from overwrought parents bent on giving their children every possible edge; from anxious employees in an efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture, where work never really ends. Chatterjee told me that many people who come to his clinic are cognitively preoccupied versions of what doctors call the ?worried well.? The day I visited his office, he had just seen a middle-aged woman, a successful Philadelphia lawyer, who mentioned having to struggle a bit to come up with certain names. ?Here?s an example of someone who by most measures is doing perfectly fine,? Chatterjee said. ?She?s not having any trouble at work. But she notices she?s having some problems, and it?s very hard to know how much of that is just getting older.? Of course, people in her position could strive to get regular exercise and plenty of intellectual stimulation, both of which have been shown to help maintain cognitive function. But maybe they?re already doing so and want a bigger mental rev-up, or maybe they want something easier than sweaty workouts and Russian novels: a pill. Recently, I spoke on the phone with Barbara Sahakian, a clinical neuropsychologist at Cambridge University, and the co-author of a December, 2007, article in Nature, ?Professor?s Little Helper.? Sahakian, who also consults for several pharmaceutical companies, and her co-author, Sharon Morein-Zamir, reported that a number of their colleagues were using prescription drugs like Adderall and Provigil. Because the drugs are easy to buy online, they wrote, it would be difficult to stop their spread: ?The drive for self-enhancement of cognition is likely to be as strong if not stronger than in the realms of ?enhancement? of beauty and sexual function.? (In places like Cambridge, at least.) When I spoke with Sahakian, she had just flown from England to Scottsdale, Arizona, to attend a conference, and she was tired. She might, justifiably, have forgone distractions like me, but she had her cell phone with her, and though it was a weekend morning some industrious person in the Cambridge news office had reached Sahakian in her hotel room, after she got out of the shower and before she had to rush to the first session. ?We may be healthy and high-functioning, and think of ourselves that way, but it?s very rare that we are actually functioning at our optimal level,? Sahakian said. ?Take me. I?m over here, and I?ve got jet lag and I?ve got to give a talk tonight and perform well, in what will be the middle of the night, U.K. time.? She mentioned businessmen who have to fly back and forth across the Atlantic: ?The difference between making a deal and not is huge and they sometimes only have one meeting to try and do it.? She sympathized with them, but, she added, ?we are a society that so wants a quick fix that many people are happy to take drugs.? For the moment, people looking for that particular quick fix have a limited choice of meds. But, given the amount of money and research hours being spent on developing drugs to treat cognitive decline, Provigil and Adderall are likely to be joined by a bigger pharmacopoeia. Among the drugs in the pipeline are ampakines, which target a type of glutamate receptor in the brain; it is hoped that they may stem the memory loss associated with diseases like Alzheimer?s. But ampakines may also give healthy people a palpable cognitive boost. A 2007 study of sixteen healthy elderly volunteers found that five hundred milligrams of one particular ampakine ?unequivocally? improved short-term memory, though it appeared to detract from episodic memory?the recall of past events. Another class of drugs, cholinesterase inhibitors, which are already being used with some success to treat Alzheimer?s patients, have also shown promise as neuroenhancers. In one study, the drug donepezil strengthened the performance of pilots on flight simulators; in another, of thirty healthy young male volunteers, it improved verbal and visual episodic memory. Several pharmaceutical companies are working on drugs that target nicotine receptors in the brain, in the hope that they can replicate the cognitive uptick that smokers get from cigarettes. Zack and Casey Lynch are a young couple who, in 2005, launched NeuroInsights, a company that advises investors on developments in brain-science technology. (Since then, they?ve also founded a lobbying group, the Neurotechnology Industry Organization.) Casey and Zack met as undergraduates at U.C.L.A.; she went on to get a master?s degree in neuroscience at U.C.S.F., and he became an executive at a software company. Last summer, I had coffee with them in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, and they both spoke with casual certainty about the coming market for neuroenhancers. Zack, who has a book being published this summer, called ?The Neuro Revolution,? said, ?We live in an information society. What?s the next form of human society? The neuro-society.? In coming years, he said, scientists will understand the brain better, and we?ll have improved neuroenhancers that some people will use therapeutically, others because they are ?on the borderline of needing them therapeutically,? and others purely ?for competitive advantage.? Zack explained that he didn?t really like the term ?enhancement?: ?We?re not talking about superhuman intelligence. No one?s saying we?re coming out with a pill that?s going to make you smarter than Einstein! . . . What we?re really talking about is enabling people.? He sketched a bell curve on the back of a napkin. ?Almost every drug in development is something that will take someone who?s working at, like, forty per cent or fifty per cent, and take them up to eighty,? he said. New psychiatric drugs have a way of creating markets for themselves. Disorders often become widely diagnosed after drugs come along that can alter a set of suboptimal behaviors. In this way, Ritalin and Adderall helped make A.D.H.D. a household name, and advertisements for antidepressants have helped define shyness as a malady. If there?s a pill that can clear up the wavering focus of sleep-deprived youth, or mitigate the tip-of-the-tongue experience of middle age, then those rather ordinary states may come to be seen as syndromes. As Casey put it, ?The drugs get better, and the markets become bigger.? ?Yes,? Zack said. ?We call it the lifestyle-improvement market.? The Lynches said that Provigil was a classic example of a related phenomenon: mission creep. In 1998, Cephalon, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures it, received government approval to market the drug, but only for ?excessive daytime sleepiness? due to narcolepsy; by 2004, Cephalon had obtained permission to expand the labelling, so that it included sleep apnea and ?shift-work sleep disorder.? Net sales of Provigil climbed from a hundred and ninety-six million dollars in 2002 to nine hundred and eighty-eight million in 2008. Cephalon executives have repeatedly said that they do not condone off-label use of Provigil, but in 2002 the company was reprimanded by the F.D.A. for distributing marketing materials that presented the drug as a remedy for tiredness, ?decreased activity,? and other supposed ailments. And in 2008 Cephalon paid four hundred and twenty-five million dollars and pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge relating to its promotion of off-label uses for Provigil and two other drugs. Later this year, Cephalon plans to introduce Nuvigil, a longer-lasting variant of Provigil. Candace Steele, a spokesperson, said, ?We?re exploring its possibilities to treat excessive sleepiness associated with schizophrenia, bipolar depression, traumatic injury, and jet lag.? Though she emphasized that Cephalon was not developing Nuvigil as a neuroenhancer, she noted, ?As part of the preparation for some of these other diseases, we?re looking to see if there?s improvement in cognition.? Unlike many hypothetical scenarios that bioethicists worry about?human clones, ?designer babies??cognitive enhancement is already in full swing. Even if today?s smart drugs aren?t as powerful as such drugs may someday be, there are plenty of questions that need to be asked about them. How much do they actually help? Are they potentially harmful or addictive? Then, there?s the question of what we mean by ?smarter.? Could enhancing one kind of thinking exact a toll on others? All these questions need proper scientific answers, but for now much of the discussion is taking place furtively, among the increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains. Paul Phillips was unusual for a professional poker player. When he joined the circuit, in the late nineties, he was already a millionaire: a twenty-something tech guy who had started off writing software, helped found an Internet portal called go2net, and cashed in at the right moment. He was cerebral and, at times, brusque. His nickname was Dot Com. On the international poker-tournament scene?where the male players tend to be either unabashedly schlumpy or sharply dressed in the manner of a Vegas hotel manager?Phillips cultivated a geeky New Wave style. He wore vintage shirts in wild geometric patterns; his hair was dyed orange or silver one week, shaved off the next. Most unusual of all, Phillips talked freely about taking prescription drugs?Adderall and, especially, Provigil?in order to play better cards. He first took up the game in 1995, when he was in college, at U.C. San Diego. He recalled, ?It was very mathematical, but you could also inject yourself into the game and manipulate the other guy with words??more so than in a game like chess. Phillips soon felt that he had mastered the strategic aspects of poker. The key variable was execution. At tournaments, he needed to be able to stay focussed for fourteen hours at a stretch, often for several days, but he found it difficult to do so. In 2003, a doctor gave him a diagnosis of A.D.H.D., and he began taking Adderall. Within six months, he had won $1.6 million at poker events?far more than he?d won in the previous four years. Adderall not only helped him concentrate; it also helped him resist the impulse to keep playing losing hands out of boredom. In 2004, Phillips asked his doctor to give him a prescription for Provigil, which he added to his Adderall regimen. He took between two hundred and three hundred milligrams of Provigil a day, which, he felt, helped him settle into an even more serene and objective state of mindfulness; as he put it, he felt ?less like a participant than an observer?and a very effective one.? Though Phillips sees neuroenhancers as essentially steroids for the brain, they haven?t yet been banned from poker competitions. Last summer, I visited Phillips in the high-desert resort town of Bend, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Kathleen, and their two daughters, Ivy and Ruby. Phillips, who is now thirty-six, seemed a bit out of place in Bend, where people spend a lot of time skiing and river rafting. Among the friendly, faithfully recycling locals, he was making an effort to curb his caustic side. Still, when I first sent Phillips an e-mail asking him to explain, more precisely, how Provigil affected him, he couldn?t resist a smart-ass answer: ?More precisely: after a pill is consumed, tiny molecules are absorbed into the bloodstream, where they eventually cross the blood-brain barrier and influence the operation of the wetware up top.? In person, he was more obliging. He picked me up at the Bend airport driving a black convertible BMW, and we went for coffee at a cheery caf? called Thump. Phillips wore shorts and flip-flops and his black T-shirt displayed an obscure programming joke. ?Poker is about sitting in one place, watching your opponents for a long time, and making better observations about them than they make about you,? he said. With Provigil, he ?could process all the information about what was going on at the table and do something about it.? Though there is no question that Phillips became much more successful at poker after taking neuroenhancers, I asked him if his improvement could be explained by a placebo effect, or by coincidence. He doubted it, but allowed that it could. Still, he said, ?there?s a sort of clarity I get with Provigil. With Adderall, I?d characterize the effect as correction?correction of an underlying condition. Provigil feels like enhancement.? And, whereas Adderall made him ?jittery,? Provigil?s effects were ?completely limited to my brain.? He had ?zero difficulty sleeping.? On the other hand, Phillips said, Provigil?s effects ?have attenuated over time. The body is an amazing adjusting machine, and there?s no upside that I?ve been able to see to just taking more.? A few years ago, Phillips tired of poker, and started playing competitive Scrabble. He was good, but not that good. He was older than many of his rivals, and he needed to undertake a lot of rote memorization, which didn?t come as easily as it once had. ?I stopped short of memorizing the entire dictionary, and to be really good you have to get up to eight- and nine-letter words,? he told me. ?But I did learn every word up to five letters, plus maybe ten thousand seven- and eight-letter words.? Provigil, he said, helped with the memorization process, but ?it?s not going to make you smarter. It?s going to make you better able to use the tools you have for a sustained period.? Similarly, a journalist I know, who takes the drug when he has to stay up all night on deadline, says that it doesn?t help in the phase when he?s trying to figure out what he wants to say or how to structure a story; but, once he?s arrived at those insights, it helps him stay intent on completing a draft. Similarly, a seventy-four-year-old who published a letter in Nature last year offered a charmingly specific description of his modafinil habit: ?Previously, I could work competently on the fracture-mechanics of high-silica stone (while replicating ancient tool-flaking techniques) for about an hour. With modafinil, I could continue for almost three hours.? Cephalon, the Provigil manufacturer, has publicly downplayed the idea that the drug can be used as a smart pill. In 2007, the company?s founder and C.E.O., Frank Baldino, Jr., told a reporter from the trade journal Pharmaceutical Executive, ?I think if you?re tired, Provigil will keep you awake. If you?re not tired, it?s not going to do anything.? But Baldino may have been overly modest. Only a few studies have been done of Provigil?s effects on healthy, non-sleep-deprived volunteers, but those studies suggest that Provigil does provide an edge, at least for some kinds of challenges. In 2002, researchers at Cambridge University gave sixty healthy young male volunteers a battery of standard cognitive tests. One group received modafinil; the other got a placebo. The modafinil group performed better on several tasks, such as the ?digit span? test, in which subjects are asked to repeat increasingly longer strings of numbers forward, then backward. They also did better in recognizing repeated visual patterns and on a spatial-planning challenge known as the Tower of London task. (It?s not nearly as fun as it sounds.) Writing in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study?s authors said the results suggested that ?modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer.? Phillips told me that, much as he believes in neuroenhancers, he did not want to be ?the poster boy for smart-in-a-pill.? At one point, he said, ?We really don?t know the possible implications for long-term use of these things.? (He recently stopped taking Provigil every day, replacing it with another prescription stimulant.) He found the ?arms-race aspect? of cognitive enhancement distasteful, and didn?t like the idea that parents might force their kids to take smart pills. He sighed when I suggested that adults, too, might feel coerced into using the drugs. ?Yeah, in a competitive field?if suddenly a quarter of the people are more equipped, but you don?t want to take the risks with your body?it could begin to seem terribly unfair,? he said. ?I don?t think we need to be turning up the crank another notch on how hard we work. But the fact is, the baseline competitive level is going to reorient around what these drugs make possible, and you can choose to compete or not.? In the afternoon, we drove over to Phillips?s house?a big place, handsome and new, with a sweeping deck overhanging the Deschutes River. Inside, toys were strewn across the shag carpeting. Phillips was waiting for his wife and daughters to come home from the swimming pool, and, sitting in his huge, high-ceilinged living room, he looked a little bored. He told me that he had recently decided to apply to graduate school in computer programming. It was going to be hard?getting out all those applications, convincing graduate programs that he was serious about returning to school. But he had, as he put it, ?exhausted myself on all forms of leisure,? and felt nostalgic for his last two years of college, when he had discovered computer programming. ?That was the most purely intellectually satisfying period of my whole life,? he said. ?It transformed my brain from being all over the place to a reasonable edifice of knowledge about something.? Back then, he hadn?t taken any smart pills. ?I would have been a freakin? dynamo in college if I?d been taking them,? he said. ?But, still, I had to find computers. That made a bigger difference than anything else?finding something I just couldn?t get enough of.? Provigil may well confer a temporary advantage on healthy people, but this doesn?t mean that it?s ready to replace your morning espresso. Anjan Chatterjee told me that there ?just aren?t enough studies of these drugs in normal people.? He said, ?In the situations where they do help, do they come with a cost?? As he wrote in a recent letter to Nature, ?Most seasoned physicians have had the sobering experience of prescribing medications that, despite good intentions, caused bad outcomes.? Given that cognitive enhancement is a choice, not a necessity, the cost-benefit calculation for neuroenhancers should probably be different than it is for, say, heart medications. Provigil can be habit-forming. In a study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group led by Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, scanned the brains of ten men after they had been given a placebo, and also after they had been given a dose of modafinil. The modafinil appeared to lead to an increase in the brain chemical dopamine. ?Because drugs that increase dopamine have the potential for abuse,? Volkow?s report concluded, ?these results suggest that risk for addiction in vulnerable persons merits heightened awareness.? (Cephalon, in a response to the report, notes that Provigil?s label urges physicians to monitor patients closely, especially those with a history of drug abuse.) On the Web site Erowid, where people vividly, and anonymously, report their experiences with legal and illegal drugs, some modafinil users have described a dependency on the drug. One man, who identified himself as a former biochemistry student, said that he had succeeded in kicking cocaine and opiate habits but couldn?t stop using modafinil. Whenever he ran out of the drug, he said, ?I start to freak out.? After ?4-5 days? without it, ?the head fog starts to come back.? Eliminating foggy-headedness seems to be the goal of many users of neuroenhancers. But can today?s drugs actually accomplish this? I recently posed this question to Anjan Chatterjee?s colleague Martha Farah, who is a psychologist at Penn and the director of its Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She has been writing about neuroenhancers for several years from a perspective that is deeply fascinated and mildly critical, but basically in favor?with the important caveat that we need to know much more about how these drugs work. I spoke with her one afternoon at her research center, which is in a decidedly unfuturistic-looking Victorian house on Walnut Street, in Philadelphia. Farah, who is an energetic conversationalist, had bought canned espresso drinks for us. Though she does not take neuroenhancers, she has found that her interest in them has renewed her romance with the next best thing: caffeine. Farah had just finished a paper in which she reviewed the evidence on prescription stimulants as neuroenhancers from forty laboratory studies involving healthy subjects. Most of the studies looked at one of three types of cognition: learning, working memory, and cognitive control. A typical learning test asks subjects to memorize a list of paired words; an hour, a few days, or a week later, they are presented with the first words in the pairs and asked to come up with the second. The studies on learning showed that neuroenhancers did improve retention. The benefits were more apparent in studies where subjects had been asked to remember information for several days or longer. Working memory has been likened to a mental scratch pad: you use it to keep relevant data in mind while you?re completing a task. (Imagine a cross-examination, in which a lawyer has to keep track of the answers a witness has given, and formulate new questions based on them.) In one common test, subjects are shown a series of items?usually letters or numbers?and then presented with challenges: Was this number or letter in the series? Was this one? In the working-memory tests, subjects performed better on neuroenhancers, though several of the studies suggested that the effect depended on how good a subject?s working memory was to begin with: the better it was, the less benefit the drugs provided. The third category that the studies examined was cognitive control?how effectively you can check yourself in circumstances where the most natural response is the wrong one. A classic test is the Stroop Task, in which people are shown the name of a color (let?s say orange) written in a different color (let?s say purple). They?re asked to read the word (which is easy, because our habitual response to a word is to read it) or to name the ink color (which is harder, because our first impulse is to say ?orange?). These studies presented a more mixed picture, but over all they showed some benefit ?for most normal healthy subjects??especially for people who had inherently poorer cognitive control. Farah told me, ?These drugs will definitely help some technically normal people?that is, people who don?t meet the diagnostic criteria for A.D.H.D. or any kind of cognitive impairment.? But, she emphasized, ?they will help people in the lower end of the ability range more than in the higher end.? One explanation for this phenomenon might be that, the more adept you are at a given task, the less room you have to improve. Farah has a hunch that there may be another reason that existing drugs, so far, at least, don?t offer as much help to people with greater intellectual abilities. Drugs like Ritalin and Adderall work, in part, by elevating the amount of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is something you want just enough of: too little, and you may not be as alert and motivated as you need to be; too much, and you may feel overstimulated. Neuroscientists have discovered that some people have a gene that leads the brain to break down dopamine faster, leaving less of it available; such people are generally a little worse at certain cognitive tasks. People with more available dopamine are generally somewhat better at the same tasks. It makes sense, then, that people with naturally low dopamine would benefit more from an artificial boost. Of course, learning, working memory, and cognitive control represent just a few aspects of thinking. Farah concluded that studies looking at other kinds of cognition?verbal fluency, for instance?were too few and too contradictory to tell us much. And the effects of neuroenhancers on some vital forms of intellectual activity, such as abstract thought and creativity, have barely been studied at all. Farah said that the extant literature was concerned with ?fairly boring kinds of thinking?how long can you stay vigilant while staring at a screen and waiting for a little light to blink.? She added, ?It would be great to have studies of more flexible kinds of thought.? Both Chatterjee and Farah have wondered whether drugs that heighten users? focus might dampen their creativity. After all, some of our best ideas come to us not when we sit down at a desk but, rather, when we?re in the shower or walking the dog?letting our minds roam. Jimi Hendrix reported that the inspiration for ?Purple Haze? came to him in a dream; the chemist Friedrich August Kekule claimed that he discovered the ring structure of benzene during a reverie in which he saw the image of a snake biting its tail. Farah told me, ?Cognitive psychologists have found that there is a trade-off between attentional focus and creativity. And there is some evidence that suggests that individuals who are better able to focus on one thing and filter out distractions tend to be less creative.? Farah and Chatterjee recently completed a preliminary study looking at the effect of one ten-milligram dose of Adderall on sixteen students doing standard laboratory tests of creative thinking. They did not find that this low dose had a detrimental effect, but both believe that this is only the beginning of the vetting that must be done. ?More and more of our young people are using these drugs to help them work,? Farah said. ?They?ve got their laptop, their iPhone, and their Adderall. This rising generation of workers and leaders may have a subtly different style of thinking and working, because they?re using these drugs or because they learned to work using these drugs, so that even if you take the drugs away they?ll still have a certain approach. I?m a little concerned that we could be raising a generation of very focussed accountants.? Farah has also been considering the ethical complications resulting from the rise of smart drugs. Don?t neuroenhancers confer yet another advantage on the kind of people who already can afford private tutors and prep courses? At many colleges, students have begun calling the off-label use of neuroenhancers a form of cheating. Writing last year in the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Virginia, a columnist named Greg Crapanzano argued that neuroenhancers ?create an unfair advantage for the users who are willing to break the law in order to gain an edge. These students create work that is dependent on the use of a pill rather than their own work ethic.? Of course, it?s hard to imagine a university administration that would require students to pee in a cup before they get their blue books. And though secretly taking a neuroenhancer for a three-hour exam does seem unfair, condemning the drugs? use seems extreme. Even with the aid of a neuroenhancer, you still have to write the essay, conceive the screenplay, or finish the grant proposal, and if you can take credit for work you?ve done on caffeine or nicotine, then you can take credit for work produced on Provigil. Farah questions the idea that neuroenhancers will expand inequality. Citing the ?pretty clear trend across the studies that say neuroenhancers will be less helpful for people who score above average,? she said that cognitive-enhancing pills could actually become levellers, if they are dispensed cheaply. A 2007 discussion paper published by the British Medical Association also makes this point: ?Equality of opportunity is an explicit goal of our education system, giving individuals the best chance of achieving their full potential and of competing on equal terms with their peers. Selective use of neuroenhancers amongst those with lower intellectual capacity, or those from deprived backgrounds who do not have the benefit of additional tuition, could enhance the educational opportunities for those groups.? If the idea of giving a pill as a substitute for better teaching seems repellent?like substituting an I.V. drip of synthetic nutrition for actual food?it may nevertheless be preferable to a scenario in which only wealthy kids receive a frequent mental boost. Farah was one of several scholars who contributed to a recent article in Nature, ?Towards Responsible Use of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs by the Healthy.? The optimistic tone of the article suggested that some bioethicists are leaning toward endorsing neuroenhancement. ?Like all new technologies, cognitive enhancement can be used well or poorly,? the article declared. ?We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function. In a world in which human workspans and lifespans are increasing, cognitive enhancement tools?including the pharmacological?will be increasingly useful for improved quality of life and extended work productivity, as well as to stave off normal and pathological age-related cognitive declines. Safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both the individual and society.? The British Medical Association report offered a similarly upbeat observation: ?Universal access to enhancing interventions would bring up the base-line level of cognitive ability, which is generally seen to be a good thing.? And yet when enthusiasts share their vision of our neuroenhanced future it can sound dystopian. Zack Lynch, of NeuroInsights, gave me a rationale for smart pills that I found particularly grim. ?If you?re a fifty-five-year-old in Boston, you have to compete with a twenty-six-year-old from Mumbai now, and those kinds of pressures are only going to grow,? he began. Countries other than the U.S. might tend to be a little looser with their regulations, and offer approval of new cognitive enhancers first. ?And if you?re a company that?s got forty-seven offices worldwide, and all of a sudden your Singapore office is using cognitive enablers, and you?re saying to Congress, ?I?m moving all my financial operations to Singapore and Taiwan, because it?s legal to use those there,? you bet that Congress is going to say, ?Well, O.K.? It will be a moot question then. It would be like saying, ?No, you can?t use a cell phone. It might increase productivity!? ? If we eventually decide that neuroenhancers work, and are basically safe, will we one day enforce their use? Lawmakers might compel certain workers?emergency-room doctors, air-traffic controllers?to take them. (Indeed, the Air Force already makes modafinil available to pilots embarking on long missions.) For the rest of us, the pressure will be subtler?that queasy feeling I get when I remember that my younger colleague is taking Provigil to meet deadlines. All this may be leading to a kind of society I?m not sure I want to live in: a society where we?re even more overworked and driven by technology than we already are, and where we have to take drugs to keep up; a society where we give children academic steroids along with their daily vitamins. Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University, has written skeptically about cosmetic neurology. In a 2004 essay, he notes that at least once a year in his private practice he sees a young person?usually a boy?whose parents worry that his school performance could be better, and want a medication that will assure it. In most of these cases, ?the truth is that the son does not have the superior I.Q. of his parents,? though the boy may have other qualities that surpass those of his parents?he may be ?handsome, charming, athletic, graceful.? McHugh sees his job as trying to get the parents to ?forget about adjusting him to their aims with medication or anything else.? When I spoke with him on the phone, McHugh expanded on this point: ?Maybe it?s wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people. And if the idea is that the only college your child can go to is Harvard, well, maybe that?s the idea that needs righting.? If Alex, the Harvard student, and Paul Phillips, the poker player, consider their use of neuroenhancers a private act, Nicholas Seltzer sees his habit as a pursuit that aligns him with a larger movement for improving humanity. Seltzer has a B.A. from U.C. Davis and a master?s degree in security policy from George Washington University. But the job that he obtained with these credentials?as a researcher at a defense-oriented think tank, in northern Virginia?has not left him feeling as intellectually alive as he would like. To compensate, he writes papers in his spare time on subjects like ?human biological evolution and warfare.? He also primes his brain with artificial challenges; even when he goes to the rest room at the office, he takes the opportunity to play memory or logic games on his cell phone. Seltzer, who is thirty, told me that he worried that he ?didn?t have the mental energy, the endurance, the?I don?t know what to properly call this?the sponginess that I seem to recall having when I was younger.? Suffice it to say that this is not something you notice when you talk to Seltzer. And though our memory is probably at its peak in our early twenties, few thirty-year-olds are aware of a deficit. But Seltzer is the Washington-wonk equivalent of those models and actors in L.A. who discern tiny wrinkles long before their agent does. His girlfriend, a technology consultant whom he met in a museum, is nine years younger, and he was already thinking about how his mental fitness would stand up next to hers. He told me, ?She?s twenty-one, and I want to stay young and vigorous and don?t want to be a burden on her later in life.? He didn?t worry about visible signs of aging, but he wanted to keep his mind ?nimble and healthy for as long as possible.? Seltzer considers himself a ?transhumanist,? in the mold of the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom and the futurist writer and inventor Ray Kurzweil. Transhumanists are interested in robots, cryogenics, and living a really, really long time; they consider biological limitations that the rest of us might accept, or even appreciate, as creaky obstacles to be aggressively surmounted. On the ImmInst forums??ImmInst? stands for ?Immortality Institute??Seltzer and other members discuss life-extension strategies and the potential benefits of cognitive enhancers. Some of the forum members limit themselves to vitamin and mineral supplements. Others use Adderall or modafinil or, like Seltzer, a drug called piracetam, which was first marketed by a Belgian pharmaceutical company in 1972 and, in recent years, has become available in the U.S. from retailers that sell supplements. Although not approved for any use by the F.D.A., piracetam has been used experimentally on stroke patients?to little effect?and on patients with a rare neurological condition called progressive myoclonus epilepsy, for whom it proved helpful in alleviating muscle spasms. Data on piracetam?s benefits for healthy people are virtually nonexistent, but many users believe that the drug increases blood flow to the brain. >From the time I first talked to Seltzer, it was clear that although he felt cognitive enhancers were of practical use, they also appealed to him on an aesthetic level. Using neuroenhancers, he said, ?is like customizing yourself?customizing your brain.? For some people, he went on, it was important to enhance their mood, so they took antidepressants; but for people like him it was more important ?to increase mental horsepower.? He added, ?It?s fundamentally a choice you?re making about how you want to experience consciousness.? Whereas the nineties had been about ?the personalization of technology,? this decade was about the personalization of the brain?what some enthusiasts have begun to call ?mind hacking.? Of course, the idea behind mind-hacking isn?t exactly new. Fortifying one?s mental stamina with drugs of various kinds has a long history. Sir Francis Bacon consumed everything from tobacco to saffron in the hope of goosing his brain. Balzac reputedly fuelled sixteen-hour bouts of writing with copious servings of coffee, which, he wrote, ?chases away sleep, and gives us the capacity to engage a little longer in the exercise of our intellects.? Sartre dosed himself with speed in order to finish ?Critique of Dialectical Reason.? My college friends and I wrote term papers with the sweaty-palmed assistance of NoDoz tablets. And, before smoking bans, entire office cultures chugged along on a collective nicotine buzz?at least, if ?Mad Men? is to be believed. Seltzer and his interlocutors on the ImmInst forum are just the latest members of a seasoned cohort, even if they have more complex pharmaceuticals at their disposal. I eventually met Seltzer in an underground food court not far from the Pentagon. We sat down at a Formica table in the dim light. Seltzer was slim, had a shaved head, and wore metal-frame glasses; matching his fastidious look, he spoke precisely, rarely stumbling over his words. I asked him if he had any ethical worries about smart drugs. After a pause, he said that he might have a concern if somebody popped a neuroenhancer before taking a licensing exam that certified him as, say, a brain surgeon, and then stopped using the drug. Other than that, he couldn?t see a problem. He said that he was a firm believer in the idea that ?we should have a fair degree of liberty to do with our bodies and our minds as we see fit, so long as it doesn?t impinge on the basic rights, liberty, and safety of others.? He argued, ?Why would you want an upward limit on the intellectual capabilities of a human being? And, if you have a very nationalist viewpoint, why wouldn?t you want our country to have the advantage over other countries, particularly in what some people call a knowledge-based economy?? He went on, ?Think about the complexity of the intellectual tasks that people need to accomplish today. Just trying to understand what Congress is doing is not a simple thing! The complexity of understanding the gamut of scientific and technical and social issues is difficult. If we had a tool that enabled more people to understand the world at a greater level of sophistication, how can we prejudice ourselves against the notion, simply because we don?t like athletes to do it? To me, it doesn?t seem like the same question. And it deserves its own debate.? Seltzer had never had a diagnosis of any kind of learning disorder. But he added, ?Though I wouldn?t say I?m dyslexic, sometimes when I type prose, after I look back and read it, I?ve frequently left out words or interposed words, and sometimes I have difficulty concentrating.? In graduate school, he obtained a prescription for Adderall from a doctor who didn?t ask a lot of questions. The drug helped him, especially when his ambitions were relatively low. He recalled, ?I had this one paper, on nuclear strategy. The professor didn?t look favorably on any kind of creative thinking.? On Adderall, he pumped out the paper in an evening. ?I just bit my tongue, regurgitated, and got a good-enough grade.? On the other hand, Seltzer recalled that he had taken piracetam to write an essay on ?the idea of harmony as a trope in Chinese political discourse??it was one of the papers he was proudest of. He said, ?It was really an intellectual challenge to do. I felt that the piracetam helped me to work within the realm of the abstract, and make the kind of associations that I needed?following this idea of harmony from an ancient religious belief as it was translated throughout the centuries into a very important topic in political discourse.? After a hiatus of several years, Seltzer had recently resumed taking neuroenhancers. In addition to piracetam, he took a stack of supplements that he thought helped his brain functioning: fish oils, five antioxidants, a product called ChocoMind, and a number of others, all available at the health-food store. He was thinking about adding modafinil, but hadn?t yet. For breakfast every morning, he concocted a slurry of oatmeal, berries, soy milk, pomegranate juice, flaxseed, almond meal, raw eggs, and protein powder. The goal behind the recipe was efficiency: to rely on ?one goop you could eat or drink that would have everything you need nutritionally for your brain and body.? He explained, ?Taste was the last thing on my mind; I wanted to be able to keep it down?that was it.? (He told me this in the kitchen of his apartment; he lives with a roommate, who walked in while we were talking, listened perplexedly for a moment, then put a frozen pizza in the oven.) Seltzer?s decision to take piracetam was based on his own online reading, which included medical-journal abstracts. He hadn?t consulted a doctor. Since settling on a daily regimen of supplements, he had sensed an improvement in his intellectual work and his ability to engage in stimulating conversation. He continued, ?I feel I?m better able to articulate my thoughts. I?m sure you?ve been in the zone?you?re having a really exciting debate with somebody, your brain feels alive. I feel that more. But I don?t want to say that it?s this profound change.? I asked him if piracetam made him feel smarter, or just more alert and confident?a little better equipped to marshal the resources he naturally had. ?Maybe,? he said. ?I?m not sure what being smarter means, entirely. It?s a difficult quality to measure. It?s the gestalt factor, all these qualities coming together?not only your ability to crunch some numbers, or remember some figures or a sequence of numbers, but also your ability to maintain a certain emotional state that is conducive to productive intellectual work. I do feel I?m more intelligent with the drugs, but I can?t give you a number of I.Q. points.? The effects of piracetam on healthy volunteers have been studied even less than those of Adderall or modafinil. Most peer-reviewed studies focus on its effects on dementia, or on people who have suffered a seizure or a concussion. Many of the studies that look at other neurological effects were performed on rats and mice. Piracetam?s mechanisms of action are not understood, though it may increase levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. In 2008, a committee of the British Academy of Medical Sciences noted that many of the clinical trials of piracetam for dementia were methodologically flawed. Another published review of the available studies of the drug concluded that the evidence ?does not support the use of piracetam in the treatment of people with dementia or cognitive impairment,? but suggested that further investigation might be warranted. I asked Seltzer if he thought he should wait for scientific ratification of piracetam. He laughed. ?I don?t want to,? he said. ?Because it?s working.? It makes no sense to ban the use of neuroenhancers. Too many people are already taking them, and the users tend to be educated and privileged people who proceed with just enough caution to avoid getting into trouble. Besides, Anjan Chatterjee is right that there is an apt analogy with plastic surgery. In a consumer society like ours, if people are properly informed about the risks and benefits of neuroenhancers, they can make their own choices about how to alter their minds, just as they can make their own decisions about shaping their bodies. Still, even if you acknowledge that cosmetic neurology is here to stay, there is something dispiriting about the way the drugs are used?the kind of aspirations they open up, or don?t. Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist at U.C. Davis, is skeptical of what he mockingly calls ?brain doping.? During a recent conversation, he spoke about colleagues who take neuroenhancers in order to grind out grant proposals. ?It?s weird to me that people are taking these drugs to write grants,? he said. ?I mean, if you came up with some really interesting paper that was spurred by taking some really interesting drug?magic mushrooms or something?that would make more sense to me. In the end, you?re only as good as the ideas you?ve come up with.? But it?s not the mind-expanding sixties anymore. Every era, it seems, has its own defining drug. Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for the anxiety of white-collar competition in a floundering economy. And they have a synergistic relationship with our multiplying digital technologies: the more gadgets we own, the more distracted we become, and the more we need help in order to focus. The experience that neuroenhancement offers is not, for the most part, about opening the doors of perception, or about breaking the bonds of the self, or about experiencing a surge of genius. It?s about squeezing out an extra few hours to finish those sales figures when you?d really rather collapse into bed; getting a B instead of a B-minus on the final exam in a lecture class where you spent half your time texting; cramming for the G.R.E.s at night, because the information-industry job you got after college turned out to be deadening. Neuroenhancers don?t offer freedom. Rather, they facilitate a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity. This winter, I spoke again with Alex, the Harvard graduate, and found that, after a break of several months, he had gone back to taking Adderall?a small dose every day. He felt that he was learning to use the drug in a more ?disciplined? manner. Now, he said, it was less about staying up late to finish work he should have done earlier, and more ?about staying focussed on work, which makes me want to work longer hours.? What employer would object to that? _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 22 13:20:07 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:20:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellites Message-ID: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: > Even if moving cable space elevators are *never* built, > they are still > useful as the gold standard for space transport.? > $0.15 for the energy > and a share of the capital to put one up. I would not use a hypothetical, untested technology as my "gold standard for space transport." All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 22 13:24:20 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:24:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fox domestication in less than a century?/was Re: Really? and EP Message-ID: <118863.42631.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I haven't read anything on Clark's site, but I did, many years ago, read about a fox domestication experiment: http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=3038739723681 It appears that this attempt at domestication -- selecting for tameness -- also led to other traits one finds in domesticated animals, such as floppy ears and variations in coat coloring. I'd like to see similar work with the lynx. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 22 14:05:05 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:05:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] the next big thing Message-ID: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Next big thing? > Agree that a continual evolution and improvement of the > cellphone, leading to an implantable cellphone, is very > probable. I believe the immediate path for improvement of the mobile is, as many have pointed out (maybe not here), just coming out with an all in one device -- something that truly replaces the PDA, media player, and portable computer but is contained in a mobile phone. Of course, quite a few devices already are making in roads along these lines... But this isn't exactly revolutionary in the sense of an implantable phone or computer. > But the "big thing" will be the ability to monitor the body > and its functions / states. What I see is something like the > BodyBug, but on steroids and implantable. This could very > well melt with the implantable cellphone immediately or > after. > > The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the Fitbit) > satisfy another need / want of the people: awareness of > their body conditions and feedback. A continuous feedback > beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. A lot of monitoring can be done now. I wonder if there are many healthy people out there who opt for some sort of frequent or even continuous body monitoring. (Certainly, a lot of life extensionists do routine blood testing that goes beyond just checking cholesterol levels.) It's be interesting because of the data that could be gained from a a decent population of such people. Regards, Dan From aware at awareresearch.com Wed Apr 22 14:17:18 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:17:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <49EF0D3A.4080509@rawbw.com> References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> <49EF0D3A.4080509@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Even *ten* years ago, a white kid I knew > mentioned that he went to a math competition > here in the bay area, and out of a hundred or > so kids there, he was the only white. > > That's just the reality. Go to the elementary > classrooms yourself, and try to talk to kids > about math or chess or something, if you don't > believe me. > > Now it's *EXTREMELY* unfashionable to point these > things about, but either you are afraid of the > truth or you're not. Lee, you make a good point and I don't dispute that there's some genetic component, but I think it's even more to do with culture. I lived in Japan for a few years, and traveled and worked extensively throughout Asia for over a dozen years. I felt at home with the people there, to the extent that the culture shock coming "home" to big brash barbaric California was greater than the adjustments I made as an expat. And I saw the same kinds and ranges of personality there as here, and roughly the same distribution of intelligence throughout the population. But the biggest difference I saw between smart there and smart people here--which still jars me on a daily basis--is the western emphasis (incoherent in my opinion) on what an object *is*, contra the Asian emphasis on what an object means, based on its relations within context. Ironically, over several years on the Extropy list, you were my biggest test case. Trying to see whether a smart, highly verbal, highly motivated "rationalist" could ever cross the divide. - Jef From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 22 14:52:22 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:52:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49EF2F26.5050900@libero.it> Il 20/04/2009 20.18, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: What would prevent people "untrainable" to commerce and have economic exchange between themselves? Large part of the African population is and will be untrainable to western standards for long time. This don't prevent them to live, be happy, commerce, fish, reproduce, etc. Do you think they are not living at human standards? Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 14:56:04 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:56:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?) In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670904091637k32a468b2s1a642a0da36894f@mail.gmail.com> <76B9EE5C-15D0-44FF-91DB-966683325427@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60904182207l1d455580sf9dd4fbb7a7916a1@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904191446y377f73bdocb5eb037a0f6d892@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904202346w6138a733uf575cc1f12f70d07@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210834n2dfa280agf87e93118a41ec1f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904220756y5f48e39cs67b3d602ed08633e@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > But when it comes to the destruction of the Earth, the ideal level is > the international level. Why, I am not sure, given that such a destruction might even create a few problem of interplanetary relevance: debris, etc. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 16:51:49 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:51:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904220951h638df3e0m9ceed3134c1dde8f@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:21 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> >>> >>> Unless, of course, you are among those who think a massive die off >>> back to one or two billion people is a good idea. >>> >> ### Why would you think this could happen (aside from the singularity >> happening)? You believe in peak oil? > > I think most people will agree that there is a finite amount of fossil > energy. ?If you assume rising use of fossil fuel and rising difficulty > to obtain it, then there will come a time of peak extraction. > > On the other hand, hydrocarbons (and oxygen from air) are a very > convenient way to carry round energy. ?50 years from now I could see a > time when oil consumption is ten times what it is today. ?However, > virtually all of it would by synthetic oil made with CO2 out of the > air and energy from power satellites. ### But how does that relate to your question about billions of people dying soon? Rafal From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 22 17:22:40 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:22:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fox domestication in less than a century?. References: <118863.42631.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <239837DFCCB64299801FBD51A84AA8B0@MyComputer> In the tombs at Saqqara there is clear evidence that the Egyptians were still experimenting with domestication almost 5000 years ago and weren't certain which species would work out best. There is a wall painting showing some poor boob trying to force feed a hyena. That idea didn't work out very well. John K Clark From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 17:50:14 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:50:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49EF0805.3080007@rawbw.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <49EF0805.3080007@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > > > Thats what will happen. If robotics achieve > > take-off in competitive edge, that very day > > McDonalds orders a million of these machines > > It never happens in a single day. The buggy > whip manufacturers slowly went out of business, > remember. > Pfft when computers appears it took less than ten. Typewriters were the norm in the late 80s. In the 90s they were gone. Remember that period? It was a mad scramble for administrative workers to keep up, wordperfect, word star and finally word. > > Listen I know you probably will be safe. You > > will probably have a job that'll last decades > > before some machine starts pushing you out. > > But can you feel safe, or do you actually > > Dagon, do you really have to *personalize* all > these exchanges? Do you think that people here > are never interested in the ideas for their own > sakes? Please stop. > No this is a valid example. Rafal is defending a system that safeguards his interests and excludes millions from a humane existence. He is spokesperson for a system that I argue causes immense grief. I work to persuade him, or if I can not, persuade those who listen in, if at all possible in the current crowd. I draw the line in the sand here, I stick with this one. > > Are you sure your unswerving zealous faith > > in free markets will not produce a society > > with abundance in one places and sprawling' > > favella ghettoes a few hundred meters away > > from that? > > Scandinavian societies have *always* been more > egalitarian, and that stems far more from their > basic culture than from the lately adopted > semi-socialist economics. The smorgasbord came > from up there for a reason. > On the contrary, very under capitalized societies > in Latin America, for example, were extremely > inequal---and this was *not* caused by rampant > capitalism. > I do not agree with that assessment - south american dictators were by and largel right wing dictators actively sponsored by US interests, corporations and intelligence services. I'd say nearly all southamerican nations. Unless anyone wishes to level the claim that right wing dictatorships and free markets are mutually exclusive. I level the claim that right wing dictatorships are very much in bed with market liberalization and "leaving the poor and helpless to fend for themselves" . > > ### But did the cotton picker cause structural unemployement? People > > dying of hunger? No, it didn't. A few million people had to retrain > > and moved to better circumstances, everybody else got to wear cheaper > > clothes, all self-regulating processes without any government help. > > Nice you give an example in support of my "dangerously naive" > > statement. > > Dagon wants a starker example. The enclosure acts > in England forced hundreds of thousands off their > lands---where it must be emphasized that they were > living in unbelievable squalor already---into towns > where there was factory work now to be had. There > were transition costs that were indeed heavy, but > in a couple of generations, the enormous wealth > from English factories got much better dispersed > among the people, and standards of living in England > rose for the first time ever above Malthusian levels. > Oh I agree that free markets aren't all bad. And I insist that mechanization, automatization is good - VERY GOOD. I am not a luddite. I just can;t stand the idea that society blissfully stumbles into mass-exclusion and mass-worthless squallor for those who lose their job because of these machines. I agree that self-regulation can absorb a trickle of people being laid off, but we are approaching a historical transition that may very well culminate into something called a singularity. These are very drastic shifts, and I am deeply suspicious that if we go into that place with the current ideologies and moral systems, millions will end up in ghettos (US/EU/Japan/Australia) and billions will end up dying in the next decades. > > ### Can you try to think your way through the scenario and describe > > how something like that could happen? Imagine - there is an abundance > > of everything (produced by robots), i.e. the food and shelter needed > > to keep a person alive cost an infinitesimal fraction of the > resources > > available to the average person, and somehow nobody is willing to > hire > > anybody to cater to their needs? How is that possible in a free > > economy? > > > > It happens in most of the third world. The end result is millions of > > people living on top of each other, in miserable, crowded, violent > > conditions. > > Pray tell, just what examples do you have in mind? > They're only "miserable" and crowded according to > your standards. Talk to the people. They never > had it so good. If you think that things are bad, > try to find out how they lived 100 years ago. > This is is debatable, and I actually did speak to people living in Bidonvilles who escaped from urban Africa and those who were capable of seeing the bigger context, and were capable verbalizing their concerns all - 1) hate and fear the leaders in their countries 2) hate the rich nations in the world and will keep doing so for a long time 3) want to get out, first chance they get, but are terrified of westerner police horror stories I would not characterize conditions in some third world countries as much better as equivalent people suffered a century ago. Not much worse either. But, do bear in mind it may get worse. > > Worse, we have examples it happened in > > Russia, in the 1990s. People fell back from a > > livable existence and (through external change) > > lost most economic power they had and fell back > > to a level of misery. > > These changes were made most unwillingly by the > Soviet leaders. Their system simply wasn't working > and they knew it. > > It will take generations for them to learn how > to be capitalist again, not that *Russians* ever > had great strengths in this area. It's wrong to > blame their lack of rule of law and respect for > private property on the disintegration of a > system that wasn't working and was headed for > even worse. > It took the west hundreds of years to develop > the wealth producing traditions and institutions. > The countries of Eastern Europe, are recovering > faster from socialism because they lived under > it for a shorter time. > As Eugen Leitl what his oinion on this topic is. He knows better than I do, and his views are less favorable. In fact he projects the same collapse scenarios and police state conditions within most of the western world as we see in Russia right now. And his expectations on what will happen after that involve most humanity going extinct. Its one example, but a valid one. > Poeple living in the most expensive city of > > third world pensions and incomes. Very limited health care. > > Again, are you aware of what it was like 70 or 80 > years ago? Good argument to make damn sure we dont go back there. Unless you assume "such a thing will never happen here". > You seem to think that a smoothly functioning > free-market society with relatively little corruption > is just the natural state, and it gets disrupted by > sinister forces. No, it takes many generations to > break free of backwardness. > Is there a chance that might be a support theory? Christians, to name but an example, use these contrived explanations the world is evil, whereas god is good. You did roughly the same thing - free market society is categorically good, but people are corrupt. I say free market societies may be very good, as long as we have unfettered democracy, and all people can organize into unions, vote up welfare (or basic income). and vote in progressive 'tax (or - my favorite : a maximum income constitutionally linked to a minimum income) > That's why so many people in those countries would > like to live in the U.S., but they can't get in. > I am sorry, you may think this is personal, but this makes me chuckle. I see people leaving 'the US in droves, denouncing citizinship rights to avoid having to cough up the US debt in a few years. In fact - I am helping a family I know from SL to resettle to the netherlands and become dutch citizins. I suggested to the guy to get out of high mortgages and stocks, he did so in 2006 and he admitted, very grudgingly, I was right several months ago. I saved his ass. He is likely to decide selling his jersey home and move to delft this or next year. > > ### Do you think that third world countries have > > market economies? You may be divorced from > > knowledge of the economy. > > I agree with Rafal about that. > I start getting the impression you and whatshisname are utopian free market people vying for a yet untested, never seen, ideal, potentially unrealizable economic system. As far out idealist and unlikely as theoretical communism. > People have limited skills and ability to do meaningful work. > > There is a limited demand for complex and highly rewarded work. > > People are left doing simple jobs and as a consequence cannot improve > > themselves. > > Large amounts of people are doing machinelike jobs. > > Machines become available, in the span of a decade (2015-2025) than can > > replace simple jobs. > > Simple jobs are replaced by machines. > > Pay for jobs decreases below the value of having machines do the job. > > People who do simple jobs can not find jobs that pay them enough to live > > humane existences > > US and EU society stratifies into a "rio de janearo model" > > Many will claim, like people always did "something like that will never > > happen here" > > Rightwing and "free market" ideologies blame the unemployed to secure > > their value systems. > > Left wing and "socialist" ideologies start implementing statist, > > wasteful bureaucracies > > Black markets fill the gap and large criminal syndicates develop. > > Society dehumanizes. We end up in a world where I do not want to live. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 18:03:19 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:03:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49EF2F26.5050900@libero.it> References: <49EF2F26.5050900@libero.it> Message-ID: I agree that the only tenable solutiion will be a society somewhat like was described in the Snow Crash novel - the world fragmented into citystates. Some rich, a few well off, but most (and I quote) When it gets down to it talking trade balances here once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity 'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery Lucid and visionary... In case you wondered, I do consider Snow Crash to be dystopian. But at least thet are still alive in that setting. But to respond to your question, and I take the effort to politely accuse you of callous disinterest in what is happening in large parts of Africa.... africa is exploited to death, its wildlife is dying, it is breeding out of control, dictators are routinely (more than half nations) kept in place by free market corporations selling free market genocide weapons, humans are starving in droves (yes in some places, in most other places they are merely illiterate) while european, arabic and american maffias literally dump toxic and radioactive waste in the sea just off the somali coast. I could go on for half a page. Caution or I'll start quoting Chomsky articles. Mind you, I am largely tolerant of free market selfregulation, as long as it is augmented by 1- democratic elected and sensibly formulated laws 2- restrictions to unbridled affluence 3- restrictions to exploiting natural resources 4- international laws penalizing emptying natural resources with severe penalties 5- absolute minimum standards to conditions under which a human being is allowed to live, even if that human is a terrorist, lazy, a communist, unclean, a child rapist, gypsy, italian, whatever. And everyone who can is expected to pay his share for this. Lets start by implementing the above in equal measure to a cleaning up campaign of africa. Lets take all places denied civilization back town by town. Let's start a war against exclusion. 2009/4/22 painlord2k at libero.it > Il 20/04/2009 20.18, Dagon Gmail ha scritto: > > What would prevent people "untrainable" to commerce and have economic > exchange between themselves? > Large part of the African population is and will be untrainable to western > standards for long time. This don't prevent them to live, be happy, commerce, fish, reproduce, etc. > > Do you think they are not living at human standards? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 18:43:59 2009 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:43:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49EF0199.5020701@rawbw.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <49EF0199.5020701@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/22 Lee Corbin > First, it's true what Rafal says about Marshal Idea. > He has no brain. > Ahh right that would explain Oprah quotes him. > He based one of his pieces, for example, on the > hypothesis that a fast food joint could succumb > to complete automation first by having the > "superfluous" (Emlyn's term) job of manager > replaced by a computer. > > Which totally demonstrated that he had no solid > foundation about what managers do in fast food > restaurants. They deal with the constant unexpected > events, directing the lower labor to "attend to this", > "attend to that". No---who'll be automated first are > the people who do the most predictable jobs. His > writings appear to be full of such misunderstanding. > I quote with nothing but politeness. Red is my emphasis. *Replacing all the Pilots* The Pace of Change It is hard to believe but true that the World Wide Web did not exist 10 years ago. On November 11, 1993, version 1.0 of Mosaic, the first Web Browser, became available on the Internet. The Web was born on the day that Mosaic appeared. Think about everything that has changed in those 10 years. No normal person had an Internet connection in 1993. Today, more than 60 percent of U.S. householdshave an Internet connection. No one shopped on the Web, bought tickets on the Web, read the news on the Web, hooked up with dates on the Web, blogged on the Web, participated in auctions on the Web, looked up movie trailers or reviews on the Web, traded or purchased music on the Web, used Instant Messaging on the Web, etc. in 1993. Today these activities are taken completely for granted. A tiny handful of people used email in 1993. Today email is essential for both business and personal communication, with trillions of messages sent every year. And The entire Internet Bubble came and went on the stock market since 1993. Hundreds of billions of dollars were invested and lost in new Internet companies. All in 10 years. That pace of change seems fast, and it is, but it is not unusual in America. Even 100 years ago things could change very quickly. The first Model T Ford, for example, was sold in the 1909 model year, and in that first year only 10,000 were manufactured. By 1912 there were 3,500 Ford dealers selling 300,000 cars per year . Just a few years later, Ford was selling 2 million cars per year and there were over 100 companies competing with Ford. Even a century ago, a popular idea could catch on and spread very quickly. Robots will spread at the same remarkable rate throughout the job market. Robots in the workplace will be a very popular idea because they will eliminate labor costs. Pilots will be the first to go because pilots are incredibly expensive and their jobs are largely automated already. Let's say that, in 2015, one airline decides to completely automate the cockpit and eliminate its pilots. Since pilots are expensive, that airline will have a real price advantage over its competitors. That airline will also have far more scheduling flexibility because it will not have to worry about crew availability. After that first airline makes the leap to the robotic cockpit, every airline will do the same thing. Competitive pressure will leave the other airlines with no choice. Southwest Airlines has shown us just how sensitive the airline industry is to lower prices. The complete elimination of pilots from the airline industry will take just a few years. The 66,000 pilots in the Air Line Pilots Associationwill be out of work. These pilots are people who have spent thousands and thousands of hours training in their chosen profession. They have high salaries as well -- up to $250,000 per year is not uncommon for a senior pilot flying commercial aircraft. The economy could weather the loss of those 66,000 jobs. With an American workforce of over 100 million employees, 66,000 people is a drop in the bucket. We will all feel sorry for the pilots for a few minutes, but then we will get over it because ticket prices will go down. The pilots will all adapt by getting jobs at Wal-Mart or Target or McDonald's. This sort of thing happens all the time in any capitalistic society. The question is, will all the unemployed pilots be able to get jobs at Wal-Mart or Target or McDonald's? The answer to that question is where things get uncomfortable. *Robots in Retailers* In 2015, at about the same time that the airlines are laying off all of their pilots, Wal-Mart or Target or some other large retailer will be introducing a totally automated inventory management system. Every shelf will be fitted with RFID tags and bar codes, allowing a mobile pick-and-place robot to find the exact shelf location of every product in the store. Every individual product in the warehouse will also be fitted with an RFID tag and bar code, so the robot will be able to pick up and identify every product that it needs to shelve. A relatively simple computer vision system will allow the robot to stack items on the shelves. These inventory management robots will operate 24-hours-a-day shuttling merchandise from the back of the store onto the shelves as items are sold. The robots will also constantly straighten the shelves and re-shelve merchandise. All of the technology needed to do this is nearly in place today. By 2015, every big box retailer will be using automated checkout lines. Robotic help systems will guide shoppers in the stores. The automated inventory management robots will allow the first retailer to lay off a huge percentage of its employees. Competitive pressure will force Wal-mart, K-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, BJ's, Sam's Club, Toys R Us, Sears, J.C. Penny's, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, Kroger's, Winn-Dixie, Pet Depot and so on to adopt the same robotic inventory systems in their stores. The entire transition will happen in just five years or so. Any company that does not automate will be at such a pricing disadvantage that it will go out of business. Ten million unemployed workers dumped onto the job market over the course of five years will have a profound effect on the unemployment statistics in the United States. The problem is that this same sort of thing will be happening in every sector of the economy at a very rapid pace, dumping millions more unemployed workers onto the job market at the same time. See Robotic Nationfor details. *Creating New J* Rationalizations People who read Robotic Nationhad a variety of rationalizations to explain why the coming wave of intelligent robots will have no effect on employment in the U.S. Here are some of the most common rationalizations: - *"We will never create robots that have vision, touch and hearing like humans do. There will never be robots working in McDonalds or Wal-Mart."*This is no different from a person in 1900 saying "humans will never fly". - *"People will not go to stores and restaurants staffed by robots. People need human interaction."* ATMs have replaced tellers for a majority of banking transactions, and automated gas pumps handle most gasoline purchases now. People love to use automated systems. It is also easy to imagine walking into a robotic restaurant where the robots, using facial recognition systems, actually greet you when you arrive, know exactly what you like and do not like, etc. The expreience in a robotic restaurant is likely to be much more personal and friendly than most restaurants are today. - *"Robots won't eliminate jobs, they will create more jobs. Backhoes and bulldozers replaced all the people who used to dig ditches, but then those ditch diggers got jobs building backhoes and were a lot better off."*This article explains why that won't be the case -- robots will be making the robots, not people. - *"Unemployed workers will riot, destroying the robots and taking back their jobs."* Part of the robotic nation will be a pervasive and extremely sensitive robot security force that will remove the word "riot" from our vocabulary. - *"We will move to a 20 hour work week and everyone will be employed."*If that's going to happen, why doesn't it happen today? We are moving in the opposite direction right now, with people in service sector jobs making so little money that they have to work two or three jobs. There is no economic reason for business owners to raise pay or shorten hours when tens of millions of people are unemployed. Supply and demand dictates that wages will fall, not rise. - *"Unemployed people will start their own businesses in massive numbers."* Unemployed people generally do not have the capital to start businesses, but even if they did the odds are against them. According to Robert Kiyosaki in the bestselling Rich Dad, Poor Dad, "The odds are against success: Nine out of 10 companies fail in five years. Of those that survive the first five years, nine out of every ten of those eventually fail, as well." That's a 1% chance of long-term success. If your business does not succeed, you are unemployed again. When Ford started selling the Model T in 1909, the industrialized automotive industry was born. This new industry eventually created millions of new jobs. Why won't all the new companies that are making these robots create millions of new jobs in 2015? Why won't these new jobs absorb all of the unemployed pilots and service-sector employees? Think about it: - Will these millions of new robots create manufacturing jobs? Not in the United States. Robots will be assembling robots. Even if you assume that some people will be involved in assembling them, all of the assembly will take place in places like China, Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, etc. where manufacturing costs are far lower than they are in the U.S. - Will these millions of new robots create programming and engineering jobs? Not in the United States. U.S. corporations are in the process of moving the bulk of all programming and engineering jobs to places like India, Russia, China, etc. where the programmers and engineers cost a tenth as much as they do in the U.S. - Will the millions of new robots create jobs in sales? Not in the United States. Corporations ordering new robots will purchase their robots over the Web without any human intervention, in the same way that you can order a Segway from Amazontoday. - Will these millions of new robots create repair and servicing jobs? Not in the United States. When a robot needs repair, another robot will bundle it onto a pallet. A robotic forklift will place the pallet on a truck. The truck will drive to a repair facility. The facility will repair the robot with highly automated systems that require no human intervention or supervision. Human beings will not be repairing robots -- robots will. The rise of the robotic nation will not create new jobs for people -- it will create jobs for robots. In the past, automation has not had this effect. For example, before there were backhoes there were men with shovels. A backhoe replaced a hundred men with shovels. But new businesses and factories sprang up to manufacture the backhoes, and those companies hired people -- many of them former ditch diggers. All of these new businesses and factories tended to employ many of the workers displaced by technology. It has never been a perfect system -- for example, the book The Grapes of Wrathchronicles just how bad things can get when a large segment of workers in the economy gets displaced. But, ignoring short-term displacements like that, the economy has generally absorbed every unemployed worker in the new businesses that get created by advances in technology. The unusual thing about the robotic revolution is that the robots will come and displace millions of workers throughout the economy, but the robot industry will create very few new jobs. Millions will be unemployed in America, but there will be nothing for them to do. Conventional wisdom says that the economy will respond to all of these unemployed workers by creating new jobs for them. But look at our economy today. For the past 40 years, the economy has been generating millions of low-paying service sector jobs that create a large class of employees known as the working poor. 60% of the American workforce makes less than $14 per hour today [ref]. If the economy is going to be creating millions of high-paying, exciting, fulfilling jobs for all of these displaced workers, it would be doing it now. Why can't all of the Wal-Mart/Target/McDonald's/etc. employees who are going to get displaced in 2015 step into their new, exciting, higher-paying jobs right now, instead of waiting? It's because the economy tends not create jobs like that in any sort of volume. At this moment, instead of creating exciting new jobs, the economy is locked in a race to the bottom. This race is marked by a workplace that continuously creates lower-paying jobs instead of higher-paying ones. *The Race to the Bottom* The fast food industry provides a perfect demonstration of how the race to the bottom works. Almost every working American employed by the fast food industry is paid hourly, makes minimum wage or close to it, receives no benefits, no vacation time and no sick time. Employee hours are tracked so that no hourly employee works more than 40 hours a week, thereby avoiding overtime pay. Schedules can be extremely choppy, sometimes requiring employees to come in to work, go home and come back again during the same day. The pay of the nation's 3.5 million fast food workers has been driven as close to zero as is legally allowed. But that is not low enough. The fast food industry wants to drive worker pay even lower. The only way to do that is to eliminate the minimum wage. The book Fast Food Nationby Eric Schlosser describes the trend: The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion of its workers than any other American industry. Consequently, a low minimum wage has long been a crucial part the fast food industry's business plan. Between 1968 and 1990, the years when the fast food chains expanded at their fastest rate, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage fell by almost 40 percent. In the late 1990s, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage still remained about 27 percent lower than it was in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) has vehemently opposed any rise in the minimum wage at the federal, state or local level [minimum wage has been $5.15 since 1997 ]. About 60 large fast food companies -- including Jack in the Box, Wendy's, Chevy's, and Red Lobster -- have backed Congressional legislation that would essentially eliminate the federal minimum wage by allowing states to disregard it. Pete Meersman, the president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, advocates creating a federal guest worker program to import low-wage foodservice workers from overseas. While the real value of the wages paid to restaurant workers has declined for the past three decades, the earnings of restaurant company executives have risen considerably. According to a 1997 survey in Nation's Restaurant News, the average corporate executive bonus was $131,000, an increase of 20 percent over the previous year. [ref] In this brief passage, you can see four different techniques that corporations use in their race to the bottom: - They hunt in packs. - They work closely with Congress to modify laws for their own benefit, even when those modifications adversely affect millions of employees. - They use multiple angles of attack. They prevent minimum wage increases. They work on guest worker programs. And they work to eliminate the minimum wage. - The upper echelon in these companies, while lowering the pay of everyone else, raise their own pay. Robots completely change the equation, because robots make the minimum wage irrelevant. As robots become available, they will allow the fast food industry to dump all the minimum wage workers. The executives will make even more money, and who can blame them? We would all like to get bigger paychecks. The goal of a business owner is to make more and more money, not to create jobs or raise wages. This is why robots will spread throughout the workforce with remarkable speed. The same sensitivity to labor costs will cause the high-speed replacement of employees in retail, construction, transportation, entertainment, etc., all at approximately the same time. Over the next decade or two, robots will begin releasing millions workers from their jobs. The bad news is that there will be nowhere else for these workers to go. In the first part of the 20th century, productivity gains translated into higher pay and shorter hours for workers. In today's economy it is just the opposite. Jobs at places like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, as well as places like meat packing plants and factories, get fragmented into components that can be performed by any warm body. "Any warm body" means a minimum wage worker. This is what the race to the bottom is all about -- the de-skilling of the workplace has been a fundamental theme of the American job market for the last century. It allows the easy replacement of low-skill workers (e.g. - turnover in the fast food industry is 300 to 400 percent), which means the lowest wages possible. So the U.S. economy is creating millions of minimum wage jobs, and minimum wage jobs are perfect for replacement by robots. The pace of that replacement will be startling to all of us. Time for some alarmist websites that some people here will be able to discount by saying they alarmist or irrelevant. * http://www.marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm * http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/04.09/pandemonium.html * http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/what-if-our-tech-is-good-enough--589169?src=rss * http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2605/26051202.jpg * http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8002178.stm * http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html * http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html * http://www.mobilerobots.com/ * http://www.ccsrobotics.com/ * http://www.activrobots.com/ROBOTS/patrolbot.html * http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb09/taleb09_index.html * http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf * http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/14/pf/taxes/_federal_tax_revenue/index.htm * http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/04/population-of-e.html * http://i.gizmodo.com/5206539/mass-production-planned-for-hal-exoskeleton-your-personal-iron-man-conversion-to-cost-4200?autoplay=true > > ### But - in the real world technology will >> > > > have unprecedented effects. We had mass > >> > migrations of millions (in the US) based >> > > > on cotton picking machines. > >> >> Amazing, you spasm back in faith based thinking. >> YES when millions of blacks became superfluous >> > > in the US south they had to leave or face severe > > consequences. > > No. They were merely *attracted* by better working > conditions elsewhere. That's a keen sense of empathy to say the least - the fact they traded genocide by a racist population for squallor in ghettoes is your humane tip of the hat for ex slaves and their plight? Many did die, > > What? Look at the growth of the American black > population. All during the last two centuries, > there have been far more per-capita black births > than white births. IN colonial times, blacks > constituted about 1 in 4. Then thanks to huge > immigration of whites from Europe, they declined > to as little as 10% of the population. > > But black people are now at 13 or 14 percent, > still despite a huge rise in the Hispanic and > Asian populations. They're approaching the same > 1 in 4 ratio of Colonial times. > What point are you trying to make? We both know that people living in abject poverty breed like rabbits, with very few historical exceptions. So I claim, black former slaves died under miserable conditions, traded in slavery for despair in a ghetto, and your come back is "yes but they at least got to fuck a lot, and got many babies". What ARE you trying to say here? > but many more ended up in squallor in ghettoes >> and poverty. Many moved north, to find jobs and >> > > found miserable factory jobs. > > It beat what was available where they came from! > Great. Marvelous. Absolutely stupendous. While people all around them live better, by any standard, historical or contextual, the blacks were slaves, were tortured routinely, and then, were made redundant - so they made a mass migrations that was probably all one giant picnic, and then ended up in ghettoes - surrounded by people that were all better off, again. And then you go and say, "damn, lucky them". One would (and I say this cautiously since my accusations have been heated in earlier\ posts) almost get the nagging feeling you have markedly different expectations for "those kind of people". Am I making a big leap here? Damn, that sure was tendentious and suspsicious. Advice - do not make the same casual statements about jews, ever as those tend to bite back when you make the same kind of ahhh..... generalized statements about their past ordeals. Which I again phrase amazingly cautious. > especially when they still live in the projects. > > The Projects were created by government bureaucrats > who took evolutionarily developed neighborhoods > and replaced them (forcefully) with monstrosities > that seem to have been *designed* to foster lack > of community among the residents. Most of the projects > have been torn down, thank goodness. Again you retort with a perception that is in large part opinion, drawn out of context, and consistently prejudicial against big government. I agree - the design of projects was miserable, even under the circumstances. But who could have done a better job? And who designed these ? A comitteee attributing funds? An architect? A mayor? A civil engineer? A Planner? Or.... perhaps you are indeed right and these guysARE to blame for everything including dubious use of lycra . > But even if you can retrain the labor reserves, > > the question is on how fast you can retrain, > >> again a topic which you conveniently scurry >> > > away from. Do you really have the near-papal > >> faith that markets can re-integrate, without >> > > massive coercion, squallor, statism, trauma > >> millions of people in under one or a few decade? >> > > The Irish in American took about six generations > to develop from (statistically speaking) lazy, > drunk, and extremely combative types into > ordinary Americans. They're incomes are at par. Be cautious with those contortions, you might sprain a muscle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Apr 22 19:05:57 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:05:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing In-Reply-To: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090422135915.0268e340@satx.rr.com> Just to enrage John Clark, I'll mention the possibility that low energy nuclear reactions aka "cold fusion" might finally pay off and prove capable of being scaled up. Cf.: CBS TV's "60 Minutes" Turns Up the Heat by Steven B. Krivit Editor, New Energy Times April 16, 2009 Low-energy nuclear reactions, historically known as "cold fusion," will get their 12 minutes of fame on CBS TV's "60 Minutes" Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in a program titled "Cold Fusion Is Hot Again." [etc] [I didn't see it; I expect it was science-very-very-lite. Anyone here watch it?] Alternatively, Bussard's Polywell fusion methods might work: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 22 20:15:23 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:15:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Falsifying evolution/was Re: Really? and EP Message-ID: <326311.75395.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Why, it is true that evolution after a fashion is > "non-falsifiable" in a Popperian sense, since > every genetically-influenced trait must have evolved, one > way or another, so that it may true that it is per se more a > worldview than a scientific theory. A firm distinction should be made between evolution the phenomenon -- or set of phenomena -- and proposed evolutionary mechanisms, such as environmental selection, neutral selection (which might, on a molecular level, make up most change we see), orthogenesis, etc. In the Popperian sense, few of these mentioned mechanisms are non-falsifiable. With environmental selection (often termed Darwinism), the method of falsifiability is simple population genetics in the lab. Outside the lab, and especially with macroevolution, one can form hypothesis about particular evolutionary paths -- mapping these onto supposed selective pressures -- and test these using cladistics methods.* Regarding evolution itself, I think the oft quoted phrase from Haldane serves well here "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era [strata]" would, for him, disprove/falsify evolution. > What are falsifiable, on the other hand, are theories > concerning how a single trait has evolved and why. Well, the theories are often built from the micro-level observations or on the basis of micro-level assumptions. E.g., Darwin's theory is basically based on some micro-level if informal observations of variable fitness along with the presumption that at least some traits that have an impact on this variable fitness are inherited. > Now, some theories may be more far-fetched than other, > other may seem at a time plausible to be then thoroughly > confutated by subsequent hypothesis, but all in all this > provides for a conceptual framework to understand and deal > with the issues concerned which end up being more > interesting that "God wills it". :-) I can't read Damien's mind (yet!), but I think he was getting at how fast and loose some EP hypotheses seem to play -- much as earlier sociobiological ones did -- among EP's fans.** Yes, there's a general presumption that seems to be correct: that evolution occurs and Darwinian mechanisms probably account for some observed behavior. But from this, I believe, too much unsubstantiated theory is currently generated. This might be especially so when dealing with very complex social changes. (As I mentioned many years ago on this list, there's always been a tendency among amateurs and even experts to go for "just so" stories of evolution -- as opposed to minutely testing the narratives. Testing here would involve not looking for supporting evidence, but looking for disconfirming evidence.) Regards, Dan * Not saying cladistics is trouble free or that cladistics methods are the only valid methods to attack these problems. ** For instance, I agree, having read the fox data long before I heard of Clark and also being familiar with popular works like _Before the Dawn_, that it's possible for traits, behavioral or otherwise, to be fixed in a population in a very short time. However, that this is so doesn't mean anyone's favorite laundry list of such traits has been so fixed. (Side note: I recommend Brooks' and McLennan's _Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior: A Research Program in Comparative Biology_ in considering the evolutionary study of behavior. Of course, they're treating much simpler behaviors of non-human animals -- it's been a few years since I read the book, but I believe they used fish behavior to illustrate their views -- but it shows, IMHO, how to approach this with a mind toward testing hypotheses as opposed to merely falling for one's favorite "just so" story.) From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 20:17:27 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:17:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> Even if moving cable space elevators are *never* built, >> they are still >> useful as the gold standard for space transport. >> $0.15 for the energy >> and a share of the capital to put one up. > > I would not use a hypothetical, untested technology as my "gold standard for space transport." "Gold standard" in this context means, "Yah can't do betta:" I.e., it is as the limit. > All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation. No, they are based on utterly sound physics. The orbital energy at GEO is 57.5 MJ/kg referenced to the surface of the earth. But a space elevator extracts the orbital velocity from the rotation of the earth. Since Ke = 1/2 mV^2, and the velocity at GEO is 3.1 km/s, the Ke is 4.8 MJ/kg. 52.7MJ is 52,700 kW-seconds or 14.6kWh. Big electric motors/generators are ~95% efficient, so call it close enough to 15kWh/kg. In this context, I am using a penny a kWh. Use 10 cents per kWh if you want, it's still dirt cheap. 15kWh * 100,000kg/hr is 1.5 GW. It would take a motor as large as the largest power plant generators to drive a moving cable space elevator being used to build power satellites. Capital cost (which I didn't mention) isn't entirely speculation either. Because there are other ways to do it, the capital cost for a moving cable space elevator can't go over ~$100 billion. The elevator has to be constructed in single digit years and it needs to lift about 2% of it's mass per day to make it a reasonable, cost effective project. For 2400 t/day that's 120,000,000 kg of elevator cable. If 60% the cost went for cable, $60B/0.12 Bkg is $500/kg--which may actually be a reasonable or even a high number in this context. These factors force the cable speed to around 450 m/s and limit the total cable length to around 100 times the distance to GEO. 100 x GEO is ~3.6 x 10^9 m, 120,000,000kg/3.6 B m is 0.0333kg/m, i.e., ~33 g/m. Nanotube cable density is ~1.1, so the cable volume would be around 30 cc/m. From V = pi r^2 L, r^2 = V/pi L, making the cable diameter ~.62 cm or about 1/4 inch for those of us raised on such units. (Check my math if you are so inclined.) Of course we don't have cable in the 40-60 GPa range and until we do space elevators are not possible. You might note though that the theory for nanotubes is ~175 GPs and that single fibers have been tested to ~40 GPa. Climbers are a different story. The power in to gaining potential energy is at best 10%. A power satellite program at ~100t/hr delivered to GEO would take 15 GW input rather than 1.5 GW. At 50% efficient the lasers would put out 7.5 GW and cost ~$75 billion. Keith > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Apr 22 20:40:13 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:40:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Falsifying evolution/was Re: Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <326311.75395.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <326311.75395.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090422153018.022fbdc0@satx.rr.com> At 01:15 PM 4/22/2009 -0700, Dan wrote: >I can't read Damien's mind (yet!), but I think he was getting at how >fast and loose some EP hypotheses seem to play -- much as earlier >sociobiological ones did -- among EP's fans. Yes, of course. Only morons deny that variation and selection provide the *substrates* of phenotypes and behavioral repertoires. But--let's not get too excited about applying this insight at perhaps inappropriate levels. Would it be profitable to explain, say, economic and artistic impulses and behavior by direct application of string theory--or even, at a slightly less basic level, nucleons and electrons? To question the validity of such an attempt need not imply reverting to Fire/Air/Water/Cheese models of the moon's structure or of the political motives driving the Apollo Program. Damien Broderick From max at maxmore.com Wed Apr 22 20:21:37 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:21:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] George Carlin - Saving The Planet Message-ID: <200904222048.n3MKmSoj022863@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I LIKED this one: George Carlin - Saving The Planet http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=70492263966&h=lth-F&u=WeaNi&ref=nf Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 22:37:52 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:37:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Falsifying evolution/was Re: Really? and EP In-Reply-To: <326311.75395.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <326311.75395.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904221537l5016dadbuf9807457ae5007d5@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Dan wrote: > Regarding evolution itself, I think the oft quoted phrase from Haldane serves well here "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era [strata]" would, for him, disprove/falsify evolution. How would that be the case? Not to me anyway, as a matter of faith. :-) Such fossil rabbits would simply force me to revise my current hypotheses on evolution. As Dawkins says, cosmic panspermia might even be true, e.g., and it would simply replace the issue on where, how and when life developed: crates all the way, *not* skyhooks. -- Stefano Vaj From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 01:37:36 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:07:36 +0930 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing In-Reply-To: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904221837g143cda2ck4f9af1e283147fbb@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/22 Dan : > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: >> But the "big thing" will be the ability to monitor the body >> and its functions / states. What I see is something like the >> BodyBug, but on steroids and implantable. This could very >> well melt with the implantable cellphone immediately or >> after. >> >> The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the Fitbit) >> satisfy another need / want of the people: awareness of >> their body conditions and feedback. A continuous feedback >> beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. > > A lot of monitoring can be done now. ?I wonder if there are many healthy people out there who opt for some sort of frequent >or even continuous body monitoring. ?(Certainly, a lot of life extensionists do routine blood testing that goes beyond just >checking cholesterol levels.) ?It's be interesting because of the data that could be gained from a a decent population of such >people. Again, I say it's the comms network (the internet + mobiles + etc) that is the real big thing here. Monitoring your own body functions is interestingish maybe but not that big a deal. Aggregations of biometric data gathered in realtime from large populations, you'd think that might revolutionise medicine (more). -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 23 04:01:37 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:01:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Food Production In-Reply-To: <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> Message-ID: <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> Mirco wrote: > Keith Henson ha scritto: >> >> [Lee wrote] >> >>> A friend who's recently returned from a month on an Indiana or >>> Ohio farm tells me that they're *still* making large improvements, >>> and actually look forward to another factor of 2. >>> [http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/articles.03/CornYldTrend2003.html] >> >> And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy >> when up to the point farmers had to make do with 10% of the energy >> they now use? Ninety percent loss of energy available to farmers!? What do you have in mind? That seems awfully high. Besides, why would it be sudden? The factor of 7 that we have already seen since 1925 (that is expected to go up altogether, then, by a factor of 14), took eighty-five years. > I think talking about "10% of the energy they now use" is wrong (it is > engineering thinking not economics thinking. And the problem is > inherently economics. > Energy is energy and, in some way, goto the people able to pay for it, > if it is not rationed. And, if it is rationed, it will go for the > agriculture before it will go for anything other. Rationing was a bad idea in all historical cases I can think of, and I can't imagine it being our best bet. > My question, that I suppose is more useful, is about level of prices: > 50% - 100% - 900% greater than now for energy. Good question. > ...Given that energy and food are linked > together in a very short loop due the > ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil > as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction > of the energy production worldwide will > cause the richer nations to use their > riches to buy food and oil at higher prices. Hmm. I don't know about the "short loop". When oil prices jumped way up, did food prices? If so, it doesn't seem that food prices have come down now! > This is like siphoning the resources of others nations and shape the > production to something we need , not something they need. We already > cause something like this with the War on Drugs. This would be similar: > nations like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria use much of their oil to buy stuff > abroad and feed their people (directly or indirectly). Higher prices of > oil imply higher prices of food (we sell the food, the drugs, the > technology, etc.). So anything they gain selling less oil for more > money, they lose for buying food at higher prices. Same complaint. "short loop"? > Given that the majority of the Earth population is, now, living in > cities, there is no way people could grow their own food if the prices > are too high. So, the major effect of raising prices of food will be a > mass starvation of the undeveloped nations (Africa, parts of Asia and > South America). This would lead to lower birthrates and greater number > of dead in these nations. It is not like they can continue to have 6-8 > children per woman, anyway. Yes, that's certainly who will starve. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 23 04:15:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:15:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing In-Reply-To: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <841673.3944.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49EFEB64.5090504@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > [Mirco wrote] > >> The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the Fitbit) >> satisfy another need / want of the people: awareness of >> their body conditions and feedback. A continuous feedback >> beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. > > A lot of monitoring can be done now. I wonder > if there are many healthy people out there who > opt for some sort of frequent or even continuous > body monitoring. Oh, yes, there is quite a group, at least here in northern California. It's led by Kevin Kelly (of "Out of Control" fame). http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/ > (Certainly, a lot of life extensionists do routine > blood testing that goes beyond just checking > cholesterol levels.) It's be interesting because > of the data that could be gained from a a decent > population of such people. I haven't been to enough of their meetings to understand if they're pooling their data. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu Apr 23 04:31:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:31:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Expected Cultural and Genetic Effects in the Present In-Reply-To: References: <49EC1A13.5090305@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090421114856.024fd620@satx.rr.com> <49EF0D3A.4080509@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49EFEF24.9010100@rawbw.com> Jef (Aware) wrote > On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Even *ten* years ago, a white kid I knew >> mentioned that he went to a math competition >> here in the bay area, and out of a hundred or >> so kids there, he was the only white. >> >> That's just the reality. Go to the elementary >> classrooms yourself, and try to talk to kids >> about math or chess or something, if you don't >> believe me... > > Lee, you make a good point and I don't dispute that there's some > genetic component, but I think it's even more to do with culture. That sounds more plausible than the case in which I have a tremendous amount of experience, namely, as a chess instructor for over forty years (with one U.S. champion to my credit, and eight other masters). I've just got a very strong feel watching people play chess, and especially kids: I am seeing a genuine talent component at work. (I also happened to once have have a conversation with my opposite number on the other side of the bay: his notes compare precisely with mine.) > I lived in Japan for a few years, and traveled and worked extensively > throughout Asia for over a dozen years. I felt at home with the > people there, to the extent that the culture shock coming "home" to > big brash barbaric California was greater than the adjustments I made > as an expat. > > And I saw the same kinds and ranges of personality there as here, and > roughly the same distribution of intelligence throughout the > population. In fact we should expect to have a biased sample here in America. The kids I see, who appear so effortlessly talented, are almost all Chinese---and of course there is a selection immigrant gradient. But still! It's just over the top (i.e., even matched IQ kids of other ethnicities don't play chess as well, I think). > But the biggest difference I saw between smart there and smart people > here--which still jars me on a daily basis--is the western emphasis > (incoherent in my opinion) on what an object *is*, contra the Asian > emphasis on what an object means, based on its relations within > context. There must be (or should be) some striking intellectual, economic, or other competitive results that stem from this. Any idea what? (BTW, it's widely thought that the Chinese will be supreme in chess by and by, and that the reason they're not already is that by far most of their effort along these lines goes into Go. On the other hand, we're not seeing SFAIK unusual numbers of scientific or mathematical breakthroughs from there.) > Ironically, over several years on the Extropy list, you were my > biggest test case. Trying to see whether a smart, highly verbal, > highly motivated "rationalist" could ever cross the divide. On one side, I am the one upbraiding Libertarians all the time for not seeing our beloved theories in the context of a given civilization or society. On the other side, your efforts I hope were not in vain: I do make more of a conscious effort to be aware of context. Well, sometimes. Lee From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu Apr 23 10:26:40 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:26:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Food Production In-Reply-To: <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <56422.12.77.169.37.1240482400.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> >> ...Given that energy and food are linked > > together in a very short loop due the >> ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil > > as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction > > of the energy production worldwide will > > cause the richer nations to use their > > riches to buy food and oil at higher prices. > > Hmm. I don't know about the "short loop". When > oil prices jumped way up, did food prices? If > so, it doesn't seem that food prices have come > down now! > Where I live many food prices did jump considerably (milk, butter, eggs, vegs) and a good number of them have dropped a bit now, not back to pre-jump, but down. Regards, MB From kanzure at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 12:51:55 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:51:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [DIYbio-SF] DIYbio Salon - May 2nd, Noisebridge SF In-Reply-To: <892F9C78-379C-4949-993C-E3B01E4176C7@gmail.com> References: <892F9C78-379C-4949-993C-E3B01E4176C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904230551u611b5736yd07077fdb75f8497@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tito Jankowski Date: Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 12:42 AM Subject: [DIYbio-SF] DIYbio Salon - May 2nd, Noisebridge SF To: DIYbio-SF at googlegroups.com Cc: diybio at googlegroups.com, NoiseBridge Discuss Hi everyone, Artists, musicians, electricians, teachers, revolutionaries, hackers, Codecon-ers, gardeners, MAKErs, and students -- this is for you.?I'm pleased to invite you to the DIYbio Salon -- a place to learn and share about biotech in the Bay area. Our first session will be held on May 2 at Noisebridge (www.noisebridge.net) in San Francisco. DIYbio Salon May 2nd,?2:00-3:00 pm Noisebridge, 83 C Wiese St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Google Maps Agenda: 30 min: What is Do It Yourself biology? What can I do in the Bay Area? 30 min+: Audience presents 10 minute lightning talks -- printouts, <<10 slides, demos are all excellent Q&A throughout - this is to get everyone's feet wet. If someone wanted to get the group up to speed on Arduino, the Noisebridge Cyborg group, and biofuels projects in the Bay, that would be perfect (please email me). Feel free to forward this to other mailing lists. Tito --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ DIYbio.org San Francisco For access to academic articles, email the name and title to: getarticles at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to DIYbio-SF+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 23 13:17:05 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:17:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Food Production In-Reply-To: <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F06A51.2000201@libero.it> Il 23/04/2009 6.01, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Mirco wrote: > >> Keith Henson ha scritto: > >> > >> [Lee wrote] > >> >>>> A friend who's recently returned from a month on an Indiana or >>>> Ohio farm tells me that they're *still* making large improvements, >>>> and actually look forward to another factor of 2. > >>> > [http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/articles.03/CornYldTrend2003.html] > >>> >>> And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy >>> when up to the point farmers had to make do with 10% of the energy >>> they now use? > > Ninety percent loss of energy available to farmers!? > What do you have in mind? That seems awfully high. For a reduction of 90% of the energy available for farmers, I would look in something like an all-out nuclear war, but worse. >> ...Given that energy and food are linked > > together in a very short loop due the >> ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil > > as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction > > of the energy production worldwide will > > cause the richer nations to use their > > riches to buy food and oil at higher prices. > > Hmm. I don't know about the "short loop". When > oil prices jumped way up, did food prices? If > so, it doesn't seem that food prices have come > down now! The ethanol production plants use corn to produce ethanol, and the US Congress subside the production. This lowered the threshold where it is profitable to turn corn in ethanol. Before the bust, when oil was 150$, it was very profitable to turn corn in ethanol (for a few months). Then the price of corn spiked, farmers started planting more corn and less of other and all prices of food started to grow. States around the world started to scramble with the prices of food spiking and stopped (partially) the exportations (India stopped the exports of rices apart the Basmati). The problem with food prices in developed contries is that we usually see only the final products costs. The cost of bread, in Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, the rest is transportation, labour, capital goods, etc. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 13:18:45 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:18:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellites Message-ID: <308115.5205.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Keith Henson wrote: > On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Dan > > wrote: > > > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> Even if moving cable space elevators are *never* > built, > >> they are still > >> useful as the gold standard for space transport. > >> $0.15 for the energy > >> and a share of the capital to put one up. > > >> I would not use a hypothetical, untested technology as > my "gold standard for space transport." > > "Gold standard" in this context means, "Yah can't do > betta:"? I.e., it > is as the limit. I think you could: nuclear pulse propulsion from the surface. I haven't run the numbers, but there'd be no need for the huge capital investment of a space elevator AND most of the technology for it'd be off-the-shelf. No need to develop nanotech further. In fact, my guess is one could do nuclear pulse propulsion with decades old tech. (Of course, there's the problem of pollution.) >> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based >> on speculation. > > No, they are based on utterly sound physics. Until you've built and tested one, you can't know the costs -- which are economic -- or the physical efficiencies of an actual space elevator. Were this not the case, there would never be any need for quality assurance and quality control; everything would simply worked as conceived. You can, of course, make guesses, but, looking at past large scale engineering projects -- especially, ones for space travel -- it seems to me these guesses are often way off the mark. (One can make similar claims about nuclear pulse propulsion, though it has a longer history and actual tests were done years ago with much of the underlying technology. Certainly, nuclear weapons have been extensively tested.:) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 13:11:06 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:11:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Falsifying evolution Message-ID: <930217.1526.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Dan > > wrote: > > Regarding evolution itself, I think the oft quoted > phrase from Haldane serves well here "fossil rabbits in the > Precambrian era [strata]" would, for him, disprove/falsify > evolution. > > How would that be the case? I believe his point -- and I'm guessing here based on the quote; I haven't read it in context -- is that fossil rabbits would mean that rabbits (and chordates in general) did not evolve. Surely, one could push back the statement and said they still evolved but just at an earlier date (or that, perhaps, they evolved, went extinct, and re-evolved; or that evolution might be cyclical), but the reason the idea of evolution got any traction in the first place was that people found fossils of life forms that no longer are and, likewise, didn't find fossils of current life forms in the older strata. I take it this was Haldane's point. > Not to me anyway, as a matter of faith. :-) > > Such fossil rabbits would simply force me to revise my > current hypotheses on evolution. It'd likely force me to revise my views of evolution, but this would be a radical revision, don't you think? It might even call into question the whole idea of evolution -- at least, in its modern, post-Darwin form. > As Dawkins says, cosmic panspermia might even be true, > e.g., and it > would simply replace the issue on where, how and when life > developed: > crates all the way, *not* skyhooks. Yes, but then it sounds more like you're adding epicycles to the idea. Also, IIRC, panspermia was posited for microbial or viral forms. That said, I still think both evolutionary theories (explanations of why evolution happens) and evolution (reconstructions of what actually happened) are falsifiable. Yes, one can always add auxiliary hypotheses in to shore up any theory -- but this can be done with the classically falsifiable hypotheses: if an experiment doesn't go correctly, one can always say it's erroneous or that some other factor impinged on the data. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 13:56:34 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:56:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] the next big thing Message-ID: <772210.99661.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/4/22 Dan : > > > > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, painlord2k at libero.it > > wrote: > >> But the "big thing" will be the ability to monitor > the body > >> and its functions / states. What I see is > something like the > >> BodyBug, but on steroids and implantable. This > could very > >> well melt with the implantable cellphone > immediately or > >> after. > >> > >> The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the > Fitbit) > >> satisfy another need / want of the people: > awareness of > >> their body conditions and feedback. A continuous > feedback > >> beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. > > > > A lot of monitoring can be done now. ?I wonder if > there are many healthy people out there who opt for some > sort of frequent >or even continuous body monitoring. > ?(Certainly, a lot of life extensionists do routine blood > testing that goes beyond just >checking cholesterol > levels.) ?It's be interesting because of the data that > could be gained from a a decent population of such > >people. > > Again, I say it's the comms network (the internet + mobiles > + etc) > that is the real big thing here. Monitoring your own body > functions is > interestingish maybe but not that big a deal. Aggregations > of > biometric data gathered in realtime from large populations, > you'd > think that might revolutionise medicine (more). That was my point (not claiming any originality here): monitor lots of people and mine the data for patterns. For instance, what if we minutely monitored thousands of people with the flu or headaches or during normal sleep? A lot might be learned, including how to do more interventions and what happens "normally" as a baseline for understanding abnormal happenings. Regards, Dan From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 14:16:43 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:16:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <308115.5205.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <308115.5205.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904230716w600a04b1udfd5fc3277caed82@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Dan wrote: > I think you could: nuclear pulse propulsion from the surface. ?I haven't run the numbers, but there'd be no need for the huge capital investment of a space elevator AND most of the technology for it'd be off-the-shelf. Project Orion-style, you mean? I have recently opened the discussion on the subject myself. The environmental issues are well real, but this may well be a litmus test with respect to GW mongers, given that if the real concern is catastrophic climatic developments and not luddism one should be more than ready to risk a marginal rise in radioactivity on earth rather than facing temperature-induced doom. There again, it remains unclear whether the technology is really appropriate and competitive in comparison with alternatives. Interestingly, in its era such propulsion was even proposed as a way to dispose of existing nuclear arsenals, even though I assume that special purpose nuclear bombs might be less polluting or better suited to the requirements of such a project; but I must confess that this and a lot of other tech details escape me entirely. For instance, it was my impression that with regard to nuclear-pulse takeoffs from earth, "the larger, the better" in tems of efficiency, but I believe that Keith suggested that mid-sized Orion vehicles would in fact be best. -- Stefano Vaj From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 15:14:20 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:44:20 +0930 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing In-Reply-To: <772210.99661.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <772210.99661.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904230814q11166f6dpac94d781be023fd4@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/23 Dan : > > --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Emlyn wrote: >> 2009/4/22 Dan : >> > >> > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, painlord2k at libero.it >> >> wrote: >> >> But the "big thing" will be the ability to monitor >> the body >> >> and its functions / states. What I see is >> something like the >> >> BodyBug, but on steroids and implantable. This >> could very >> >> well melt with the implantable cellphone >> immediately or >> >> after. >> >> >> >> The BodyBug and other similar devices (like the >> Fitbit) >> >> satisfy another need / want of the people: >> awareness of >> >> their body conditions and feedback. A continuous >> feedback >> >> beat a sporadic feedback in usefulness. >> > >> > A lot of monitoring can be done now. ?I wonder if >> there are many healthy people out there who opt for some >> sort of frequent >or even continuous body monitoring. >> ?(Certainly, a lot of life extensionists do routine blood >> testing that goes beyond just >checking cholesterol >> levels.) ?It's be interesting because of the data that >> could be gained from a a decent population of such >> >people. >> >> Again, I say it's the comms network (the internet + mobiles >> + etc) >> that is the real big thing here. Monitoring your own body >> functions is >> interestingish maybe but not that big a deal. Aggregations >> of >> biometric data gathered in realtime from large populations, >> you'd >> think that might revolutionise medicine (more). > > That was my point (not claiming any originality here): monitor lots of people and mine the data for patterns. ?For instance, what if we minutely monitored thousands of people with the flu or headaches or during normal sleep? ?A lot might be learned, including how to do more interventions and what happens "normally" as a baseline for understanding abnormal happenings. > > Regards, > > Dan Yes, sorry, it was definitely your point that I was repeating. I just finished reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody", and got to thinking about "mass amateurization" (that we see professions disappearing where the 'net+ provides the means for amateurs to replace them, eg: journalists, and photographers since cheap quality digital photography). What's the bet that general practitioner doctors are some of the next against the wall, following mass biometric monitoring, and whatever comes with that? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 15:22:37 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:22:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Food Production Message-ID: <190925.5421.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/23/09, MB wrote: > >> ...Given that energy and food are linked > >? > together in a very short loop due the > >> ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil > >? > as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction > >? > of the energy production worldwide will > >? > cause the richer nations to use their > >? > riches to buy food and oil at higher > prices. > > > > Hmm. I don't know about the "short loop". When > > oil prices jumped way up, did food prices? If > > so, it doesn't seem that food prices have come > > down now! > > > > Where I live many food prices did jump considerably (milk, > butter, eggs, vegs) and a > good number of them have dropped a bit now, not back to > pre-jump, but down. I'm not familiar with the details of the food markets, but they are heavily subsidized in the first place and have price supports in most places, especially in the US. Also, the subsidization of corn for ethanol in the US seems to have driven up grain prices. Since corn derivatives are used in many food products -- e.g., corn syrup is used as an additive in many foods -- this shouldn't be surprising. In other words, the demand for corn rose -- as some of it was siphoned off by further government subsidies -- while the supply didn't increase, one would expect the price to go up. Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Apr 23 15:49:34 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:49:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> Dan wrote: >> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation. "Keith Henson" > No, they are based on utterly sound physics. [...] > Capital cost (which I didn't mention) That is the problem. You keep going on and on about the energy required to put a power satellite into geosynchronous orbit but I don't give a hoot in hell about that; I'm interested in the dollars required to put it into orbit. Not to mention the dollars required to build it. > isn't entirely speculation either. Of course it is! By honest, if you were a prudent banker would you invest hundreds of billions of dollars of your bank's money into Power Satellites on the basis of these cost estimates? I wouldn't and I'd take my savings out of any bank that did. And you thought investing in sub prime mortgages was risky! The number of large projects that have come in at or under budget could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and this thing is larger than any of them, and we have no experience to help us because nobody has ever done anything even remotely like it before. I'd be very surprise if these cost "estimates" (optimistic guesses would be a better word) were accurate within 1000%, probably not accurate to 10,000%. John K Clark From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 16:45:15 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:15:15 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Food Production In-Reply-To: <56422.12.77.169.37.1240482400.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <840FA155BCE14B109F42E2D1C2CDF06E@spike> <49EC12A0.9030001@rawbw.com> <49EF0AE9.9020006@libero.it> <49EFE821.5090903@rawbw.com> <56422.12.77.169.37.1240482400.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904230945s460d3bean56e9aa6969bba49a@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/23 MB : > >>> ...Given that energy and food are linked >> ?> together in a very short loop due the >>> ability to use ethanol and vegetable oil >> ?> as fuel, any serious and lasting reduction >> ?> of the energy production worldwide will >> ?> cause the richer nations to use their >> ?> riches to buy food and oil at higher prices. >> >> Hmm. I don't know about the "short loop". When >> oil prices jumped way up, did food prices? If >> so, it doesn't seem that food prices have come >> down now! >> > > Where I live many food prices did jump considerably (milk, butter, eggs, vegs) and a > good number of them have dropped a bit now, not back to pre-jump, but down. > > Regards, > MB > food prices jumped, eg: http://www.independent-bangladesh.com/200802212190/business/worldwide-shortage-of-rice-shoots-prices-soaring.html -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 16:56:55 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:56:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <308115.5205.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <308115.5205.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Dan >> >> wrote: >> > >> > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Keith Henson >> wrote: >> >> Even if moving cable space elevators are *never* >> built, >> >> they are still >> >> useful as the gold standard for space transport. >> >> $0.15 for the energy >> >> and a share of the capital to put one up. >> > >>> I would not use a hypothetical, untested technology as >> my "gold standard for space transport." >> >> "Gold standard" in this context means, "Yah can't do >> betta:"? I.e., it >> is as the limit. > > I think you could: nuclear pulse propulsion from the surface. ?I haven't run the numbers, but there'd be no need for the huge capital investment of a space elevator AND most of the technology for it'd be off-the-shelf. ?No need to develop nanotech further. ?In fact, my guess is one could do nuclear pulse propulsion with decades old tech. ?(Of course, there's the problem of pollution.) Nuclear pulse is a reaction technique. All reaction engines are rotten at energy efficiency--which hardly matters with nuclear energy. Why not run the numbers? A year at 1.5 GW is ~48 million GW-sec. A GW-sec is 1/4 ton of TNT, so the energy consumed by a space elevator lifting 8700 tons to GEO in a year would be about ~12 MT. The literature is not very clear on the subject, but a thousand 100kt bombs would be 100 MT. >>> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based >>> on speculation. >> >> No, they are based on utterly sound physics. > > Until you've built and tested one, you can't know the costs -- which are economic -- or the physical efficiencies of an actual space elevator. ?Were this not the case, there would never be any need for quality assurance and quality control; everything would simply worked as conceived. ?You can, of course, make guesses, but, looking at past large scale engineering projects -- especially, ones for space travel -- it seems to me these guesses are often way off the mark. ?(One can make similar claims about nuclear pulse propulsion, though it has a longer history and actual tests were done years ago with much of the underlying technology. ?Certainly, nuclear weapons have been extensively tested.:) My claim, space elevators, like common building elevators, would be upwards of 90 % efficient in converting electrical energy into potential energy. If your claim is that you don't have any confidence in this figure, why? I.e., energy is conserved, where is going to go? To be sure, when working on ambitious projects with a lot of R&D there is uncertainty in the cost. But that's not the reason for quality control. You need quality control on railroad axles. For the most part stuff does work as conceived. But "as conceived" may include proper heat treatment. I remember a case of a carrier aircraft with fold up wings where the hinge pins were not properly heat treated. The wings fell off, fortunately not in the air. The space shuttle/space station went way over budget, but that can mostly be traced to political decisions that forced underestimate of the cost. There is a lot of commonality with aircraft design and that's fairly well understood. You might note that the Three Gorges dam came in under budget. Keith From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 23 17:25:34 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:25:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> Il 23/04/2009 17.49, John K Clark ha scritto: > > Dan wrote: > >>> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation. > "Keith Henson" > >> No, they are based on utterly sound physics. [...] >> Capital cost (which I didn't mention) > > That is the problem. You keep going on and on about the energy required to > put a power satellite into geosynchronous orbit but I don't give a hoot in > hell about that; I'm interested in the dollars required to put it into > orbit. Not to mention the dollars required to build it. Brad Edwards report to NIAC put development costs to 2 billions in 10 years. Building costs 10-20 billions in 3-4 years. Depend on the legal framework, mainly. This for the first, the second and following would cost much less as you use the first to put in GEO the latter. > > isn't entirely speculation either. > > Of course it is! By honest, if you were a prudent banker would you invest > hundreds of billions of dollars of your bank's money into Power Satellites > on the basis of these cost estimates? Hundred of billions? 1/10 of this for the first, and you repay it near immediately building the second and the third and selling them to the highest bidders. And much of the technology developed for the project can be resold to others in other fields of applications; the cable would sell itself. Indeed, the R&D in this field is doing well without billions or hundreds of millions. > I wouldn't and I'd take my savings > out of any bank that did. > And you thought investing in sub prime mortgages was > risky! I would invest a part of mine in the project. It is like investing in Google or Yahoo or MS or Ebay before they become what they are now. Mainly, I would consider the people in the management to evaluate the risk. > The number of large projects that have come in at or under budget could be > counted on the fingers of one hand, and this thing is larger than any of > them, Not really. It will cost less than the Bridge that will link Messina with Reggio Calabria. Or less than a CVN. And less of the money that is funnelled to the Palestinian National Authority by the US government. Mr. Gates and a couple of friends could finance the development without problems. The only real show-stopper is the government involvement, the laws in the books and the international politics. > and we have no experience to help us because nobody has ever done > anything even remotely like it before. I'd be very surprise if these cost > "estimates" (optimistic guesses would be a better word) were accurate > within 1000%, probably not accurate to 10,000%. Until we do it for the first time, we don't really know how hard it is. You forget the "The terrorist will attack it" point. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Apr 23 17:39:16 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] In praise of pollution References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> Message-ID: <30BA179B5370482AACA1833567495D94@MyComputer> There is a interesting article in the current issue of Nature, Author Dr Lina Mercado said: "Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. This resulted in a net 10% increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land once other effects were taken into account." They found that manmade aerosols cause less light to reach the surface (Global Dimming) but this is more than compensated for by the fact that it also diffuses the light, that is to say light comes in more directions so fewer leaves are in the shade. John K Clark From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 23 18:02:05 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:02:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the next big thing In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904230814q11166f6dpac94d781be023fd4@mail.gmail.com> References: <772210.99661.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <710b78fc0904230814q11166f6dpac94d781be023fd4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F0AD1D.7000408@libero.it> Il 23/04/2009 17.14, Emlyn ha scritto: > I just finished reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody", and got > to thinking about "mass amateurization" (that we see professions > disappearing where the 'net+ provides the means for amateurs to > replace them, eg: journalists, and photographers since cheap quality > digital photography). What's the bet that general practitioner doctors > are some of the next against the wall, following mass biometric > monitoring, and whatever comes with that? I see this arrive: the doctors are struggling to manage the mass (and the mess) of informations about treatments, pathologies, drugs, etc. And they are losing. The following is an interesting article about biometric monitoring: http://www.jpands.org/vol12no1/robinson.pdf Nothing really new, apart the ability to make it real for the mass. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 23 18:04:07 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:04:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:49 AM, John K Clark wrote: > > Dan wrote: > >>> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation. > > "Keith Henson" > >> No, they are based on utterly sound physics. [...] >> Capital cost (which I didn't mention) > > That is the problem. You keep going on and on about the energy required to > put a power satellite into geosynchronous orbit but I don't give a hoot in > hell about that; I'm interested in the dollars required to put it into > orbit. Not to mention the dollars required to build it. > >> isn't entirely speculation either. > > Of course it is! You didn't read what I said: "Because there are other ways to do it, the capital cost for a moving cable space elevator can't go over ~$100 billion." >By honest, if you were a prudent banker would you invest > hundreds of billions of dollars of your bank's money into Power Satellites > on the basis of these cost estimates? I wouldn't and I'd take my savings out > of any bank that did. And you thought investing in sub prime mortgages was > risky! I don't know where the money will come from to build power satellites, or if they will be built at all. If they are I would bet on it being Chinese money. Power satellites and nuclear reactors are the only sources currently known that scale large enough replace fossil fuels over the few decades. The consequences of not replacing fossil fuels are a bit more serious than the sub prime mortgages, with the models showing the population of the earth falling to one or two billion people by the end of this century. If we could count on the singularity (nanotech and AI) coming in one or two decades, I wouldn't worry about it. > The number of large projects that have come in at or under budget could be > counted on the fingers of one hand, and this thing is larger than any of > them, and we have no experience to help us because nobody has ever done > anything even remotely like it before. I'd be very surprise if these cost > "estimates" (optimistic guesses would be a better word) were accurate within > 1000%, probably not accurate to 10,000%. Jordin Kare (who knows far more about laser propulsion than I do) thinks a billion dollars for a 4-5 MW propulsion laser and one redirection mirror in GEO would fully demonstrate the transport system. It could also clean up space junk at 500 t/year Given the seriousness of both energy and space junk, it seems worthwhile. Did you see the news the the US has committed to spend $60 billion on a new generation of remotely operated aircraft? Keith From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 18:17:16 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:17:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Prices/was Re: Food Production Message-ID: <467373.21916.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > The problem with food prices in developed contries is that > we usually see only the final products costs. The cost of > bread, in Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, > the rest is transportation, labour, capital goods, etc. Prices, where markets operate, depend on supply and demand. Governments often interfere with this by setting prices or setting quotas, especially with food, energy, and transportation. (These, in effect, and to the extent of the interference, become "make believe" prices -- with the extreme example being comprehensive economic planning, where all prices are set by the government and have no relation to anything other than bureaucratic whim.) Costs, per se, do not create prices. If costs did create prices, then we would never expect to see someone selling below cost or anyone making the mistake of making something and later finding out the expect price was too low. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 23 20:38:00 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:38:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Risks on large scale and long term projects/was Re: Power satellites Message-ID: <937733.80666.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/23/09, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Dan > > wrote: > > > > --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Dan > >> > >> wrote: > >>> I would not use a hypothetical, untested > technology as > >> my "gold standard for space transport." > >> > >> "Gold standard" in this context means, "Yah can't > do > >> betta:"? I.e., it > >> is as the limit. > > > > I think you could: nuclear pulse propulsion from the > surface. ?I haven't run the numbers, but there'd be no need > for the huge capital investment of a space elevator AND most > of the technology for it'd be off-the-shelf. ?No need to > develop nanotech further. ?In fact, my guess is one could > do nuclear pulse propulsion with decades old tech. ?(Of > course, there's the problem of pollution.) > > Nuclear pulse is a reaction technique.? All reaction > engines are > rotten at energy efficiency--which hardly matters with > nuclear energy. I was thinking -- as I stated -- in terms of costs: lower capital investment, shorter development time, and lower overall risk.? Plus, think of the final product: you'd probably have several nuclear pulse rockets for the price of one space elevator.? If one of those rockets fails, you still have the others.? If the single space elevator fails, you have to build another one and fall back on non-space elevator means to get to orbit.? (Of course, if space elevators do happen, there'd likely be more than one.) > > Until you've built and tested one, you can't know the > costs -- which are economic -- or the physical efficiencies > of an actual space elevator. ?Were this not the case, there > would never be any need for quality assurance and quality > control; everything would simply worked as conceived. ?You > can, of course, make guesses, but, looking at past large > scale engineering projects -- especially, ones for space > travel -- it seems to me these guesses are often way off the > mark. ?(One can make similar claims about nuclear pulse > propulsion, though it has a longer history and actual tests > were done years ago with much of the underlying technology. > ?Certainly, nuclear weapons have been extensively > tested.:) > > My claim, space elevators, like common building elevators, > would be > upwards of 90 % efficient in converting electrical energy > into > potential energy.? If your claim is that you don't > have any confidence > in this figure, why?? I.e., energy is conserved, where > is going to go? Simple: you have to build one to see what the actual efficiencies are. This has yet to be done. Until then, these are hypothetical efficiencies. They might be a good ballpark, but it seems more like what's being assumed is the best case scenario with little attention paid to things not going right. > To be sure, when working on ambitious projects with a lot > of R&D there > is uncertainty in the cost.? But that's not the reason > for quality > control.? You need quality control on railroad > axles.? For the most > part stuff does work as conceived.? But "as conceived" > may include > proper heat treatment.? I remember a case of a carrier > aircraft with > fold up wings where the hinge pins were not properly heat > treated. > The wings fell off, fortunately not in the air. > > The space shuttle/space station went way over budget, but > that can > mostly be traced to political decisions that forced > underestimate of > the cost. Do you believe a space elevator will avoid the averse effects of "political decisions"? Is anyone seriously planning to build it completely without any political input? Also, there are still many unknowns with a space elevator.? One has yet to be built and the closest thing to it, space tethers, are not a proven technology either.? It'd be a lot different if you lived in a world where space tethers were commonplace -- a mature and proven technology -- and large-scale nanoenegineering. These may yet come to pass, but, until they do, there are still huge financial and engineering risks with this kind of large scale project. > There is a lot of commonality with aircraft > design and > that's fairly well understood. > > You might note that the Three Gorges dam came in under > budget. Government project in a nation that doesn't have independent auditing techniques.? I'd hardly rely on that one example to bolster my case -- and it's funny that that's one of the rare cases where a large engineering project came in under budget. You might want to look at a larger data sample, especially including most other large scale engineering projects and especially space projects -- both sets of which tend to have large political components. Also, aside from political components, any project that takes a long time to complete -- all else being equal -- is going to have more risk. The longer it takes, the more things there are that can go wrong, all else remaining the same. Regards, Dan From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Thu Apr 23 22:56:17 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:56:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Cortical simulation news Message-ID: <664760.70192.qm@web27005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I can't remember anyone posting updates on this, but this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8012496.stm mentions the announcement from the Blue Brain project. Apparently Anders Sandberg is at the European Future Technologies conference, so hopefully he'll mention what fascinating things went under the media radar at this conference. Actually, it's been a good couple of days in the science news field - the cattle genome (for Hereford cattle) has been sequenced, and the Rydberg molecule has been observed. Here's to more interesting developments, Tom From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Apr 23 23:58:35 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:58:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Prices/was Re: Food Production In-Reply-To: <467373.21916.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <467373.21916.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F100AB.2080102@libero.it> Il 23/04/2009 20.17, Dan ha scritto: > --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> The problem with food prices in developed countries is that we >> usually see only the final products costs. The cost of bread, in >> Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, the rest is >> transportation, labour, capital goods, etc. > > Prices, where markets operate, depend on supply and demand. > Governments often interfere with this by setting prices or setting > quotas, especially with food, energy, and transportation. (These, in > effect, and to the extent of the interference, become "make believe" > prices -- with the extreme example being comprehensive economic > planning, where all prices are set by the government and have no > relation to anything other than bureaucratic whim.) Costs, per se, > do not create prices. If costs did create prices, then we would > never expect to see someone selling below cost or anyone making the > mistake of making something and later finding out the expect price > was too low. I wrote about costs, not prices. They can sell bread at the price people want pay, here. In fact, the price difference from North and South Italy is large. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 24 13:03:22 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:03:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Prices Message-ID: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 23/04/2009 20.17, Dan ha scritto: > > --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it > > wrote: > >> The problem with food prices in developed > countries is that we > >> usually see only the final products costs. The > cost of bread, in > >> Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, > the rest is > >> transportation, labour, capital goods, etc. > > > > Prices, where markets operate, depend on supply and > demand. > > Governments often interfere with this by setting > prices or setting > > quotas, especially with food, energy, and > transportation.? (These, in > > effect, and to the extent of the interference, become > "make believe" > > prices -- with the extreme example being comprehensive > economic > > planning, where all prices are set by the government > and have no > > relation to anything other than bureaucratic > whim.)? Costs, per se, > > do not create prices.? If costs did create > prices, then we would > > never expect to see someone selling below cost or > anyone making the > > mistake of making something and later finding out the > expect price > > was too low. > > I wrote about costs, not prices. Then how would you interpret this: "The problem with food prices in developed countries is that we usually see only the final products costs. The cost of bread, in Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, the rest is transportation, labour, capital goods, etc." It seems to me a reasonable interpretation of this statement is that its writer believes costs do determine prices. > They can sell bread at the price people want pay, here. > In fact, the price difference from North and South Italy is > large. Which probably reflects both differing demands and supplies between the regions. Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Apr 24 14:10:41 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:10:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> Message-ID: > Brad Edwards report to NIAC put development costs to 2 billions in 10 > years. Building costs 10-20 billions in 3-4 years. Depend on the legal > framework, mainly. And you believe that moonshine?! I think that could be the very worst financial estimate in the entire long history of bad financial estimates. The International Space Station ended up over budget, of course, it ended up costing about 100 billion dollars; and it was tiny, in low earth orbit, and people have been making similar things for decades. A Power Satellite would be HUGE, it would be in a far more difficult and expensive orbit to reach, and nobody has the slightest bit of experience in building anything even remotely similar to it. And this man thinks he can build it for 10 to 20% of the cost of the Space Station. I'd like to contact this Mr. Brad Edwards and sell him some swamp land, or a half interest on a perpetual motion machine. > Mr. Gates and a couple of friends could finance the > development without problems. That would be a great idea provided Mr. Gates ever got tired of being the richest man in the world. John K Clark From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Apr 24 15:44:32 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:44:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 7:10 AM, John K Clark wrote: > > >> Brad Edwards report to NIAC put development costs to 2 billions in 10 >> years. Building costs 10-20 billions in 3-4 years. Depend on the legal >> framework, mainly. > > And you believe that moonshine?! Have you *looked* at how he proposes to do it? If you have not, you have no right to call it "moonshine." Like all elevator proposals it suffers from the problem that we don't have the nanotube cable yet, but if we did his estimate isn't out of bounds. It stars with lifting ~20 t of cable to GEO with rockets. The rest of the elevator is bootstrapped up from the first thread. My main problem with what Edwards proposes is the size, it's capacity is way to small for power sat construction. I also think he underestimates the space junk problem, but perhaps not, that has to be solve in any case and there are multiple ways to do it. >I think that could be the very worst > financial estimate in the entire long history of bad financial estimates. > The International Space Station ended up over budget, of course, it ended up > costing about 100 billion dollars; and it was tiny, in low earth orbit, and > people have been making similar things for decades. A Power Satellite would > be HUGE, it would be in a far more difficult and expensive orbit to reach, > and nobody has the slightest bit of experience in building anything even > remotely similar to it. > > And this man thinks he can build it for 10 to 20% of the cost of the Space > Station. I'd like to contact this Mr. Brad Edwards and sell him some swamp > land, or a half interest on a perpetual motion machine. Brad Edwards I encourage reasoned objections, and there are good reasons to object to space elevators using climbers. But folks, at least read the wikipedia articles on a subject before ripping into it. Keith From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Apr 24 16:44:48 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:44:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer><49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> Message-ID: <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> "Keith Henson" > Like all elevator proposals it suffers from the problem that we don't > have the nanotube cable yet, but if we did his estimate isn't out of > bounds. So let's see, we don't know how to build practical power satellites but if we had something else that we know even less how to build then they would be dirt cheap. And on the basis of this "financial analysis" you expect people to invest in the venture. Recent events have shown that bankers aren't exactly rocket scientists, but they're not THAT dumb. John K Clark From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Apr 24 19:45:08 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:45:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:44 AM, John K Clark wrote: > "Keith Henson" > >> Like all elevator proposals it suffers from the problem that we don't >> have the nanotube cable yet, but if we did his estimate isn't out of >> bounds. > > So let's see, we don't know how to build practical power satellites but if > we had something else that we know even less how to build then they would be > dirt cheap. It's a straight forwards analysis. I worked it out here: http://htyp.org/Penny_a_kWh >And on the basis of this "financial analysis" you expect people > to invest in the venture. Invest in what venture? There is no space elevator venture possible until and unless we get the cable. I clearly stated that. >Recent events have shown that bankers aren't > exactly rocket scientists, but they're not THAT dumb. Bankers loaned money, several times as much as would be needed for a full scale power sat project, to people who could not pay it back. I would appreciate you distinguishing between perpetual motion machines and space elevators. The first violates our understanding of physics and takes extraordinary proof. Space elevators do not violate physics, they just take engineering development. Rockets, laser propulsion or space elevators, none of them violate physics. Rockets going into space went from being considered impossible by most people early in the last century to landing on the moon by the mid 60s. Space elevator physics was understood by the mid 60s and there was even earlier work by the Russians. There was a great deal of work on laser propulsion in the 70s which was finally shelved because efficient lasers were not available. That has changed with the advent of solid state lasers to the point a system can be analyzed and even made into a business proposal. In that context, moving cable space elevators need to be considered as a *risk.* There is massive incentive and plenty of current work to develop extremely strong nanotube fibers and cables for a huge range of products. A large propulsion laser used part time to clean up space junk would massively reduced the second biggest space elevator problem. A power satellite project based on rockets and lasers transport could be abruptly undercut by a space elevator. If you don't think this can be a problem, look up what happened to Iridium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Satellite_LLC#History Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Apr 24 20:14:46 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:14:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha update In-Reply-To: <200904241956.n3OJuCki017903@mercury.wolfram.com> References: <200904241956.n3OJuCki017903@mercury.wolfram.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904241314t3c258762t35c4d2c860f86d40@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wolfram|Alpha Team Date: Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:56 PM Subject: Wolfram|Alpha update To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com We are very busy preparing for the upcoming launch of Wolfram|Alpha. Plans were announced this week for Stephen Wolfram's first public presentation of Wolfram|Alpha. He'll be giving a sneak preview of his computational knowledge engine at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, April 28. If you cannot attend the presentation in person, we invite you to participate in the live webcast. For more details, please visit: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram Best regards, The Wolfram|Alpha Team You received this email because you signed up on our Wolfram|Alpha preview page. It was sent from an unmonitored email address, so please do not reply to this email address. ----------------- If you wish to change the email address we have on file for you, please go to: http://www.wolfram.com/emailchange/?email=stefano.vaj at gmail.com&mid=WR1586449 If you wish to be removed from the Wolfram Research mailing list, please go to: http://www.wolfram.com/unsubscribe/?email=stefano.vaj at gmail.com&mid=WR1586449 ----------------- This message was sent to by Wolfram Research, Inc. Mailing address: 100 Trade Center Dr., Champaign, IL 61820, USA -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Apr 24 20:18:18 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:18:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery Message-ID: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/indusscript.html See also "A Refutation of the Claimed Refutation of the Nonlinguistic Nature of Indus Symbols: Invented Data Sets in the Statistical Paper of Rao et alia" at: http://www.safarmer .com/Refutation3 .pdf Comments? Regards, Dan From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Apr 25 03:53:45 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:53:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> Message-ID: <62c14240904242053q1e9db9bfhe9e2ef3f15d94ee0@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:44 PM, John K Clark wrote: > "Keith Henson" > >> Like all elevator proposals it suffers from the problem that we don't >> have the nanotube cable yet, but if we did his estimate isn't out of >> bounds. > > So let's see, we don't know how to build practical power satellites but if > we had something else that we know even less how to build then they would be > dirt cheap. And on the basis of this "financial analysis" you expect people > to invest in the venture. Recent events have shown that bankers aren't > exactly rocket scientists, but they're not THAT dumb. Perhaps not, but bankers can be impressed by rocket scientists... and mathematicians... and monkeys that play the accordion.* * Not all bankers of course, some are thoroughly unimpressed by rocket scientists and mathematicians. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Apr 25 04:08:00 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:08:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Benford on David Friedman's new book Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090424230650.022c74f0@satx.rr.com> Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, by David Friedman, New York: Cambridge University Press, 351 pages, $30 In Future Imperfect David Friedman presents a wide variety of possible futures, "some attractive, some frightening, few dull." Looking through a lens of science fiction and fact, Friedman explores how libertarian ideas can help us adjust our lives and institutions to technological change ranging from computer crime to nanotechnology, from contracts in cyberspace to aging research. etc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Apr 25 11:38:26 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:38:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <62c14240904242053q1e9db9bfhe9e2ef3f15d94ee0@mail.gmail.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <62c14240904242053q1e9db9bfhe9e2ef3f15d94ee0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904250438g760e3dbcx4ee2d32ed460beb@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 5:53 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > * Not all bankers of course, some are thoroughly unimpressed by rocket > scientists and mathematicians. Why, rocket scientists are not performing so well themselves, these days... Interesting that in Italian the equivalent jargon reference is to "atomic physicists". -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Apr 25 13:15:45 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:15:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Prices In-Reply-To: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F30D01.8090207@libero.it> Il 24/04/2009 15.03, Dan ha scritto: > --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: > It seems to me a reasonable interpretation of this statement is that > its writer believes costs do determine prices. The writer don't believe this. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Apr 25 15:54:29 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:54:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer><49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it><10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> Message-ID: <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> "Keith Henson" > Rockets, laser propulsion or space elevators, none of > them violate physics. Did you think I didn't know that? Mr. Edwards claimed to be making a financial estimate on the cost of a power satellite, but he assumed the existence of a space elevator, something that in fact does not exist; that means the numbers he got on the cost were completely meaningless, they're not even good guesses, it's just blather. As for laser propulsion, it's an interesting idea and for all I know it may turn out to work great, but it's a unproven technology. Up to now it hasn't even come close to putting a peanut into low earth orbit. You propose using it to put a supertanker sized object into geosynchronous orbit and claim you've already thought of everything that could go wrong so you know how much it will cost. I don't buy it, much smaller and more conventional projects have gone 1000% over budget. > Bankers loaned money, several times as much as would be > needed for a full scale power sat project, to people who > could not pay it back. You can't know that, in the power satellite business we don't even know what we don't know so nobody can pin a cost number on it. About the only thing we could say with any confidence is that it would be the most expensive object ever made by the human race. John K Clark From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 25 16:29:58 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:29:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 4/25/09, John K Clark wrote: > You can't know that, in the power satellite business we don't even know > what we don't know so nobody can pin a cost number on it. About the only thing > we could say with any confidence is that it would be the most expensive object > ever made by the human race. > I agree that there are probably many unknown unknowns in a project of this scale. But the main thing I don't like is the timescale of 15 to 50 years. How can you guarantee funding and political will for a project like that? PV cells are improving month by month, becoming cheaper and more efficient. By 15 years time, I would expect every building to be off the grid, using spray on PV cells. And who knows what other energy improvements will come along in that time period. By the time it gets half built, people will be wondering whether they should be spending all this money on a project that is looking as though it might not be needed after all. BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 25 17:47:51 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:47:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Prices In-Reply-To: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F34CC7.5090904@rawbw.com> Well, it looked like Dan wrote that Mirco wrote that Dan wrote that... --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > > Il 23/04/2009 20.17, Dan ha scritto: >> > > --- On Thu, 4/23/09, painlord2k at libero.it >> > > wrote: >>> > >> The problem with food prices in developed > > countries is that we >>> > >> usually see only the final products costs. The > > cost of bread, in >>> > >> Italy, is only 10% dependent to the cost of flour, > > the rest is >>> > >> transportation, labour, capital goods, etc. >> > > >> > > Prices, where markets operate, depend on supply and > > demand. >> > > Governments often interfere with this by setting etc. But if you can parse that you must be some kind of fucking syntax genius. Well, I'm not! (And it was even worse in HTML.) So here's what all that meant to me (of course, this requires a fair amount of effort on my part, having to unscramble posts four levels deep). Ahem: Dan wrote: > > [Mirco] wrote: > >> Dan wrote: >> >>> Mirco wrote >>> >>>> The problem with food prices in >>>> developed countries is that we >>>> usually see only the final products >>>> costs. The cost of bread, in Italy, >>>> is only 10% dependent to [on] the cost >>>> of flour, the rest is transportation, >>>> labour, capital goods, etc. >>> >>> Prices, where markets operate, depend >>> on supply and demand. Governments often >>> interfere with this by setting prices >>> or setting prices or setting quotas, >>> especially with food, energy, and >>> transportation. (These, in effect, >>> and to the extent of the interference, >>> become "make believe" prices -- with >>> the extreme example being comprehensive >>> economic planning, where all prices are >>> set by the government and have no relation >>> to anything other than bureaucratic whim.) >>> >>> Costs, per se, do not create prices. >>> If costs did create prices, then we >>> would never expect to see someone >>> selling below cost or anyone making >>> the mistake of making something and >>> later finding out the expect price >>> was too low. Nice econ lesson, thanks. Mirco then adds >> I wrote about costs, not prices. They >> can sell bread at the price people >> want pay, here. In fact, the price >> difference from North and South Italy >> is large. > > Which probably reflects both differing > demands and supplies between the regions. Well, Mirco, do you think that Dan is right? How else to explain it? That is, what?, folks in the south don't have as much money? Or is it that they don't like bread as much? Or is the price greater in the south because (i) transportation or storage costs are higher and (2) total volume is lower (with the earlier factors helping to determine that)? Or am I totally lost here, and the price is *lower* in the south? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 25 18:06:06 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:06:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/indusscript.html where Rao runs a program and finds a lot of correlations. > See also "A Refutation of the Claimed > Refutation of the Nonlinguistic Nature > of Indus Symbols: Invented Data Sets > in the Statistical Paper of Rao et alia" at: > > http://www.safarmer.com/Refutation3.pdf > > Comments? The history of reading ancient scripts usually exhibits this pattern: specialists cannot read the script and fall for the "ideographic myth", that the symbols communicate on a non-linguistic basis by means of pure thought. But no purely pictorial languages have ever been found, short of our street signs (curve ahead, no left turn, etc.). But Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel counter with The implausibility of the view that the so-called Indus script was true writing is suggested in many ways that do not require sophisticated analyses. The simplest argument is the best: the sheer brevity of the inscriptions. We possess thousands of inscribed Indus objects on a wide range of materials. The average inscription is 4-5 symbols long and the longest, found on a highly anomalous piece, carries 17. So maybe they're right, and it's no language. What will happen is this: some aspiring Champollion or Ventris will be swayed by Rao's paper, and try. He or she will either get a sense that it's a language, or join the skeptics' camp. Hopefully, enough will indeed get a sense that it's a true language, and eventually solve it. But pretty smart people used to look for messages in Shakespeare and the Bible. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Apr 25 18:16:44 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:16:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090425131446.02638468@satx.rr.com> At 11:06 AM 4/25/2009 -0700, Lee messaged: >But pretty smart people used to look for >messages in Shakespeare and the Bible. And rightly so--the works of Shakespeare and the Bible are *nothing but* messages. :) From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 25 20:46:31 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:46:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Raising the Level of Discourse in General In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> Passing over what "destroying lives" might mean, all the way from *death* to causing people to simply relocate in another country with no inconvenience--- two extremes that intelligent readers should not read into what others mean--- on 4/17/2009 9:40 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki (in Making Rationalizations...) wrote: > ### Let's not get hypocritical here.... > ### Don't accuse me of being a liberal hypocrite... > ### Good, so you admit your math isn't worth a damn. > This invalidates all else - if you build a chain of > reasoning on quantitatively incorrect data, the > reasoning is invalid. This apparent rigidity in thinking does not become you. It's a "take no prisoners" style of discourse into which it seems to me you lapse from time to time: "This invalidates...", "Incorrect data", "invalid" reasoning, math being "worth a damn" or not. Sounds like I'm in a conversation with Mr. Data. It's harder for thoughtful discussion to proceed. Please relax and try to infer the *most* intelligent possible meaning of what is said, rather than the least. You accuse me of hypocrisy (above) when, I surmise, it seems to you that there is an inconsistency in my position. This is overloaded and unnecessarily caustic language! Why is that necessary? I never accused you of being a "liberal hypocrite". Did I? So why the 2nd "###" above? Besides, it's I who refrain from that kind of rigid attack. I don't think that you would speak this way in a face to face discussion with me about any of these topics, or with anyone here. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 25 21:02:29 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:02:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] When do People Make Exceptions to Principles They Hold? In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904172140i2de7b1feo29998069f2cd25d7@mail.gmail.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140i2de7b1feo29998069f2cd25d7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F37A65.8030500@rawbw.com> On 4/17/2009 9:40 PM Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:18 AM, BillK wrote: > >> But you still want to initiate force against law-abiding >> citizens because you suspect that many years in the future >> they 'might' spoil a society that you want to scrap anyway. I don't understand. Who wants to scrap what society? > ### Bill, you nailed it. He did? > I mean, if Bill, who is a good guy but no libertarian, > has to remind you of *non-initiation of violence*, Please, give a little credit! I made utterly no secret (this will be the *third* time I have had to repeat this), that violations of some principles is exactly what in certain cases I recommend. It goes without saying, or should, that I consider these to be extreme exceptions---otherwise, I could not be said to hold the principle at all. > then ... well, I have no more comments on this issue. No principle, such as the NAP above, can be mechanically applied to every situation. Or can it? Do you believe that the *non-initiation of violence* is inviolate under all circumstances? Sorry for asking what may be a dumb question, but I am calmly trying to improve the communication here. If, as I suspect, your answer is "no, it is not inviolate under *all* circumstances", then it would be neat if you could give an example or two, and perhaps shed light on any general meta-principle that we might conjecture about; namely when principles themselves are to be violated. Thanks, Lee From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 25 21:07:13 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:07:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Raising the Level of Discourse in General In-Reply-To: <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/25/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > You accuse me of hypocrisy (above) when, I surmise, > it seems to you that there is an inconsistency in > my position. This is overloaded and unnecessarily > caustic language! Why is that necessary? > I think the problem is partly due to your debating style, where you sometimes take the devil's advocate position, for the sake of argument. For example; If I lived in France, and, if I held traditional French values, and, if I supported the French state and status quo, then I believe this and thus should be done. Some might find that sort of theoretical argument hypocritical. Rafal doesn't debate like that at all. He calls a spade a bloody shovel. ;) BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Apr 25 22:19:14 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:19:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Raising the Level of Discourse in General In-Reply-To: References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F38C62.6050104@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 4/25/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> You accuse me of hypocrisy (above) when, I surmise, >> it seems to you that there is an inconsistency in >> my position. This is overloaded and unnecessarily >> caustic language! Why is that necessary? > > I think the problem is partly due to your debating > style, where you sometimes take the devil's advocate > position, for the sake of argument. Hmm, I am unaware of ever having done that (but thanks so much for raising the possibility). Could this be a different meaning we attach to "taking a devil's advocate" position? Without looking it up---so that I don't bias my report---I thought it meant to argue a position that you do not really believe, perhaps for the purposes of exposing a logical weakness. > For example; [thanks!] > If I lived in France, and, > if I held traditional French values, and, > if I supported the French state and status quo, > then I believe this and thus should be done. > > Some might find that sort of theoretical argument hypocritical. Not sure if that's what Rafal was getting at. (I doubt it, really.) I readily admit that the hypotheses there are a bit weird, since they include so many counterfactuals. But it's just a form of saying, for example (A) "I don't blame the Indians in case X for massacring the white settlers (because the pony soldiers had killed some squaws and children in their earlier raid)." (A') "If I had been an Indian and had returned to see my village burned and our squaws dead, I would have believe it right to go kill the settlers." A' is a statement filled with similar counter- factual hypotheticals that seems to me quite equivalent to A. Anyway, "hypocritical" is widely, widely and wildly overused. We ought to mean by the term preaching one thing and behaving differently. It's often bandied about by those seeking a more explosive term than "inconsistent" or, (far better here) "apparently inconsistent". > Rafal doesn't debate like that at all. He > calls a spade a bloody shovel. ;) Yes, :-) and that has its pluses and minuses. Lee From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Apr 25 23:07:07 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:07:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, BillK wrote: snip > But the main thing I don't like is the timescale of 15 to 50 years. > How can you guarantee funding and political will for a project like that? You can't. Which is why the crash program to reach at least half a GW/day construction rate by 2015. Impossible you say? I agree it can't be done in the US, we are no longer the country that did the Manhattan project in a few years. China/Japan may be a different story. > PV cells are improving month by month, becoming cheaper and more efficient. > By 15 years time, I would expect every building to be off the grid, > using spray on PV cells. Short of full on nanotechnology, I don't think spray on PV cells are possible. Assuming they were, how are you going to make connections to them? What voltage/current are you talking about? PV cells make around half a volt/cell. How do you suggest wiring them in series/parallel to get a reasonable voltage? Storage? >And who knows what other energy improvements > will come along in that time period. The current energy per person in the US is ~10kW. It is obviously possible to run a human scale intelligence on 20 W. There is a 500 to one improvement. > By the time it gets half built, people will be wondering whether they > should be spending all this money on a project that is looking as > though it might not be needed after all. Possible, likely even. >From the "Standard Gauge" story The grid was lightly loaded though not as much as the 98.8 % drop in active population would indicate; supporting close to half a billion minds and keeping the associated bodies in cold storage and their memories updated took a modest amount of power. On the way down to the train, the power sats looked like a chain of beads across the southern sky. Amanda turned to Jenny: "Jenny, if you stay up a while, you can see power sats blink out as they enter the earth's shadow." "Remember what I said about humans not being very good at anticipating the future? "Yes." "Well, there you can see it." The chain of power sats had gaps in them. "By the time most of them were built, the population and the demand for power was falling fast." "There are a few up there that were never finished." "You won't see it this time of the year, but in the spring, the power beams are used to warm up fields and control weeds." "How does that work?" Jenny asked as they approached the station with its Russian looking cupola on the top of the clock tower looming in the near dark. "The farmers put up pilot beams in the middle of a big circle of farmland and several power sats focus their microwaves on the pilot beams. It's just like warming up food in a microwave oven." Jenny had figured out microwave ovens before she was 3 so the concept was easy to grasp. "And the heat kills the weeds?" Jenny said. "Weeds, insects, nematodes, they mildly cook the top few inches of soil." ************** Thirty years before the AIs who were tasked with remembering and making presentations to CMU visitors would run up a palace of utility fog on the mall and present a 3D docudrama on the historical events around the emergence of AIs at CMU. Now, in deference to the attempt to raise children in a retro environment with features of the 1950s, the adults were directed by messages to their neural interfaces to the McConomy Auditorium, a 110 year-old theater in Carnegie Mellon?s central buildings. The 20-minute presentation to the adults and older kids (the younger ones could watch or play on the lawn) was in black and white newsreels format, much of it converted from video of press conferences. ?Even with a nearly complete historical record from those times, it?s hard to pin down when the first AIs became full personalities.? The narrator spoke in a voice over showing primitive robots and computers. ?The problem isn?t unique to AI history, there is a similar problem about the first railroad." (Montage of drawings and photographs of early trains.) "About the best we can say is that what we now think of as AIs didn?t exist before 2032 and definitely did by 2036. In that year there were more than a hundred scientific papers co-authored by AIs. Carnegie Mellon was in the forefront of this effort." (Shots of University labs and bits of recorded slow interactions with early AIs.) "The key insight was to equip AIs with carefully selected human motivations." ?The two biggest problems of the early 21 century were energy and medical treatment. CMU researchers contributed to both. ?Solar power from orbit solved, in fact, over solved, the first by 2035.? (Shots of space elevators and power satellites in orbit, photos of rectenna farms.) ?Integrating AIs into nanomedicine clinics solved the medical treatment problem. It took only a few years. After that AIs and clinics could be ?grown? at low cost and they did their own upgrades, a lot of it in the field in Africa. They were too late for the smallpox epidemics that swept out of the Mid East. ?A side effect of the clinics and widespread use of virtual reality caused a physical world population crash in the mid 2050s and the mothballing of the cities.? (Simulated video of dense freeway traffic dwindling to an occasional car and then none.) The rest of the presentation was subtle propaganda mainly to the children and directed to the goal of them doing their part in enlarging the population. ************ My work on power sats built using space elevators wasn't serious. Hu Davis asked me to run the energy payback analysis for rockets. The payback times were really good, under 100 days even for rockets, but the economics sucked, $8-10 a gallon gasoline, at least ten cent a kWh power. Not to mention the boggle factor, launching a vehicle twice the size of a Saturn V every hour. In thrashing around I looked at nuclear tugs to get stuff from LEO up to GEO. Better, but not good enough. Considered lasers to accomplish the same thing and with Jordin Kare's suggestions got the traffic model down to four 300 ton sub orbital launches with the second stage being pushed by a 4 GW ablation laser. The laser has to be bounced from GEO to get the very long path length required for large payloads and a relatively small laser. Mass ratios are 3 for the first stage and as little as two for the second. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 26 00:01:05 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:01:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Was the Chief Right? Message-ID: <49F3A441.2030304@rawbw.com> "It is true," said the Chief with a sigh, "our young men did go and steal horses from the whites, and killed a settler who tried to stop them. But when the white soldiers come, we elders too must join the ambush, and kill as many as we can. For they intend to destroy our whole village." General nodding, and murmuring of agreement. "But that is for tomorrow," he continued. "Let us now talk in more general terms about what to do concerning the Problem of the Whites, who move on to our lands relentlessly. "We should band together with the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Arapaho, the Pawnee, the Apache, the Kiowa, the Comanche, and even far away tribes such as the Navajo, and all the tribes between here and the far, far Great Water where the sun sets. Yes, the Crow too, who are such friends with the whites. We must convince them." A long pause. "Why would you want that?" asked Silver Eagle. "The Cheyenne and the Apache are our sworn enemies, and always we enjoy making war against them. I understand the Problem of the Whites, but we can gradually work with them as we have often done: sometimes we have war with them, and sometimes we have peace. They're really just like everyone else." It was a very long time before anyone spoke. Finally the Chief said, "We have tried making war just among ourselves, and remaining at peace with the Whites, as they would have it. But always the pattern is the same. Either they cannot control their settlers, or we cannot control our young men. And I pass completely over the times when they have simply lied. "But that is not what is important. Always, always, their numbers grow, they do not fight against each other, and their ways are completely different from ours. "Now, I say, with the help of all the tribes between the Great River to the east, and the far, far Great Water to the West, our braves will number in the many tens of thousands! We should drive *all* the whites beyond the Great River, killing as few as necessary, but ignoring not a single one." This time, Silver Eagle was not long in responding. "The words of our chief fill me with disgust and loathing. Many of the whites are our friends, and many we trade with. Many, many whites with whom we have never even had contact would starve in a trail of tears as they went back to the River. Many would die, who have done nothing against any Indian, and who also have no horses we can take. Worse, it would disrupt our lives more than anything has before. "And it is not the Indian Way to join together with our ancient enemies, such as the Crow, for any reason whatsoever. Besides our impoverishment (as trade ceased), we would become what the whites call a nation. No longer could we war upon one another; we would have to keep a large band of permanent warriors from many tribes to patrol our "boundaries". Permanent delegations would have to be sent to Mexico and Canada, and probably to faraway places we never heard of. In short, we would sacrifice everything that it means to be Indian, and become ourselves white." The Chief inhaled deeply from his pipe and said, "I have heard you. But you must see that in this clash, in the long run, all the tribes will be destroyed, or at very least shunted off to the most miserable areas. The rising numbers of the whites make it only the more more difficult to do what someday we must do and will be forced to do. But someday will be too late, and our grandsons will think badly of us for not having acted when we could. "Besides, your words are untrue in this part: We would not be sacrificing everything that it means to be Indian. No, not at all. True, many of the changes you list would be necessary---but in the vast interior of our new land, our customs and our lives would be mostly unaffected. It is true that we would have to be at peace among ourselves, to direct all our fighting strength against the whites and the Mexicans when they invade, but it is better to be at peace among ourselves and at war with the true outsiders, than it is to vainly try to be at peace with the whites and at war with ourselves." Finally, Sliver Eagle said, "I still cannot understand what ails the thinking of our leader, but I for one will never go along. The things you warn of are far in the future, and I will not betray the white traders who are my friends. Nor will I make peace with the Cheyenne. "And please do not accuse me of being a squaw, for I will be the first to rise tomorrow when we must ambush the white soldiers. And how can you know about things many, many years in the future? As the white settlers come, they may come to understand the better lives we lead as Indians, make their own tribes, and become like us. "To unite with tribes we have never known, or never even known about, is ridiculous and extreme. We should continue as we have, and hope for the best. I have spoken." From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 26 02:38:42 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:38:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > ... > > But pretty smart people used to look for messages in > Shakespeare and the Bible... Lee Shakespeare may have put messages in the bible. Shakespeare was thought to have participated in the translation of the King James bible. In 1610, the year the King James bible was published, Shakespeare turned 46 years old. If one looks at the 46th Psalm, the 46th word of that psalm is shake, and the 46th word from the end of that psalm is spear. Possibly a coincidence, but if so a most remarkable one indeed. How many such goodies are hidden in that text? spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 26 03:53:55 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:53:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> spike wrote: >> But pretty smart people used to look for messages in >> Shakespeare and the Bible... Lee > > Shakespeare may have put messages in the bible. Shakespeare was thought to > have participated in the translation of the King James bible. In 1610, the > year the King James bible was published, Shakespeare turned 46 years old. > If one looks at the 46th Psalm, the 46th word of that psalm is shake, and > the 46th word from the end of that psalm is spear. Possibly a coincidence, > but if so a most remarkable one indeed. How many such goodies are hidden in > that text? Well, here is what wikipedia says about the who David Kahn called "the greatest cryptanalyst of all time": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Friedman As a child, he was introduced to cryptography in the short story "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe.[1] He studied at the Michigan Agricultural College (known today as Michigan State University) in East Lansing and received a scholarship to work on genetics at Cornell University. Meanwhile George Fabyan, who ran a private research laboratory to study any project that caught his fancy, decided to set up his own genetics project and was referred to Friedman. Friedman joined Fabyan's Riverbank Laboratories outside Chicago in September 1915... Initial work in cryptology Another of Fabyan's pet projects was research into secret messages which Sir Francis Bacon had allegedly hidden in various texts during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. The research was carried out by Elizabeth Wells Gallup. She believed that she had discovered many such messages in the works of William Shakespeare, and convinced herself that Bacon had written many, if not all, of Shakespeare's works. Friedman had become something of an expert photographer while working on his other projects, and was asked to travel to England on several occasions to help Gallup photograph historical manuscripts during her research. He became fascinated with cryptology as he courted Elizebeth Smith, Mrs. Gallup's assistant and an accomplished cryptologist. They married, and he soon became director of Riverbank's Department of Codes and Ciphers... Following World War II, Friedman remained in government signals intelligence. In 1949 he became head of the code division of the newly-formed Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and in 1952 became chief cryptologist for the National Security Agency (NSA) when it was formed to take over from AFSA. Friedman produced a classic series of textbooks, "Military Cryptanalysis", used to train NSA students. (These were revised and extended, under the title "Military Cryptanalytics", by Friedman's assistant and successor Lambros D. Callimahos, and used to train many additional cryptanalysts.) Friedman retired in 1956 and, with his wife, turned his attention to the problem that had originally brought them together: examining Bacon's codes. In 1957 they wrote The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, demonstrating flaws in Gallup's work and in that of others who sought hidden ciphers in Shakespeare's work... So: if William Friedman couldn't find any hidden codes in Shakespeare, I'd be willing to bet that by any date you care to mention, neither will have anyone else. Lee P.S. Yes, since I've never heard of another such remarkable finding as the 46/46/46, right now it seems best to regard that as mere coincidence. From max at maxmore.com Sun Apr 26 04:13:12 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:13:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] God Makes Surprise Visit To Local Church Message-ID: <200904260441.n3Q4fSmL007544@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Read all about it: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/god_makes_surprise_visit_to_local From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 26 05:44:45 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:44:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike> ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin ... > 4,000-Year-Old Mystery > > spike wrote: > > >>...In 1610, the year the King James bible was > published, Shakespeare turned 46 years old. > > If one looks at the 46th Psalm, the 46th word of that psalm > is shake, > > and the 46th word from the end of that psalm is spear. Possibly a > > coincidence, but if so a most remarkable one indeed. How many such > > goodies are hidden in that text? > ... > Lee > > P.S. Yes, since I've never heard of another such remarkable > finding as the 46/46/46, right now it seems best to regard > that as mere coincidence. Lee I don't know how to estimate the probability of such a thing happening by chance, and have changed my mind on it at least twice, but currently I think Billy did this himself. He had the sense of humor to do something like this. How many of you out there think this 46/46/46/46 is a coincidence? Any idea how to guesstimate the probability? spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 26 09:30:48 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:30:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> <27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike> Message-ID: On 4/26/09, spike wrote: > Lee I don't know how to estimate the probability of such a thing happening > by chance, and have changed my mind on it at least twice, but currently I > think Billy did this himself. He had the sense of humor to do something > like this. How many of you out there think this 46/46/46/46 is a > coincidence? Any idea how to guesstimate the probability? > Numerology is fascinating, and by diligent searching you can find 'codes' in everything. William Shakespeare is an anagram of ?Here was I, like a psalm.? But don't throw commonsense out the window. Let's start. Did Bacon write Shakespeare's plays? Should you be looking for bacon? (Yummy!). The Bible was *published* when Shakespeare was 46. The Psalms were actually translated many years earlier. It is not 46 words from the end. You have to drop the last 'Selah' to get 46. The Hebrew words for 'shake' and 'spear' are common in the Old Testament and are bound to be found together somewhere. There is no documentation at all to associate Shakespeare with translating the KJV Bible. He was not a Hebrew or Greek Bible scholar. OK, so you're hesitating now. Maybe it was just coincidence. Here's the clincher. J. Karl Franson, writing in Word Ways (August 1994) revealed that in an earlier English translation of the Bible, by Richard Taverner, all the numerology given above was there! The Taverner translation was in 1559, 25 years before Shakespeare was born. The coincidences are more astonishing when one learns that the wording of Psalm 46 is not the same in the two translations! (Richard Taverner (c. 1505 ? July 14, 1575) is best known for his bible translation, The Most Sacred Bible whiche is the holy scripture, conteyning the old and new testament, translated into English, and newly recognized with great diligence after most faythful exemplars) BillK From aiguy at comcast.net Sun Apr 26 12:27:38 2009 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:27:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse? In-Reply-To: References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: I know this will please the beekeepers in the crowd! Science Daily has reported that scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm I'm happy for the bees and the reduced effect this problem will have now on agricultural yields but I wish scientists could find a cure to heart disease or cancer in this short of a time period. From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Apr 26 15:51:02 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:51:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_=5BDIYbio-SF=5D_=5BInvitation=5D_DI?= =?windows-1252?q?Ybio_Salon_=40_83C_Wiese_=40_Sat_May_2_2pm_=96_3p?= =?windows-1252?q?m_=28DIYbio_-_San_Francisco=29?= In-Reply-To: <0016e646034055c9a4046876a724@google.com> References: <0016e646034055c9a4046876a724@google.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904260851q188e4adfqde44d3c81c952654@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tito Jankowski Date: Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM Subject: [DIYbio-SF] [Invitation] DIYbio Salon @ 83C Wiese @ Sat May 2 2pm ? 3pm (DIYbio - San Francisco) To: DIYbio - San Francisco DIYbio - San Francisco, you are invited to DIYbio Salon @ 83C Wiese Sat May 2 2pm ? 3pm (Timezone: Pacific Time) 83C Wiese St, San Francisco, CA (map) Calendar: DIYbio - San Francisco Owner/Creator: titojankowski at gmail.com Artists, musicians, electricians, teachers, revolutionaries, hackers, Codecon-ers, gardeners, MAKErs, and students -- this is for you. I'm pleased to invite you to the DIYbio Salon -- a place to learn and share about biotech in the Bay area. Our first session will be held on May 2 at Noisebridge (www.noisebridge.net) in San Francisco. DIYbio Salon May 2nd, 2:00-3:00 pm Noisebridge, 83 C Wiese St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Google Maps Agenda: 30 min: What is Do It Yourself biology? What can I do in the Bay Area? 30 min+: Audience presents 10 minute lightning talks -- printouts, <<10 slides, demos are all excellent Q&A throughout - this is to get everyone's feet wet. If someone wanted to get the group up to speed on Arduino, the Noisebridge Cyborg group, and biofuels projects in the Bay, that would be perfect (please email me). Feel free to forward this to other mailing lists. More event details? Will you attend? Yes |Maybe |No You are receiving this courtesy email at the account diybio-sf at googlegroups.com because you are an attendee of this event. To stop receiving future notifications for this event, decline this event. Alternatively you can sign up for a Google account at http://www.google.com/calendar/ and control your notification settings for your entire calendar. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ DIYbio.org San Francisco For access to academic articles, email the name and title to: getarticles at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to DIYbio-SF+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: invite.ics Type: application/ics Size: 2024 bytes Desc: not available URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 26 17:42:45 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:42:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse? In-Reply-To: References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F49D15.2040400@libero.it> Il 26/04/2009 14.27, Gary Miller ha scritto: > I know this will please the beekeepers in the crowd! > > Science Daily has reported that scientists have isolated the parasite > Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from > honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the > infection with complete success. > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm > > I'm happy for the bees and the reduced effect this problem will have now > on agricultural yields but I wish scientists could find a cure to heart > disease or cancer in this short of a time period. Interesting enough, the theories about electromagnetic pollution, chemical pollution, etc. were wrong. Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 26 18:24:50 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:24:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? Message-ID: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> Neologisms seldom are a good idea, and even more rarely stick. "Meme" is the main one that did in recent memory. A word is badly needed, methinks, for "do a web search for". E.g., google for "incompleteness math". But "google" doesn't work since it's not generic (and something else feels wrong about it), and neither do (i) type for "math, incompleteness" (ii) search for "math, incompleteness" (iii) web lookup "math, incompleteness" Does anyone have any better phrases, or an idea? What about coining a brand new word? Also, is it possible that it would include the concept of "for", e.g., ________ "math, incompleteness" Lee From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Apr 26 18:36:11 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:36:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn Message-ID: <1727626603.145577.1240770971749.JavaMail.app@ech3-cdn05.prod> LinkedIn ------------ ExI, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Stefano PS: Here is the link: https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/566769104/8tK8OI5P/ It is free to join and takes less than 60 seconds to sign up. This is an exclusive invitation from Stefano Vaj to ExI list. For security reasons, please do not forward this invitation. ------------------------------------------ What is LinkedIn and why should you join? http://learn.linkedin.com/what-is-linkedin ------ (c) 2009, LinkedIn Corporation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 26 18:37:08 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:37:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426132959.0250dc08@satx.rr.com> At 11:24 AM 4/26/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >But "google" doesn't work Yes it does. And is now very widespread usage. (I used it as a verb in a story published nine years ago.) >since it's not generic Neither is Kleenex, but do you reach for a Kleenex or a "multi-ply facial tissue"? Do you gulp down a Tylenol or an acetaminophen capsule? Even when you mean some cheapo store-brand in either case. >(and something else feels wrong about it), What? Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Sun Apr 26 18:48:48 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:48:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 4/26/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > A word is badly needed, methinks, for > "do a web search for". E.g., google > for "incompleteness math". > > But "google" doesn't work since it's > not generic (and something else feels > wrong about it), and neither do > >From Webster's New Millennium? Dictionary of English Copyright ? 2003-2009 Dictionary.com, LLC Main Entry: google Part of Speech: v Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine Example: She googled her high school boyfriends. Etymology: trademark Google Usage: googling n Main Entry: google Part of Speech: v Definition: to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine Example: We googled to find the definition of the new word. Etymology: trademark Google Usage: googling n --------------- >From The Online Etymology Dictionary google (v.) "to search (something) on the Google search engine," 2000 (do a google on was used by 1999). The domain google.com was registered in 1997. ----------------- BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 26 19:01:33 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:01:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> Damien asks "What else makes you uncomfortable about it" or words to that effect. I don't know. BillK wrote: > On 4/26/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >> A word is badly needed, methinks, for >> "do a web search for". E.g., google >> for "incompleteness math". >> >> But "google" doesn't work since it's >> not generic (and something else feels >> wrong about it)... > >>From Webster's New Millennium? Dictionary of English > Copyright ? 2003-2009 Dictionary.com, LLC > > Main Entry: google > Part of Speech: v Well, I was the first in my circle of friends to use the word as a verb, because I remember one of them making a note of the fact that I did. So I'm probably just ahead of the curve here somehow, too... :-) > Definition: to search for information about a specific person > through the Google search engine > Example: She googled her high school boyfriends. Ah. Very good. So this strong form obviates "for". Maybe it just seems like an ugly word, and too hard to say (at least for the past tense like here). > Etymology: trademark Google > Usage: googling n > > Main Entry: google > Part of Speech: v Oh well. Looks like it's a done deal. Lee > Definition: to search for information on the Internet, esp. using > the Google search engine > Example: We googled to find the definition of the new word. > Etymology: trademark Google > Usage: googling n > > --------------- > >>From The Online Etymology Dictionary > google (v.) > "to search (something) on the Google search engine," 2000 > (do a google on was used by 1999). > The domain google.com was registered in 1997. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Apr 26 19:09:58 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:09:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> Too bad "web", "webbed" and "webbing" weren't used. The phrase "try googling 'math incompleteness'" still sounds awkward, whereas "try webbing 'math incompleteness' would have been better. E.g., "go web 'futurist'" as an imperative would have been dandy, or "go net 'futurist'". Lee Lee Corbin wrote: > Damien asks "What else makes you uncomfortable > about it" or words to that effect. I don't know. > > BillK wrote: > >> On 4/26/09, Lee Corbin wrote: >>> A word is badly needed, methinks, for >>> "do a web search for". E.g., google >>> for "incompleteness math". >>> >>> But "google" doesn't work since it's >>> not generic (and something else feels >>> wrong about it)... >> >>> From Webster's New Millennium? Dictionary of English >> Copyright ? 2003-2009 Dictionary.com, LLC >> >> Main Entry: google >> Part of Speech: v > > Well, I was the first in my circle of friends > to use the word as a verb, because I remember > one of them making a note of the fact that I > did. > > So I'm probably just ahead of the curve here > somehow, too... :-) > >> Definition: to search for information about a specific person >> through the Google search engine >> Example: She googled her high school boyfriends. > > Ah. Very good. So this strong form obviates "for". > > Maybe it just seems like an ugly word, and too > hard to say (at least for the past tense like here). > >> Etymology: trademark Google >> Usage: googling n >> >> Main Entry: google >> Part of Speech: v > > Oh well. Looks like it's a done deal. > > Lee > >> Definition: to search for information on the Internet, esp. using >> the Google search engine >> Example: We googled to find the definition of the new word. >> Etymology: trademark Google >> Usage: googling n >> >> --------------- >> >>> From The Online Etymology Dictionary >> google (v.) >> "to search (something) on the Google search engine," 2000 >> (do a google on was used by 1999). >> The domain google.com was registered in 1997. > > From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 26 19:11:31 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:11:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Prices In-Reply-To: <49F34CC7.5090904@rawbw.com> References: <590807.60821.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F34CC7.5090904@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F4B1E3.3080106@libero.it> Il 25/04/2009 19.47, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Well, Mirco, do you think that Dan is > right? How else to explain it? That is, > what?, folks in the south don't have > as much money? Or is it that they don't > like bread as much? The reasons are many and mix together: 1) The southerns have less income 2) They buy larger loaves of bread and much more bread 3) The costs of life, in general, is lower (lower house prices, lower wages,..) 4) They don't like to pay taxes (for example, the 95% of the families in the North pay the TV tax, "Canone RAI"; in places like Naples or Caserta the families that pay the TV tax are 20-10% sometimes less), so they have lower costs. 5) Moonshine production ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/14/mafia.italy?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews ) > Or is the price greater in the south > because (i) transportation or storage > costs are higher and (2) total volume > is lower (with the earlier factors > helping to determine that)? In the North, with higher wages, there are higher costs, less bread eaten per capita (but people eat other products from bakeries like) more costly bread is bough, the bread is produced in loaves smaller: for example some loaves are 1 kg size in the south and often they are 1/2 kg size, where in the north you could find only 120-80g loaves. The production of bread, in Italy, is only 10% industrial. Consider that there are something like 150-200 traditional types bread (I leave out the numbers about pasta, cheese, wine and oil). > Or am I totally lost here, and the > price is *lower* in the south? It is lower in the south; it is higher in the north. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 26 19:13:06 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:13:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Was the Chief Right? In-Reply-To: <49F3A441.2030304@rawbw.com> References: <49F3A441.2030304@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F4B242.4060506@libero.it> Il 26/04/2009 2.01, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > It was a very long time before anyone spoke. Finally > the Chief said, "We have tried making war just among > ourselves, and remaining at peace with the Whites, > as they would have it. But always the pattern is the > same. Either they cannot control their settlers, or > we cannot control our young men. And I pass completely > over the times when they have simply lied. Do they tried multiculturalism? I suppose it don't worked as well as they supposed. What will people must do when two mutually exclusive culture come in contact and can not ignore each other? Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 26 20:12:22 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:12:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse? In-Reply-To: References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of > Gary Miller > Subject: [ExI] Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse? > > Science Daily has reported that scientists have isolated the > parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional > apiaries... > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm > I have noticed that the bees around the Bay Area seem to have partially recovered. I see about twice as many bees this year on the lavenders as last, which is about half what I saw three years ago. Perhaps the local bees are recovering. The wild swarm I was hoping to recover from a tree this year collapsed: I found the hive filled with dead bees last month. > I'm happy for the bees and the reduced effect this problem > will have now on agricultural yields but I wish scientists > could find a cure to heart disease or cancer in this short of > a time period. Ja that would be nice. In the mean time caloric restriction can reduce your risk to some extent. It's all we have. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 26 21:01:04 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:01:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> <27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike> Message-ID: <985D4A8A6BD44AA194D885EBEF788B65@spike> > ...On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: Re: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks > 4,000-Year-Old Mystery > > On 4/26/09, spike wrote: > > ...How many of you out there think > > this 46/46/46/46 is a coincidence? Any idea how to > guesstimate the probability? > > ... > Here's the clincher...25 years before > Shakespeare was born. The coincidences are more astonishing > when one learns that the wording of Psalm 46 is not the same > in the two translations!... BillK Indeed! So the writers of the bible were so inspired that they wrote those Psalms in manner most prophetic, forseeing that an English writer would be born in the near future who would do magic with the language, wording the original Hebrew songs in such a way that centuries later, translators would honor the yet-to-be-born writer. Magnificent and mysterious are the ways of god! {8^D Thanks BillK. Anyway, it makes for a good story. And gives me an idea: I don't know who discovered the 46/46/46/46 coincidence, or how the hell she did it, but I do know it predates computers for I heard of it during my misspent youth. Did she have absolutely NOTHING to do, for years at at time? With the free downloadable word files of the bible, and Shakespeare for that matter, and a little skill in writing macro scripts, we could set idle computers to finding stuff kinda like this 46 phenom. The script I have in mind would look for certain key words that we can be certain the ancients wrote intentionally, to warn us of the horrors to come. For instance if we take the last five words of Exodus 3 verse 3 and append the last 11 words of that same chapter, we get the stunning message "Bush does not burn up...your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians!" Could it be MERE COINCIDENCE that the very same chapter (verse 8) mentions Jebusites, and 11 minus 8 equals 3? Get it, Floridians? JEB usites? Watch out Mubarek, Jeb Bush is planning to plunder your asses, even as you attempt to flee using that odd looking sideways-feet-sideways-hand thing you Egyptians like to do when fleeing from non-burned up sons and daughters. We could uncover any number of such remarkable truths using the complete bible word file and a few thousand otherwise idle computers. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 26 21:55:30 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:55:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> At 12:09 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, Lee e'd: >Too bad "web", "webbed" and "webbing" weren't used. > >The phrase "try googling 'math incompleteness'" >still sounds awkward, whereas "try webbing 'math >incompleteness' would have been better. > >E.g., "go web 'futurist'" as an imperative would >have been dandy, or "go net 'futurist'". In THE WHITE ACABUS (1997) I introduced "aksed" which immediately took flight like a... dead auk. I still think it nicely combines the common solecism for "asked" and the implied root term "access". In my forthcoming story from Tor.com, a character speaks of "consulting the Know." Presumably in that future, she'd have "knowed." Or "node." Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Apr 26 22:00:21 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:00:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <985D4A8A6BD44AA194D885EBEF788B65@spike> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com> <49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com> <27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike> <985D4A8A6BD44AA194D885EBEF788B65@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426165939.024d59b8@satx.rr.com> At 02:01 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >With the free downloadable word files of the >bible, and Shakespeare for that matter, and a little skill in writing macro >scripts, we could set idle computers to finding stuff kinda like this 46 >phenom. The script I have in mind would look for certain key words that we >can be certain the ancients wrote intentionally, to warn us of the horrors >to come. You've just reinvented the "Bible Code" algorithm. Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Apr 26 22:13:44 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:13:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> Message-ID: <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> Il 25/04/2009 18.29, BillK ha scritto: > But the main thing I don't like is the timescale of 15 to 50 years. The problem of the people in western world is the time. The want it all, the want it now. The electrification of the US or Europe, not to say Japan, China, Russia and many other places required decades. It could be argued that it never was completed. This is the same for the SPS. The project start with a pilot plant (one small SPS, one rectenna field) then you have experience of the problems, what work, what don't, what is cheap, what is not. Then apply the know-how developed and build another. If you want government help, the government could offer a reward for the first power plant able to feed 1 MW to the grid, then to the first able to feed 10 MW, 100 MW and so on. The reward could be a sum of money, a tax break, no tax for a 10 years period, etc. > How can you guarantee funding and political will for a project like that? None. This is because the SPS must be a private venture aimed to maximize profits. Future profits guarantee funding and will. > PV cells are improving month by month, becoming cheaper and more efficient. They could be good for distributed generation, not for base load generation. > By 15 years time, I would expect every building to be off the grid, > using spray on PV cells. And who knows what other energy improvements > will come along in that time period. You anyway need power for that nasty things like foundries, chemical industries and so on. The homes are not the centre of the universe. > By the time it gets half built, people will be wondering whether they > should be spending all this money on a project that is looking as > though it might not be needed after all. This is because it need to be a commercial venture: if there is no profit, the owner will find other uses or will scrap the project, because it is his money. The politicos would not stop the waste because it is not their money. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 26 23:33:44 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:33:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426165939.024d59b8@satx.rr.com> References: <836304.7820.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F3510E.1070203@rawbw.com><49F3DAD3.8090709@rawbw.com><27F32AE40F75412AB8D26AE4955D8DC2@spike><985D4A8A6BD44AA194D885EBEF788B65@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426165939.024d59b8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <595705CC70D8455FBFAB8983795AB87D@spike> >...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > > At 02:01 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > > >With the free downloadable word files of the bible... > >...and a little skill in writing macro scripts...warn us of the horrors to come. > > You've just reinvented the "Bible Code" algorithm... Damien Broderick The idea isn't new by any means. In my misspent youth in 1980, the college was given a mainframe computer, an HP3000. We had a word processor, if the term is used very loosely. One of the products one could get was an ASCII file containing the entire bible. It was expensive, so we budding theologians decided to raise an army of volunteers and type the thing ourselves, then compile the result. Then we could compete with the other company, perhaps make some money. We did manage to get the whole thing in there eventually, but we had nothing analogous to spell check, so I am confident there were plenty of mistakes. But we discussed at the time doing these kinds of random-ish exhaustive searches, this being nearly 30 years ago. The computers of those days, even the mainframes, were not really up to the task. Then PCs came along and life as we knew it changed forever. It's been fun to live thru the 80s and 90s. My son will never know what it was like back then. spike From max at maxmore.com Mon Apr 27 01:44:52 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:44:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists Message-ID: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I have a question for everyone: Actually, first, a pre-question: Are you familiar with the Union of Concerned Scientists? (If you've read much by Julian Simon or Petr Beckmann you've probably heard a little.) If so, how objective do you think they are, and do you see a pattern shaped by any particular attitude toward advancing technology or by a political agenda. I would appreciate any thoughts, publicly or privately. Thanks, Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon Apr 27 01:34:04 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:34:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> Message-ID: <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> At 03:13 PM 4/26/2009, Mirco wrote: snip >The project start with a pilot plant (one small SPS, one rectenna >field) then you have experience of the problems, what work, what >don't, what is cheap, what is not. Then apply the know-how developed >and build another. Alas, if this were possible, SPS would have been done decades ago. The problem is partly transporting the parts to GEO or alternatively getting materials from the moon or asteroids. Either way involves lifting a lot of material to GEO or beyond. Taking the parts up requires a shipment rate of around a million tons per year. Going after extra terrestrial resources might be done with only 100,000 tons, but it would take decades to bootstrap up space industry. The other hard part is that for optical reasons power sats (at least the microwave kind) just don't come in small sizes. If you assume 5kg/kW (a safe number) then for 5 GW (5 million kW) the mass is 25,000,000 kg or 25,000 tons (metric tons of course). At 5 tons per launch, 5000 launches. The rocket guys claim that for this many flights they could get the cost down from $20,000/kg to ~$2000/kg. ultimately to ~$500/kg to GEO. (Less to LEO, but you still have to get power sats to GEO.) At $1000/kg, and 5kg/kW a power sat per kg will cost $5000/kW just for the lift, not counting rectenna or parts. This is not competitive with nuclear. After working through this backwards, it turns out that to really compete, i.e., to take a large share of coal and oil market, we have to get launch cost to GEO down to ~$100/kg. That's next to impossible to do with rockets and anything close to current technology. The basic problem is the rotten mass ratio, which is a consequence of the low exhaust velocity from chemical fuels. Laser ablation propulsion is not limited to chemical exhaust velocities. Lasers have been considered for close to 30 years, but they require really huge lasers to lift even small payloads, one to three MW/kg, 1-3 GW/ton. It is a feature of the rocket equation that matching exhaust velocity to rocket velocity puts the most energy into the payload. (The exhaust gets left at zero velocity and all the energy is in the rocket/payload.) Thus rocket efficiency isn't bad up to a mission velocity near the exhaust velocity and costs are quite reasonable. Combining the high thrust of a chemical rocket first stage with a laser second stage using high exhaust velocity allows a relatively small laser to push a large payload for a long time, (close to 15 minutes). There may be other approaches that make a case for getting the lift cost down to ~$100/kg, but here is at least one. More at www.htyp.org/dtc. >If you want government help, the government could offer a reward for >the first power plant able to feed 1 MW to the grid, then to the >first able to feed 10 MW, 100 MW and so on. The reward could be a >sum of money, a tax break, no tax for a 10 years period, etc. http://htyp.org/Miller%27s_method snip From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 27 02:29:04 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:29:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists In-Reply-To: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <5B3FB97114BC407FB64817FFB46FA2D6@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Max More > Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists > > I have a question for everyone: Actually, first, a > pre-question: Are you familiar with the Union of Concerned > Scientists? (If you've read much by Julian Simon or Petr > Beckmann you've probably heard a > little.) If so, how objective do you think they are, and do > you see a pattern shaped by any particular attitude toward > advancing technology or by a political agenda... Max Max, my own reading is that they jump straight to a particular solution before all the data is in. I can't find anything on their site about the possible cooling effects of increased high cirrus clouds for instance, nothing about the alarming shortage of sun spots, and what do we do if we measure average cooling. Since UCS already decided that increased CO2 leads to global warming, then if some other effect comes along and starts global cooling, do we then burn coal like hell trying to compensate? Do we subsidize oil? To me this is one of the biggest questions we face if we decide the humans are impacting the global temperature. UCS sidesteps that question altogether. I see far too much idea fixation on reducing CO2 emissions. The global warming people need a unified theory that takes into account the suggested action if we see the much more immediately harmful possibility of a cooling planet. spike From brent.allsop at comcast.net Mon Apr 27 03:23:41 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:23:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists In-Reply-To: <5B3FB97114BC407FB64817FFB46FA2D6@spike> References: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <5B3FB97114BC407FB64817FFB46FA2D6@spike> Message-ID: <49F5253D.5020202@comcast.net> And everyone should keep in mind the claims of 'scientific consensus' on this issue could be complete mistaken BS. If there is a consensus, what evidence is there for such beyond such so called obviously biased "unions"? Here is a lot of evidence against such: http://www.oism.org/pproject/ ("signed by over 31,000 American Scientists') http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22866/New_York_Global_Warming_Conference_Considers_Manhattan_Declaration.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus To bad there isn't some rigorous open equally biased for comparison way to know for sure how much scientific (and otherwise) consensus there is so we could end all this infernal yes there is, know there isn't, for eternity, at least one side being obviously false ignorant childishness? Brent Allsop spike wrote: >> ...On Behalf Of Max More >> Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists >> >> I have a question for everyone: Actually, first, a >> pre-question: Are you familiar with the Union of Concerned >> Scientists? (If you've read much by Julian Simon or Petr >> Beckmann you've probably heard a >> little.) If so, how objective do you think they are, and do >> you see a pattern shaped by any particular attitude toward >> advancing technology or by a political agenda... Max >> > > > Max, my own reading is that they jump straight to a particular solution > before all the data is in. I can't find anything on their site about the > possible cooling effects of increased high cirrus clouds for instance, > nothing about the alarming shortage of sun spots, and what do we do if we > measure average cooling. Since UCS already decided that increased CO2 leads > to global warming, then if some other effect comes along and starts global > cooling, do we then burn coal like hell trying to compensate? Do we > subsidize oil? To me this is one of the biggest questions we face if we > decide the humans are impacting the global temperature. UCS sidesteps that > question altogether. I see far too much idea fixation on reducing CO2 > emissions. The global warming people need a unified theory that takes into > account the suggested action if we see the much more immediately harmful > possibility of a cooling planet. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 27 03:32:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:32:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426223057.0263dec0@satx.rr.com> At 06:34 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, KH wrote: >(Less to LEO, but you still have to get power sats to GEO.) Sails? Or would that take too long? Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Apr 27 03:35:21 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:35:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426223057.0263dec0@satx.rr.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426223057.0263dec0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 06:34 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, KH wrote: > >> (Less to LEO, but you still have to get power sats to GEO.) > > Sails? Or would that take too long? That deep in the earth's gravity well and that deep in the atmosphere it's really hard to use solar sales. Keith From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 27 06:03:07 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:03:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor Message-ID: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> To this day an amazing number of people refuse to admit that the Holocaust took place, or at least find reason to suggest that it never took place on a massive scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial The list (taken from there) is pretty amazing: * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad[114][115][116] * Mahmoud Abbas (Abbas' Moscow PHd involved denial, he has since largely retracted his position).[117] * Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi[68] * Mohammed Mahdi Akef * Harry Elmer Barnes[118] * Arthur R. Butz * Thies Christophersen * Doug Collins * G?nter Deckert * L?on Degrelle * David Duke * Fran?ois Duprat * Robert Faurisson * Bobby Fischer * Roger Garaudy * Hutton Gibson * J?rgen Graf * Nick Griffin * Richard E. Harwood (see Richard Verrall) * Michael Hoffman II * Gerd Honsik * David Irving * James Keegstra * Fred A. Leuchter * Norman Lowell * Horst Mahler * Carlo Mattogno * Carl O. Nordling * Konstantinos Plevris * Roeland Raes * Siegfried Verbeke * Dariusz Ratajczak * Ahmed Rami * Paul Rassinier * Otto-Ernst Remer * Michele Renouf * Manfred Roeder * Germar Rudolf * Bernhard Schaub * Israel Shamir * Gerald L. K. Smith * Wilhelm St?glich * Fredrick T?ben * John Tyndall[119] * Richard Verrall * Udo Walendy * Richard Williamson * Ernst Z?ndel * R. J. Rushdoony Now reading through most of those names, certain obvious correlations are clear. It seems to me that ideological predisposition is *the* explanation for holocaust denial in every case---except among some who simply hate Jews. True, there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald; there were no Jews made into soap; the "confession" of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, was extracted by force and contains his claim to have killed more Jews than was "humanly" possible. At least, so Christopher Hitchens says (who I suppose has looked into it). But to deny that more than 5M people were systematically killed on racial/ethnic grounds? or that the killing was "carried out at extermination camps using tools of mass murder, such as gas chambers"? That's , of course, sheer fantasy. But I understand why some people think this (as I said): predisposed ideological commitment. What I do not understand is why their extreme opposites, those who would persecute holocaust deniers, i.e., persecute people for merely SAYING that it never took place, go so far as to make it actually illegal just to SAY something. So some of our German colleagues were visiting us, and at lunch I asked, "Can you explain why you favor preventing free speech in this case?". Just ventured to explain, the most adamant and articulate of them---a highly intelligent but comparatively rigid and doctrinaire systems analyst---and basically, he denied it. He professed that technically, it is *not* illegal: "You'll just be sued," he said, adding "and you'll lose". This is not correct. Not only Germany, but Poland, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France and several others have made it explicitly *illegal*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_Holocaust_denial Our German colleagues were all in favor of those laws: "people should not be allowed to say these things that cause others so much suffering" basically, was the jist. Is this not an alien mentality to everyone here? Can anyone suggest an hypothesis that will explain what is going on in otherwise sensible and tolerant minds? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 27 06:16:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:16:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Was the Chief Right? In-Reply-To: <49F4B242.4060506@libero.it> References: <49F3A441.2030304@rawbw.com> <49F4B242.4060506@libero.it> Message-ID: <49F54DBC.8080408@rawbw.com> Mirco writes > Il 26/04/2009 2.01, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > >> It was a very long time before anyone spoke. Finally >> the Chief said, "We have tried making war just among >> ourselves, and remaining at peace with the Whites, >> as they would have it. But always the pattern is the >> same. Either they cannot control their settlers, or >> we cannot control our young men. And I pass completely >> over the times when they have simply lied. > > Do they tried multiculturalism? The American Indians were great believers in multiculturalism. This stemmed from their extreme individuality, which also helps explain why they could not unite against the whites. They did not tend towards suspicions of others' ways, unlike us. Most Indians wouldn't give a damn if you beat your wife, played loud music all night, or got stinking drunk and became a public menace. Nor would it ever occur to them to have concerns about your sexual habits, your religion, or your business practices. At least that's my understanding. > I suppose it don't worked as well as they supposed. It's as if they just couldn't see the big picture. Or, they simply didn't care about anything beyond next week or next month. > What will [people] do when two mutually > exclusive culture[s] come in contact > and can not ignore each other? We need only look at history. It's happened a lot. One C. Darwin explained the general phenomenon: the more hardy survives. (Of course, not all colliding cultures are mutually exclusive.) Unfortunately, the less tolerant culture is the one eliminated, or the one vastly inferior in technology and numbers. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 27 06:43:36 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:43:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> At 11:03 PM 4/26/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Our German colleagues were all in favor of those laws: >"people should not be allowed to say these things >that cause others so much suffering" basically, was >the [gist]. > >Is this not an alien mentality to everyone here? Perhaps, but that's not the real explanation. >Can anyone suggest an hypothesis that will explain >what is going on in otherwise sensible and tolerant >minds? Yes. We understand memes, cultural contagion and infection, the evolved human predisposition to behave abominably when we have a handy articulated structure of bullshit that's being openly accepted by others. To be very simplistic, but using a traditional analogy: do you, Lee, really think there should be no prohibition of, or penalty for, untruthfully screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theater? If you'd make an exception for that, how about "Jews, Homos and Niggers deserve to die, because they are inhuman scum who are destroying our way of life!"? Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 27 09:20:58 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:20:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists In-Reply-To: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904270220r49e8c4d7web323f5f8461a041@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:44 AM, Max More wrote: > I have a question for everyone: Actually, first, a pre-question: Are you > familiar with the Union of Concerned Scientists? (If you've read much by > Julian Simon or Petr Beckmann you've probably heard a little.) If so, how > objective do you think they are, and do you see a pattern shaped by any > particular attitude toward advancing technology or by a political agenda. I have heard about them as a group with a membership including rather few real scientists, and mostly concerned with an anti-tech, if not anti-scientific, agenda. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Apr 27 09:48:17 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:48:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904270248l15bc4237n32ec6e0a8f415c66@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > If you'd make an exception for that, how about "Jews, Homos and Niggers > deserve to die, because they are inhuman scum who are destroying our way of > life!"? I would only remark that in large chunks of Europe is way out of political correctness not only to condone the Holocaust; not only to deny its reality or scale on whatever ground or to compare it with other mass killing events; but since the beginning of the nineties even to discuss publicly... whether special laws limiting freedom of speech and/or research in this specific respect are justified and acceptable or not. Those possibly adhering to the say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", if they even exist, are in fact not so far from being put to test on that one. But, hey, the good news is that we are still somewhat more flexible on global warming, flat-earth theories, UFOs and evolution... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 27 11:43:35 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:43:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> Il 27/04/2009 8.03, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > What I do not understand is why their extreme opposites, > those who would persecute holocaust deniers, i.e., > persecute people for merely SAYING that it never took > place, go so far as to make it actually illegal just > to SAY something. > So some of our German colleagues were visiting us, and > at lunch I asked, "Can you explain why you favour > preventing free speech in this case?". Is it really free speech? Untruthfully screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theatre is not free speech: it is an unlawful act, not an unlawful speech. It is an act of "causing alarm". People alarmed will not think and debate and consider the message, they will react to the message without thinking or narrowing their critical sense. The same could be said about someone that tell you that "Mr.X want kill you and is out with a gun" when in reality he know it is false; then you react against Mr.X and kill him. In the case of holocaust deniers, they are negating a fact, not stating an opinion. It is like negating that a man was killed when there are witnesses, the corpse, the killer confession and many records of what happened. It is like telling lies in a trial. And becoming accomplices of the killer. In the case of Holocaust deniers not to the actual killers, but to their agenda. It is, for sure, a blurred line and very troublesome. I don't think the Holocaust is something unusual in the long history of humanity. Muslims did it often, Europeans did it sometimes as others did it. What is different is the application of industrial technology to the extermination of a people. But marching people until they die (like Turks did) or sending them in Gulags (as did and do the communists) accomplish the same results. I would say that forced sterilizing them like the Swedes did until a few decades ago to individuals considered unfit is not very different. > Can anyone suggest an hypothesis that will explain > what is going on in otherwise sensible and tolerant > minds? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 27 11:58:29 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:58:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Was the Chief Right? In-Reply-To: <49F54DBC.8080408@rawbw.com> References: <49F3A441.2030304@rawbw.com> <49F4B242.4060506@libero.it> <49F54DBC.8080408@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49F59DE5.7040907@libero.it> Il 27/04/2009 8.16, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Mirco writes >> I suppose it don't worked as well as they supposed. > > It's as if they just couldn't see the big picture. > > Or, they simply didn't care about anything beyond > next week or next month. This is what I believe. They were blind to what was beyond their time and cultural horizon. A few were able to foresee what could happen, but they were too few, too late to accomplish anything. But their technology was obsolete compared to the settlers technology. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 27 14:10:15 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:10:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] IBM AI and Jeopardy! References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer><49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it><10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer><1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426223057.0263dec0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/27jeopardy.html?_r=1&ref=science From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 27 15:40:23 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:40:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> Message-ID: Wrote: > Untruthfully screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theatre is not free > speech: I don't literally disagree with that, in fact I think anyone who screamed "theatre" in a crowded theatre should be booted out of the building, but it's interesting that I have never in my life seen that clich? used in support of any position I agreed with, not even the first time it was used. It was coined by Supreme Court Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in his Schenck v. United States decision. It involved prosecuting a man who wrote against the draft during World War 1. This is what Justice Holmes wrote in his decision to put the man in prison: "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." And this is what Justice Holmes thought would cause a panic and justified the imprisonment of Mr. Schenck the author: "Do not submit to intimidation, assert your rights. If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain. To draw this country into the horrors of the present war in Europe, to force the youth of our land into the shambles and bloody trenches of war-crazy nations, would be a crime the magnitude of which defies description. Words could not express the condemnation such cold-blooded ruthlessness deserves." > Is it really free speech? It's irrelevant today. In the age of the Internet, law or no law you're not going to have much luck restricting the flow of information. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 27 17:11:14 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:11:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellites Message-ID: <269814.98503.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 4/25/09, BillK wrote: > On 4/25/09, John K Clark wrote: > > >? You can't know that, in the power satellite > business we don't even know > >? what we don't know so nobody can pin a cost > number on it. About the only thing > >? we could say with any confidence is that it > would be the most expensive object > >? ever made by the human race. > > > > I agree that there are probably many unknown unknowns in a > project of > this scale. > > But the main thing I don't like is the timescale of 15 to > 50 years. > How can you guarantee funding and political will for a > project like that? > > PV cells are improving month by month, becoming cheaper and > more efficient. > By 15 years time, I would expect every building to be off > the grid, > using spray on PV cells. And who knows what other energy > improvements > will come along in that time period. > > By the time it gets half built, people will be wondering > whether they > should be spending all this money on a project that is > looking as > though it might not be needed after all. That's probably the best argument against any large scale public works project. :) Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 27 17:19:25 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:19:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> Message-ID: <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> Il 27/04/2009 17.40, John K Clark ha scritto: > Wrote: >> Is it really free speech? > It's irrelevant today. It is relevant, because free speech must be tolerated but action must be not. > In the age of the Internet, law or no law you're > not going to have much luck restricting the flow of information. This depend on how much power and freedom the enemies of free speech have. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 27 19:01:51 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:01:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> Il 27/04/2009 3.34, hkhenson ha scritto: > At 03:13 PM 4/26/2009, Mirco wrote: > > snip > >> The project start with a pilot plant (one small SPS, one rectenna >> field) then you have experience of the problems, what work, what >> don't, what is cheap, what is not. Then apply the know-how developed >> and build another. > > Alas, if this were possible, SPS would have been done decades ago. Well, decades ago we could not build cheap photovoltaic cells like now. The same is true for other technologies. SPS-enabling technologies are not really here now, but they are coming. Investments in developing the technologies are useful and probably able to generate profits as they can be used in many different ways. The same is true for many other related technologies like the Space Elevator, Laser Propulsion, etc. But an important point is to build a safe legal environment for the industrial development of the space. > The problem is partly transporting the parts to GEO or alternatively > getting materials from the moon or asteroids. I'm sure your is the cheapest way, but if the world economy continue to grow at a decent speed, we could have the resources to do it using the resources of Earth. > Either way involves lifting a lot of material to GEO or beyond. Taking > the parts up requires a shipment rate of around a million tons per year. > Going after extra terrestrial resources might be done with only 100,000 > tons, but it would take decades to bootstrap up space industry. This is possible or it could be possible to do it faster if key technologies are developed. Nanotech is obviously one of these. > The other hard part is that for optical reasons power sats (at least the > microwave kind) just don't come in small sizes. I have read a few years ago a plan from the Japanese to put SPS on low orbit and use the energy to power small appliances in a distributed way. >> If you want government help, the government could offer a reward for >> the first power plant able to feed 1 MW to the grid, then to the first >> able to feed 10 MW, 100 MW and so on. The reward could be a sum of >> money, a tax break, no tax for a 10 years period, etc. > http://htyp.org/Miller%27s_method Yes, the idea is good. You force the utilities to pay handsomely for the first 0,1% of the energy of the grid, then a bit less for the first 1% and so on. This make sure investor's risks are lowered, then they are able to risk their capital and don't need the same high return. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Apr 27 19:47:08 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:47:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> At 09:01 PM 4/27/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: >Yes, the idea is good. >You force the utilities to pay handsomely for the first 0,1% of the >energy of the grid, then a bit less for the first 1% and so on. You *force* the utilities??? What sort of free market capitalism is this? From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Apr 27 20:15:42 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:15:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <9DEC554EBFE2403CB39C6954C0664F97@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > do you, Lee, really think there should be no prohibition of, or penalty > for, untruthfully screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theater? I can't speak for Lee but as I said in a previous post I think there should be a penalty for someone screaming anything in a crowded theater; I want to watch the movie dammit. > If you'd make an exception for that, how about "Jews, Homos and Niggers > deserve to die, because they are inhuman scum who are destroying our way > of life!"? The operative word in the business of the rapid oxidation of the theater is "untruthfully", so that means government must now get into the truth determining business, and I really don't think they'd be very good at that, I'd prefer to do that little task myself. And it they stop all speech that is untruthful then the simple corollary is that anything the government approves of is true. I'm not sure but that doesn't seem to me to be the path to a free and happy civilization. And Damien, what is the point of debasing yourself by advocating laws against freedom of thought when you know there is not the slightest chance they will be successful? You're a intelligent man so you know it will work about as well as the recent attempts to stomp out the pirated copy of the new multi million dollar Wolverine movie after it reached the internet. Unscrambling an egg would be easy in comparison. Due to technology Internet racist morons will be able to communicate with other racist morons. It's not the end of the world, get over it; there is a cap on how much evil they can produce because they are, after all, morons. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Apr 27 20:57:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:57:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor Message-ID: <330358.43950.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/27/09, Lee Corbin wrote: [snip] > Our German colleagues were all in favor of those laws: > "people should not be allowed to say these things > that cause others so much suffering" basically, was > the jist. > > Is this not an alien mentality to everyone here? > > Can anyone suggest an hypothesis that will explain > what is going on in otherwise sensible and tolerant > minds? That they basically statists underneath and freedom of expression -- along with all other freedoms -- are viewed as something to be set aside under myriad provisoes and conditions. Don't you think, rather, that while this view is alien to you, it's quite common in most of the world. (I imagine, too, were you to ask the average American about allowing freedom of speech, she would be all in favor, but then in you went on to specifics about, say, using this or that abusive term or extremely unpopular expressions, she would suddenly be all in favor of restrictions. This has been my experience. Yeah, if I'm hanging out with civil libertarians, they might be in favor of a wide latitude for freedom of speech, but just about everyone else doesn't. Who's the real alien here?) Regards, Dan From aiguy at comcast.net Mon Apr 27 22:33:32 2009 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:33:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Union of Concerned Scientists In-Reply-To: <580930c20904270220r49e8c4d7web323f5f8461a041@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904270145.n3R1j2aD017307@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904270220r49e8c4d7web323f5f8461a041@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <077A219127DB4E91872E2E307C1C4B4E@ZandraQuad> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:44 AM, Max More wrote: >> I have a question for everyone: Actually, first, a pre-question: Are you >> familiar with the Union of Concerned Scientists? (If you've read much by >> Julian Simon or Petr Beckmann you've probably heard a little.) If so, how >> objective do you think they are, and do you see a pattern shaped by any >> particular attitude toward advancing technology or by a political agenda. > I have been reading their emails for a long time and they seem to be trying to promote many of the Green movements pet projects by finding scientists who agree with them and using that to appeal to the masses, mostly for money but also to sign petitions. I find only maybe one in twenty projects that I agree with or could support. From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Apr 27 22:45:50 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:45:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> Il 27/04/2009 21.47, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 09:01 PM 4/27/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: > >> Yes, the idea is good. >> You force the utilities to pay handsomely for the first 0,1% of the >> energy of the grid, then a bit less for the first 1% and so on. > > You *force* the utilities??? What sort of free market capitalism is this? I was evaluating the positive of the proposal, not the ethics of the proposal. I would prefer a real free market for all, utilities included. I would abolish any and all laws limiting the zoning of power plants, would reduce / abolish the taxes. You know, near the full Rothbard. But given that this is not the reality now, given that the government will not go away over the horizon, I evaluate how do the best with what is given. The government could force the utilities to buy up to 1% of the energy distributed at higher rates and payback them with a reduction of the taxes equal to the incurred expenses. This would be tax neutral for the utilities and the consumers. In Europe they do it for the electric solar power generated by privates so I don't see any problem to extend it to SPS generated electricity. But, given the choice, between lower taxes / smaller government and subsides for the SPS I would support the lower taxes. Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 27 15:52:18 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:52:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The top 0.1% earn 77 times the income of the bottom 90% Message-ID: <49F5D4B2.1050701@rawbw.com> On page 15 of the Economist (two weeks ago, the "Get the Rich" cover), there was this line: (in 2006) the top 0.1% of Americans earned 77 times the income of the bottom 90%. Note it was *income*, not total wealth. Also, it is not "per capita" obviously since there are 900 times as many people in the bottom 90%. So say we're generous, and via tax we let the top 1 in 1000 people keep, oh, say a mere 60 times the income of the bottom 90%. Then double what we all make in the bottom 90%, and use what's left to spread among the 90 - 99.9 in some equitable way. Somehow, I doubt that the top .1% is very much inconvenienced by this, and everyone else is tremendously better off. Yet I have this feeling in my bones that I am trying to circumvent a law of nature, or embrace a logical impossibility, or invent a perpetual motion machine. But what is the simplest two-sentence refutation of this? Hell, I can't really think of an airtight refutation at all. Lee From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 02:34:12 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:34:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904271934i1960b01aua3f15c7fd5527acc@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Emlyn wrote: > This is econ 101, and I think the really depressing thing is that you > are right. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we passed the point long ago > where most employed workers were doing anything real with their lives. > I know that value is defined relatively in this context, so it is > invalid to say what is real and not real value, but surely there is > some difference between work which directly feeds another person, say, > and work which is on the face of it entirely superfluous (eg: many > faceless bureaucrat jobs in government and large industry)? Maybe > tentatively you could say any particular job has a "reality > coefficient", which is derived from how much impact would be felt by > that job no longer being performed? Fuzzy. Sorry, this is difficult. > > I propose that pretty much all of the service industries are of this > nature; they are in fact make work, magically appearing out of the > ether based on a surfeit of labor that can do nothing else. I read > that the hospitality industry is expanding here at the moment due to > the availability of skilled workers coming out of the finance > industry, for instance. I actually think most of the "creative" and > professional jobs are also make work, but that's harder to argue. > > So, what I'm saying is yes, you are right that jobs get created. On > the other hand, it is very difficult to argue that as a group, we'd be > worse off if many of those jobs went unfilled. I would also posit that > many people, given the choice between doing their jobs and not doing > them, would choose not to do them, all else being equal (eg: if they > were still able to live comparatively well). > > Now if you concede that this is all true, then we have a picture of > many (most, I think) jobs really being about income redistribution. > You do need a mechanism to allocate resources, of course. But, is > making people perform what amounts to make-work really the best way to > do that? ### I do not believe that most currently existing jobs in the less un-free economies are "make-work". Sure, we could live without dog groomers, phone ringtone composers and society bloggers but this doesn't make them meaningless. Yes, there are life-and-death jobs, like police, farming or asteroid watching (crucial for survival on different time-scales) but there is more to a good life than simply staying alive, and being able to buy frivolities is a part of it. Of course, if a violent bureaucracy makes people waste their lives without benefiting anybody, that is evil (endlessly buffing the bronze effigies of the Dear Leader, cleaning Superfund sites, collating data for Sarbanes-Oxley) but except in the most deranged societies such jobs are not the majority. ----------------------------------------- > My worry is that we will get to a society of fully automated > production, and yet we will still all be employed, in ever more > unfulfilling and pointless paid work, with no mechanism to stop. ### I really don't think so. If you have an unfullfilling job and the option of buying a robot who will do it for you (and this is implied by "fully automated production"), you will probably elect to keep the robot busy while you look for something fun to do. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 03:14:16 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:14:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:27 AM, Dagon Gmail wrote: ### Dagon, I really don't know what you are talking about. Read Hernando de Soto. You are too confused about whatever you are trying to get pissed about. Also, you should look deep into your soul, and expel envy. Then run the numbers again, and come back if you have any more questions. But I can comment on one paragraph where you tried to provide a mechanistic explanation of how robotization is supposed to cause mass poverty: > > People have limited skills and ability to do meaningful work. > There is a limited demand for complex and highly rewarded work. ### Obviously, if there is low demand for complex work, it will not be highly rewarded. So the premise on which you build the argument is incorrect, in almost the most basic way imaginable, by directly contradicting the law of supply and demand. -------------------- > People are left doing simple jobs and as a consequence cannot improve > themselves. ### You cannot draw correct conclusions from incorrect premises. Here you are adding a restatement ("people are left doing simple jobs") of the first part of the previous sentence ("There is a limited demand for complex ....work"), and claim that somehow doing a simple job prevents you from improving yourself. Whatever the meaning of "improving oneself", this is manifestly untrue. So another completely useless sentence. ----------------- > Large amounts of people are doing machinelike jobs. ### I assume you mean "doable by machines". Well, yes, trivially true, absolutely all human jobs that do not explicitly demand humans as part of the job definition can be in principle performed by sufficiently sophisticated machines. ---------------- > Machines become available, in the span of a decade (2015-2025) than can > replace simple jobs. ### Maybe. So what? -------------- > Simple jobs are replaced by machines. ### Restatement of the previous. ------------------ > Pay for jobs decreases below the value of having machines do the job. ### Say it again? Obviously, if the pay for a human is lower than the cost of using a machine, then the human worker will not be replaced. So you contradict the previous two sentences. ------------------ > People who do simple jobs can not find jobs that pay them enough to live > humane existences ### Now this is the heart of your argumentation - a statement that if true, would certainly be a very good reason to break the machine, or otherwise do something wild and emotionally liberating. However, this statement floats in a vacuum - all the previous sentences are irrelevant, self-contradictory, or manifestly untrue, so the statement is just an expression of faith, not a reasoned, mechanistic explanation of your reasoning. -------------------- > US and EU society stratifies into a "rio de janearo model" > Many will claim, like people always did "something like that will never > happen here" > Rightwing and "free market" ideologies blame the unemployed to secure their > value systems. > Left wing and "socialist" ideologies start implementing statist, wasteful > bureaucracies > Black markets fill the gap and large criminal syndicates develop. > Society dehumanizes. We end up in a world where I do not want to live. > ### And here is the vision of dystopia used in roughly 80% of heated social arguments, making clear that all honest men must heed your word. I actually know a mechanistically plausible scenario where your vision could true but I don't feel like expounding on it. Please excuse me but I will not continue our conversation. Rafal From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Apr 28 02:33:59 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:33:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <88AD4B9CC58946FA9A9DF0ED81D95508@MyComputer> <49F0A48E.7040305@libero.it> <10AC18F4699C42548096CACC47D7B8EF@MyComputer> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> Message-ID: <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> At 03:45 PM 4/27/2009, you wrote: >Il 27/04/2009 21.47, Damien Broderick ha scritto: >>At 09:01 PM 4/27/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: >> >>>Yes, the idea is good. >>>You force the utilities to pay handsomely for the first 0,1% of the >>>energy of the grid, then a bit less for the first 1% and so on. >> >>You *force* the utilities??? What sort of free market capitalism is this? It's no skin off the utilities any more than the expensive solar power is to the German utilities. They just pass on the high mandated cost they buy at prices set by the government to the customers. What this amounts to is a tax, but unlike most taxes, the point is to pay a little more for a short time in order to get the power sat business going, then paying a lot less for power in the longer run. It would have to be structured carefully so at the end the customers were getting cheap power (and synthetic oil). Keith >I was evaluating the positive of the proposal, not the ethics of the proposal. >I would prefer a real free market for all, utilities included. >I would abolish any and all laws limiting the zoning of power >plants, would reduce / abolish the taxes. You know, near the full Rothbard. >But given that this is not the reality now, given that the >government will not go away over the horizon, I evaluate how do the >best with what is given. > >The government could force the utilities to buy up to 1% of the >energy distributed at higher rates and payback them with a reduction >of the taxes equal to the incurred expenses. This would be tax >neutral for the utilities and the consumers. > >In Europe they do it for the electric solar power generated by >privates so I don't see any problem to extend it to SPS generated electricity. > >But, given the choice, between lower taxes / smaller government and >subsides for the SPS I would support the lower taxes. > >Mirco >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 03:41:13 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:41:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Raising the Level of Discourse in General In-Reply-To: <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> References: <49E27E59.3000805@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904122138m76e92071p2727aeecfd2d9caf@mail.gmail.com> <49E3D904.4040807@rawbw.com> <7641ddc60904172140rc7b6a55n4a04a46a09064a12@mail.gmail.com> <49F376A7.1030406@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904272041w37ced998kad4ea65b0a6ff578@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: . It's a "take no prisoners" style of discourse > into which it seems to me you lapse from time to time: ### Lee, you wrote earlier that I am "parasitizing" the society, or something of the sort, so don't give if you can't take it. Did you notice that the first post I made on this wretched issue did not name names, just imprecated on the notions advanced? I didn't kick a shin first, if I remember correctly. ----- > > "This invalidates...", "Incorrect data", > "invalid" reasoning, math being "worth a damn" or not. > Sounds like I'm in a conversation with Mr. Data. > It's harder for thoughtful discussion to proceed. ### If the numbers don't make sense, it is invalid. How else do you want me to say it? -------------------- > You accuse me of hypocrisy (above) when, I surmise, > it seems to you that there is an inconsistency in > my position. This is overloaded and unnecessarily > caustic language! Why is that necessary? ### I meant what I wrote. I cannot believe that you can advocate mass ethnic cleansing and *really* think that this is just "causing people to simply relocate in another country with no inconvenience". You are veiling violent thoughts and motivations in soothing words. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 04:45:03 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:45:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904272145w6483baa0v3ea18fd431fe967@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:40 AM, John K Clark wrote: > Wrote: > >> Untruthfully screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theatre is not free >> speech: > > I don't literally disagree with that, in fact I think anyone who screamed > "theatre" in a crowded theatre should be booted out of the building, but > it's interesting that I have never in my life seen that clich? used in > support of any position I agreed with, not even the first time it was used. > > It was coined by Supreme Court Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in his Schenck v. > United States decision. It involved prosecuting a man who wrote against the > draft during World War 1. This is what Justice Holmes wrote in his decision > to put the man in prison: ### Now I know why the fire-in-theatre argument always sounded like something an evil person would use: It was invented as justification for imprisoning people who oppose slavery and mass slaughter. Of course, the argument is specious - a theatre is a private venue where the owner does not need to protect speech, and the act of lying to others may make you reasonably liable for damages if the victims can claim they were not in a position to properly evaluate the validity of your word, and this has nothing to do with almost any form of public speech - but then one should not expect good arguments from militant slavers. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 04:52:36 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:52:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The top 0.1% earn 77 times the income of the bottom 90% In-Reply-To: <49F5D4B2.1050701@rawbw.com> References: <49F5D4B2.1050701@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904272152p172da01jf3b820e6d116e3e1@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > On page 15 of the Economist (two weeks ago, the > "Get the Rich" cover), there was this line: > > ?(in 2006) the top 0.1% of Americans > ?earned 77 times the income of the > ?bottom 90%. > > Note it was *income*, not total wealth. > Also, it is not "per capita" obviously > since there are 900 times as many people > in the bottom 90%. > > So say we're generous, and via tax we > let the top 1 in 1000 people keep, oh, > say a mere 60 times the income of the > bottom 90%. > > Then double what we all make in the bottom > 90%, and use what's left to spread among > the 90 - 99.9 in some equitable way. > > Somehow, I doubt that the top .1% is very > much inconvenienced by this, and everyone > else is tremendously better off. > > > Yet I have this feeling in my bones that > I am trying to circumvent a law of nature, > or embrace a logical impossibility, or > invent a perpetual motion machine. But > what is the simplest two-sentence refutation > of this? > ### Here are my two sentences: "By taking from the usefully working and therefore rich you remove the reasons to be useful. By giving to the useless and therefore poor, you give more reasons to stay useless". And the bonus third sentence: "Are you sure it's a good idea?" Rafal From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 28 04:45:43 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:45:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] joke Message-ID: <49F689F7.8020209@rawbw.com> The purpose of this post is not to engage in the vulgar practice of using the web to disseminate jokes of questionable taste. Ahem. Certainly not! There is a point. Anyway: A young boy comes down for breakfast. Since they live on a farm, his mother asks if he has done his chores. 'Not yet,' said the little boy. His mother tells him no breakfast until he does his chores. Well, he's a little ticked off so when he feeds the chickens, he kicks a chicken. When he feeds the cows, he kicks a cow. When he feeds the pigs, he kicks a pig. He goes back in for breakfast and his mother gives him a bowl of dry cereal. 'How come I don't get any eggs and bacon, and why don't I have any milk in my cereal?' he asks. 'Well,' his mother says, 'I saw you kick a chicken, so you don't get any eggs for a week. I saw you kick the pig, so you don't get any bacon for a week either. I saw you kick the cow so for a week you aren't getting any milk.' Just then, his father comes down for breakfast and kicks the cat halfway across the kitchen. The little boy looks up at his mother and says, 'You gonna tell him or should I?' Get it? Did you get it? I submit that there are three kinds of people who don't get the joke: 1. those not familiar enough with English, or at least not familiar enough with the terms having to do with sex 2. innocents, e.g., young people or the very ascetic, who never happened to pick up on that universe of discourse 3. folks whose linguistic associations failed them or who demanded more in the way of strict logic than the joke supported, (a category into which I myself fell) I am reliably informed by two co-workers that ...... the joke revolves around one particular other term in the English language for cat besides "kitten", "kit" and so forth, to wit, "pussy" (a term, of course, that indeed is familiar to many, and even to me). Now I would have "gotten" a slightly different joke: the man comes downstairs and kicks the goat, and the little boy says to his mom, "You gonna tell him or should I?". It wouldn't have been very funny, in all probability, but it would have made more logical sense, implying perhaps a sudden discomfort to the man as his wife now realizes she has a rival. (I tried that, but a cat is too small. Er, I mean, I sought such an interpretation of the joke, but the cat was too small.) Consider that the entire context of the joke is supposed to have provided the basis for a linguistic association, and does in fact succeed for many or most people. Yet (so my take goes) such are the logical requirement of some of us that the following sequence Kick chicken -> No eggs for a week. Kick cow -> No milk for a week. Kick pig -> No bacon for a week. Kick cat -> No "pussy" for a week. doesn't work at all. In the first three cases the object of the kick provides a service. In the latter case, the cat is out of the picture, and only a synonym for the cat comes into play. Mind you---I'm not saying that the joke is wrong or illogical, just that I am surprised that it works for most people. (In my own case, so far as I can tell by introspection, it was a simultaneous linguistic association failure and a too rigid logical adherence, the former possibly provoked by the latter.) Any analogs to this phenomenon occur to you, or emergent new generalities, or other examples? Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 05:53:00 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:23:00 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904271934i1960b01aua3f15c7fd5527acc@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271934i1960b01aua3f15c7fd5527acc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904272253k24eec536x53f029e27ff1fda0@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/28 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Emlyn wrote: > >> This is econ 101, and I think the really depressing thing is that you >> are right. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we passed the point long ago >> where most employed workers were doing anything real with their lives. >> I know that value is defined relatively in this context, so it is >> invalid to say what is real and not real value, but surely there is >> some difference between work which directly feeds another person, say, >> and work which is on the face of it entirely superfluous (eg: many >> faceless bureaucrat jobs in government and large industry)? Maybe >> tentatively you could say any particular job has a "reality >> coefficient", which is derived from how much impact would be felt by >> that job no longer being performed? Fuzzy. Sorry, this is difficult. >> >> I propose that pretty much all of the service industries are of this >> nature; they are in fact make work, magically appearing out of the >> ether based on a surfeit of labor that can do nothing else. I read >> that the hospitality industry is expanding here at the moment due to >> the availability of skilled workers coming out of the finance >> industry, for instance. I actually think most of the "creative" and >> professional jobs are also make work, but that's harder to argue. >> >> So, what I'm saying is yes, you are right that jobs get created. On >> the other hand, it is very difficult to argue that as a group, we'd be >> worse off if many of those jobs went unfilled. I would also posit that >> many people, given the choice between doing their jobs and not doing >> them, would choose not to do them, all else being equal (eg: if they >> were still able to live comparatively well). >> >> Now if you concede that this is all true, then we have a picture of >> many (most, I think) jobs really being about income redistribution. >> You do need a mechanism to allocate resources, of course. But, is >> making people perform what amounts to make-work really the best way to >> do that? > > ### I do not believe that most currently existing jobs in the less > un-free economies are "make-work". I can't prove it, so go for it. > Sure, we could live without dog > groomers, phone ringtone composers and society bloggers but this > doesn't make them meaningless. Very true. Humans need to do things to be fulfilled, I agree 100% with this. > Yes, there are life-and-death jobs, > like police, farming or asteroid watching (crucial for survival on > different time-scales) but there is more to a good life than simply > staying alive, And also this, all good. > and being able to buy frivolities is a part of it. And here we differ. You are justifying the assertion that these jobs are not makework, by saying effectively that people get paid. Of course they get paid, that would be the very definition of makework; you get paid for doing something pointless. Alternatively, you could pay them to do whatever they want to do, voluntary activity. We need to judge makework on something else than payment, because payment alone can't distinguish between makework, and work that is actually worth doing (given that we are allowing that makework can exist). For the time-being, let's get away from the question of "is there makework?" and "how much makework is there?" and just look at "Is makework bad or good?". Actually, I might restate that as, "Is makework better than the alternative?". I'll call the alternative Voluntary Activity. Let's be a little utilitarian and define makework as work which has a negligible utility for the greater group, as opposed to "real" work which has a non-negligible utility. I think we can say the total utility of work is the utility to the group plus the utility to the individual. I'm happy to ignore "real" work for now, and just talk about makework, where the utility to the group is 0, so the total utility is solely comprised of the utility to the individual *. So what is the utility to the individual of makework? Well, probably it's based on whether it makes the individual happy. Seligman (authentichappiness.com) identifies three types of happiness; the Pleasant Life, the Engaged Life and the Meaningful Life. Read more here: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-quest-for-happiness-is-no-laughing-matter-20080513-2do0.html?page=-1 It's hard to say much absolute here, but I think we can get some insight by comparing make work to its opportunity cost, the voluntary activity one would otherwise undertake. The Pleasant Life: I think we can safely say that most of the time it is unlikely that a person, when faced with paid labour vs voluntary activity, can find something more pleasant to do than paid labour. I will also assert that it would never be the case that voluntary activity is less pleasurable than paid labour except by accident (we don't know what we want) or because the happiness deficit is balanced by some other form of happiness. The Engaged Life: This ties in with the concept of flow. I'm agnostic on Make Work vs Voluntary Activity here. The Meaningful Life: Make Work scores zero here by definition, unless the worker is fooled into thinking the work matters. Voluntary Activity scores 0 or more. So for individual utility we have: Pleasant Life: Makework <= Voluntary Activity Engaged Life: Makework == Voluntary Activity Meaningful Life: 0 == Makework <= Voluntary Activtity This says that, whatever the individual utility of Makework is, the individual utility of the Voluntary Activity foregone is equal to it or, very likely, greater. So solely based on the individual utility component of the total utility equation, my answer to "Is makework better than the alternative?" is no. It is in fact worse. * You can easily challenge the assertion that the utility of makework == zero for the group. Some types of positive utility I can think of: 1 - People need money: Well, give them some. If you are in a position to create Makework, then you are already giving away money. Just cut out the bullshit obligations. 2 - Idle hands do the devil's work: You put people in Makework to keep them busy. I can't support this; there are plenty of things people can do without bullshit work. The kind of alienation/depression people suffer in case of not having work is more to do with an unjustified social assumption that useful people work in paid jobs. And, repressing people so they wont cause mischief should be beneath us. 3 - The work ethic is valuable: This is probably important if the unavailability of "real" work is temporary. If it's permanent though, the work ethic is just leading us to a crazy place. I think it's permanent. In summary, if we don't need a person to work in order to support themselves, then we shouldn't make them. It leads to a worse outcome personally, and the summation of those worse outcomes gives us a worse overall outcome, ignoring the effects of happiness differences on people around us, which would further accentuate the problem. Makework is a bad way to allocate resources. So, we still need to decide, are any or indeed most of us engaged in makework, or not? I think so, Rafal thinks not, any others want to chime in? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 06:39:16 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904272253k24eec536x53f029e27ff1fda0@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271934i1960b01aua3f15c7fd5527acc@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904272253k24eec536x53f029e27ff1fda0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904272339w78afbc3cva2882e1111f75cf6@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:53 AM, Emlyn wrote: > > And here we differ. You are justifying the assertion that these jobs > are not makework, by saying effectively that people get paid. ### No, this is not what I claim. I say that since these jobs are useful (otherwise nobody would pay voluntarily for them), they are not makework. They make the lives of customers better, even if trivially so. The benefit to customer outweighs the inconvenience to worker (otherwise nobody would do these jobs voluntarily). The net effect is positive, even if such jobs are not indispensable for anybody's survival. Lack of relevance to survival does not make for pointlessness. ----------------------- > > For the time-being, let's get away from the question of "is there > makework?" and "how much makework is there?" and just look at "Is > makework bad or good?". ### Makework, that it paying in real coin for useless activity, is either stupid (if you are paying with your own money), or wrong (if you take somebody else's money to pay for it, either to yourself or to others). The net effect is negative. I don't see this is as controversial at all. ------------------ > Let's be a little utilitarian and define makework as work which has a > negligible utility for the greater group, as opposed to "real" work > which has a non-negligible utility. I think we can say the total > utility of work is the utility to the group plus the utility to the > individual. ### There is no utility to the group. The group has no utility function. Only individuals do. ---------------------- I'm happy to ignore "real" work for now, and just talk > about makework, where the utility to the group is 0, so the total > utility is solely comprised of the utility to the individual *. > > So what is the utility to the individual of makework? ### None. Work almost always has negative utility, and only payment sufficient to outweigh this disutility keeps us working. Some people (like me) are in the lucky position of enjoying a useful hobby that gets well paid, but this is uncommon, I gather. ------------------- > > In summary, if we don't need a person to work in order to support > themselves, then we shouldn't make them. ### I am not sure I understand the structure of your statement (who are these "we"?) but I think I might agree - I don't have a need (desire) to force others to work, and even if I did, I would still think it would be not nice to force them to do or not do anything. I am all for live and let live, you know. -------------- > > So, we still need to decide, are any or indeed most of us engaged in > makework, or not? I think so, Rafal thinks not, any others want to > chime in? ### Maybe you could name names and numbers on who is really involved in makework? Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 08:54:20 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:54:20 +0000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/28/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Obviously, if there is low demand for complex work, it will not be > highly rewarded. So the premise on which you build the argument is > incorrect, in almost the most basic way imaginable, by directly > contradicting the law of supply and demand. > No, that's not how the world works. The level of reward does not equal the 'value' of the work. (Now you need to get into a complex discussion about how to 'value' the work). Compare the rewards of different jobs and you will quickly notice strange anomalies. High rewards are in the entertainment industry and anything to do with celebrity. Pop stars, sports stars, hairdressers, chefs, interior designers, etc. The other big rewards are for the crooks in the financial industry, whose reward is as much as they can get away with, without actually being charged with fraud. So, if your argument is based on the theoretical law of supply and demand it fails in the real world that the rest of us live in. (Or, the corollary, that if it is correct, then the law of supply and demand produces a very poor quality of world). BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 09:52:22 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:52:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904280252p6aebc993k558826a5bc0ba18b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 7:19 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 27/04/2009 17.40, John K Clark ha scritto: >> Wrote: >>> Is it really free speech? > >> It's irrelevant today. > > It is relevant, because free speech must be tolerated but action must be > not. I am hardly an unconditional fan of the US legal system, but I think that the dominant interpretation by US current case law of the First Amendement is reasonable and balanced enough. OTOH, what exactly is the connection between Holmes reasoning on the punishment of false alarms and a possible claim, e.g., that the Night of Saint Barthelemy never took place? A false alarm creates a rushing towards the exit that may pointlessly kill people. Would the second scenario suggest that it is good to kill protestants and encourage people to do so? or that one should become a catholic, since catholics would be allegedly innocent of the behaviour blamed on them? or prevent interested parties to contradict the theory, and the others to form an independent opinion by comparing the existing sources? :-/ Label, defamation, inducement, istigation and apology of crime are distinct crimes, which are already punished by independent provisions, and I do believe that a community may live well enough by restricting prosecution, as far as speech is concerned, to those conducts. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 28 13:31:03 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:31:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <580930c20904280252p6aebc993k558826a5bc0ba18b@mail.gmail.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> <580930c20904280252p6aebc993k558826a5bc0ba18b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F70517.5070309@libero.it> Il 28/04/2009 11.52, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > OTOH, what exactly is the connection between Holmes reasoning on the > punishment of false alarms and a possible claim, e.g., that the > Night of Saint Bartholomew never took place? I'm not an expert, but Holmes was not reasoning but claiming that the drafted youngs would be sent to a slaughterhouse and other, and asked them to act. Now, after googling about the verdict, I know what is a "clear and present danger" standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger >> The question in every case is whether the words used are used in >> such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear >> and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils >> that the United States Congress has a right to prevent. It is a >> question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many >> things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to >> its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men >> fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any >> constitutional right. > A false alarm creates a rushing towards the exit that may > pointlessly kill people. It cause a "clear and present danger". What danger could be caused by negating the Night of St. Bartholomew is the question. Not now, but in the time and place it is done. And what are the intentions of who that do it. > Would the second scenario suggest that it is good to kill > protestants and encourage people to do so? or that one should become > a catholic, since Catholics would be allegedly innocent of the > behaviour blamed on them? or prevent interested parties to contradict > the theory, and the others to form an independent opinion by > comparing the existing sources? :-/ It depend, as I understand, from the background. Take the Holocaust deniers: I have not a problem if historians debate in their papers their findings (or what they think they have found) about the numbers and the types of the victims of the Holocaust and how it happened. Nor if a newspaper report the news. The problem is when the "findings" are used to disprove the right to the existence of Israel, that is right to kick the Jews in the sea, the existence of a world-wide Jews conspiracy aimed to dominate the world and justify attacks of Jews everywhere as a way to "defend themselves". Then, in the US, the Schenck v. United States the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States was overthrow by the Brandenburg v. Ohio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio For the critics of the "Schenck v. United States" and Justice Holmes I want point out that the standard at the time was much less stringent, so people could be sentenced even without a "clear and present danger" but only for "Bad tendency" and it was a far more ambiguous standard where speech could be punished even in the absence of identifiable danger. > Label, defamation, inducement, instigation and apology of crime are > distinct crimes, which are already punished by independent > provisions, I'm not sure they are all punished in the US. Is "apology of crime" a crime in the US? > and I do believe that a community may live well enough by > restricting prosecution, as far as speech is concerned, to those > conducts. I hope so. But we must understand that the standard become more stringent as the individuals become less prone to act after inflammatory speeches and less violent (Flynn Effect? less youths around?). What would happen if we import low IQ people, with a different morality, that regard violence as a normal way to address problems (from beating their wives and children to raping not enough covered meat (AKA kafir women) or rioting for an allegation of a flushed Quran). These people would be more prone to react at inflammatory speeches in a violent and unlawful way. This is the reason used to justify, in the UK, the suppression of the St-Georges-Day-parade and much more, so I don't see a reason to not apply the same restrictions to the inflammable people. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-560769/Cancelled-police-advice-St-Georges-Day-parade-Bradford-race-riot-zone.html I think that with a fully implemented Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights there would not be so much need to restrict speech as there would be many less helpless potential victims of inflammatory speeches. I would have not so many problems with an Imam advocating the raping of "uncovered meat" if all the "uncovered meat" had a Glock and ammos and the right to use them. Natural selection would take care of the problem. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 13:32:01 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:32:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians Message-ID: <229761.74193.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, BillK wrote: > On 4/28/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > ### Obviously, if there is low demand for complex > work, it will not be > >? highly rewarded. So the premise on which you > build the argument is > >? incorrect, in almost the most basic way > imaginable, by directly > >? contradicting the law of supply and demand. > > > No, that's not how the world works. > The level of reward does not equal the 'value' of the > work. > > (Now you need to get into a complex discussion about how to > 'value' the work). > > Compare the rewards of different jobs and you will quickly > notice > strange anomalies. > > High rewards are in the entertainment industry and anything > to do with > celebrity. Pop stars, sports stars, hairdressers, chefs, > interior > designers, etc. > > The other big rewards are for the crooks in the financial > industry, > whose reward is as much as they can get away with, without > actually > being charged with fraud. > > So, if your argument is based on the theoretical law of > supply and > demand it fails in the real world that the rest of us live > in. > (Or, the corollary, that if it is correct, then the law of > supply and > demand produces a very poor quality of world). No. The law of supply and demand is not a law people merely adhere to casually -- because they're too stupid to see real value -- or a law that they adhere to because of ideological predilections. It merely states what's inescapable. The reason some people in the entertainment industry are paid a lot is because they are, for whatever reason, highly demanded or (inclusive "or") in short supply as compared with others -- say, farmers, mathematics professors, trauma surgeons, and caretakers. What you've stumbled onto, too, is the what diamonds and water paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value I'd also point out, too, that with regard to entertainers who make a lot of money, the judgment that they make too much (or too little) is subjective and merely signals the judge's particular subjective values. Yeah, you and I probably think that a highly paid sports star is not of any value to us. But the thing she or he is obviously of value to others -- that is, they value her or his entertainment more than other options, hence they're willing to trade other values (e.g., money) for it. (And all that would happen if you or I or Rafal or a group of people were to decide who gets paid what is merely to substitute our value judgments for those of the people who actually pay lots, say, to see their favorite team play.)* Regards, Dan * Of course, this is ignoring the myriad government interferences in the market, such as, in the case of sports, subsidizing sports stadia (which in the US are mostly publicly funded under the lie that they somehow generate more economic growth; this may at best generate growth in one area, but only at the expense of shrinking it in another, often more than offsetting any gains**) and training (think of public schools in the US with football teams). ** Were this not so, then it'd have almost definitely been the case that private investors would've snapped at the chance to fund such projects -- to recoup huge profits. Instead, they tend to shirk off such funding to get a free lunch at the taxpayer's expense. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 13:07:55 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:07:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The top 0.1% earn 77 times the income of the bottom 90% Message-ID: <491856.50919.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/27/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > On page 15 of the Economist (two > weeks ago, the > "Get the Rich" cover), there was this line: > > ? (in 2006) the top 0.1% of Americans > ? earned 77 times the income of the > ? bottom 90%. > > Note it was *income*, not total wealth. > Also, it is not "per capita" obviously > since there are 900 times as many people > in the bottom 90%. > > So say we're generous, and via tax we > let the top 1 in 1000 people keep, oh, > say a mere 60 times the income of the > bottom 90%. > > Then double what we all make in the bottom > 90%, and use what's left to spread among > the 90 - 99.9 in some equitable way. > > Somehow, I doubt that the top .1% is very > much inconvenienced by this, and everyone > else is tremendously better off. > > > Yet I have this feeling in my bones that > I am trying to circumvent a law of nature, > or embrace a logical impossibility, or > invent a perpetual motion machine. But > what is the simplest two-sentence refutation > of this? > > Hell, I can't really think of an airtight > refutation at all. I would question the use of the word "earn" here -- given wealth transfers to the rich as well as to the non-rich. Has a person who has gotten wealthy because she or he had good connections in the central government -- hence got lucrative contracts, subsidies, or other assistance* -- really earned it? This, of course, doesn't answer your question. Rafal already provided a pragmatic response to it. I would try to persuade people of the immorality of taking any justly earned or justly acquired wealth. And I'd also try to persuade people that there should be no presumption of equality in earnings or wealth. Regards, Dan * Such assistance can even, at the extreme, including regulations that hurt the person's business, but hurts her or his rivals' businesses more. This, e.g., seems to be why Walmart would support increasing the minimum wage in the US: yes, such an increase would hurt Walmart, but it would hurt its rivals -- especially small mom and pop firms -- even more. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 14:06:04 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:06:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view Message-ID: <988161.98558.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm surprised to see no one is looking at what Rothbard actually wrote on this subject at: http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp (Just search on "fire" for the passage dealing with this issue.) Notice how this view actually clears up much. No need for a judge or government to weigh one person's rights against another's (or against an collective or abstraction like "society" or the "community"). No need for fuzzy boundaries. This is not to say that Rothbard's system completely banishes all ambiguities and fuzziness, but I believe, in this case, it confutes Holmes and his seconds. (There is one fault in Rothbard's analysis: a third party -- neither owner nor patron -- might cry "fire" in the theater. But, in that case, in his system, it still resolves to a property rights issue.) Regards, Dan From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 14:18:32 2009 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:18:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <918a899d0904280718r555b8c37g6fdda734b61b2dc1@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > In THE WHITE ACABUS (1997) I introduced "aksed" which immediately took > flight like a... dead auk. I still think it nicely combines the common > solecism for "asked" and the implied root term "access". Maybe because many people actually (and erroneously) pronounce the word "asked" as "aksed"? Joseph From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue Apr 28 06:54:36 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:54:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> Message-ID: <49F6A82C.9090108@rawbw.com> Earlier, Mirco wrote > [Lee wrote] > > > So some of our German colleagues were visiting us, and > > at lunch I asked, "Can you explain why you favour > > preventing free speech in this case?". > > Is it really free speech? > ... > In the case of holocaust deniers, they are negating > a fact, not stating an opinion. It is like negating > that a man was killed when there are witnesses, the > corpse, the killer confession and many records of > what happened. It is like telling lies in a trial. One does not know they're intentionally lying. One may believe quite differently from them, that's about it. People often debate the record about something. Now you write > Il 27/04/2009 17.40, John K Clark ha scritto: > > > Wrote: > > > > Is it really free speech? > > > It's irrelevant today. > > It is relevant, because free speech must be > tolerated but action must be not. What's to keep the authorities from proscribing anything they dislike, e.g., don't most Democrats think that the Republican pundits are not being accurate, and vice-versa? > > In the age of the Internet, law or no law > > you're not going to have much luck restricting > > the flow of information. > > This depend on how much power and freedom the > enemies of free speech have. There aren't many places in the world where they have that kind of power, not any more. Lee From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 14:39:18 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:39:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <229761.74193.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <229761.74193.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 4/28/09, Dan wrote: >> No. The law of supply and demand is not a law people merely adhere to casually > -- because they're too stupid to see real value -- or a law that they adhere to > because of ideological predilections. It merely states what's inescapable. > The reason some people in the entertainment industry are paid a lot is because > they are, for whatever reason, highly demanded or (inclusive "or") in short supply > as compared with others -- say, farmers, mathematics professors, > trauma surgeons, and caretakers. > > What you've stumbled onto, too, is the what diamonds and water paradox: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value > That's what I said. :) You have to start discussing complex theories of 'value'. Supply and demand is not a law. Lots of things the public wants, they can't get. And lots of things available, they don't really want. But you have to make do with what is available. In olden times, you had to pay the strolling minstrel to hear him sing. Nowadays, everyone that sees or hears anything could be recording it. I've been to concerts where the band announced they would not be playing anything from their latest recordings because of the danger of surreptitious recording. So the audience were treated to 'Their greatest Hits' of years past. (Still enjoyable). > I'd also point out, too, that with regard to entertainers who make a lot of money, > the judgment that they make too much (or too little) is subjective and merely > signals the judge's particular subjective values. Yeah, you and I probably think > that a highly paid sports star is not of any value to us. But the thing she or he is > obviously of value to others -- that is, they value her or his entertainment more > than other options, hence they're willing to trade other values (e.g., money) for it. > (And all that would happen if you or I or Rafal or a group of people were to decide > who gets paid what is merely to substitute our value judgments for those of the > people who actually pay lots, say, to see their favorite team play.)* > > Of course, this is ignoring the myriad government interferences in the market, > Not the evil government again! Boo! Hiss! ;) It is also ignoring all the 'entertainment industry' interference in the market, with all the manufactured boy bands, promotions, etc. manipulating the market. It is also ignoring all the crooked dealers in the market, like the financiers out for as much as they can con people for. 'Supply and demand' is like the 'free market'. They are mythical beasts that never appear in our day to day world. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 28 14:35:49 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:35:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904272339w78afbc3cva2882e1111f75cf6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904211823j5c9dc8d9kef88a28c48522028@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271934i1960b01aua3f15c7fd5527acc@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904272253k24eec536x53f029e27ff1fda0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272339w78afbc3cva2882e1111f75cf6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F71445.2030508@libero.it> Il 28/04/2009 8.39, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: Makeworks are works mandated by laws. Without laws the makeworks would not exist. Usually a makeworks stop someone from doing a job that he could do as well or better than the people that do the makework. For example, a law that prevents the plumber to do the work of a mason when repairing a home plant is a makework law. The owner of the home is forced to pay the mason to break the wall, the plumber to repair the plant and again the mason to repair the wall. The owner will do it only because he have no other way to have the job done. But, given the plumber is also a capable mason, he would prefer to pay the same to the plumber to do all the job himself. The main point to a makework job is to prevent other from doing the job in question and force people to pay more for the job done. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 14:55:52 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:55:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Aks/was Re: time for a new word? Message-ID: <921512.32768.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Joseph Bloch wrote: > Damien Broderick > wrote: > > > > In THE WHITE ACABUS (1997) I introduced "aksed" which > immediately took > > flight like a... dead auk. I still think it nicely > combines the common > > solecism for "asked" and the implied root term > "access". > > Maybe because many people actually (and erroneously) > pronounce the > word "asked" as "aksed"? Whether it's erroneous depends... It's a metathesis -- change in the order of sounds in a word -- which happens often enough in language. Also, I've read that there was an AngloSaxon word pronounced "aksee-en" (not sure of the stresses) that meant "to ask." Should we complain -- as long as we understand what's meant? (Of course, depending on audience, one might prefer to use one pronunciation over another.) Of course, there's a big difference, in my view, between this sort of spontaneous language change and someone cooking up a new word. The latter is usually unsuccessful -- if success is measure by the neologism catching on, no? Regards, Dan From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 28 15:21:12 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:21:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <918a899d0904280718r555b8c37g6fdda734b61b2dc1@mail.gmail.co m> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> <918a899d0904280718r555b8c37g6fdda734b61b2dc1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090428100848.02488a40@satx.rr.com> > > In THE WHITE ACABUS (1997) I introduced "aksed" which immediately took > > flight like a... dead auk. I still think it nicely combines the common > > solecism for "asked" and the implied root term "access". > >Maybe because many people actually (and erroneously) pronounce the >word "asked" as "aksed"? That's what "common solecism" means--a common mistake of usage, in this case of pronunciation. My little word is a portmanteau of "asked(for information)-mispronounced-as-aksed" and "accessed". (And since the people using it in my novel tend to be the equivalent of today's rich and powerful, there's a little puzzling frisson for the reader precisely because they're *not* uneducated.) But yes, for all these reasons I didn't really expect it to spread like a hot new meme. I fear my brand of punnish whimsy does not travel well in the USA. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 15:27:55 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:27:55 +0000 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090428100848.02488a40@satx.rr.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> <918a899d0904280718r555b8c37g6fdda734b61b2dc1@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090428100848.02488a40@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 4/28/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > But yes, for all these reasons I didn't really expect it to spread like a > hot new meme. I fear my brand of punnish whimsy does not travel well in the > USA. > Don't you dare punish whimsy! What has she done to deserve such treatment? First they came for whimsy, then caprice, conceit, fancy and vagary. Where will it all end? BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Apr 28 15:41:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:41:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F6A82C.9090108@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> <49F6A82C.9090108@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090428102805.022d2408@satx.rr.com> At 11:54 PM 4/27/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > > In the case of holocaust deniers, they are negating > > a fact, not stating an opinion. It is like negating > > that a man was killed when there are witnesses, the > > corpse, the killer confession and many records of > > what happened. It is like telling lies in a trial. > >One does not know they're intentionally lying. One >may believe quite differently from them, that's >about it. People often debate the record about >something. Omg. Lee, you started out by asking how apparently sensible people could become "intolerant", demanding or accepting restrictions on certain kinds of public speech. Mirco accurately used the word "inflammatory" for such speech, which is exactly to the point, but you and some others instantly side-stepped this key aspect and shifted the topic to some sort of lofty parliamentarian or academic debate. John Clark seems to think an inflammatory KKK march complete with frothing speeches calling for the ill treatment of black humans is annoying in the same way as someone raising his voice in the cinema during a movie. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 16:30:10 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:30:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F70517.5070309@libero.it> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> <580930c20904280252p6aebc993k558826a5bc0ba18b@mail.gmail.com> <49F70517.5070309@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904280930r2685258dsc7115bc9ef052578@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:31 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 28/04/2009 11.52, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > >> OTOH, what exactly is the connection between Holmes reasoning on the >> punishment of false alarms and a possible claim, e.g., that the >> Night of Saint Bartholomew never took place? > > I'm not an expert, but Holmes was not reasoning but claiming that the > drafted youngs would be sent to a slaughterhouse and other, and asked them > to act. Yes. I was speaking in general to the reasoning by which he took the false-alarm-in-a-theatre argument as a reasoable example of a possible exception to an unconditional freedom of speech. > The problem is when the "findings" are used to disprove the right to the > existence of Israel, that is right to kick the Jews in the sea, the > existence of a world-wide Jews conspiracy aimed to dominate the world and > justify attacks of Jews everywhere as a way to "defend themselves". I agree, the problem being mainly a non-sequitur. When exactly did the fact of having suffered genocidal attentions at the hands of enemies become a requirement to establish a national entity? >> Label, defamation, inducement, instigation and apology of crime are >> distinct crimes, which are already punished by independent >> provisions, > > I'm not sure they are all punished in the US. > Is "apology of crime" a crime in the US? Mmhhh, good question. Any local jurist cares to answer to that one? "Apology of crime" in civil law is the conduct consisting more or less in any propaganda aimed at exalting a given criminal conduct as such and exciting public praises thereof. It is however distinct from "inducement" or "istigation" which requires an active, positive pressure to persuade one or more people to commit the crime concerned, as in "Please do it" or "You must do it" rather than "Doing it is the right thing to do". >> and I do believe that a community may live well enough by >> restricting prosecution, as far as speech is concerned, to those >> conducts. > > I hope so. > But we must understand that the standard become more stringent as the > individuals become less prone to act after inflammatory speeches and less > violent (Flynn Effect? less youths around?). Possibly so, in terms of economic analysis of law. But this of course would suggest that restrictions to freedom of speech should be progressively... restricted, rather than expanded. > What would happen if we import low IQ people, with a different morality, > that regard violence as a normal way to address problems (from beating their > wives and children to raping not enough covered meat (AKA kafir women) or > rioting for an allegation of a flushed Quran). What about not importing them in the first place? :-) Yet, it appears to me that the US managed to survive with both a less "timid" population *and* with more a more libertarian stance on free speech, as opposed to more conformist and peaceful (or perhaps cynic) countries with a more stringent regulation thereof... -- Stefano Vaj From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 28 16:36:12 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:36:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Selling the Green Economy Message-ID: <200904281636.n3SGaMSj011964@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Article by Robert Samuelson: http://www.newsweek.com/id/195233 From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 16:56:29 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:56:29 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The furthest object ever seen Message-ID: No one has ever seen an object further away than the one at the center of the image below. It?s a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 090423, spotted by the Swift satellite on April 23rd and quickly observed by the Gemini Observatory and United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, both on Mauna Kea (Hawaii). The source is visible at longer wavelengths but disappears at the 1 micron level, all of which corresponds to a distance of about thirteen billion light years. The new GRB 090423 at a redshift of z = 8.2 easily broke the previous record for gamma-ray bursts, and also exceeds the highest redshift galaxy and quasar discovered to date, making it the most distant known object in the Universe. GRB 090423 exploded on the scene when the Universe was only 630 million years old, and its light has been travelling to us for over 13 billion years. BillK From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 17:28:58 2009 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:28:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time for a new word? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090428100848.02488a40@satx.rr.com> References: <49F4A6F2.1090404@rawbw.com> <49F4AF8D.60307@rawbw.com> <49F4B186.9060403@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090426164947.024d64a8@satx.rr.com> <918a899d0904280718r555b8c37g6fdda734b61b2dc1@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090428100848.02488a40@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <918a899d0904281028r2f325249k951d89cf45ca6ac5@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> > In THE WHITE ACABUS (1997) I introduced "aksed" which immediately took >> > flight like a... dead auk. I still think it nicely combines the common >> > solecism for "asked" and the implied root term "access". >> >> Maybe because many people actually (and erroneously) pronounce the >> word "asked" as "aksed"? > > That's what "common solecism" means--a common mistake of usage, in this case > of pronunciation. My little word is a portmanteau of "asked(for > information)-mispronounced-as-aksed" and "accessed". (And since the people > using it in my novel tend to be the equivalent of today's rich and powerful, > there's a little puzzling frisson for the reader precisely because they're > *not* uneducated.) Yes... that was the sound of my little joke going *kerplowie*. ;-) Joseph From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 18:10:38 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:10:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] joke In-Reply-To: <49F689F7.8020209@rawbw.com> References: <49F689F7.8020209@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <62c14240904281110m381aa794lad8475b75149005b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Any analogs to this phenomenon occur to you, > or emergent new generalities, or other examples? > 'Man walks into a bar... ... says "ouch." We find humor in the unexpected outcome that (in retrospect) could have been obvious. What I find interesting is that we generally like this kind of deception while we dislike many others. From sparge at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 18:50:20 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:50:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Most Fuel Efficient Cars (was: Selling the Green Economy) Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Max More wrote: > Article by Robert Samuelson: > http://www.newsweek.com/id/195233 Not to hijack the thread, but while reading that article I saw a promo for "America's Most Fuel Efficient Cars" (http://www.newsweek.com/id/123631). The Prius topped the list in the mid 40's. By number 5 we're down to the mid 30's. WTF!? Ten years ago I had a Geo Metro XFi that routinely got 55+ MPG in mixed city/highway driving. Granted, that was a pretty spartan car (crank windows, no A/C) by today's standards. But VW has a 70+ MPG car today that's probably more mainstream (http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4219904.html). What's it going to take to get a truly fuel efficient car available in the US? How do/will fuel cell cars compare in terms of efficiency and cleanliness? -Dave From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 19:23:22 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:23:22 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Most Fuel Efficient Cars (was: Selling the Green Economy) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/28/09, Dave Sill wrote: > What's it going to take to get a truly fuel efficient car available in > the US? How do/will fuel cell cars compare in terms of efficiency and > cleanliness? > I blame the evil US government for not making US gas taxes high enough. The Euro price is about 3 to 4 times higher than US prices, due to our lovable government taxation. Result - Euroland has much more economical cars than the US and we drive lower mileage. And Euro governments have more tax income to spend lavishly without running trillion dollar deficits. What's not to like? ;) BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 19:15:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:15:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Most Fuel Efficient Cars Message-ID: <910472.83823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Dave Sill wrote: > More > wrote: > > Article by Robert Samuelson: > > http://www.newsweek.com/id/195233 > > Not to hijack the thread, but while reading that article I > saw a promo > for "America's Most Fuel Efficient Cars" > (http://www.newsweek.com/id/123631). The Prius topped > the list in the > mid 40's. By number 5 we're down to the mid 30's. > > WTF!? Ten years ago I had a Geo Metro XFi that routinely > got 55+ MPG > in mixed city/highway driving. Granted, that was a pretty > spartan car > (crank windows, no A/C) by today's standards. But VW has a > 70+ MPG car > today that's probably more mainstream > (http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4219904.html). > > What's it going to take to get a truly fuel efficient car > available in > the US? How do/will fuel cell cars compare in terms of > efficiency and > cleanliness? I'm fairly ignorant in this area, but what are particular things could be changed to make cars more fuel efficient? Making them lighter, for instance? I think the main area to decrease mass at this time would be in the engine itself and maybe some of the structural members. Regards, Dan From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Apr 28 19:38:50 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:38:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] joke In-Reply-To: <62c14240904281110m381aa794lad8475b75149005b@mail.gmail.com > References: <49F689F7.8020209@rawbw.com> <62c14240904281110m381aa794lad8475b75149005b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1240947986_8226@s6.cableone.net> At 11:10 AM 4/28/2009, you wrote: >On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > > Any analogs to this phenomenon occur to you, > > or emergent new generalities, or other examples? > > > >'Man walks into a bar... > >... says "ouch." > > >We find humor in the unexpected outcome that (in retrospect) could >have been obvious. What I find interesting is that we generally like >this kind of deception while we dislike many others. Minsky has a lot to say about humor. I don't know exactly how he would classify this one, perhaps an "out of context" joke. Lee, you might send this one to Marvin Minsky and see what he says about it. Keith From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 20:18:05 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:18:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] WP: Joel Garreau on neurotoys Message-ID: <29666bf30904281318i61bc714et3515d87e3f0fe997@mail.gmail.com> Why do people on these lists argue endlessly about things they neither fully understand, nor will ever change their opponents' minds, when we can be filling our holiday wish-lists with things like this? PJ Video: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/04/22/VI2009042203236.html?sid=ST2009042204139 (If you want to understand why MSM doesn't get how fast things are changing, watch his editors' reactions... LOL!) Print: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042204036_pf.html Brain Wave of The Future What If You Could Move Objects With Your Mind? Well, That Time Has Come. By Joel Garreau Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 23, 2009 You slip the wireless headset on. It looks like something a telemarketer would wear, except the earpieces are actually sensors, and what looks like a microphone is a brain wave detector. You place its tip against your forehead, above your left eyebrow. A few feet away is a ping-pong ball in a clear tube called the Force Trainer. The idea is to use your thoughts alone, as recognized by the wand on your forehead, to lift the ball. Your brain's electrical activity is translated into a signal understood by a little computer that controls a fan that blows the ball up the tube. Levitates it. As if by magic. It's mind over matter. All you have to do is concentrate. On anything, it doesn't matter. The harder you concentrate, the higher the ball goes. A musician says he played a song in his head and focused on a particular chord change. A former high school tennis star focused on his 120-mph serve. One woman brought the image of a candle flame to mind. The ball rose. Concentrate. Concentrate. A sound erupts -- first a groan, then a woooo, WOOOO -- like a Halloween ghost. The ball spins, slowly at first, then faster. Concentrate, concentrate. And then the ball rises inside the tube. Up it lifts, two inches, four inches -- a foot! You giggle and your concentration is broken; the ghostly sound fades and the ball drops back into its nest with a gurgle. You have just controlled a physical object with your mind. Competing mind-over-matter toys from Mattel and Uncle Milton Industries are coming this fall to a store near you. They are the first "brain-computer interfaces" to enter the consumer mainstream. Toys, but so much more. They embody a dream of the ages: controlling the world with your thoughts. Telekinesis. The stuff of the gods. * * * Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke * * * The question everyone has about these gizmos is whether they are parlor tricks like Magic 8 Balls or Ouija boards. Even Geoff Walker, a senior vice president at Mattel, acknowledges that users "spend the first 20 minutes stunned that it actually works." Evidence in favor of them being for real is that some people are worse than others at controlling them -- certainly not a marketing feature. Lawyers and other multitaskers, for example, tend to have a terrible time focusing their brain waves, says Johnny Liu of NeuroSky, the creator of the mind-over-matter headset. But there are those to whom controlling the device comes effortlessly and instantly, as if single-mindedness is the person's natural default position. Copy editors and IT jockeys on whom we tested this, you know who you are. What happens when millions of youngsters in a notoriously ADHD generation start getting programmed by these new toys? What happens when they start being rewarded for very long periods of intense concentration? Nobody in the toy industry seems to know. But it sure looks like parents are about to find out. The Monkey's Mind Now let's get serious with these toys, with the idea of telekinesis. A lot of scientists are. Nine years ago, they created the world's first telekinetic monkey. That would be Belle, a cute little owl monkey in the lab of Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University. She was the first to actually control tangible objects, long distance, with her thoughts. How do you make a monkey telekinetic? First you get her way into a computer game. She knows that if a light suddenly shines on her screen and she moves her joystick left or right to hit it, she gets a drop of juice. Then the researchers drill a hole in her head. They take a device the size of a baby aspirin, out of which come many superfine wires, and lower it into Belle's motor cortex -- the portion of the brain that plans muscle movement. The object is to line up each wire with an individual neuron to detect its firing. Then comes the big moment in telekinesis. When Belle resumes her game, the scientists put the signal from her brain on the Internet and pipe it 600 miles north to a robotic arm at MIT. Sure enough, it starts dancing like a ballerina in exactly the same fashion as Belle's arm, "choreographed by the electrical impulses sparking in Belle's mind," her researchers report. "Amid the loud celebration that erupted in Durham, N.C., and Cambridge, we could not help thinking that this was only the beginning of a promising journey," Nicolelis wrote in Scientific American. Indeed, work is advancing rapidly. Four profoundly paralyzed humans equipped with a "BrainGate" implant created by the biotech firm Cyberkinetics have demonstrated their ability, with just their thoughts, to check and send e-mail; turn televisions, lights and appliances on and off; and control a wheelchair. Monkeys equipped with brain-controlled artificial arms have learned how to guide food to their mouths. A monkey in Nicolelis's lab recently controlled a humanoid robot in Japan. But the most spectacular work has centered on neural control of mechanical arms, hands and legs. The goal of a program funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is to soon produce intelligent artificial limbs controlled by your nervous system that will allow you to pitch a fastball, thread a needle or play a piano as well as you did before your loss. "You have to dream big," says Col. Geoffrey Ling, a neurologist and program manager. "If you don't dream that you're going to the moon, you won't go to the moon." 'Replace Ball With Kitten' It's not unusual for new technologies to first enter popular consciousness as toys. In the 1st century, Heron of Alexandria invented the aeolipile: a metal ball with curved nozzles sticking out of it, perched on stilts. With water in it, and flame beneath it, the resultant steam would make it spin, whiz, whiz, whiz. Such fun. Nobody understood they were looking at a steam engine. Hence, the Industrial Revolution didn't start for another 1700 years. In 1267 Roger Bacon wrote about "a child's toy of sound and fire and explosion made in various parts of the world with powder of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal of hazelwood." That description of firecrackers is one of the earliest European references to gunpowder. Toys make sense as early adoptions of a new technology. Parents will pay to make their children smile. The generation raised on telekinetic X-Men, from Professor Xavier to Jean Grey to Magneto, already is buzzing all over the Web about the advance videos of these mind-over-matter toys, as they think of further possibilities. In a Gizmodo chat, "inseptiv" writes, "I'm all for modding the crap out of this to use my brain waves to trigger custom things around the house. 'Let me concentrate . . . and the coffee will be ready in 5 minutes.' " "Silly scientists," writes "im2fools." "For this to be commercially succesful, you have to tie it into a tv remote, and market it to couch potatoes. 'Push' a button? Like I have that kind of energy!" On Engadget, "absinthe party" suggests: "Replace ball with kitten." "i wonder what would happen if you watch porn with this on?" asks "godwhacker" on Gizmodo. "I want one!" says "Mike." "Not really, nothing says, 'Lives with his mom,' more than acting like you have, 'the force.' " But it is "Skyfloating" on Abovetopsecret who takes the long view. " 'Those were the beginnings' . . . they will say in a few hundred years." The First Generation As a mind-reading location, your forehead has only one significant advantage. "It's a horrible place to get signals. But that's the only place most people do not have hair," says Stanley Yang, chief executive of NeuroSky. "Hair is not conductive." NeuroSky is in the forefront of turning brain-computer interfaces into cheap, ubiquitous consumer items. It's selling brain-reading hardware and software headsets to all comers -- including Christmas competitors like Mattel's $80 Mindflex and Uncle Milton's $130 Force Trainer, both of which involve levitating a ping-pong-like ball. NeuroSky has its sights set on providing brain-wave sensors for the automotive, health-care and education industries. The prospect for mind controlling matter dates to 1875, when Richard Caton discovered that you could peer into the workings of the brain by detecting its electrical impulses. In 1929 came the first electroencephalograph -- the EEG machine -- that became the staple of science-fiction movies. All those wires and sticky pads festooning bare skulls. But hospital EEG machines are expensive, enormous and not good at fine control; plus you have to smear conductive goop on your head -- not a great selling point. Thus, NeuroSky's adaptation is no small thing. They get a single dry sensor to read your bare forehead, no goop, no holes drilled through the skull. They get the device to focus on the correct signals from that extremely noisy brain area, filtering out everything else -- that's their big trick. "It's like being at a crowded party, and picking out one quiet conversation," says Liu. Then they make it small, light and cheap, and deliver it to market. "The sensors you are seeing today are first generation," says Yang. "You have to wear it. The second generation can sense your brain waves and other bio-signals from a distance. Like sensors in your car seats that can go through clothes without touching you. Embed the sensor in the seat belt. In the steering wheel. Or embed a sensor in the headrest." Yang wants the car to know if you are falling asleep. Or drunk. Or wishing the air conditioning would go on, or the music would play more softly. He is talking with the Japanese telephone company NTT DoCoMo about cellphones. Its brain lab has looked at over 300 mind-over-matter products, he says. Where we go from there is limited only by imagination: brain-controlled television couch-potato remote controls, brain-controlled video games, brain-controlled race cars, brain-controlled spouses. No, dream on, the last is not on the horizon. The next announcement NeuroSky expects from a business partner is one that it won't talk about much. But the company expects it later this year. It will be able to fly. Around the room. Controlled by your brain. * * * Yoda: Luminous beings are we . . . [Yoda pinches Luke's shoulder] . . . not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. [Gesturing] Here, between you . . . me . . . the tree . . . the rock . . . everywhere! Yes, even between the land and the ship. Luke: [Discouraged] You want the impossible. [Quietly Yoda turns toward the sunken X-wing fighter. With his eyes closed and his head bowed he raises his arm and points at the ship. Soon the fighter rises above the water and moves forward as Artoo beeps in terror and scoots away. The entire X-wing moves majestically, surely, toward the shore. Yoda, perched on a tree root, guides the fighter carefully down toward the beach. Luke stares in astonishment as the fighter settles gently onto the shore. He walks toward Yoda.] Luke: I don't . . . I don't believe it. Yoda: That is why you fail. -- "The Empire Strikes Back" * * * So where does this leave us right now? Steve Koenig, director of industry analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association, has little doubt about the high-end, professional possibilities of the mind-over-matter market. He sees the opportunities for military robot wrangling, say, or mastering space or undersea exploration, or allowing the profoundly ill or disabled to control their surroundings. He is, however, a skeptic about how eagerly we will embrace the toys. "Anybody having to wear anything is challenged in a lot of ways. That's why you don't see everybody you know having a little Bluetooth earpiece in their ear." As for the TV remote control, Koenig says: "If, to control things, you have to concentrate, at what point is it much easier to just grab the knob and turn the volume down?" Reyne Rice, the toy trends specialist for the Toy Industry Association, is more optimistic: "What's been happening in the last couple of years is a real interest in mental gymnastics, mind games and logic solving. Not only for kids but adults" including boomers interested in staving off Alzheimer's. To Rice, mind-over-matter technology is "the next logical step." She sees great potential for games. Imagine a "CSI"-like law-and-order game that could use a lie detector. Or multi-player games. "Whoever has the strongest mind control can take over the thing on the screen," she says. She also wonders what happens when user-generated content kicks in. When players start creating their own applications to be controlled by mind-over-matter headsets. Mattel is aiming Mindflex at 8-to-12-year-olds, both girls and boys, although "it seems like a product that can inspire a 'wow' from 8 to 82," says Walker, the senior vice president. Uncle Milton is aiming the Force Trainer, which has a "Star Wars" theme, at those adults who still can't get too much Luke Skywalker in their lives, and then at boys 6 to 11. But the industry considers $80 or $130 pricey for a little kid's toy -- especially in this year's economy. Rice sees the market as being "older kids, college students and adults" who are willing to pay much more. And indeed, talk to spring-break college kids, suggesting these first-generation ping-pong ball games might be a tad primitive, and you get major push-back. "You've been doing this stuff for too long," says one. "This is going to be the biggest thing to hit colleges since the Frisbee." We're talking beer-pong plus superpowers, here. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Apr 28 21:11:09 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:11:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] New Blow For Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Theory Message-ID: <715248.81705.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Blow_For_Dinosaur_Killing_Asteroid_Theory_999.html Comments? Some of you may recall that many years ago I raised the issue of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaur-Extinction-Professor-David-Archibald/dp/0231076258 Yes, I know it's a minority view, but I found Archibald cogent even if I'm skeptical. Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 28 21:31:10 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:31:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <580930c20904280930r2685258dsc7115bc9ef052578@mail.gmail.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> <49F5E91D.4000801@libero.it> <580930c20904280252p6aebc993k558826a5bc0ba18b@mail.gmail.com> <49F70517.5070309@libero.it> <580930c20904280930r2685258dsc7115bc9ef052578@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F7759E.7020104@libero.it> Il 28/04/2009 18.30, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:31 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> The problem is when the "findings" are used to disprove the right to the >> existence of Israel, that is right to kick the Jews in the sea, the >> existence of a world-wide Jews conspiracy aimed to dominate the world and >> justify attacks of Jews everywhere as a way to "defend themselves". > I agree, the problem being mainly a non-sequitur. When exactly did the > fact of having suffered genocidal attentions at the hands of enemies > become a requirement to establish a national entity? It never was and never will be a requirement. The requirement is the power and the will to prevent your enemies from using genocidal attention on you. But having many enemies with genocidal attention is a good reason to for your national entity. In fact, I always wonder the reasons the Palestinians don't form their national entity as they cry "genocide" any day and two times at Friday. > Possibly so, in terms of economic analysis of law. But this of course > would suggest that restrictions to freedom of speech should be > progressively... restricted, rather than expanded. Only if the median and mean IQ grow. It is a function of the IQ distribution inside the population and their sensitivity to speech. Unfortunately, the current freedom of speech is restricted more for the most peaceful people than for the most violent one. They shut your mouth to prevent someone else from becoming angry and harming you. They put in prison the victim to protect the victim from the killers. And the killers go around free. Geert Wilders and Ayan Hirsi Ali come in mind as jail dweller with killers following them. > What about not importing them in the first place? :-) The problem is they are importing themselves without asking permission. The main point is to convince them that coming is not a good option and that self-deportation home is a good option. If Romanian criminal emigrated en-masses in Italy (so much the crime in Romania crashed) it is because they find the place hospitable and good for business. > Yet, it appears to me that the US managed to survive with both a less > "timid" population *and* with more a more libertarian stance on free > speech, as opposed to more conformist and peaceful (or perhaps cynic) > countries with a more stringent regulation thereof... As I pointed out, the Second Amendment is there for a reason. Mirco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 28 21:50:26 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:50:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] New Blow For Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Theory References: <715248.81705.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > the Chicxulub impact predates the K-T boundary by as much as 300,000 > years. So the largest impact in at least 100 million years and probably MUCH longer happened at just about the same time (300,000 years is a mere trifle even if true) as a HUGE mass extinction and it's all just a big coincidence? You are in a massive thunderstorm and see your friend struck by lightning, you run to him and see he is dead. Maybe the lightning didn't kill him, maybe he had a stroke a tenth of a second before and was already dead when the lightning hit him. Well maybe, but probably not. Having said that I must also say I find it odd that the huge volcanic Deccan Traps in India occurred at just about the same time as the impact and the extinction. Everything seemed to be going wrong at the same time; but if it didn't we wouldn't be here. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 28 22:18:12 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:18:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? References: <715248.81705.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2B3F3C7A6F6448D691A9F6627767DFA1@MyComputer> Why? John K Clark From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Apr 28 22:20:43 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:20:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view In-Reply-To: <988161.98558.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <988161.98558.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F7813B.6000004@libero.it> Il 28/04/2009 16.06, Dan ha scritto: > I'm surprised to see no one is looking at what Rothbard actually > wrote on this subject at: > > http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp > > (Just search on "fire" for the passage dealing with this issue.) > > Notice how this view actually clears up much. No need for a judge or > government to weigh one person's rights against another's (or against > an collective or abstraction like "society" or the "community"). No > need for fuzzy boundaries. This is not to say that Rothbard's system > completely banishes all ambiguities and fuzziness, but I believe, in > this case, it confutes Holmes and his seconds. (There is one fault > in Rothbard's analysis: a third party -- neither owner nor patron -- > might cry "fire" in the theater. But, in that case, in his system, > it still resolves to a property rights issue.) I agree that, in a libertarian society, a person living in a compact that don't fulfil his obligation to common defence or, worse, act in a way damaging the common defence obligation he accepted freely could be sanctioned using property rights and / or placing him in outlaw status. For example, people could give up a collateral when accepting to serve in the local militia. If they don't show up to serve when a call is done, they forfeit the collateral that will be divided between the people showing. Something like his home. In the case of Schenck v. United States this would become a breach of contractual duties. Mirco From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 28 22:47:24 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:47:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? Message-ID: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> As I told you just an hour or so ago, privately: >I'm not directly involved in this, but I believe that Lee is not >expelled but is under moderation. > >I know that Spike said he is away this week. I'm not what that >implies, but it may mean that Lee won't be able to post until next >week, since I think Spike's email access is very limited or >non-existent while away (and no one else steps up to the plate for >this kind of thankless work). > >Personally, (at this time) I would certainly oppose Lee's permanent >removal from the list, but I can see a case for moderation. It's >unfortunate that Spike's away (apparently the last time for a while) >and so Lee's posts may be blocked in a more blanket way than I >expect was intended. Did you not accept my word, did you not read my reply, or do you ask "why?" on the list for some other reason? Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From max at maxmore.com Tue Apr 28 23:19:21 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:19:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list Message-ID: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I believe that Spike will be back in regular email contact sometime next week. Until then, I suggest we table any direct discussion of the moderation of Lee Corbin. (As I said before, it's my understanding that Lee is indeed on moderation and has not been "expelled". Use of the term "booted" or "expelled" is unhelpful because it fails to distinguish between these two possibilities.) In the meantime, this issue -- and I don't pretend to have read anything close to every post by Lee recently (though I certainly value his contributions in general) -- raises again the question of how best to manage this list according to the purposes for which is was created early last decade, and for which it still exists. Personally, as a co-owner of this list, I feel internal conflict. One the one hand, I don't like to suppress vigorous debate on controversial and troubling topics (such as forcibly relocating people of a certain religious belief). On the other, this list -- to retain its unique flavor -- should cleave reasonably closely to the Principles of Extropy. One of those, you may recall, says something about Self-Direction which, in my mind, is not remotely compatible with forced relocation of people who hold stupid beliefs (and, frankly, Muslim beliefs ARE stupid and dangerous) but do nothing coercive in pursuit of those beliefs. What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount of digital "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions. Requiring some basic level of adherence to the Principles of Extropy on this particular list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I don't believe anyone could demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) Rather than an "either-or solution", perhaps we can develop a workable and productive "and" solution. In barest form, that would mean moderating this list -- probably a little *more* vigorously than we have historically -- while creating a new list. The new list, perhaps named "Extropy-Controversial" or "Extropy-Unmoderated" would be the place to take all discussions which the moderators deem unsuitable to Extropy-Chat. Each message might carry a note saying that the posts to the list cannot be taken as representative of extropian transhumanism. How exactly this might work, I'm not sure. For instance, at what point should moderators move such discussions to the other list? What penalty should there be for those who contravene the policy and insist on posting inappropriately to the current list? Those kinds of questions should be discussed here. I'm wary of raising these issues now, while Spike is apparently away from the List for a few days (or perhaps has limited access), since he has -- at cost and no reward to himself -- recently been the main moderator of the List, and I don't want to burden him with catching up on a potentially vigorous discussion. However, the public inquiry and a couple of private inquiries about the status of Lee Corbin have prompted these thoughts. So, regarding the possibility of: Extropy-Controversial" or "Extropy-Unmoderated ...what are your thoughts? Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 28 23:27:23 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:27:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: > Did you not accept my word, did you not read my reply Yes I did and I concede you are a honorable man. > do you ask "why?" on the list for some other reason? After reading Lee's often wrong but always interesting and intelligent comments for 13 years I figured list members deserved to know why we don't hear from him anymore. It's not because he lost interest, it's because he's been expelled. Do you deny that information could be of some interest to long time members of this list? But it's your list not mine and I certainly believe in private property, so you have every right in the world to expel him, and me too if the mood strikes you. It's just that I personally don't think expelling people who aren't terminally stupid or boring is a very good way to get at the truth. But as I say it's your list not mine. John K Clark From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 23:59:47 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:59:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Sonia Arrison/H+ Message-ID: <29666bf30904281659m5455054y78b2655d5c180cdc@mail.gmail.com> http://www.transhumanism.org/ed-search JOB OPENING: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUMANITY+ Humanity+ (formerly known as the World Transhumanist Association) is accepting applications for the position of Executive Director. The Executive Director is responsible for managing the affairs of H+ under the Direction of the Board of Directors, including: * directing the work of the Assistant Director * maintaining the website * fundraising * managing mailing lists, a newsletter, and member communications * maintaining contact with chapters and organizing committees, and facilitating chapter growth * maintaining contact with affiliates around the programmatic agenda outlined by the Board * representing H+ and transhumanism in the media and other outlets (such as seminars and conferences) The position will require a commitment of approximately 15 hours per week. Candidates must have experience with organizational management, fundraising and administration. They must be self-starters with keen entrepreneurial sense. Applicants must also display a working understanding of and commitment to transhumanism, and an acceptance of the various perspectives grouped under the transhumanist umbrella. Candidates must also be prepared to sometimes navigate among diverse opinions within the Board of Directors. The Executive Director will be frequently called upon to act as a mediator and facilitator in the efforts of moving things forward. Preference will be given to prospects with strong written and verbal communication skills and for those who are experienced and capable public speakers. Fluency in English is essential, with other world languages a plus. Candidates must be prepared to be the ?public face? of Humanity+. Location is irrelevant as the candidate will be expected to telecommute. The position is currently voluntary. However, there are prospects that fundraising will enable some level of compensation in the coming year (part of the responsibilities of the Executive Director will be to make this happen). It is also expected that the Executive Director will attend conferences, seminars and other networking opportunities. The ED will be reimbursed for these expenses. Applications will be accepted until May 15, 2009. A final decision will be made by May 25, 2009, and the position will begin June 1, 2009. Please send resumes to: hplusdirector at gmail.com From kanzure at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 00:40:36 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:40:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70904281740u5766d874u11db5f40fdd438bc@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Max More wrote: > What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount of digital > "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions. Requiring some > basic level of adherence to the Principles of Extropy on this particular > list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I don't believe anyone could > demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) Maybe it would turn out to be helpful to turn into a facilitator of extropian thinking. To be honest, I haven't been here too long but do suspect the list has been dropping in quality of extropic thought, to the extent that I suspect that the common posts might not be about extropy simply because the original posters are now gone. I know that Eugen is gone now, for instance, and I haven't been channeling in all that much of the work that I've been up to into here, so maybe that's why the health has been low? - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Wed Apr 29 02:26:55 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:26:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Really...Was the Chief Right? Message-ID: <779722.49798.qm@web110407.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 4/27/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Unfortunately, the less tolerant culture is the one eliminated, or the one vastly inferior in technology and numbers. Really? The vastly inferior are the ones that don't understand technology and numbers? I find that highly unlikely. Numbers are great as you add, reduce, multiply and divide but they don't say much. Technology is fascinating as you never know what to expect but I think the wise are those that undestand science, accept social conditioning, are diverse enough to withstand judgement and respect the status quo. Just an opinion Anna:) __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Wed Apr 29 02:44:07 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (femmechakra at yahoo.ca) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:44:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list Message-ID: <362545.17614.qm@web110416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> It's not that complicated. Lee has been an avid poster for as long as i've been on the list.? At times, he is exuberant and at times he is important to discussion.? Imho maybe he just said the wrong thing at the wrong time..so what?? It's the Extropy list...do we really need to create certain norms to post...please don't make me feel like I'm on the Eliezer chain all over again...it is a public diverse chain. --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Max More wrote: > From: Max More > Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list > To: "Extropy-Chat" > Received: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 7:19 PM > I believe that Spike will be back in > regular email contact sometime next week. Until then, I > suggest we table any direct discussion of the moderation of > Lee Corbin. (As I said before, it's my understanding that > Lee is indeed on moderation and has not been "expelled". Use > of the term "booted" or "expelled" is unhelpful because it > fails to distinguish between these two possibilities.) > > In the meantime, this issue -- and I don't pretend to have > read anything close to every post by Lee recently (though I > certainly value his contributions in general) -- raises > again the question of how best to manage this list according > to the purposes for which is was created early last decade, > and for which it still exists. Personally, as a co-owner of > this list, I feel internal conflict. One the one hand, I > don't like to suppress vigorous debate on controversial and > troubling topics (such as forcibly relocating people of a > certain religious belief). On the other, this list -- to > retain its unique flavor -- should cleave reasonably closely > to the Principles of Extropy. One of those, you may recall, > says something about Self-Direction which, in my mind, is > not remotely compatible with forced relocation of people who > hold stupid beliefs (and, frankly, Muslim beliefs ARE stupid > and dangerous) but do nothing coercive in pursuit of those > beliefs. > > What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount > of digital "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our > discussions. Requiring some basic level of adherence to the > Principles of Extropy on this particular list seems quite > reasonable to me. (And I don't believe anyone could > demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) > > Rather than an "either-or solution", perhaps we can develop > a workable and productive "and" solution. In barest form, > that would mean moderating this list -- probably a little > *more* vigorously than we have historically -- while > creating a new list. The new list, perhaps named > "Extropy-Controversial" or "Extropy-Unmoderated" would be > the place to take all discussions which the moderators deem > unsuitable to Extropy-Chat. Each message might carry a note > saying that the posts to the list cannot be taken as > representative of extropian transhumanism. > > How exactly this might work, I'm not sure. For instance, at > what point should moderators move such discussions to the > other list? What penalty should there be for those who > contravene the policy and insist on posting inappropriately > to the current list? Those kinds of questions should be > discussed here. > > I'm wary of raising these issues now, while Spike is > apparently away from the List for a few days (or perhaps has > limited access), since he has -- at cost and no reward to > himself -- recently been the main moderator of the List, and > I don't want to burden him with catching up on a potentially > vigorous discussion. However, the public inquiry and a > couple of private inquiries about the status of Lee Corbin > have prompted these thoughts. > > So, regarding the possibility of: > Extropy-Controversial" > or > "Extropy-Unmoderated > > ...what are your thoughts? > > Max > > > > Max More, Ph.D. > Strategic Philosopher > www.maxmore.com > max at maxmore.com > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From brent.allsop at comcast.net Wed Apr 29 04:27:19 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:27:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> I'll sure miss Lee. Brent Allsop From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 04:47:15 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:47:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Most Fuel Efficient Cars (was: Selling the Green Economy) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7641ddc60904282147r4e2c6298sf501907f987e676d@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:23 PM, BillK wrote: > I blame the evil US government for not making US gas taxes high enough. > > The Euro price is about 3 to 4 times higher than US prices, due to our > lovable government taxation. > > Result - Euroland has much more economical cars than the US and we > drive lower mileage. ?And Euro governments have more tax income to > spend lavishly without running trillion dollar deficits. > > What's not to like? ?;) ### Riding in buses with other losers who can't afford to drive a car. Not being able to afford living in a log home in the forest with view like that: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/HH-htH6LbNqwYmQ3kKM07w?feat=directlink because you can't do the 42 mile commute to town. Getting killed in an accident when your tiny econobox bounces off an S-class Benz. The sheer indignity of driving an econobox? Just to give you some food for thought, this is my car: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/DLa9W4qlYQRAFTuxzOBbOg?authkey=Gv1sRgCM_CkaX1rZSagwE&feat=directlink Take that, Yugo! Rafal From moulton at moulton.com Wed Apr 29 05:13:39 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:13:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1240982020.10761.96.camel@hayek> I have been busy with work and other activities and not able to follow the list closely for over a week however this caught my attention. Since I have not followed the list closely for the past week I will refrain from commenting on the situation of a specific person at least until I have had a chance to review recent traffic. However I do have some thoughts on some of the longer term issues that Max raises. On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 18:19 -0500, Max More wrote: ...snip... > . On the other, this list -- to > retain its unique flavor -- should cleave reasonably closely to the > Principles of Extropy. One of those, you may recall, says something > about Self-Direction which, in my mind, is not remotely compatible > with forced relocation of people who hold stupid beliefs (and, > frankly, Muslim beliefs ARE stupid and dangerous) but do nothing > coercive in pursuit of those beliefs. This is a key point. > What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount of digital > "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions. Requiring > some basic level of adherence to the Principles of Extropy on this > particular list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I don't believe > anyone could demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) To me one of the values of this list is that it is has a basis in the Principles of Extropy. This is useful because hopefully one does not need to keep repeating the basics. I am not saying that critical analysis Extropian Principles is ruled out; what I am saying is that if someone wants to go off on some thing which clearly violates the Extropian Principles then that person should be doing it in a different forum. Because otherwise there is a lot of confusion. > Rather than an "either-or solution", perhaps we can develop a > workable and productive "and" solution. In barest form, that would > mean moderating this list -- probably a little *more* vigorously than > we have historically -- while creating a new list. Let me ask the obvious question of why should you or Spike expend your time creating another list? Why not let those people who would be using the list create it themselves; that way they can have it exactly as they want it. One of the problems of creating something for someone else is that you are stuck with it. There are several places on the Internet where people can set up new lists; why not let the people who want to discuss things which are outside the Extropian Principles design, name and moderate their own list on Yahoo or any of the other sites where lists can be created. As long as they do not call it Extropy or Extropian then it is not something that you or Spike have to worry about. Both you and Spike have more important things to do than deal with a second list. > The new list, > perhaps named "Extropy-Controversial" or "Extropy-Unmoderated" would > be the place to take all discussions which the moderators deem > unsuitable to Extropy-Chat. If you do create a new list then please please please do not put the term Extropy or Extropian as part of the list name. That will just add to the confusion. As I said above I think you and Spike have more important things to do than set up a new list; leave it to the people who are going to be using it. If they set up their own list then they should be happy and not complaining to you or Spike. If it is their own list running on Yahoo they can moderate or not as they see fit. Then they have two places to post; one place for things in harmony with the Extropian Principles and another place for things not in harmony with the Extropian Principles. Fred From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 05:28:03 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:28:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 4:54 AM, BillK wrote: > > No, that's not how the world works. > The level of reward does not equal the 'value' of the work. > > (Now you need to get into a complex discussion about how to 'value' the work). > > Compare the rewards of different jobs and you will quickly notice > strange anomalies. > > High rewards are in the entertainment industry and anything to do with > celebrity. Pop stars, sports stars, hairdressers, chefs, interior > designers, etc. > > The other big rewards are for the crooks in the financial industry, > whose reward is as much as they can get away with, without actually > being charged with fraud. > > So, if your argument is based on the theoretical law of supply and > demand it fails in the real world that the rest of us live in. > (Or, the corollary, that if it is correct, then the law of supply and > demand produces a very poor quality of world). > ### Acceptance of certain basic economic knowledge is indispensable for any discussion of economics. Since you seem to be playfully rejecting the basics, I see no reason to continue. Rafal From eschatoon at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 05:49:04 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:49:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> I believe after the moderation notice Lee got an email saying that he had been unsubscribed. I very often disagree with Lee, but consider him as one of the most interesting posters here. He frequently has interesting things to say, he does not insult others, and he is not obsessively focused on one topic only. My advice is, let's get him back. G. On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:27 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > > I'll sure miss Lee. > > Brent Allsop -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 06:06:33 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:06:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904282306o4f7dd9b0s41debd2109b263ba@mail.gmail.com> Max, my experience is that splitting a list into sublists does not work, and can only decrease the appeal of the main list. One of the things that I value here is a wide conversation space, broadly related to extropy but with some necessary elbow room. Some considerations: If I want to read a list where I always agree with everyone on everything, there is a very simple thing that I can do: to create a list where I am the only member. Or in other words, talking to the mirror. Kind of boring I would say. Yes, there are certainly some enemies lurking here, who can use unPC posts to attack extropy. I say, fuck them. Sacred cows are just as good for hamburgers as other cows. G. On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Max More wrote: > I believe that Spike will be back in regular email contact sometime next > week. Until then, I suggest we table any direct discussion of the moderation > of Lee Corbin. (As I said before, it's my understanding that Lee is indeed > on moderation and has not been "expelled". Use of the term "booted" or > "expelled" is unhelpful because it fails to distinguish between these two > possibilities.) > > In the meantime, this issue -- and I don't pretend to have read anything > close to every post by Lee recently (though I certainly value his > contributions in general) -- raises again the question of how best to manage > this list according to the purposes for which is was created early last > decade, and for which it still exists. Personally, as a co-owner of this > list, I feel internal conflict. One the one hand, I don't like to suppress > vigorous debate on controversial and troubling topics (such as forcibly > relocating people of a certain religious belief). On the other, this list -- > to retain its unique flavor -- should cleave reasonably closely to the > Principles of Extropy. One of those, you may recall, says something about > Self-Direction which, in my mind, is not remotely compatible with forced > relocation of people who hold stupid beliefs (and, frankly, Muslim beliefs > ARE stupid and dangerous) but do nothing coercive in pursuit of those > beliefs. > > What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount of digital > "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions. Requiring some > basic level of adherence to the Principles of Extropy on this particular > list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I don't believe anyone could > demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) > > Rather than an "either-or solution", perhaps we can develop a workable and > productive "and" solution. In barest form, that would mean moderating this > list -- probably a little *more* vigorously than we have historically -- > while creating a new list. The new list, perhaps named > "Extropy-Controversial" or "Extropy-Unmoderated" would be the place to take > all discussions which the moderators deem unsuitable to Extropy-Chat. Each > message might carry a note saying that the posts to the list cannot be taken > as representative of extropian transhumanism. > > How exactly this might work, I'm not sure. For instance, at what point > should moderators move such discussions to the other list? What penalty > should there be for those who contravene the policy and insist on posting > inappropriately to the current list? Those kinds of questions should be > discussed here. > > I'm wary of raising these issues now, while Spike is apparently away from > the List for a few days (or perhaps has limited access), since he has -- at > cost and no reward to himself -- recently been the main moderator of the > List, and I don't want to burden him with catching up on a potentially > vigorous discussion. However, the public inquiry and a couple of private > inquiries about the status of Lee Corbin have prompted these thoughts. > > So, regarding the possibility of: > Extropy-Controversial" > or > "Extropy-Unmoderated > > ...what are your thoughts? > > Max > > > > Max More, Ph.D. > Strategic Philosopher > www.maxmore.com > max at maxmore.com > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 06:55:18 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:55:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904282306o4f7dd9b0s41debd2109b263ba@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1fa8c3b90904282306o4f7dd9b0s41debd2109b263ba@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670904282355i3434d935hbcb34c88881fb354@mail.gmail.com> As much as I like Lee, he (and some others) kept on discussing Muslims in the West, despite being asked repeatedly to stop. And so Lee brought this (up to a point) on himself. I think those in charge here, Natasha, etc., decided an example had to be made. And because Lee was in violation of repeated moderator orders, and is also a prominent Extropy list poster, he was chosen for temporary banishment from the Extropian realm here. "I will be as good unto ye as ever a Queen was unto her people. No will in me can lack, neither do I trust shall there lack any power. And persuade yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you all I will not spare if need be to spend my blood. (Elizabeth to the Lord Mayor and people of London on the eve of her Coronation)" "Long Life to Queen Natasha and her consort Max!" "May they live a 1,000 years!" John : ) P.S. Please bring back Lord Corbin soon. From eschatoon at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 07:24:19 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:24:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <2d6187670904282355i3434d935hbcb34c88881fb354@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1fa8c3b90904282306o4f7dd9b0s41debd2109b263ba@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670904282355i3434d935hbcb34c88881fb354@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90904290024y512e742fla6d9426236000e6b@mail.gmail.com> Lee posts about Muslims in the West, and about a lot of other things. I am not much interested in the Muslims in the West thread, so I often do not read what he posts there. I do read other interesting things that he posts, which are a lot. That is why I value Lee and am not happy if he leaves the list. Some other posters seem _only_ interested in the Muslims in the West and similar threads, and never seem interested in anything even remotely related to extropy. They woule make a much bettere example imo. G. On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 8:55 AM, John Grigg wrote: > As much as I like Lee, he (and some others) kept on discussing Muslims > in the West, despite being asked repeatedly to stop. ?And so Lee > brought this (up to a point) on himself. > > I think those in charge here, Natasha, etc., decided an example had to > be made. And because Lee was in violation of repeated moderator > orders, and is also a prominent Extropy list poster, he was chosen for > temporary banishment from the Extropian realm here. > > "I will be as good unto ye as ever a Queen was unto her people. No > will in me can lack, neither do I trust shall there lack any power. > And persuade yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you all I > will not spare if need be to spend my blood. > (Elizabeth to the Lord Mayor and people of London on the eve of her > Coronation)" > > "Long Life to Queen Natasha and her consort Max!" > > "May they live a 1,000 years!" > > John ?: ) > > P.S. ?Please bring back Lord Corbin soon. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 29 08:02:09 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:02:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> Message-ID: "Brent Allsop" > I'll sure miss Lee. Me too, this is bullshit. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Apr 29 08:05:07 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:05:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com><49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8073E4ADC0CE41C0B4846532FBCBEE48@MyComputer> "Eschatoon Magic" > My advice is, let's get him back. That sounds like a good idea to me. John K Clark From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 08:25:32 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:25:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904290125n59e8da8aj11f6717e3117759@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:49 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > I believe after the moderation notice Lee got an email saying that he > had been unsubscribed. > > I very often disagree with Lee, but consider him as one of the most > interesting posters here. He frequently has interesting things to say, > he does not insult others, and he is not obsessively focused on one > topic only. > > My advice is, let's get him back. ### Yeah, he has some queer notions but overall it's nice to have him around. Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 08:58:28 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:58:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <1240982020.10761.96.camel@hayek> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1240982020.10761.96.camel@hayek> Message-ID: On 4/29/09, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > To me one of the values of this list is that it is has a basis in the > Principles of Extropy. This is useful because hopefully one does not > need to keep repeating the basics. I am not saying that critical > analysis Extropian Principles is ruled out; what I am saying is that if > someone wants to go off on some thing which clearly violates the > Extropian Principles then that person should be doing it in a different > forum. Because otherwise there is a lot of confusion. > > That's the main point. I pointed out that what Lee was suggesting was against basic human rights and basic libertarian principles, but he (and others) argued that it might be necessary. All it needs is slightly more aggressive moderation. 'Stop that now, or leave the room'! BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 10:49:57 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:49:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/4/29 Eschatoon Magic : > I believe after the moderation notice Lee got an email saying that he > had been unsubscribed. > > I very often disagree with Lee, but consider him as one of the most > interesting posters here. He frequently has interesting things to say, > he does not insult others, and he is not obsessively focused on one > topic only. > > My advice is, let's get him back. I'll add my vote to that. I often disagree with Lee but he is always smart, interesting, intellectually honest and doesn't insult people. -- Stathis Papaioannou From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed Apr 29 10:58:44 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:58:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <8073E4ADC0CE41C0B4846532FBCBEE48@MyComputer> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com><49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> <8073E4ADC0CE41C0B4846532FBCBEE48@MyComputer> Message-ID: <60756.12.77.169.14.1241002724.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> I will miss Lee's postings. He gave me much to think about. Seems to me if a repressive group moves in - a group that threatens death to those who disagree, a group that is actively appeased by many in positions of political power, a group that is anything but Extropian in its own positions and values - it behooves the rest of us to consider what to do, to think about the situation so if/when it looks like "push comes to shove" we don't *react* but are in a position to *proact*. Why is this off-topic for Extropians list? Regards, MB From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 29 13:14:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:14:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view Message-ID: <482719.97035.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 28/04/2009 16.06, Dan ha scritto: > > I'm surprised to see no one is looking at what > Rothbard actually > > wrote on this subject at: > > > > http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp > > > > (Just search on "fire" for the passage dealing with > this issue.) > > > > Notice how this view actually clears up much.? No > need for a judge or > > government to weigh one person's rights against > another's (or against > > an collective or abstraction like "society" or the > "community").? No > > need for fuzzy boundaries.? This is not to say > that Rothbard's system > > completely banishes all ambiguities and fuzziness, but > I believe, in > > this case, it confutes Holmes and his seconds.? > (There is one fault > > in Rothbard's analysis: a third party -- neither owner > nor patron -- > > might cry "fire" in the theater.? But, in that > case, in his system, > > it still resolves to a property rights issue.) > > I agree that, in a libertarian society, a person living in > a compact that don't fulfil his obligation to common defence > or, worse, act in a way damaging the common defence > obligation he accepted freely could be sanctioned using > property rights and / or placing him in outlaw status. I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean someone who expressly makes consents to some sort of common defense arrangement? Or are you relying on some form of tacit consent? If the latter, then, I submit, you're not talking about a libertarian society. > For example, people could give up a collateral when > accepting to serve in the local militia. If they don't show > up to serve when a call is done, they forfeit the collateral > that will be divided between the people showing. Something > like his home. > > In the case of Schenck v. United States this would become a > breach of contractual duties. How does this relate to Rothbard's view of Holmes crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument? In my understanding of Schenck v. United States, I completely and wholeheartedly disagree. Schenck was not under contractual obligation to the federal government not to express his opinion concerning the draft and the war. Even if he were under some sort of obligation for common defense -- something that remains to be proved -- it's hard to see how that same government's involvement in a European war had anything to do with the common defense. At best, it'd be a matter of opinion and one could easily imagine a reasonable opinion against that war being for common defense. Regards, Dan From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 13:14:53 2009 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:14:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanism and the Limits of Democracy Message-ID: <918a899d0904290614l52ff9759ma6ce8997d0936679@mail.gmail.com> Ronald Bailey's paper from the ASU Workshop on Transhumanism and the Future of Democracy: http://www.reason.com/news/show/133074.html Joseph From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 13:36:16 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:36:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904290636r11b624adjbdbbdec1f73a1c5f@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Max More wrote: > In the meantime, this issue -- and I don't pretend to have read anything > close to every post by Lee recently (though I certainly value his > contributions in general) -- raises again the question of how best to manage > this list according to the purposes for which is was created early last > decade, and for which it still exists. Personally, as a co-owner of this > list, I feel internal conflict. One the one hand, I don't like to suppress > vigorous debate on controversial and troubling topics (such as forcibly > relocating people of a certain religious belief). On the other, this list -- > to retain its unique flavor -- should cleave reasonably closely to the > Principles of Extropy... .What to so? I do think that we face an > overwhelming amount of digital "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus > our discussions. Requiring some basic level of adherence to the Principles > of Extropy on this particular list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I > don't believe anyone could demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) When I was encouraged by Natasha to join this list, I had the pleasure to discover not only the oldest transhumanist list, but that which is probably is the richest and the most vibrant, and to get a direct exposure to the extropian environment that I had just known only through very dubious mediations until then. Now, as to the concerns currently expressed by Max, I would reiterate the view already expressed once in a private exchange with Spike that the really crucial issue, IMHO, is "that we face an overwhelming amount of digital stuff and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions". I am far from scandalised by "vigorous debate on controversial and troubling topics", but I think that the really troubling aspect thereof is *when even the vaguest reference to the topics of the list (namely, estropy, transhumanism, technology, posthuman change, futurism, etc.) risks to be lost along the way* (possibly along with civility, critical spirit, pertinence, constructive attitudes, etc.). This risks to make for repetitive, stereotypical, radicalised/personalised, and/or less-than-focused exchanges, including when the contents do not call at all into question the Principles of Extropy but may remain nevertheless detrimental to the health and flourishing of the list. On the contrary, I suspect that *a much stricter requirement to stay on topic*, which includes constantly justifying one's position in view of the said Principles (be it in terms of adherence, or even just in terms of *relevance*) *would be enough to avoid 99% of what might be perceived as embarassing, exploitative, irritating, provocative, propaganda-sounding, or simply boring*. Moreover, the choice to concentrate on this aspect has the distinct advantage of avoiding any hint of censorship as to the merits of the positions expressed, while at the same time achieving in a subtler and less disturbing way the same goals - keeping the list on track and retaining its flavour. Just my two (Euro) cents... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Apr 29 15:28:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:28:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] New Blow For Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Theory Message-ID: <747373.78702.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, John K Clark wrote: >> the Chicxulub impact predates >> the K-T boundary by as much as 300,000 >> years. > > So the largest impact in at least 100 million years and > probably MUCH longer > happened at just about the same time (300,000 years is a > mere trifle even if > true) as a HUGE mass extinction and it's all just a big > coincidence? I'm not so sure. I'm not aware of the resolution involved here. If it's precise enough to be certain, then, IMO, it would seriously call into question that the Chicxulub impact caused the extinction event. > You are in a massive thunderstorm and see your friend > struck by lightning, > you run to him and see he is dead. Maybe the lightning > didn't kill him, > maybe he had a stroke a tenth of a second before and was > already dead > when the lightning hit him. Well maybe, but probably not. I think that analogy doesn't fit the case well. Let me try one better. It's more like you find a bunch of skeletons -- human and other animals -- in a valley. The skeletons are decades old. You're not sure what killed them. Then you find evidence that there was a forest fire there. You think the forest fire was around the same time, but let's say you can't date it to the specific year or month at this time. Let's say you know if happened sometime in the 1920s and the bodies seem to date back to 1926. Do you know if the fire caused the deaths? > Having said that I must also say I find it odd that the > huge volcanic Deccan > Traps in India occurred at just about the same time as the > impact and the > extinction. Everything seemed to be going wrong at the same > time; but if it > didn't we wouldn't be here. That's kind of what I thought reading Archibald's book years ago, but it really depends on whether an impactor of that size can cause the kind of (postulated episodic?) mantle upwelling. Also, regarding the Deccan Traps, there's seems to be some evidence the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event -- one much smaller than the K/T one, it appears -- was caused by volcanism, specifically the whatever formed the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. There's much debate on this, but it could show that massive volcanism sans an impactor not only happens but can cause mass depletions or mass extinctions. Ditto for the end Permian event, but the evidence seems, to me, even more sketchy there.* My guess is: Come back in twenty years and a lot of what's considered the majority view on all these extinctions will be heavily revised. Regards, Dan * A recent and decent (IMO) lay summary of this is _Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago_ by Douglas H. Erwin. A sad shortcoming of this book, though, is he hardly talks about the organisms themselves. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 19:12:58 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:12:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <60756.12.77.169.14.1241002724.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> <1fa8c3b90904282249x127a3543t31510168cc135f6d@mail.gmail.com> <8073E4ADC0CE41C0B4846532FBCBEE48@MyComputer> <60756.12.77.169.14.1241002724.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <580930c20904291212s73fd487ue8039ba084f8a725@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:58 PM, MB wrote: > I will miss Lee's postings. He gave me much to think about. I will refrain from discussing the "merits" of Lee's posts - which I find sometimes refreshingly "uncorrect", sometimes *very* far from my own ideas - since I am always uneasy when the discussion on somebody's moderation does not concern trolling, spamming, exploiting, verbosity, flaming, overposting, off-topics, but ideological stances. In fact, as mentioned earlier, even though as a mere guest I have no say on the list's management, I respectfully submit that Natasha's and Max's more than legitimate concerns might be better addressed by an effort to discuss any subject and any position *with explicit reference to the list own topics*, rather than by establishing "boundaries" to the "acceptable" positions on the merits - and, if necessary, by an enforcement of such principle. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Apr 29 19:19:58 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:19:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view In-Reply-To: <49F7813B.6000004@libero.it> References: <988161.98558.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F7813B.6000004@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20904291219i46f19867p5ca0b0e1f28c7e55@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:20 AM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > For example, people could give up a collateral when accepting to serve in > the local militia. If they don't show up to serve when a call is done, they > forfeit the collateral that will be divided between the people showing. > Something like his home. > > In the case of Schenck v. United States this would become a breach of > contractual duties. As little as an (anarco-capitalist? radical libertarian? minarchist?) I may be, I must confess that I am often positively awed by the creative effort of the relevant environment towards lateral thinking, thinking-out-of-the-box and radically consistent solutions Something which might well explain why they are over-represented in the transhumanist ranks in comparison with the "outside world". However, as per our recent discussion, what exactly the issue at hand has to to with the list topics? -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 29 23:11:24 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:11:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view In-Reply-To: <580930c20904291219i46f19867p5ca0b0e1f28c7e55@mail.gmail.com> References: <988161.98558.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F7813B.6000004@libero.it> <580930c20904291219i46f19867p5ca0b0e1f28c7e55@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49F8DE9C.3010305@libero.it> Il 29/04/2009 21.19, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:20 AM, painlord2k at libero.it > However, as per our recent discussion, what exactly the issue at hand > has to to with the list topics? I think would be good to develop a way to organize the defence of a society that is based upon the Principles of Extropy. This is consistent with the first point of the Principles of Extropy. It is also consistent with practical optimism and rational thinking. > Extropy means seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, > an open-ended lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, > biological, and psychological limits to continuing development. > Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities > as individuals, as organizations, and as a species. Growing in > healthy directions without bound. This is a way to overcome the constrains that our current organization of the society put upon our development and the development of the society itself. The current organization of the western societies is, in my opinion, a brake to the healthy development of individuals and group, and will make near impossible or incredibly slow our development as a species. So we need to develop a framework of how organize the future, when someone will be able to create extropic, libertarian, anarcho-capitalist seasteding or space-faring communities. When Jefferson helped to write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights he was deeply influenced by Cesare Beccaria writings. So, maybe, someone could be influenced by these and other topics and will not be force to fall back to the old ways to organize things. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 29 23:13:33 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:13:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49F7D727.80805@comcast.net> Message-ID: <49F8DF1D.7040801@libero.it> Il 29/04/2009 6.27, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > I agree with Brent and all following people. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Apr 29 23:40:52 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:40:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view In-Reply-To: <482719.97035.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <482719.97035.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49F8E584.6020401@libero.it> Il 29/04/2009 15.14, Dan ha scritto: >> I agree that, in a libertarian society, a person living in a >> compact that don't fulfil his obligation to common defence or, >> worse, act in a way damaging the common defence obligation he >> accepted freely could be sanctioned using property rights and / or >> placing him in outlaw status. > > I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean someone who expressly > makes consents to some sort of common defence arrangement? Or are > you relying on some form of tacit consent? If the latter, then, I > submit, you're not talking about a libertarian society. I'm talking about a formal contract that people accept freely. Obviously, people that don't accept the contract of mutual defence is probably left alone to fend off for themselves in case of troubles. Or would be forced to pay more to be defended. >> For example, people could give up a collateral when accepting to >> serve in the local militia. If they don't show up to serve when a >> call is done, they forfeit the collateral that will be divided >> between the people showing. Something like his home. >> >> In the case of Schenck v. United States this would become a breach >> of contractual duties. > > How does this relate to Rothbard's view of Holmes > crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument? My understanding is that Rothbard addresses the crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument as a problem of free speech, where the Schenck v. United States is not a free speech argument but a series of unlawful acts undermining the war efforts of the US. > In my understanding of Schenck v. United States, I completely and > wholeheartedly disagree. Schenck was not under contractual > obligation to the federal government not to express his opinion > concerning the draft and the war. In fact, Schenck was not incriminated for printing the leaflets and distributing them to the wide public or stating his opinion in public, but to sending them to drafted men to incite them to resist the draft and disobey to lawful orders and the words he used were not rational albeit passionate; they were directed to incite fear and other strong emotions in young men that were vulnerable to them. The proper way to prevent the draftees to be sent in war was to change the Congress opinion or the electors opinion, not push the draftees to mutiny and rebellion. > Even if he were under some sort of > obligation for common defence -- something that remains to be proved > -- it's hard to see how that same government's involvement in a > European war had anything to do with the common defence. This would become a longer thread, so maybe it is better not start it now. I limit myself to note that the best way to help people after a earthquake is to build earthquake resistant homes before the earthquake. > At best, > it'd be a matter of opinion and one could easily imagine a reasonable > opinion against that war being for common defence. In fact, I'm sure many were against the war but only a few went if jail. Mirco From moulton at moulton.com Thu Apr 30 03:59:23 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:59:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <580930c20904290636r11b624adjbdbbdec1f73a1c5f@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20904290636r11b624adjbdbbdec1f73a1c5f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241063963.10761.178.camel@hayek> On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 15:36 +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On the contrary, I suspect that a much stricter requirement to stay on > topic, which includes constantly justifying one's position in view of > the said Principles (be it in terms of adherence, or even just in > terms of *relevance*) would be enough to avoid 99% of what might be > perceived as embarassing, exploitative, irritating, provocative, > propaganda-sounding, or simply boring. > > Moreover, the choice to concentrate on this aspect has the distinct > advantage of avoiding any hint of censorship as to the merits of the > positions expressed, while at the same time achieving in a subtler and > less disturbing way the same goals - keeping the list on track and > retaining its flavour. Stefano has suggested some things well worth considering. What I still have trouble with is how clearly outrageous material will be handled. Will this list become a platform for material which advocates actions which are against the Extropian Principles and would be considered as crimes against humanity? Consider the following passage which was posted to this list about a month ago: "As soon as recognizable underclasses begin to form, they ought to have been either massively deported, or subjected to resettlement on reservations, where they'd be compelled to go back to agriculture or any kind of honest toil in order to survive." Is this part of the Extropian vision? I hope not. I hope that the Extropian community has not become so callous as to overlook on the list someone advocating deporting the "underclasses". Several people have mentioned being able to seriously discussion critical issues. One thing that concerns me is that was no serious analysis and discussion was done on the list to see if there even was a problem. It was as if a two or three sentence fig leaf was thrown up so that some sick idea about expelling the underclass or deporting Muslims could be expounded. I do not see that any serious discussion or analysis was done on this list before the talk of expelling and deporting started. Fred > Just my two (Euro) cents... > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 30 04:29:47 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:29:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things Message-ID: Greetings fellow extropians! On the subject of moderation, I am reluctantly and belatedly offering my resignation as moderator. This resignation is at least a couple months overdue, for I really haven't been doing much, other than occasionally looking in the hold bucket and letting almost everything through. The term "offering" is understated; rather I must gently insist, for I intend to make a few changes in my life forthwith, one of which is to go to daily digest Exi-chat for a while, perhaps as long as the duration of the summer, and unsub to all other internet lists besides this one. Please I hope one or more of you will step up to the plate and take on this moderation task, so we can keep this list going, which I have enjoyed so much for the past dozen years. With this email, I can cheerfully announce a personal and professional triumph that has allowed me to return early from a business trip to the east coast, and now I will be able to stay home for the next eight to ten weeks, perhaps longer. I never expected this insane sprint to last all spring. For the last six weeks, my own boss has had to stand tall on the carpet every morning in front of the brass to explain in painful detail why my hardware hasn't been delivered and what he and I were doing to rectify this sitch immediately. Now we don't need to do that anymore, thank evolution. It is said that moderating Exi-chat is a thankless task, but I disagree. It is a sometimes thankful task, for someone once posted me: >...Spike, I appreciate your laissez faire approach to moderating the list... Faire? Well, thanks, I like to think I give everyone an even break, but Laissez? No WAY Jose, not a chance! I have been working my butt off this past year, the most insanely busy of my professional career, with thirty trips to the east coast in 15 months, back there every single week for the past five including this one. New Jersey expects me to pay taxes in that state. This I flatly refuse to do. Sue me. In the past half a year I have had to pass up good times with friends, chess club, a wicked cool project working with Keith Henson, something I deeply regret having no time to do, and of course my family has sacrificed as well, suffering my absense early and often. This routine for the past five weeks is Monday in the home office, catch the 10:40pm flight out of San Francisco to Newark NJ, or JFK if the Newark flight is full, arriving at crack of dawn Tuesday, head straight to the office, then Wednesday and Thursday in the east coast office, catch the 6:20 pm flight back, arriving at 9:45 pm (and hoping I don't catch the swine flu resulting in illness or serious death) so I can make the usual Friday meetings in the home office. I will not miss that exhausting routine for one minute, nor will I pay New Jersey income taxes, nooo way. I currently have over two thousand unread messages in my in box, about half of it Exi-chat stuff, some of it a couple months old, for I don't get Exi-chat or personal email while on the road, only business email. I just fell behind, after reading everything on Exi-chat for a dozen years. Most of that may hafta go in the bit bucket unread. United Airlines is offering me all these free trips, for I have flown on them farther than the distance to the moon, which Armstrong and Aldrin did in a mere three days, but I don't want any of their lousy plane tickets! I don't want any premier executive red carpet yakkity yaks or bla blas, I just want some stay-home tickets. I like airplanes. I just don't like airports and actually flying in the damn things. I don't like sitting next to hemans either, ewwww yuk, germ factories are we. Well, I am not, but everyone else is. My own germs never bothered me, but their's bothered me. Actually germs are kinda cool; wiggly little things that can go all over the place, or at least mine are. The other proles' germs are filthy disease carrying pathogens, stalking me constantly, wishing to fight with my own germs, just to be mean. But I digress. Regarding my experience with Exi-chat, I will share some insider gossip you may find interesting, and perhaps say something helpful to the next moderator. About four years ago, we tried having three moderators, with the notion that we would confer and try to come to a three way unanimous agreement on any action. That didn't work. I can't recall one single occasion where the three of us agreed, and so we tended to block ourselves and do nothing. In retrospect this was my fault, for I usually wanted to allow everything, and it wasn't the right thing, for some of the stuff that is posted is downright offensive. Of course, I like being offended, but still. The right way is to have a single moderator, and rotate the job around about every six months or so. I kept getting in trouble because I would never spank anyone, even those who richly deserved it. And I like spanking. But I digress. Some here may recall when the list was attacked by those new transhumanist religion folks, led by I think his name mighta been Derk or Dark or something like that, and that weird chick that met him here and became his minion. Usually one must have at least two minions to make an honest plural, but I think Durk had just the one minion. What happens if two people are doting followers, and neither a leader? Do they become each others' minion? Are the then co-minions? Or is it a minion and her manion? If they take holy observances are they then co-minions in communion? The world may never know. In any case, they were bad news and had to go and so we had that unpleasant episode where they and a whole bunch of other people were tossed into the penalty box including myself, for overposting. We spent several days spanking each other. That part was cool, but some never came back, which was sad. I had to throw myself in there, but fortunately for me, the moderator has the power to lift himself by the hair of his own head, back out, which is what I did, along with all the others except Dork and his co-minion. I never found out what happened to them. If you know don't tell me, for I don't *even* need to know. When an elected offical resigns mid term due to some scurrilous scandal, the usual claim is that he wishes to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily. Why do they always make that silly comment? My resignation is kinda like that, except for four minor points. First, I never expected to be doing this job for this long, so it isn't really an untimely resignation, and second, I am not an elected official, or if so, I stole the election. Third, I haven't done any actual scandals (but I am always open to suggestion of course, scurrilous or otherwise.) Last, the reprehensible elected official will make this claim of wanting to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily even if his closest living relative is an illegitimate adopted half third cousin once removed (by way of his second ex wife) who lives in prison on a different continent. I on the other hand, have an actual family, including six ageing parents, all of whom have at least one serious health problem and need my help. Shelly and I celebrated our golden anniversary in March, and my son turns 3 in June. Life is goooood. {8-] But there isn't time for everything, ja? That being said, all I really ask is a little respect. And a condo at Aspen. And a Maserati testarossa. And godlike power over life and death, but that's all I really want. Hell, keep the car, the resort and the respect, but that godlike power would be waaaay cool. I would banish the hell outta death, forthwith. Now please someone step up and moderate this fine list. I nominate John Grigg. Isn't the Griggmeister about the nicest guy you ever met? Johnny I respectfully offer you the badge sir. We will do whatever you say. Well, not really, but we will cheer you on and will be cool if you serve only the six month term we originally envisioned nearly four years ago. I will never utter a word of complaint, nor will anyone who has served as Exi-chat moderator, or plans to do so. Exi-chatters, thank you all for writing such interesting stuff during my term. Please keep it up, turn it up, read the principles of extropy and do them bigtime. spike http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 05:23:56 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:53:56 +0930 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <710b78fc0904292223m6be3f8c4ia9532db4ede37034@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/30 spike : > > Greetings fellow extropians! > > On the subject of moderation, I am reluctantly and belatedly offering my > resignation as moderator. Thanks for doing this job for so long Spike. Thanks! Funny post too, and 'grats for whatever it is that went so well for you. I kinda know that the answer to this is "no", but I'll ask anyway: Is there any spunky web 2.0 crowd sourcing kinda thingamajig that we could do, to moderate without a moderator? You know, a karma system, or some crappy thing like that? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 05:42:44 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:12:44 +0930 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904292242l733b443fl6e6d484d02677e2a@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/29 Max More : > So, regarding the possibility of: > Extropy-Controversial" > or > "Extropy-Unmoderated > > ...what are your thoughts? > > Max My vote is "no". Creating a new list will mean either everyone goes there and this one dies (unlikely) or no one goes there and the new one is stillborn (very likely). Either way, there's only one list. Over the years Exi Institute tried to drag us kicking and screaming onto web based forums and whatnot, to great consternation and no result. I concluded long ago that this will always be an email list, even well after we've all evolved into pure energy. Email is problematic, no? But I think we are stuck with it. Moderation is problematic, especially in this nest of rugged individualism. I know I'd be a terrible moderator, because I can't think of many or any cases for moderation (I'm comfortable with chaos, and cool with using my mail client to do my own filtering). It'd be nice to use some kind of karma system, or something a bit more crowd-sourcey, to replace moderation. Unfortunately, just about every scheme I can think of would require a website (there are no feedback buttons in an email). And this will always be an email list. Lists are this big bucket 'o' stuff, vulnerable to denial of service attacks by overposters, which is mostly what we use moderators for, and to trolling attacks, which is the rest of what we use moderators for. I do have a couple of thoughts. First, I think most stuff that needs (wants? :-) ) moderating, is stuff where the poster wants instant gratification. So, delaying posts might work as well as blocking them entirely. I get the impression this has been the defacto situation with Spike; if you go on moderation, you get delayed by Spike's busy schedule (and fair enough). Secondly, if you had a web based mechanism to allow member feedback where people cared enough to do it, that'd probably be underused and abusable. However, it might make decent input for a bayesian filter to sort out "bad" posts (low quality/troll/??) from "good" posts. If that filter's results were used to drive a delay mechanism (ie: bayesian "badness" filter says "no", so post is delayed by 1 day), and the poster got an automated email to tell them of that event, might that begin to be workable? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 05:48:08 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:48:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/30/09, spike wrote: > Now please someone step up and moderate this fine list. I nominate John > Grigg. Isn't the Griggmeister about the nicest guy you ever met? Johnny I > respectfully offer you the badge sir. We will do whatever you say. Well, > not really, but we will cheer you on and will be cool if you serve only the > six month term we originally envisioned nearly four years ago. I will never > utter a word of complaint, nor will anyone who has served as Exi-chat > moderator, or plans to do so. > Nothing against John Grigg, :) But 'niceness' is not really the main quality you need in a moderator. It is a thankless job, as they will probably end up offending almost everyone on the list at some time. They will need a very thick skin, as few people will thank them for their efforts and many will complain. They also need to be closely aligned with the objectives of the owners of the list as their moderation must have the owners' support and be aimed at maintaining list standards as specified by the owners. A six month term sounds like a good idea, but to be be practical, the limits will be a) How long they can face doing the job b) How long they maintain the confidence and support of the owners. c) How long before lynch mobs petition the owners. BillK From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 05:52:44 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:22:44 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/29 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 4:54 AM, BillK wrote: > >> >> No, that's not how the world works. >> The level of reward does not equal the 'value' of the work. >> >> (Now you need to get into a complex discussion about how to 'value' the work). >> >> Compare the rewards of different jobs and you will quickly notice >> strange anomalies. >> >> High rewards are in the entertainment industry and anything to do with >> celebrity. Pop stars, sports stars, hairdressers, chefs, interior >> designers, etc. >> >> The other big rewards are for the crooks in the financial industry, >> whose reward is as much as they can get away with, without actually >> being charged with fraud. >> >> So, if your argument is based on the theoretical law of supply and >> demand it fails in the real world that the rest of us live in. >> (Or, the corollary, that if it is correct, then the law of supply and >> demand produces a very poor quality of world). >> > ### Acceptance of certain basic economic knowledge is indispensable > for any discussion of economics. Since you seem to be playfully > rejecting the basics, I see no reason to continue. > > Rafal Not so. I think BillK is pointing out that our intuitive notion of value, and the word value from the economics lexicon, are two different things. In the economics discourse the idea that the level of reward and the "value" diverge is wrong, because they are exactly the same thing, whereas I think intuition says otherwise. I agree with BillK, that value and reward are related but separate. Thus all my banging on about voluntary vs paid activity, yada yada. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From nanogirl at halcyon.com Thu Apr 30 05:55:49 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:55:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2AA61639CCDB4359B3E986E0F5379EFE@3DBOXXW4850> Spike, that was beautiful, but I digress. You have done a good job. Enjoy your time with your family, you deserve it. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller http://www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 9:29 PM Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things > > Greetings fellow extropians! > > On the subject of moderation, I am reluctantly and belatedly offering my > resignation as moderator. This resignation is at least a couple months > overdue, for I really haven't been doing much, other than occasionally > looking in the hold bucket and letting almost everything through. The > term > "offering" is understated; rather I must gently insist, for I intend to > make > a few changes in my life forthwith, one of which is to go to daily digest > Exi-chat for a while, perhaps as long as the duration of the summer, and > unsub to all other internet lists besides this one. Please I hope one or > more of you will step up to the plate and take on this moderation task, so > we can keep this list going, which I have enjoyed so much for the past > dozen > years. > > With this email, I can cheerfully announce a personal and professional > triumph that has allowed me to return early from a business trip to the > east > coast, and now I will be able to stay home for the next eight to ten > weeks, > perhaps longer. I never expected this insane sprint to last all spring. > For the last six weeks, my own boss has had to stand tall on the carpet > every morning in front of the brass to explain in painful detail why my > hardware hasn't been delivered and what he and I were doing to rectify > this > sitch immediately. Now we don't need to do that anymore, thank evolution. > > It is said that moderating Exi-chat is a thankless task, but I disagree. > It > is a sometimes thankful task, for someone once posted me: > >>...Spike, I appreciate your laissez faire approach to moderating the > list... > > Faire? Well, thanks, I like to think I give everyone an even break, but > Laissez? No WAY Jose, not a chance! I have been working my butt off this > past year, the most insanely busy of my professional career, with thirty > trips to the east coast in 15 months, back there every single week for the > past five including this one. New Jersey expects me to pay taxes in that > state. This I flatly refuse to do. Sue me. In the past half a year I > have > had to pass up good times with friends, chess club, a wicked cool project > working with Keith Henson, something I deeply regret having no time to do, > and of course my family has sacrificed as well, suffering my absense early > and often. This routine for the past five weeks is Monday in the home > office, catch the 10:40pm flight out of San Francisco to Newark NJ, or JFK > if the Newark flight is full, arriving at crack of dawn Tuesday, head > straight to the office, then Wednesday and Thursday in the east coast > office, catch the 6:20 pm flight back, arriving at 9:45 pm (and hoping I > don't catch the swine flu resulting in illness or serious death) so I can > make the usual Friday meetings in the home office. I will not miss that > exhausting routine for one minute, nor will I pay New Jersey income taxes, > nooo way. > > I currently have over two thousand unread messages in my in box, about > half > of it Exi-chat stuff, some of it a couple months old, for I don't get > Exi-chat or personal email while on the road, only business email. I just > fell behind, after reading everything on Exi-chat for a dozen years. Most > of that may hafta go in the bit bucket unread. United Airlines is > offering > me all these free trips, for I have flown on them farther than the > distance > to the moon, which Armstrong and Aldrin did in a mere three days, but I > don't want any of their lousy plane tickets! I don't want any premier > executive red carpet yakkity yaks or bla blas, I just want some stay-home > tickets. I like airplanes. I just don't like airports and actually > flying > in the damn things. I don't like sitting next to hemans either, ewwww > yuk, > germ factories are we. Well, I am not, but everyone else is. My own > germs > never bothered me, but their's bothered me. Actually germs are kinda > cool; > wiggly little things that can go all over the place, or at least mine are. > The other proles' germs are filthy disease carrying pathogens, stalking me > constantly, wishing to fight with my own germs, just to be mean. But I > digress. > > Regarding my experience with Exi-chat, I will share some insider gossip > you > may find interesting, and perhaps say something helpful to the next > moderator. About four years ago, we tried having three moderators, with > the > notion that we would confer and try to come to a three way unanimous > agreement on any action. That didn't work. I can't recall one single > occasion where the three of us agreed, and so we tended to block ourselves > and do nothing. In retrospect this was my fault, for I usually wanted to > allow everything, and it wasn't the right thing, for some of the stuff > that > is posted is downright offensive. Of course, I like being offended, but > still. The right way is to have a single moderator, and rotate the job > around about every six months or so. I kept getting in trouble because I > would never spank anyone, even those who richly deserved it. And I like > spanking. But I digress. > > Some here may recall when the list was attacked by those new transhumanist > religion folks, led by I think his name mighta been Derk or Dark or > something like that, and that weird chick that met him here and became his > minion. Usually one must have at least two minions to make an honest > plural, but I think Durk had just the one minion. What happens if two > people are doting followers, and neither a leader? Do they become each > others' minion? Are the then co-minions? Or is it a minion and her > manion? > If they take holy observances are they then co-minions in communion? The > world may never know. In any case, they were bad news and had to go and > so > we had that unpleasant episode where they and a whole bunch of other > people > were tossed into the penalty box including myself, for overposting. We > spent several days spanking each other. That part was cool, but some > never > came back, which was sad. I had to throw myself in there, but fortunately > for me, the moderator has the power to lift himself by the hair of his own > head, back out, which is what I did, along with all the others except Dork > and his co-minion. I never found out what happened to them. If you know > don't tell me, for I don't *even* need to know. > > When an elected offical resigns mid term due to some scurrilous scandal, > the > usual claim is that he wishes to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily. > Why > do they always make that silly comment? My resignation is kinda like > that, > except for four minor points. First, I never expected to be doing this > job > for this long, so it isn't really an untimely resignation, and second, I > am > not an elected official, or if so, I stole the election. Third, I haven't > done any actual scandals (but I am always open to suggestion of course, > scurrilous or otherwise.) Last, the reprehensible elected official will > make this claim of wanting to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily even if > his closest living relative is an illegitimate adopted half third cousin > once removed (by way of his second ex wife) who lives in prison on a > different continent. I on the other hand, have an actual family, > including > six ageing parents, all of whom have at least one serious health problem > and > need my help. Shelly and I celebrated our golden anniversary in March, > and > my son turns 3 in June. Life is goooood. {8-] But there isn't time for > everything, ja? > > That being said, all I really ask is a little respect. And a condo at > Aspen. And a Maserati testarossa. And godlike power over life and death, > but that's all I really want. Hell, keep the car, the resort and the > respect, but that godlike power would be waaaay cool. I would banish the > hell outta death, forthwith. > > Now please someone step up and moderate this fine list. I nominate John > Grigg. Isn't the Griggmeister about the nicest guy you ever met? Johnny > I > respectfully offer you the badge sir. We will do whatever you say. Well, > not really, but we will cheer you on and will be cool if you serve only > the > six month term we originally envisioned nearly four years ago. I will > never > utter a word of complaint, nor will anyone who has served as Exi-chat > moderator, or plans to do so. > > Exi-chatters, thank you all for writing such interesting stuff during my > term. Please keep it up, turn it up, read the principles of extropy and > do > them bigtime. > > spike > > http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 06:14:26 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:14:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:52 AM, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/4/29 Rafal Smigrodzki : >> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 4:54 AM, BillK wrote: >> >>> >>> No, that's not how the world works. >>> The level of reward does not equal the 'value' of the work. >>> >>> (Now you need to get into a complex discussion about how to 'value' the work). >>> >>> Compare the rewards of different jobs and you will quickly notice >>> strange anomalies. >>> >>> High rewards are in the entertainment industry and anything to do with >>> celebrity. Pop stars, sports stars, hairdressers, chefs, interior >>> designers, etc. >>> >>> The other big rewards are for the crooks in the financial industry, >>> whose reward is as much as they can get away with, without actually >>> being charged with fraud. >>> >>> So, if your argument is based on the theoretical law of supply and >>> demand it fails in the real world that the rest of us live in. >>> (Or, the corollary, that if it is correct, then the law of supply and >>> demand produces a very poor quality of world). >>> >> ### Acceptance of certain basic economic knowledge is indispensable >> for any discussion of economics. Since you seem to be playfully >> rejecting the basics, I see no reason to continue. >> >> Rafal > > Not so. I think BillK is pointing out that our intuitive notion of > value, and the word value from the economics lexicon, are two > different things. In the economics discourse the idea that the level > of reward and the "value" diverge is wrong, because they are exactly > the same thing, whereas I think intuition says otherwise. I agree with > BillK, that value and reward are related but separate. Thus all my > banging on about voluntary vs paid activity, yada yada. ### Let's wait for Bill to take umbrage at being characterized as an anti-free-marketeer and a supply-and-demand denialist..... this could be a long wait ... but I'd be glad to be surprised on this count. BTW, "voluntary" means for me that no threat of an attack against you is used to induce a behavior which also implies that in real life almost all paid behaviors are a subset a voluntary behaviors. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 06:52:25 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:22:25 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> > BTW, "voluntary" means for me that no threat of an attack against you > is used to induce a behavior which also implies that in real life > almost all paid behaviors are a subset a voluntary behaviors. > > Rafal You're right, you're dead right, it's ambiguous. Paid employment is not direct coercion. However, there is a difference between stuff you do because you get paid to, and stuff you do regardless. What's good language for that? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 07:13:06 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:13:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things In-Reply-To: <2AA61639CCDB4359B3E986E0F5379EFE@3DBOXXW4850> References: <2AA61639CCDB4359B3E986E0F5379EFE@3DBOXXW4850> Message-ID: <2d6187670904300013r7c20e7feobeb8028d209426e7@mail.gmail.com> Spike, wow you have had quite a year! I'd say you need to take a vacation, except that people who go on vacation often feel when they get home, that they need to take yet another vacation to recover from the first one! LOL I'm so glad you got your professional challenges resolved and can now focus on family. you wrote: Now please someone step up and moderate this fine list. I nominate John Grigg. Isn't the Griggmeister about the nicest guy you ever met? Johnny I respectfully offer you the badge sir. We will do whatever you say. Well, not really, but we will cheer you on and will be cool if you serve only the six month term we originally envisioned nearly four years ago. I will never utter a word of complaint, nor will anyone who has served as Exi-chat moderator, or plans to do so. >>> BillK wrote: hey also need to be closely aligned with the objectives of the owners of the list as their moderation must have the owners' support and be aimed at maintaining list standards as specified by the owners. A six month term sounds like a good idea, but to be be practical, the limits will be a) How long they can face doing the job b) How long they maintain the confidence and support of the owners. c) How long before lynch mobs petition the owners. >>> I feel very complimented by your nomination, but I think BillK has a good point about how being a nice guy is just not enough for this position. But ironically, he may not know me so well, because I do have a tougher side (from having been in hospitality management, complexity help me) and actually could do the job, just not as fiercely as Eugen Leitl, or as charmingly (like a beloved bartender) as you did it. I would of course view Max More and Natasha Vita-More as the ultimate arbiters/supreme court, because this is their baby. I love the Extropian email list and would do my best to maintain the standards (gently but firmly). Evidence of doing a good job might very well be no longer being viewed as a sweet guy. lol But I hope not. I had thought Natasha would take up the reins, but if she does not want to, then a replacement will need to be found for you. Emlyn? BillK? John K Clark? I'm sure we have a number of people around here who could do a good job, in the ways BillK listed. John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 07:35:33 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:35:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Emlyn wrote: >> BTW, "voluntary" means for me that no threat of an attack against you >> is used to induce a behavior which also implies that in real life >> almost all paid behaviors are a subset a voluntary behaviors. >> >> Rafal > > You're right, you're dead right, it's ambiguous. Paid employment is > not direct coercion. However, there is a difference between stuff you > do because you get paid to, and stuff you do regardless. What's good > language for that? ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 07:43:34 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:13:34 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> > ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", > "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and > possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter > with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and > lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness > and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. > > Rafal Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 08:11:06 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:11:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:43 AM, Emlyn wrote: >> ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", >> "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and >> possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter >> with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and >> lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness >> and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. >> >> Rafal > > Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it > doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably > so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. ### So what do 95% humans do when not paid? You would be hard-pressed to find them engaged in many activities of use to strangers. Rafal From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 10:23:19 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:23:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Wolfram|Alpha news update In-Reply-To: <200904300038.n3U0cOdK003526@mercury.wolfram.com> References: <200904300038.n3U0cOdK003526@mercury.wolfram.com> Message-ID: <580930c20904300323g9ab1611ue52d5416eb1d5f0c@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wolfram|Alpha Team Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:38 AM Subject: Wolfram|Alpha news update To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com One day after giving the first public presentation of Wolfram|Alpha, Stephen Wolfram is now sharing more about the rich history behind the project. Today he posted "The Quest for Computable Knowledge" in the Wolfram|Alpha Blog. You can read his blog post now at: http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/04/29/the-quest-for-computable-knowledge-a-longer-view Stay tuned for more! Best regards, The Wolfram|Alpha Team You received this email because you signed up on our Wolfram|Alpha preview page. It was sent from an unmonitored email address, so please do not reply to this email address. ----------------- If you wish to change the email address we have on file for you, please go to: http://www.wolfram.com/emailchange/?email=stefano.vaj at gmail.com&mid=WR1591074 If you wish to be removed from the Wolfram Research mailing list, please go to: http://www.wolfram.com/unsubscribe/?email=stefano.vaj at gmail.com&mid=WR1591074 ----------------- This message was sent to by Wolfram Research, Inc. Mailing address: 100 Trade Center Dr., Champaign, IL 61820, USA -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu Apr 30 11:07:33 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:07:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <34071.12.77.168.172.1241089653.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", > "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and > possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter > with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and > lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness > and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. > Many of the people I know who do "volunteer work" are doing so from some sense of guilt. Some "giving back to the community" thing which seems to be rooted in guilt and a sense of debt, for all I can tell. Maybe the people I know are sick puppies? I see little joy. Regards, MB From pharos at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 11:13:38 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:13:38 +0000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4/29/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Acceptance of certain basic economic knowledge is indispensable > for any discussion of economics. Since you seem to be playfully > rejecting the basics, I see no reason to continue. > > ### Let's wait for Bill to take umbrage at being characterized as an > anti-free-marketeer and a supply-and-demand denialist.... That's the point I'm trying to make. Rafal loves theoretical discussion where intricate logic can 'win' the argument. I point to all the real-life exceptions where humans don't behave the way the theory says that they should behave. (I would happily call myself an anti-free-marketeer because a truly free market society has never existed and *can* never exist while trying to get unequal humans to deal, negotiate, trick, con, etc. each other. A regulated market is the best you can get in practice, and even that has human failings). I'm not so sure about being a supply-and-demand denialist, but there are definitely many situations when it just doesn't work in real life. That's why you have all the different schools of economists, all arguing that the others are talking / doing the wrong thing. Let's see.... The basic theory is childishly simple. *All_things_being_equal* if the price of goods increases consumers tend to buy less and if the price reduces consumers tend to buy more. Note: 'All things being equal' defines the theory. In real life things are often very unequal. The theory of supply and demand is important in the functioning of a market economy in that it explains the mechanism by which many resource allocation decisions are made. So Rafal understands, (correctly, I may say) that pointing out all the flaws in supply and demand theory is also pointing out all the flaws in free market theory, as it actually occurs in the messy, inconsistent and unpredictable real world. The basic theory of supply and demand assumes that markets are perfectly competitive. This means that there are many small buyers and sellers, each of which is unable to influence the price of the good on its own. This assumption is central to the simple understanding of supply and demand taught in introductory economics. However, in many actual economic transactions, the assumption fails because some individual buyers or sellers or other external forces have enough market power to influence prices. Then there are all the other exceptions, like - where the supply is fixed. If you only have 1000 widgets, then the price can be as high as you like, providing at least 1000 people will still buy one, where there is a monopoly supplier, or only a few buyers and sellers, the price is easily manipulated, where the price drops and consumers stop buying because they think the price might drop even more next month (depression), where the price rises and consumers buy more because they think the price might increase even more next month (inflation), where the reward is not in the price paid and the price is really irrelevant. Consumers buy things for many reasons, not just that the price is right for them at that time, and so on. And no market is isolated, they all interact with each other. If popular fashion, or a TV campaign gets consumers buying widgets, then these consumers will be buying less sprockets or grungeons. So the price in one market affects the price in other totally unrelated markets. Then there are all the problems of market interference, price fixing, taxes, subsidies, bailouts, rationing, externalities, etc. What I am saying is that there is no *law* of supply and demand. It is a useful part of economic theory, but it only applies in very restricted times and circumstances. Like most ideal theories, once the list of exceptions and special cases becomes too large, you have to examine every real life case on its own merits, because trying to apply a global 'law' will lead to error. BillK From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 11:30:35 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:00:35 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> 2009/4/30 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:43 AM, Emlyn wrote: >>> ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", >>> "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and >>> possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter >>> with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and >>> lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness >>> and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. >>> >>> Rafal >> >> Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it >> doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably >> so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. > > ### So what do 95% humans do when not paid? You would be hard-pressed > to find them engaged in many activities of use to strangers. > > Rafal Sounds like when they are paid (95% might be high). Also, this is not a fair comparison. People who are in paid work already feel they are doing their fair share. If people didn't need to be paid and so all their time could happily be unpaid time, how many people would do something useful with their time, vs how many would waste their time (watching tv / playing WoW)? Also, if the percentage of "usefuls" in the latter scenario is lower than in the former, is the work of the people who comprise the margin a significant loss? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 14:56:41 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:56:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904202336l5df9db6av480dd4fe78651788@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904210826y2b8135ael543ecf743ce93437@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904300756g4e61a387rd3ef22909d7e6a79@mail.gmail.com> See, Emlyn, I have not been disappointed. On the other hand, Bill did write a long post on supply and demand rather than a curt dismissal which could mean that he is developing doubts. Not all is yet lost - he may yet see the light of the market. Bill, economists do not really argue about the law of supply and demand, although many of them love finding goods with unusual demand and supply curves. Most definitely you do not need perfectly competitive markets for the law to work. Contrary to what you claim, demand and supply is active even in highly regulated economies, such as communist ones (which is of the reasons they malfunction). All it needs to be applicable is for humans to be able to respond to incentives and to operate under conditions of scarcity which means almost everywhere. And to go back to the comment that started this offshoot of a thread, supply and demand determine labor prices as well. I do appreciate your willingness to expound your views in detail but I will not tackle them. Rafal On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 5:13 AM, BillK wrote: > On 4/29/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> ### Acceptance of certain basic economic knowledge is indispensable >> ?for any discussion of economics. Since you seem to be playfully >> ?rejecting the basics, I see no reason to continue. >> >> ### Let's wait for Bill to take umbrage at being characterized as an >> anti-free-marketeer and a supply-and-demand denialist.... > > That's the point I'm trying to make. > Rafal loves theoretical discussion where intricate logic can 'win' the argument. > > I point to all the real-life exceptions where humans don't behave the > way the theory says that they should behave. > > (I would happily call myself an anti-free-marketeer because a truly > free market society has never existed and *can* never exist while > trying to get unequal humans to deal, negotiate, trick, con, etc. each > other. A regulated market is the best you can get in practice, and > even that has human failings). > > I'm not so sure about being a supply-and-demand denialist, but there > are definitely many situations when it just doesn't work in real life. > That's why you have all the different schools of economists, all > arguing that the others are talking / doing the wrong thing. > > Let's see.... ? ?The basic theory is childishly simple. > *All_things_being_equal* if the price of goods increases consumers > tend to buy less and if the price reduces consumers tend to buy more. > Note: 'All things being equal' defines the theory. In real life things > are often very unequal. > > The theory of supply and demand is important in the functioning of a > market economy in that it explains the mechanism by which many > resource allocation decisions are made. So Rafal understands, > (correctly, I may say) that pointing out all the flaws in supply and > demand theory is also pointing out all the flaws in free market > theory, as it actually occurs in the messy, inconsistent and > unpredictable real world. > > The basic theory of supply and demand assumes that markets are > perfectly competitive. This means that there are many small buyers and > sellers, each of which is unable to influence the price of the good on > its own. This assumption is central to the simple understanding of > supply and demand taught in introductory economics. However, in many > actual economic transactions, the assumption fails because some > individual buyers or sellers or other external forces have enough > market power to influence prices. > > Then there are all the other exceptions, like - > where the supply is fixed. If you only have 1000 widgets, then the > price can be as high as you like, providing at least 1000 people will > still buy one, > where there is a monopoly supplier, or only a few buyers and sellers, > the price is easily manipulated, > where the price drops and consumers stop buying because they think the > price might drop even more next month (depression), > where the price rises and consumers buy more because they think the > price might increase even more next month (inflation), > where the reward is not in the price paid and the price is really > irrelevant. Consumers buy things for many reasons, not just that the > price is right for them at that time, > and so on. > > And no market is isolated, they all interact with each other. If > popular fashion, or a TV campaign gets consumers buying widgets, then > these consumers will be buying less sprockets or grungeons. So the > price in one market affects the price in other totally unrelated > markets. > > Then there are all the problems of market interference, price fixing, > taxes, subsidies, bailouts, rationing, externalities, etc. > > What I am saying is that there is no *law* of supply and demand. It is > a useful part of economic theory, but it only applies in very > restricted times and circumstances. Like most ideal theories, once the > list of exceptions and special cases becomes too large, you have to > examine every real life case on its own merits, because trying to > apply a global 'law' will lead to error. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Chief Clinical Officer, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 15:05:52 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:05:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 5:30 AM, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/4/30 Rafal Smigrodzki : >> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:43 AM, Emlyn wrote: >>>> ### "chore", "job", "task", "labor" vs. "play", "entertainment", >>>> "amusement", "hobby"? Note the connotations of seriousness and >>>> possibly usefulness with the former and the association of the latter >>>> with frivolity. There are occasional diversions that are useful and >>>> lots of jobs that can be useless but overall if you want usefulness >>>> and productivity you are talking about jobs, not fun and games. >>>> >>>> Rafal >>> >>> Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it >>> doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably >>> so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. >> >> ### So what do 95% humans do when not paid? You would be hard-pressed >> to find them engaged in many activities of use to strangers. >> >> Rafal > > Sounds like when they are paid (95% might be high). > > Also, this is not a fair comparison. People who are in paid work > already feel they are doing their fair share. ### I didn't understand the above. > > If people didn't need to be paid and so all their time could happily > be unpaid time, how many people would do something useful with their > time, vs how many would waste their time (watching tv / playing WoW)? ### 85% outright waste (boozing, scheming, etc.), 10% good-intentioned waste (missionary work, all kinds of stupid activism) , 5% sexy useful stuff, like proving Fermat's theorem. Nobody would ever clean the sewers. ----------------------------- > > Also, if the percentage of "usefuls" in the latter scenario is lower > than in the former, is the work of the people who comprise the margin > a significant loss? ### Yes. Almost all that we enjoy is the result of paid work. Rafal From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 30 16:04:48 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:04:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Call for moderator candidates Message-ID: <200904301604.n3UG4vaD002849@andromeda.ziaspace.com> In light of the discontinuation of Spike's greatly appreciated service as moderator, rather than settle on a replacement immediately, let's hear from any of you who think they would be good at the job and who have the time and energy to do it. This is probably a good time also to review the List Agreement and Guidelines and to set out what is expected of a moderator. See http://www.extropy.org/emaillists.htm Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 30 16:05:38 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:05:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] condom con Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090430110149.022e9aa8@satx.rr.com> "If the Pope is right about condoms' effectiveness, surgeons will have to abandon latex gloves to reduce the likelihood of transmitting bugs. If latex won't work on a lone phallus, what chance does it have against 10 digits with nails on the tips?" ? Peter Robinson, letter, Sydney Morning Herald, April 20, 2009 From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 30 16:29:45 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:29:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What is God? Message-ID: <200904301629.n3UGTqWG008761@andromeda.ziaspace.com> From The Island -- a silly but nicely filmed SF movie -- comes a pretty good definition of "God": - "What's God?" -- "You know, when you want somethin' really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it... God's the guy that ignores you." Max From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 16:29:42 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:29:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70904281740u5766d874u11db5f40fdd438bc@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <55ad6af70904281740u5766d874u11db5f40fdd438bc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0FEDA39536BB41C68F50D7812DE1603C@DFC68LF1> Could be. I'm not sure. List behavior, like life in general, has its ups and downs and perhaps we just need more ideas to bit into. I mean, how long can we talk about the same old ideas from the same perspective? We have been in existence since the early 90s. I do not think because 'gene is not on the list that its quality is down. He is genuinely brilliant, provocative, informative and no nonsense, but there are so many list members who have the same characteristics. Maybe because Extropy Institute is not longer in business there is no formal project to get involved in, or maybe because the early ideas are not mainstream, or maybe because we don't have to defend ourselves against attacks from WTA any more, or because TED has taken the baton of the future and marketed it, or that Kurzweil has created his own philosophically/pragmatically transhumanist business and not included many transhumanists, I do not know. BUT, personally I like this. It is a very good sign. We ought to be taking bigger bits of the present, near future and far future. But you can be darn sure that members who are aggitating the list, Max or Spike does not help. Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 7:41 PM To: ExI chat list; kanzure at gmail.com Subject: Re: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Max More wrote: > What to so? I do think that we face an overwhelming amount of digital > "stuff" and quite reasonably want to focus our discussions. Requiring > some basic level of adherence to the Principles of Extropy on this > particular list seems quite reasonable to me. (And I don't believe > anyone could demonstrate dictatorial behavior from me. EVER.) Maybe it would turn out to be helpful to turn into a facilitator of extropian thinking. To be honest, I haven't been here too long but do suspect the list has been dropping in quality of extropic thought, to the extent that I suspect that the common posts might not be about extropy simply because the original posters are now gone. I know that Eugen is gone now, for instance, and I haven't been channeling in all that much of the work that I've been up to into here, so maybe that's why the health has been low? - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 16:42:25 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:42:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <80E04DAB4E634BC4A356B93ACE550B4D@DFC68LF1> Congratulations on your triumph! It has been a pleasure to have you as list moderator. You have always been fair-minded and kind. 1,000+ thanks, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:30 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] FW: moderation in all things Greetings fellow extropians! On the subject of moderation, I am reluctantly and belatedly offering my resignation as moderator. This resignation is at least a couple months overdue, for I really haven't been doing much, other than occasionally looking in the hold bucket and letting almost everything through. The term "offering" is understated; rather I must gently insist, for I intend to make a few changes in my life forthwith, one of which is to go to daily digest Exi-chat for a while, perhaps as long as the duration of the summer, and unsub to all other internet lists besides this one. Please I hope one or more of you will step up to the plate and take on this moderation task, so we can keep this list going, which I have enjoyed so much for the past dozen years. With this email, I can cheerfully announce a personal and professional triumph that has allowed me to return early from a business trip to the east coast, and now I will be able to stay home for the next eight to ten weeks, perhaps longer. I never expected this insane sprint to last all spring. For the last six weeks, my own boss has had to stand tall on the carpet every morning in front of the brass to explain in painful detail why my hardware hasn't been delivered and what he and I were doing to rectify this sitch immediately. Now we don't need to do that anymore, thank evolution. It is said that moderating Exi-chat is a thankless task, but I disagree. It is a sometimes thankful task, for someone once posted me: >...Spike, I appreciate your laissez faire approach to moderating the list... Faire? Well, thanks, I like to think I give everyone an even break, but Laissez? No WAY Jose, not a chance! I have been working my butt off this past year, the most insanely busy of my professional career, with thirty trips to the east coast in 15 months, back there every single week for the past five including this one. New Jersey expects me to pay taxes in that state. This I flatly refuse to do. Sue me. In the past half a year I have had to pass up good times with friends, chess club, a wicked cool project working with Keith Henson, something I deeply regret having no time to do, and of course my family has sacrificed as well, suffering my absense early and often. This routine for the past five weeks is Monday in the home office, catch the 10:40pm flight out of San Francisco to Newark NJ, or JFK if the Newark flight is full, arriving at crack of dawn Tuesday, head straight to the office, then Wednesday and Thursday in the east coast office, catch the 6:20 pm flight back, arriving at 9:45 pm (and hoping I don't catch the swine flu resulting in illness or serious death) so I can make the usual Friday meetings in the home office. I will not miss that exhausting routine for one minute, nor will I pay New Jersey income taxes, nooo way. I currently have over two thousand unread messages in my in box, about half of it Exi-chat stuff, some of it a couple months old, for I don't get Exi-chat or personal email while on the road, only business email. I just fell behind, after reading everything on Exi-chat for a dozen years. Most of that may hafta go in the bit bucket unread. United Airlines is offering me all these free trips, for I have flown on them farther than the distance to the moon, which Armstrong and Aldrin did in a mere three days, but I don't want any of their lousy plane tickets! I don't want any premier executive red carpet yakkity yaks or bla blas, I just want some stay-home tickets. I like airplanes. I just don't like airports and actually flying in the damn things. I don't like sitting next to hemans either, ewwww yuk, germ factories are we. Well, I am not, but everyone else is. My own germs never bothered me, but their's bothered me. Actually germs are kinda cool; wiggly little things that can go all over the place, or at least mine are. The other proles' germs are filthy disease carrying pathogens, stalking me constantly, wishing to fight with my own germs, just to be mean. But I digress. Regarding my experience with Exi-chat, I will share some insider gossip you may find interesting, and perhaps say something helpful to the next moderator. About four years ago, we tried having three moderators, with the notion that we would confer and try to come to a three way unanimous agreement on any action. That didn't work. I can't recall one single occasion where the three of us agreed, and so we tended to block ourselves and do nothing. In retrospect this was my fault, for I usually wanted to allow everything, and it wasn't the right thing, for some of the stuff that is posted is downright offensive. Of course, I like being offended, but still. The right way is to have a single moderator, and rotate the job around about every six months or so. I kept getting in trouble because I would never spank anyone, even those who richly deserved it. And I like spanking. But I digress. Some here may recall when the list was attacked by those new transhumanist religion folks, led by I think his name mighta been Derk or Dark or something like that, and that weird chick that met him here and became his minion. Usually one must have at least two minions to make an honest plural, but I think Durk had just the one minion. What happens if two people are doting followers, and neither a leader? Do they become each others' minion? Are the then co-minions? Or is it a minion and her manion? If they take holy observances are they then co-minions in communion? The world may never know. In any case, they were bad news and had to go and so we had that unpleasant episode where they and a whole bunch of other people were tossed into the penalty box including myself, for overposting. We spent several days spanking each other. That part was cool, but some never came back, which was sad. I had to throw myself in there, but fortunately for me, the moderator has the power to lift himself by the hair of his own head, back out, which is what I did, along with all the others except Dork and his co-minion. I never found out what happened to them. If you know don't tell me, for I don't *even* need to know. When an elected offical resigns mid term due to some scurrilous scandal, the usual claim is that he wishes to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily. Why do they always make that silly comment? My resignation is kinda like that, except for four minor points. First, I never expected to be doing this job for this long, so it isn't really an untimely resignation, and second, I am not an elected official, or if so, I stole the election. Third, I haven't done any actual scandals (but I am always open to suggestion of course, scurrilous or otherwise.) Last, the reprehensible elected official will make this claim of wanting to spend more tiiime with his faaaamily even if his closest living relative is an illegitimate adopted half third cousin once removed (by way of his second ex wife) who lives in prison on a different continent. I on the other hand, have an actual family, including six ageing parents, all of whom have at least one serious health problem and need my help. Shelly and I celebrated our golden anniversary in March, and my son turns 3 in June. Life is goooood. {8-] But there isn't time for everything, ja? That being said, all I really ask is a little respect. And a condo at Aspen. And a Maserati testarossa. And godlike power over life and death, but that's all I really want. Hell, keep the car, the resort and the respect, but that godlike power would be waaaay cool. I would banish the hell outta death, forthwith. Now please someone step up and moderate this fine list. I nominate John Grigg. Isn't the Griggmeister about the nicest guy you ever met? Johnny I respectfully offer you the badge sir. We will do whatever you say. Well, not really, but we will cheer you on and will be cool if you serve only the six month term we originally envisioned nearly four years ago. I will never utter a word of complaint, nor will anyone who has served as Exi-chat moderator, or plans to do so. Exi-chatters, thank you all for writing such interesting stuff during my term. Please keep it up, turn it up, read the principles of extropy and do them bigtime. spike http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 16:21:33 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:21:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <3479FBF1CC4E49AFBC5855E000BFDE33@DFC68LF1> No one was expelled. Insisting that what is not the truth is the truth is not helping Lee or the list. Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John K Clark Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 6:27 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin been expelled from the list? > Did you not accept my word, did you not read my reply Yes I did and I concede you are a honorable man. > do you ask "why?" on the list for some other reason? After reading Lee's often wrong but always interesting and intelligent comments for 13 years I figured list members deserved to know why we don't hear from him anymore. It's not because he lost interest, it's because he's been expelled. Do you deny that information could be of some interest to long time members of this list? But it's your list not mine and I certainly believe in private property, so you have every right in the world to expel him, and me too if the mood strikes you. It's just that I personally don't think expelling people who aren't terminally stupid or boring is a very good way to get at the truth. But as I say it's your list not mine. John K Clark _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Apr 30 16:54:09 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:54:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list Message-ID: <896334.93749.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/30/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Could be.? I'm not sure.? > List behavior, like life in general, has its ups > and downs and perhaps we just need more ideas to bit > into.? I mean, how long > can we talk about the same old ideas from the same > perspective?? We have > been in existence since the early 90s.? I do not think > because 'gene is not > on the list that its quality is down.? He is genuinely > brilliant, > provocative, informative and no nonsense, but there are so > many list members > who have the same characteristics. Maybe because Extropy > Institute is not > longer in business there is no formal project to get > involved in, or maybe > because the early ideas are not mainstream, or maybe > because we don't have > to defend ourselves against attacks from WTA any more, or > because TED has > taken the baton of the future and marketed it, or that > Kurzweil has created > his own philosophically/pragmatically transhumanist > business and not > included many transhumanists, I do not know.? BUT, > personally I like this. > It is a very good sign.? We ought to be taking bigger > bits of the present, > near future and far future. It could be, if that's what you're getting at, that some of the ideas have spread to the wider community, so there's less of a reason to participate here. In that case, part of the decline in quality or, perhaps more pecisely, the shift in focus of the list comes from the success in spreading the ideas. Regards, Dan From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 30 17:30:43 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:30:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7641ddc60904272014k29c9b52eqd664d461fc3b6298@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090430122048.02490bf8@satx.rr.com> At 04:11 AM 4/30/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > > Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it > > doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably > > so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. > >### So what do 95% humans do when not paid? You would be hard-pressed >to find them engaged in many activities of use to strangers. Wrong question in this context. A better one is: What do humans do when don't have to take a standard job in order to earn an income? Answer: Many of them no doubt hang about jawing with each other, or gambling, or becoming intoxicated; some, like Darwin, go out and revolutionize everything we know. These days, most of the Darwins are subsidized by govt or corporations rather than requiring private incomes, but many people in a guaranteed minimum income society would create freeware, art, music, wild ideas and other good things of potential general benefit. In essence, that's what I've done for the last three decades at least. It was easier, in some respects, as an Australian. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 30 17:45:59 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:45:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <3479FBF1CC4E49AFBC5855E000BFDE33@DFC68LF1> References: <200904282247.n3SMlVvR000231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <3479FBF1CC4E49AFBC5855E000BFDE33@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090430124234.024d4e60@satx.rr.com> At 11:21 AM 4/30/2009 -0500, Natasha wrote: >No one was expelled. > >Insisting that what is not the truth is the truth is not helping Lee or the >list. So what *is* the truth? I have a strong feeling that *Lee* thinks he was expelled when he <...received a blank message (no body) whose subject line is "You have been unsubscribed from the extropy-chat mailing list."> Maybe that's how moderation works. Sounds more like expulsion to me. Could you please clarify this sorry situation? Damien Broderick From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 17:52:51 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:52:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090430122048.02490bf8@satx.rr.com> References: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090430122048.02490bf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904301052j363a8bcdpc9c07a0ec6b64dd3@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 04:11 AM 4/30/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> > Well there's the problem. When people aren't doing paid labour, it >> > doesn't mean they are just engaged in "fun and games", demonstrably >> > so. So, that kind of language doesn't fit. >> >> ### So what do 95% humans do when not paid? You would be hard-pressed >> to find them engaged in many activities of use to strangers. > > Wrong question in this context. A better one is: What do humans do when > don't have to take a standard job in order to earn an income? Answer: Many > of them no doubt hang about jawing with each other, or gambling, or becoming > intoxicated; some, like Darwin, go out and revolutionize everything we know. > These days, most of the Darwins are subsidized by govt or corporations > rather than requiring private incomes, but many people in a guaranteed > minimum income society would create freeware, art, music, wild ideas and > other good things of potential general benefit. In essence, that's what I've > done for the last three decades at least. It was easier, in some respects, > as an Australian. ### Sure. 5% Optimistically. Rafal From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 30 18:29:17 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:29:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? Message-ID: <200904301829.n3UITRVV027203@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien -- I already explained what I thought happened in my post on April 28. Since I have seen Lee post since Spike returned (earlier than expected), that explanation appears to be correct. Max Damien wrote: >At 11:21 AM 4/30/2009 -0500, Natasha wrote: > > >No one was expelled. > > > >Insisting that what is not the truth is the truth is not helping Lee or > >the list. > >So what *is* the truth? > >I have a strong feeling that *Lee* thinks he was expelled when he > ><...received a blank >message (no body) whose subject line is >"You have been unsubscribed from the >extropy-chat mailing list."> > >Maybe that's how moderation works. Sounds more like expulsion to me. > >Could you please clarify this sorry situation? > >Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Apr 30 18:53:01 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:53:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <200904301829.n3UITRVV027203@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904301829.n3UITRVV027203@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090430134622.0231c618@satx.rr.com> At 01:29 PM 4/30/2009 -0500, Max wrote: >Damien -- I already explained what I thought happened in my post on >April 28. Since I have seen Lee post since Spike returned (earlier >than expected), that explanation appears to be correct. Asynchrony strikes again. I still haven't see Lee's return-from-the-dead post. And the archive http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/ isn't working, apparently--at least via Firefox on my machine. Yes, you explained what you thought happened: --my point was that this didn't seem terribly consistent with what Lee said actually happened: >"You have been unsubscribed from the >extropy-chat mailing list." But hey. I trust it's all been worked out. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 20:05:10 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:05:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? In-Reply-To: <200904301829.n3UITRVV027203@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200904301829.n3UITRVV027203@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20090430160510.jpily6on4wg4gowo@webmail.natasha.cc> Damien wrote: > At 11:21 AM 4/30/2009 -0500, Natasha wrote: > >> No one was expelled. >> >> Insisting that what is not the truth is the truth is not helping Lee or >> the list. > So what *is* the truth? Lee was unsubscribed because he (1) over posted while knowing the daily limit; and (2) he continued to post on a topic after all list members were asked to not to and a moratorium was placed on the topic. Lee can re-subscribe to the list. By the way, I also noticed that the archive is down. I emailed John, the list tech administrator, and he is dealing with it. (I'll foward this correspondence to the list.) Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 20:08:40 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:08:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] List Archive - In process of Upgrade Message-ID: <20090430160840.wu4yy0j3ko0gwc0g@webmail.natasha.cc> Below is the list tech/administrator's response to my correspondence with him this morning: -----Original Message----- From: John Klos Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 12:45 PM To: Natasha Vita-More Subject: Re: Extropy List - Archives Down Hi, Natasha, > Could you please check out the website and let me know why the > archives are not coming up on the page > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/ Certainly. My initial guess is that it has something to do with an upgrade to Mailman, but we have backups of everything, so even if the upgrade did something it wasn't supposed to do, it'll be fine. I'll let you know when I've figured it out. Thanks, John From max at maxmore.com Thu Apr 30 22:32:05 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:32:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why has Lee Corbin has NOT been expelled from the list? Message-ID: <200904302232.n3UMWIXZ027581@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien wrote: >Yes, you explained what you thought happened: > >been "expelled". Use of the term "booted" or "expelled" is unhelpful >because it fails to distinguish between these two possibilities.> > >--my point was that this didn't seem terribly consistent with what >Lee said actually happened: > > >"You have been unsubscribed from the > >extropy-chat mailing list." The more relevant part of what I said was: > >I know that Spike said he is away this week. I'm not what that > >implies, but it may mean that Lee won't be able to post until next > >week, since I think Spike's email access is very limited or > >non-existent while away (and no one else steps up to the plate for > >this kind of thankless work). In other words: If Spike were away, he might be unable to let any of Lee's posts through until he returned. That didn't mean that he had been expelled from the list, if that means permanently removed. I'm assuming Lee Corbin is back, since I received a post from him to the List on the morning of the 28th. I'll email him now to ask. If he's not, perhaps he can wait until we have a new moderator sorted out. Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Apr 30 22:31:16 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 08:01:16 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904282228ge9897c4wff6b2771f6edc11d@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> >> Also, this is not a fair comparison. People who are in paid work >> already feel they are doing their fair share. > > ### I didn't understand the above. People in paid work don't feel like they need to give back. It's a social norm, that being in paid work means you are "doing your bit" for society. So not a very strong drive to volunteer. >> >> If people didn't need to be paid and so all their time could happily >> be unpaid time, how many people would do something useful with their >> time, vs how many would waste their time (watching tv / playing WoW)? > > ### 85% outright waste (boozing, scheming, etc.), 10% good-intentioned > waste (missionary work, all kinds of stupid activism) , 5% sexy useful > stuff, like proving Fermat's theorem. > > Nobody would ever clean the sewers. Ok, two points about this. 1: Let's say that sewers need cleaning. Then, why would we want to make a person do it? It's a job for a machine. The only reason we think it's ok for a person to do it now is because we are used to people doing crap like this. If a universal income made it really hard to employ people to do this, then it would provide incentive to private industry (or a free project!) to automate the job once and for all. 2: I actually think you'd still have people volunteering to do work like this. Absent the need to earn a living, people still need to find meaning in their lives. Many find meaning by doing something they know is needed by others, no matter that it's a bit shitty. I'm constantly surprised, for instance, at the depth of driver support on Linux. These drivers are mostly maintained by volunteers I think. > ----------------------------- >> >> Also, if the percentage of "usefuls" in the latter scenario is lower >> than in the former, is the work of the people who comprise the margin >> a significant loss? > > ### Yes. Almost all that we enjoy is the result of paid work. > > Rafal In Rome maybe they would have used the same naturalistic falacy to justify slavery? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Apr 30 22:50:09 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:50:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Re: Extropy List - Archives Down Message-ID: <20090430185009.5qlnsdyvagoco48g@webmail.natasha.cc> John has confirmed what the problem was and is fixing it: ----- Forwarded message from john at ziaspace.com ----- Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:28:30 +0000 (UTC) Ok - I figured out that the cron jobs didn't get reinstalled when we upgraded python (which is the language Mailman uses). I've reloaded the crontab, and I'm rebuilding the mailing list web page archives. Because there are so many messages, it'll take a little while, but you should see that the links will be working in a little bit. Please let me know if anything else is out of place! John ----- End forwarded message ----- From asyluman at gmail.com Tue Apr 28 20:27:11 2009 From: asyluman at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:27:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] joke In-Reply-To: <1240947986_8226@s6.cableone.net> References: <49F689F7.8020209@rawbw.com> <62c14240904281110m381aa794lad8475b75149005b@mail.gmail.com> <1240947986_8226@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: You must not attend high school. I, on the other hand, do; how anyone could not understand this joke (or why anyone would analyze it for semantic meaning rather than the obvious implied humor) escapes me. On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:38 PM, hkhenson wrote: > At 11:10 AM 4/28/2009, you wrote: > >> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> > >> > Any analogs to this phenomenon occur to you, >> > or emergent new generalities, or other examples? >> > >> >> 'Man walks into a bar... >> >> ... says "ouch." >> >> >> We find humor in the unexpected outcome that (in retrospect) could >> have been obvious. What I find interesting is that we generally like >> this kind of deception while we dislike many others. >> > > Minsky has a lot to say about humor. I don't know exactly how he would > classify this one, perhaps an "out of context" joke. > > Lee, you might send this one to Marvin Minsky and > see what he says about it. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fortean1 at mindspring.com Wed Apr 29 14:29:12 2009 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry Colvin) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:29:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Fw: American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse Message-ID: <9654677.1241015353030.JavaMail.root@elwamui-karabash.atl.sa.earthlink.net> This oddity was completely unknown to me; either that or CRS is reaching new heights. Lengthy article with photos and notional sketch of the monument's languages. Terry -----Forwarded Message----- http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones Interesting article, with pictures, about a monument I had never heard of before. The article begins: The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it's hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it. Various conspiracists have weighed in on the stones, and many religious people don't like them. ---Rob Terry W. Colvin Ladphrao (Bangkok), Thailand Pran Buri (Hua Hin), Thailand http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html [Terry's Fortean & "Work" itty-bitty site] From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon Apr 27 16:03:23 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:03:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> Damien writes >> Can anyone suggest an hypothesis that will explain >> what is going on in otherwise sensible and tolerant >> minds? [E.g. folks who'd outlaw holocaust denial.] > Yes. We understand memes, cultural contagion and > infection, the evolved human predisposition to > behave abominably I.e., people might get ideas and be bad > when we have a handy articulated structure of > bullshit I.e., when there are certain widespread opinions A. that you don't agree with? B. that are objectively incorrect? C. that the mass of people don't prefer? or all three? > that's being openly accepted by others. May I rephrase? You are saying that some ideas are so contagious, and so harmful, that these ideas must be suppressed? > To be very simplistic, but using a traditional > analogy: do you, Lee, really think there should > be no prohibition of, or penalty for, untruthfully > screaming "Fire!" or "Bomb!" in a crowded theater? No, indeed there should be no legal penalty for shouting "fire!" or "bomb!". Outlawing the act of saying something is unduly restrictive, and it seldom works anyway. (Now this is not a constitutional "freedom of speech" issue. The constitution, as any idiot should realize, was referring to *political* speech.) So if a community passes a law saying "you cannot shout fire", or "no one may call the Mayor's daughter a whore", it's perfectly constitutional. It's just dumb and ultimately unworkable, although not living there, I'm willing to defer to those close to the situation and who have immediate knowledge. On principle, however, we should make laws only when it's absolutely necessary. Freedom is very important. Your particular example, "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a bad law because it takes the focus off what the true problem is, namely, that the theater has been ill-constructed, and poses a menace to patrons. In reality, if someone shouts "fire!" or "bomb!", and there is no such, then he or she'll probably get roughed up, or spit upon, or something. But does there REALLY need to be a law? > If you'd make an exception for that, well, I myself wouldn't... but I will defend the right of a community to pass such (wrongheaded) laws. > how about "Jews, Homos and Niggers deserve to > die, because they are inhuman scum who are > destroying our way of life!"? That's an easy one. Of course it should be legal. It is legal. Why not? Oh, yes. I recall. The stuff about memes. You are saying that someone might hear that, and then go surmise that it makes a lot of sense, and then go repeat it, and then the first thing you know everyone hates Jews, gays, and black people. Whereas if we can just get people to BE QUIET, then things will be much better. Strategically (not morally) would it have been a good idea for the religious people, when they were in control, to prohibit taking the Lord's name in vain? To prohibit meetings of freethinkers? Remember, they felt more strongly about their Deity than you do about Jews, gays, and black people. You saying they made a really stupid move letting us talk? Strategically, do you think that it is a good idea to prohibit reasoned attacks on religion, insults of races, religions, or the Mayor's daughter? Where do you draw the line? And beyond strategy, where in a free society do you draw the line ethically? Lee