From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 06:52:27 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 08:52:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <20110628083514.GS26837@leitl.org> <4E0A222E.2000901@susaro.com> <20110629085740.GN26837@leitl.org> <4E0B48E6.6030608@susaro.com> <20110629165112.GV26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110701065226.GP26837@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 06:30:32PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > "Real time" is the crucial thing here. > > If you have an Intel i8088 with a sufficiently high pile of floppies, and > performance is not an issue, you can model (and emulate) any system with a > finite set of statuses, as you can with a group of people playing logic > circuit in a plain. No, you can't. Human activities are short-lived, so you're limited to less than 10 years. 0.6 MIPS (no FPU). Floppy is 360 kBytes, and for pracical reasons you can't use more than 10 k of these, so it's about 4 GByte of state. A 360 kBytes floppy writes at about 32 kBytes/s, so you need over 100 days just to write these once. Add handling, wear, diagnostics and error correction and you can easily multiply that by 2 or more. As a crude estimate, a modern PC does a decade of above in much less than a second. > OTOH, I am by no means certain that organic brains are so poorly optimised > to run "AGI" programs in comparison with other conceivable, eg, silicon, > supports. It's the opposite. When Sun (vanquished by Orkcackle) said that the network is the computer they spoke truer than they knew. Silicon has lousy fanout, and modern systems are extremely poor at parallelism. Which is why you need huge clusters with millions of cores to do something quite trivial. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 09:05:41 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 11:05:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <4E0B7308.6040201@susaro.com> Message-ID: <20110701090541.GR26837@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 06:57:13PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > - Firstly, AGIs can be by definition implemented, and in fact no > especial or very powerful hardware is required to do so; in fact, I > would even submit that the "intelligence" (in a rigourous sense) of a > system is irrilevant to its ability to exhibit AGIs traits. You know why I don't use the term AGI? Because it's kook central: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI#Artificial_General_Intelligence_research Artificial General Intelligence research Artificial General Intelligence[26] (AGI) describes research that aims to create machines capable of general intelligent action.[27] The term was introduced by Mark Gubrud in 1997[28] in a discussion of the implications of fully-automated military production and operations. The research objective is much older, for example Doug Lenat's Cyc project (that began in 1984), and Allen Newell's Soar project are regarded as within the scope of AGI. AGI research activity in 2006 was described by Pei Wang and Ben Goertzel[29] as "producing publications and preliminary results". As yet, most AI researchers have devoted little attention to AGI, with some claiming that intelligence is too complex to be completely replicated in the near term. However, a small number of computer scientists are active in AGI research, and many of this group are contributing to a series of AGI conferences.[30] The research is extremely diverse and often pioneering in nature. In the introduction to his book,[26] Goertzel says that estimates of the time needed before a truly flexible AGI is built vary from 10 years to over a century, but the consensus in the AGI research community seems to be that the timeline discussed by Ray Kurzweil in "The Singularity is Near"[1] (i.e. between 2015 and 2045) is plausible.[31] Most mainstream AI researchers doubt that progress will be this rapid. Organizations actively pursuing AGI include Adaptive AI, Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (AGIRI), the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and TexAI.[32] One recent addition is Numenta, a project based on the theories of Jeff Hawkins, the creator of the Palm Pilot. While Numenta takes a computational approach to general intelligence, Hawkins is also the founder of the RedWood Neuroscience Institute, which explores conscious thought from a biological perspective. AND Corporation has been active in this field since 1990, and has developed machine intelligence processes based on phase coherence principles,[33] having strong similarities to digital holography and QM with respect to quantum collapse of the wave function. Ben Goertzel is pursuing an embodied AGI through the open-source OpenCog project. Current code includes embodied virtual pets capable of learning simple English-language commands, as well as integration with real-world robotics, being done at the robotics lab of Hugo de Garis at Xiamen University. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 09:07:47 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 11:07:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <4E0B7308.6040201@susaro.com> <4E0BDDCC.5010305@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110701090747.GS26837@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 07:05:14PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > Why? Because since any universal system can emulate any other > universal system, (almost) everything can do everything, the problem In theory, not in practice. > being that of being still there after the time it takes to complete > the computation required on the system concerned. What are 100 gigayears among friends? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 09:52:20 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 11:52:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:57:11PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I hate to disagree with you twice in one day Jeff... > > But NanoSolar has been in production with a continuous printing > process for a couple of years now. The high cost of solar > photovoltaics really isn't so much about the panels themselves, but > all the equipment to store and distribute the electricity thus You can safely ignore storage for another 15-20 years. Distribution is a semi-solved problem. > generated. The cost of batteries, inverters, and so forth swamps the No batteries for next 15-20 years. When people are talking about grid parity, they're comparing turnkey systems. All costs factored in. > cost of the panels themselves in small scale applications (like MY > house). Nanosolar proposes to solve this problem by creating > neighborhood sized installations covering a few acres and serving a > few hundred homes. This gets the required economies of scale for the > parts of the system that are not the panels themselves. Make building-integrated part of building code. That will keep you up to your ears in work and solar growth maxed out for the next 20 years. > I would get really excited if someone figured out how to make > inverters cheaper, or batteries. Working on the panels themselves is a There are panel-integrated inverters. > yawner. > > Here's the thing. If solar panels were absolutely 100% FREE, it > wouldn't come close to solving the problem. More than half of the > current costs are in the batteries and inverters. If panels were free, solar PV would be cheaper than dirty coal, and you wouldn't be able to get panels at all because they would be even more sold out (try buying CdTe or CIGS panels) than now. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 11:31:15 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 13:31:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] another nail in the coffin Message-ID: <20110701113115.GF26837@leitl.org> La fracturation hydraulique est morte. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=france-bans-fracking-2011-06-30&WT.mc_id=SA_Twitter_sciam From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 1 14:20:37 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 07:20:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <20110701090541.GR26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1309530037.16946.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 7/1/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: You know why I don't use the term AGI? Because it's kook central: People use "AGI" for only 2 reasons: 1) For affect, if sounds ever so much more sophisticated than AI. 2) To muddy the lines of communication; clarity is not your friend if your idea is shallow. If you use the term "AGI" people will know immediately you're just a dilettante if they don't look at you with a blank stare. Think I'm exaggerating? Go to : http://ngrams.googlelabs.com and type it AI,AGI . You will see a graph of how often the words AI and AGI appeared in books from 1800 to 2000. And keep in mind that almost all the times AGI was used in a book it had to do with Adjusted Gross Income or Analytical Graphics Incorporated or American Gunsmithing Institute or the American Geological Institute and had nothing to do with smart computers. Think I'm exaggerating? A few months ago I did a Google search for "AGI", it was page 9 before I found anything about smart computers. Page 9 ! ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 1 15:24:21 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 08:24:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space may not be quantized after all In-Reply-To: <20110701113115.GF26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1309533861.79006.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Apparently we don't know as much as we thought we did and our quantum theories need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist that space is quantized just like everything else, that is to say space can not be continuous but must be grainy and the lumps in space must be as large or larger than the Planck Length of 1.62*10^-35 of a meter because size is meaningless in quantum theories if things are smaller than that. But now to everybody's surprise there is experimental evidence that if space is quantized at all then the lumps must be smaller than 10^-48 of a meter; that's at least ten thousand billion times smaller than the Planck Length, the smallest size previously thought to exist and it makes one wonder if the smallest possible size is actually zero. For more see: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 17:11:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 19:11:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <20110701065226.GP26837@leitl.org> References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <20110628083514.GS26837@leitl.org> <4E0A222E.2000901@susaro.com> <20110629085740.GN26837@leitl.org> <4E0B48E6.6030608@susaro.com> <20110629165112.GV26837@leitl.org> <20110701065226.GP26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 1 July 2011 08:52, Eugen Leitl wrote: > No, you can't. Human activities are short-lived, so you're > limited to less than 10 years. 0.6 MIPS (no FPU). As long as you go on, replacing along the way dead humans (and perhaps dead planets, since the time I suspect it would take) what's the problem? Floppy is 360 kBytes, and for pracical reasons you can't use more > than 10 k of these, so it's about 4 GByte of state. > A 360 kBytes floppy writes at about 32 kBytes/s, so you > need over 100 days just to write these once. Add handling, > wear, diagnostics and error correction and you can > easily multiply that by 2 or more. > Why on the earth can't I use more that 10k floppies? And what is 100 days if I have all the time of the world? My point is not that the original PC would be very performing. My point is that we would still recognise as "sentient" a man slowed down by a factor of 10x, 1000x, 10^10x, etc., so that as a pure Gendankenexperiment my example is valid. > > OTOH, I am by no means certain that organic brains are so poorly > optimised > > to run "AGI" programs in comparison with other conceivable, eg, silicon, > > supports. > > It's the opposite. When Sun (vanquished by Orkcackle) said > that the network is the computer they spoke truer than they > knew. Silicon has lousy fanout, and modern systems are > extremely poor at parallelism. Which is why you need huge > clusters with millions of cores to do something quite > trivial. > Yes, we fully agree on that (even though the typical counterargument is that organic brains have been molded by evolution and natural selection, which could have constrained us in some less-than-ideal paths in the space of all those theoretically possible, and which could be adopted by design). Conversely, organic brains are not so brilliant with basic arithmetics. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 17:17:48 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 11:17:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Space may not be quantized after all In-Reply-To: <1309533861.79006.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110701113115.GF26837@leitl.org> <1309533861.79006.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In other space news... Black holes from the very early universe have been found in large numbers. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-11-183.html Interesting stuff for physics junkies... :-) -Kelly 2011/7/1 john clark > Apparently we don't know as much as we thought we did and our quantum > theories need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist that space is > quantized just like everything else, that is to say space can not be > continuous but must be grainy and the lumps in space must be as large or > larger than the Planck Length of 1.62*10^-35 of a meter because size is > meaningless in quantum theories if things are smaller than that. But now to > everybody's surprise there is experimental evidence that if space is > quantized at all then the lumps must be smaller than 10^-48 of a meter; > that's at least ten thousand billion times smaller than the Planck Length, > the smallest size previously thought to exist and it makes one wonder if the > smallest possible size is actually zero. For more see: > > http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html > > 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 stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 17:19:30 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 19:19:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <20110701090747.GS26837@leitl.org> References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <4E0B7308.6040201@susaro.com> <4E0BDDCC.5010305@mac.com> <20110701090747.GS26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 1 July 2011 11:07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > What are 100 gigayears among friends? > :-) The conclusion, on which I believe we agree, is that AGIs which are much slower than organic brains are a distinct possibility, and may still represent interesting mind (or actual) experiments, but would by no means be more crucial to our future than the increase in raw processing power or in AI non-G efficiency. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 17:24:42 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 11:24:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:52 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:57:11PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> I hate to disagree with you twice in one day Jeff... >> >> But NanoSolar has been in production with a continuous printing >> process for a couple of years now. The high cost of solar >> photovoltaics really isn't so much about the panels themselves, but >> all the equipment to store and distribute the electricity thus > > You can safely ignore storage for another 15-20 years. Maybe you can, but I gots ta buy some battries soon!! This summer!! > Distribution is a semi-solved problem. Semi. And not at all at my house (which is an unusual case, granted). >> generated. The cost of batteries, inverters, and so forth swamps the > > No batteries for next 15-20 years. When people are talking > about grid parity, they're comparing turnkey systems. All > costs factored in. Depends on their politics what numbers people use. >> cost of the panels themselves in small scale applications (like MY >> house). Nanosolar proposes to solve this problem by creating >> neighborhood sized installations covering a few acres and serving a >> few hundred homes. This gets the required economies of scale for the >> parts of the system that are not the panels themselves. > > Make building-integrated part of building code. That will keep > you up to your ears in work and solar growth maxed out for the > next 20 years. But it is an inefficient approach. Having inverters and batteries at each home adds tens of thousands of dollars to the price of homes. We can't sell the homes we have now here in the US. >> I would get really excited if someone figured out how to make >> inverters cheaper, or batteries. Working on the panels themselves is a > > There are panel-integrated inverters. Still, the lowered costs that you are discussing have nothing to do with lowering the cost of those panels. Right? >> yawner. >> >> Here's the thing. If solar panels were absolutely 100% FREE, it >> wouldn't come close to solving the problem. More than half of the >> current costs are in the batteries and inverters. > > If panels were free, solar PV would be cheaper than dirty coal, > and you wouldn't be able to get panels at all because they > would be even more sold out (try buying CdTe or CIGS panels) > than now. It would be in large installations. It would NOT be in the short term in individual house installations. That's my point. Solar is high capital up front, and that is it's weakness when people are mostly living from paycheck to paycheck and already up to their eyeballs in debt. Nanosolar is selling most of their panels these days to facilities in Germany. In a way, this is fair. Germany subsidizes the development of solar energy, while we in the US subsidize Germany's security through military spending. I doubt they are on the same order of magnitude of expenditure, but it's nice to see some money flowing each way. :-) -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 17:43:35 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 19:43:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 29 June 2011 05:34, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:03 AM, Stefano Vaj > wrote: > > OTOH, let us forget governments and their misdeeds. Let us take the > > more libertarian concept of a commercial company and make a story. The > > company gets bigger and bigger. It has shareholders and employees. The > > relationships with them are contractual, so this is fine, right? The > > company adopts internal regulations (well within its rights) and > > general terms and conditions of trade and of employment. The company > > buys land. The company become the main living framework on a given > > territory, and amongst other benefits take care of increasingly > > numerous aspects of the private life of its human resources. > > Shareholders and employees increasingly tend to become one and the > > same. > > Sounds like commercial totalitarianism. > > > At a point in time the company declares independence, and stop > > recognising any superior, national legal system. Perhaps it creates > > its own currency, why not. Libertarian dream, right? > > Wrong. You seem to equate corporate state-ism with libertarian views. > Corporate state conglomeration is fascism, not libertarianism. > This might well be the case (actually, "state corporativism" IMHO describes better fascism, rather than the other way around, but this is not the issue here), even though this scenario need not be neither more, nor less, totalitarian than our average State today. My real point however is: how a radically libertarian view could ever prevent a company from going down this path? And if the end result is neither better nor worse than our average State today, what's the point? I am referring to the kind of libertarian view which postulates that we can go without a State legal system at all, not to more moderate ones. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 1 17:36:17 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 10:36:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Thu, 6/30/11, Stefano Vaj wrote: "What I think is reasonable, and corresponds to everyday experience, is to expect that a PC in comparison with other systems, such as organic brains, be incredibly faster at some tasks (say, arithmetics), and incredibly slower at some other (say, pattern recognition or neural network emulation)." Organic brains may work by neural networks but they are no better at emulating one than a non organic metallic computer, in fact they're not nearly as good; if you doubt that then look at a very very small network of only a few hundred elements and through pure visualization (or "emulation" if you prefer that word) predict how this network will behave. It's hard as hell, we're just not very good at that; electronic computers can do it much better. As for?pattern recognition we still have an edge over the machines, but I doubt our superiority will last another decade. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 18:19:29 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 12:19:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy Message-ID: Those who don't believe libertarianism can work often state that the richest among us are greedy. As a balance to that point of view, I respectfully submit this web site: http://www.givingpledge.org/ It's an interesting concept. All of the people on this list are billionaires. I counted 69 people on the list and this is a pretty new idea. According to Forbes, there are just over 1000 billionaires world wide, 408 in America. Most of the people I recognized in the giving pledge list were Americans. http://www.rferl.org/content/Forbes_Rich_List_Number_Of_New_Billionaires_Reflects_Global_Recovery/1980413.html Interestingly, Carlos Slim, the new richest man in the world says he can do more good for the world in business than in philanthropy. Perhaps he is right. But the point is that it should be (and for now is) his choice how to use his money. He still thinks he's doing good in the world, and probably he is. Employing Mexicans in Mexico is probably a pretty good idea, honestly. :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 18:36:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 12:36:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited. In-Reply-To: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/1 john clark > On *Thu, 6/30/11, Stefano Vaj * wrote: > > > "What I think is reasonable, and corresponds to everyday experience, is > to expect that a PC in comparison with other systems, such as organic > brains, be incredibly faster at some tasks (say, arithmetics), and > incredibly slower at some other (say, pattern recognition or neural > network emulation)." > > Organic brains may work by neural networks but they are no better at > emulating one than a non organic metallic computer, in fact they're not > nearly as good; if you doubt that then look at a very very small network of > only a few hundred elements and through pure visualization (or "emulation" > if you prefer that word) predict how this network will behave. It's hard as > hell, we're just not very good at that; electronic computers can do it much > better. > > As for pattern recognition we still have an edge over the machines, but I > doubt our superiority will last another decade. > > One way to look at this is that when we "emulate" computers, by say doing math in our head, we do it at a rate that is thousands (if not millions) of times slower. Similarly when computers emulate the pattern recognition tasks that we are good at, they are thousands of times slower than us... The difference of course is that computers keep getting faster, and we stay the same (so far). Therefore, even if computers are thousands of times slower at pattern recognition, someday computers will be thousands of times faster than they are today, and then eventually a trillion times faster. The outcome of this race is inevitable. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 18:45:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 12:45:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: >2011/7/1 Stefano Vaj : >> Wrong. You seem to equate corporate state-ism with libertarian views. >> Corporate state conglomeration is fascism, not libertarianism. > > This might well be the case (actually, "state corporativism" IMHO describes > better fascism, rather than the other way around, but this is not the issue > here), even though this scenario need not be neither more, nor less, > totalitarian than our average State today. > > My real point however is: how a radically libertarian view could ever > prevent a company from going down this path? And if the end result is > neither better nor worse than our average State today, what's the point? > > I am referring to the kind of libertarian view which postulates that we can > go without a State legal system at all, not to more moderate ones. Stefano, There you go again... :-) The "kind of libertarian view" you are speaking of in Anarchy. Libertarianism is no more anarchy than it is fascism. If you define libertarianism as anything that seems dangerous, then you aren't going to like it. My definition of libertarianism is most closely approximated in the real world by the VERY early United States. That is, there are very few laws, but the laws that exist are followed by the majority of the citizenry, and are respected. In part, the law is respected when it is understood by the citizen. When the law is so voluminous that not only the citizen can not read it, but even the lawmaker is challenged, then this is FAR from the libertarian ideal. So government yes, absolutely you need government. But the very smallest amount that can possibly do. Just enough to prevent invasion, and protect me from my fellow citizens when they run amok. So no, I am not an anarchist. I am a libertarian! (As a libertarian, I get to define what that means to me, this being one of the greatest benefits of being a libertarian... ;-) (kidding, just a little bit here.) -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 19:00:29 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 21:00:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <20110628083514.GS26837@leitl.org> <4E0A222E.2000901@susaro.com> <20110629085740.GN26837@leitl.org> <4E0B48E6.6030608@susaro.com> <20110629165112.GV26837@leitl.org> <20110701065226.GP26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110701190029.GI26837@leitl.org> On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 07:11:33PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > As long as you go on, replacing along the way dead humans (and perhaps dead > planets, since the time I suspect it would take) what's the problem? The problem is that it doesn't happen, in practice. The longest supercomputer batch jobs I know of are all 2-3 years (and have to be re-run in order to validate them, despite all the error correction tens of thousands of nodes running that long will produce uncatched errors). A typical run takes days to weeks. Most supercomputer installations have a lifetime of much less than a decade without upgrades. Business upgrade cycles are 2-3 years, as older hardware is not worth the juice to keep running. > Floppy is 360 kBytes, and for pracical reasons you can't use more > > than 10 k of these, so it's about 4 GByte of state. > > A 360 kBytes floppy writes at about 32 kBytes/s, so you > > need over 100 days just to write these once. Add handling, > > wear, diagnostics and error correction and you can > > easily multiply that by 2 or more. > > > > Why on the earth can't I use more that 10k floppies? And what is 100 days if Because you can only write that floppy set about ten times in a decade. That assumes you're streaming through, with random access across the entire data set you can be lucky to write once in a century. How does less than a second versus a century sound like? And how does a nanosecond (dedicated hardware) versus a century sound like? Ok, that was computers. With people, multiply this by >10^7. That's a gigayear or ten. And for some strange reason people (ok, for small values of people: philosophers) are taking *Searle* seriously. Lolwhut? > I have all the time of the world? My point is not that the original PC would Nobody has all the time in the world. As I said, human affairs are ephemeral. I can guarantee you one thing: the only way the 10 kiloyear clock is going to manage anywhere near that runtime is when we all get raptured. > be very performing. It would not just be not very performing. It would never finish. > My point is that we would still recognise as "sentient" a man slowed down by > a factor of 10x, 1000x, 10^10x, etc., so that as a pure Gendankenexperiment Factor 10, no problem. Factor 10^3, some problem. Anything beyond that, and you're looking at a multigeneration project. Oh, a bright a shiny object... say, what's that statue doing there? And just who vandalized it so brutally? > my example is valid. My point was that in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. > > > > OTOH, I am by no means certain that organic brains are so poorly > > optimised > > > to run "AGI" programs in comparison with other conceivable, eg, silicon, > > > supports. > > > > It's the opposite. When Sun (vanquished by Orkcackle) said > > that the network is the computer they spoke truer than they > > knew. Silicon has lousy fanout, and modern systems are > > extremely poor at parallelism. Which is why you need huge > > clusters with millions of cores to do something quite > > trivial. > > > > Yes, we fully agree on that (even though the typical counterargument is that > organic brains have been molded by evolution and natural selection, which > could have constrained us in some less-than-ideal paths in the space of all Of course it's less than ideal, taking a theoretical limit. But in practice the hardware is both extremely powerful and extremely efficient, given the energy constraints. > those theoretically possible, and which could be adopted by design). > > Conversely, organic brains are not so brilliant with basic arithmetics. It does plenty of basic arithmetics very quickly if you consider analog computation. If you consider the realtime inverse kinematics you're performing you'll be beating a supercomputer. You, as a top layer of the process don't realize this, and of course we didn't have time to evolve to deal with symbolic arithmetics on the top level. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 1 19:29:15 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 21:29:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110701192915.GK26837@leitl.org> On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 11:24:42AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Make building-integrated part of building code. That will keep > > you up to your ears in work and solar growth maxed out for the > > next 20 years. > > But it is an inefficient approach. Having inverters and batteries at Inverters. No batteries. There are MWh class flow batteries being developed, but not yet. > each home adds tens of thousands of dollars to the price of homes. We Inverters *are* getting cheaper. Plus, with DC you don't need inverters. Forget batteries for the next 15 years. Yes, not you, but nigh-everybody else. > can't sell the homes we have now here in the US. Nothing whatesover to do with solar photovoltaics. US is a developing country in regards to photovoltaics or energy-efficiency for that matter. Even if attitudes would change (doubtful) it would take a decade or two for them to get up to speed. > >> I would get really excited if someone figured out how to make > >> inverters cheaper, or batteries. Working on the panels themselves is a > > > > There are panel-integrated inverters. > > Still, the lowered costs that you are discussing have nothing to do > with lowering the cost of those panels. Right? The panels are getting cheaper. The inverters are getting cheaper. People live in houses, so you could just as well make houses produce their own power and export some. See http://www.transparency.eex.com/en/Statutory%20Publication%20Requirements%20of%20the%20Transmission%20System%20Operators what the fat tail adds up to (above omits the smallest installations, so it's actually more dramatic than this). > >> yawner. > >> > >> Here's the thing. If solar panels were absolutely 100% FREE, it > >> wouldn't come close to solving the problem. More than half of the > >> current costs are in the batteries and inverters. > > > > If panels were free, solar PV would be cheaper than dirty coal, > > and you wouldn't be able to get panels at all because they > > would be even more sold out (try buying CdTe or CIGS panels) > > than now. > > It would be in large installations. It would NOT be in the short term If panels are free, I'd be getting a few GW of my own. > in individual house installations. That's my point. Solar is high Most installations are in invididual houses. Unless you live in a renewable-disadvantaged country like the US. > capital up front, and that is it's weakness when people are mostly > living from paycheck to paycheck and already up to their eyeballs in > debt. How did these people get to afford the houses they live in in the first place? Oh, wait, they didn't. They got suckered in by the bubble. Guess what, the bubble is not global. It might have hit US, Spain and Canada, and a few other places. But world-wide, it's an anomaly. > Nanosolar is selling most of their panels these days to facilities in > Germany. In a way, this is fair. Germany subsidizes the development of I know, I've tried to buy some, and you can't get any as end user. Same thing with Fist Solar. It will take a while until the overheated market cools off enough that availability and prices are adequate. > solar energy, while we in the US subsidize Germany's security through > military spending. I doubt they are on the same order of magnitude of Dog knows the failing empire is doing everything to piss off the entire world and get a half million of Manhattanites fried to a crisp by a nuke, but I don't know what this autoexsanguination has to do anything with anything else than people endorsing instituionalized insanity, bless their black little hearts. W0Of. > expenditure, but it's nice to see some money flowing each way. :-) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Jul 1 20:29:43 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:29:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> Kelly, why don't you look beyond political borders? Who gives a flying monkey's ass what the political party is - or ism?! We have world problems to solve and need smart strategic thinking that arguably understands the transhumanist perspective. Forgive me, but talking about libertarianism and/or Markism or socialism, etc. is so old world it causes my skin to crawl. (Actually I would like my skin to crawl, but preferably with nanorobots rather than political bot-tlenecking.) Natasha Quoting Kelly Anderson : > Those who don't believe libertarianism can work often state that the > richest among us are greedy. As a balance to that point of view, I > respectfully submit this web site: > > http://www.givingpledge.org/ > > It's an interesting concept. All of the people on this list are > billionaires. I counted 69 people on the list and this is a pretty new > idea. > > According to Forbes, there are just over 1000 billionaires world wide, > 408 in America. Most of the people I recognized in the giving pledge > list were Americans. > http://www.rferl.org/content/Forbes_Rich_List_Number_Of_New_Billionaires_Reflects_Global_Recovery/1980413.html > > Interestingly, Carlos Slim, the new richest man in the world says he > can do more good for the world in business than in philanthropy. > Perhaps he is right. But the point is that it should be (and for now > is) his choice how to use his money. He still thinks he's doing good > in the world, and probably he is. Employing Mexicans in Mexico is > probably a pretty good idea, honestly. :-) > > -Kelly > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jrd1415 at gmail.com Fri Jul 1 23:43:48 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 16:43:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Kelly Anderson >> >>> Ok Jeff. So what do we do about homelessness? >> >> I consider homelessness part of the larger problem of social and >> economic decay, > > I've heard some liberals state (seriously) that the biggest mistake > mankind ever made was to come in from the rain and begin agriculture. > So according to that method of thinking, the purest, best state for > humanity would be for us ALL to be essentially homeless. They were hippies. It's a narrow class of liberal. And even a narrow class of hippie. The macrobiotic, Koom-bah-yah, crystal vibration, back-to-nature kind of hippie. Not all us old hippies slash liberals are of that type. Not being a liberal yourself, it's understandable you would not be fully versed in liberal phylogeny. > > I don't state this to be provocative, but to point out that > homelessness isn't the end of the world, > just the end of access to a > certain kind of civilization for those who are homeless. Interesting apologism for that sort of conservative heartlessness exemplified by Reagan's "they're just camping" comment. Don't go there. Homelessness IS the "end of the world" -- which is to say the end of dignity and the beginning of a sanity-destroying horror -- for most homeless folks, in the same sense that falling from a tall building is "the end". It's not relevant, but glib and heartless, to observe that one remains perfectly healthy until impact with the pavement. > > I could be perfectly happy in a perpetual camp out, If it was involuntary? I doubt it. For one thing, as you yourself observe below, involuntary homelessness -- in your case involuntary "camping" -- might cost you your children. At the very least, the financial causes of your homelessness would also mean a severe strain on your ability to care for your kids, which is up there with the worst horrors imaginable. And if somehow you managed to meet their physical and emotional needs, you would be living in constant fear of having them taking from you. Homelessness is NOT camping. If forced on you, you would NOT be perfectly happy. > but DCFS would > remove my children from me if I did. Another example of the loss of > liberty we face in our home-filled society. Normal has become overly > important in the US. > >> and would prefer to discuss the larger challenge of a >> new system of governance -- a rational system of governance -- >> designed to address the circumstances -- social, cultural, political, >> human behavioral, and technological -- of today's world. > > That sounds like a good goal. A bit much for one email :-) ?but my > answer would be a system with the absolute maximum amount of freedom > possible without impinging upon the freedom of others. Lest you think > this a purely libertarian pov, I include protection of the environment > as necessary to avoid damaging others. Thank you for that. By way of reciprocation let me say that I stand with you in supporting every person's right to arm themselves, particularly for community and self-defense. >> If this seems like a dodge, then I defer to the practical and >> compassionate and EXPLICIT suggestions of John Grigg, who to his great >> credit, always seems to have his feet planted solidly on the ground >> (unlike moi). > > I don't know exactly what you are referring to here. Could you be more explicit? Check John Grigg's post to this thread. > >> Simply put. if you create the conditions for people to feel safe, they >> will work steadily to resolve problems both personal and societal. ?If >> however, people are constantly stressed by unrelenting vulnerability >> in a ruthless social environment, then any spark can unleash the dark >> forces of barbarism. > > Ok, so the core of my proposed civilization > is freedom, and the core of your proposed > civilization is safety. My bad. I had introduced the larger overarching issue of governance, but then kinda backtracked with a summarizing comment on the physical and emotional safety of homeless persons. Not national safety, I believe, regarding safety, that Franklin was speaking of threats to national(and by extension, personal) safety from foreign aggressors . >> We've had thousands of years of seeing how humans behave and how that >> gets us all in trouble. > > We have accomplished great things in > the last few thousand years. Apologism again. Very lame argumentation. "Great accomplishments" do not and cannot exculpate criminality. Hitler built the autobahn, so he gets a free pass on the holocaust? I don't think so. Neither do you. Doesn't even count toward mitigation. Humanity has made very little progress toward preventing the damage caused by human behavioral failings. > I ask again, would you like to climb > back up into the trees? First, you never asked. You implied, but failed to tell me about it. Second, I'm not that kind of hippie. Third, "up into the trees" is a bit further "back to nature" than the macrobiotic Koombahyah lifestyle. Please. for the sake of a coherent discussion, try to maintain continuity from one paragraph to the next. > >>?Since we now have technology enabling a level >> of productivity sufficient to meet ?-- AT LEAST -- everyone's BASIC >> needs, there is no longer any reason for the war of all against all. > > But don't you see? We don't. But don't YOU see, we do? > If everyone's basic needs were met > without work, Huh? Without work? Where did I ever say anything like that? I didn't. > very soon nobody's basic needs would be met. Presumably because no one would be working and then nothing would be produced and then "nobody's basic needs would be met"? (State what you mean explicitly. If I have to guess, then I'd just as well go off in the corner and talk to myself.) > We would > either overpopulate to the point that the whole system would collapse > into starving chaos, or we would just all stop doing things for each > other outside of our local groups and collapse into tribalism. I don't > think you can stop the basic forces of Darwinism, and that's what you > are asking to have happen. I'd love to suspend the law of gravity now > and again too. :-) This is conservative projection from conservative dogma. Nonsense out of nonsense. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we will have to end our "discussion" and go our separate ways. So much of what you say is founded on underlying assumptions that I find -- how can I say this politely -- "unpersuasive". >> To achieve that lasting peace, and reap the economic benefits of a >> demilitarized world -- trillions saved on weapons and an end to the >> cycle of destruction and rebuilding -- we have to find a way to >> prevent the ruling elite -- those who start and benefit from wars -- >> from victimizing the rest of us with their pathology of ambition and >> power. > > Now there is something that is hard to disagree with. I would love to > be able to demilitarize. The only problem with that is that everyone > has to demilitarize together, Has to? Has to? You're so rigid. Loosen up. > and I see no way to accomplish that. I understand. We all have our strengths. I for instance have some suggestions about how to start this, and I feel confident that once we all get together to work on it, synergy will take hold, and we'll find our way.. > > The United States could and probably will have to unilaterally > decrease the size of their military presence around the world. Well there you go! So, (1) a START at disarmament can in fact be unilateral. And (2) it's the first step in the necessary MULTILATERAL effort. Excellent work! > There > are more US military service men protecting South Korea from North > Korea than there are protecting the US southern border from Mexican > drug lords! This is just what I'm talking about. You lump together the conservative talking (bigotry, actually) points -- drugs(druggie low-lifes), border security (spics, no one talks about the Canadian border)), immigrant labor("illegal" spics), and Mexican drug gang violence ****IN MEXICO****(drugs and killer spics). This isn't discussion. it's just a right-wing recitation, Koombahyah without the poetry or uplift.. > But getting rid of the whole enchilada only kicks the ball > down the field so far. Someone on this list recently said that 80% of > our economy could be attributed to the rule of law, well friend, that > same 80% comes from the power of the military too. After Bush and Obama the "Rule of Law" is clearly a fiction. And militarism is terminal criminal psychosis. Terminal because it kills the nation, criminal because it's mass-murder done for profit, and psychotic because, in contrast to a cannibal who feeds on others, which is borderline rational, feeding on one's own until the nation dies is clearly insane. > > But, if you can do it, that would be swell. > > Step one. Stop the western addiction to oil. That's what all the fuss > is about in the Middle East, No. The US "addiction" to oil is a factor. However, while economically problematic is not at all what ALL the fuss is about. The owners of the oil are thrilled to sell it to us. Couldn't be more thrilled, and love the idea of market forces setting the price. Is it too expensive? Whose fault is that Mr. Free Market Capitalism? The fuss is about Western support for Arab dictatorships. Support aimed at getting the oil on the cheap. And of course, it's about Israel. > which is the core of almost all the > world's problems these days. This is the drunk slash liquor-store bandit blaming the liquor companies for his "problem". > Something like 23 of the last 25 inter > state wars have involved at least one Islamic country. Yeah. Islam is the problem. Why won't they let the West rob them, subvert their governments, violate their culture, murder and expel their peoples and replace them with Jewish colonists, and make perpetual war on them to keep those colonists safe???!!! Those barbaric Islamofascists!!! So damn touchy. How dare they??!!! > Sad. Indeed. > >> Can we design a system to do that? > > Probably not. But perhaps with more intelligence, it can be achieved. > And I'm talking superhuman intelligence of the AGI sort. And I'm talking entirely human intelligence of the compassionate liberal type. (NOT the spineless PC liberal type, which I despise.) ***************************** For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". ***************************** It's not personal. I'm sure you're a fine fellow. We just disagree. Best, Jeff Davis "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Anais Nin From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 01:20:41 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:20:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> On 07/01/2011 04:43 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > > They were hippies. It's a narrow class of liberal. And even a narrow > class of hippie. The macrobiotic, Koom-bah-yah, crystal vibration, > back-to-nature kind of hippie. Not all us old hippies slash liberals > are of that type. Not being a liberal yourself, it's understandable > you would not be fully versed in liberal phylogeny. I was a hippie and for a while there I guess I was a [modern usage] liberal as well. Ayn Rand was the beginning of getting over the default hippie stances on many [political and economic especially] things and fired up critical inquiry on the rest. Thanks be unto Rand. :) >> I don't state this to be provocative, but to point out that >> homelessness isn't the end of the world, >> just the end of access to a >> certain kind of civilization for those who are homeless. > Interesting apologism for that sort of conservative heartlessness > exemplified by Reagan's "they're just camping" comment. Don't go > there. Just because a human being is needy in various ways, even really serious ones, does not mean that person has an automatic valid claim on any part of the life or possessions of any other human being. I don't think this is at all heartless. I think it is the only view compatible with human freedom - with humans not being in involuntary servitude to others. > Homelessness IS the "end of the world" -- which is to say the end of > dignity and the beginning of a sanity-destroying horror -- for most > homeless folks, in the same sense that falling from a tall building is > "the end". It's not relevant, but glib and heartless, to observe that > one remains perfectly healthy until impact with the pavement. > As someone who has been homeless (early 20s) that is a bit overstated. Yes it was rough getting back on my feet. The key was inside my own head. As long as I thought I was the victim of something some "they" did to me I was stuck. At one time I was even lame enough to think it was obvious I was better than "those people with a job, in the System" and that it was a major injustice I didn't have what I needed without bothering to trade any sort of values at all. I am not saying that every homeless is like this but all too many liberals seem to look at the "plight of the homeless" from a position not that far removed from what I thought way back then. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 01:23:06 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:23:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> On 07/01/2011 01:29 PM, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > Kelly, why don't you look beyond political borders? Who gives a > flying monkey's ass what the political party is - or ism?! We have > world problems to solve and need smart strategic thinking that > arguably understands the transhumanist perspective. Forgive me, but > talking about libertarianism and/or Markism or socialism, etc. is so > old world it causes my skin to crawl. (Actually I would like my skin > to crawl, but preferably with nanorobots rather than political > bot-tlenecking.) Sometimes we need to talk about these things because it is obvious people still have a difficult time thinking about politics and economics in a sane way or even having a fruitful discussion with others on these topics. Granted the old labels are pretty useless. However the underlying issues are very much alive. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 01:32:20 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:32:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4E0E7524.8010907@mac.com> On 07/01/2011 11:45 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> 2011/7/1 Stefano Vaj: >>> Wrong. You seem to equate corporate state-ism with libertarian views. >>> Corporate state conglomeration is fascism, not libertarianism. >> This might well be the case (actually, "state corporativism" IMHO describes >> better fascism, rather than the other way around, but this is not the issue >> here), even though this scenario need not be neither more, nor less, >> totalitarian than our average State today. >> >> My real point however is: how a radically libertarian view could ever >> prevent a company from going down this path? And if the end result is >> neither better nor worse than our average State today, what's the point? >> >> I am referring to the kind of libertarian view which postulates that we can >> go without a State legal system at all, not to more moderate ones. > Stefano, There you go again... :-) > > The "kind of libertarian view" you are speaking of in Anarchy. I am an anarcho-capitalist. Anarchy, in case anyone is confused, means without the State. It does not mean chaos though most may have difficulty imagining a stateless society that is not chaotic. I am libertarian (small l) in the sense that I hold the NAP as one of the most concise correct statements of proper human interaction ever conceived. I am not a Libertarian in that the party is no longer the "Party of Principles". Nominating an ex drug czar as presidential candidate was the final irrevocable proof for me. > Libertarianism is no more anarchy than it is fascism. If you define > libertarianism as anything that seems dangerous, then you aren't going > to like it. My definition of libertarianism is most closely > approximated in the real world by the VERY early United States. That > is, there are very few laws, but the laws that exist are followed by > the majority of the citizenry, and are respected. In part, the law is > respected when it is understood by the citizen. When the law is so > voluminous that not only the citizen can not read it, but even the > lawmaker is challenged, then this is FAR from the libertarian ideal. > Where is the "principle" in that? Is it merely very few laws or the proper kind of laws adhering to the missing and not mentioned principles? > So government yes, absolutely you need government. No, you don't. > But the very > smallest amount that can possibly do. Just enough to prevent invasion, > and protect me from my fellow citizens when they run amok. I can protect myself. So can you. The rest is a matter of voluntary agreements. > So no, I am not an anarchist. I am a libertarian! (As a libertarian, I > get to define what that means to me, this being one of the greatest > benefits of being a libertarian... ;-) (kidding, just a little bit > here.) Unfortunately it is only a little bit as libertarian now means very little you can pin many libertarians (and certainly not the Party) down on. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 01:49:35 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:49:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <20110701192915.GK26837@leitl.org> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <20110701192915.GK26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4E0E792F.5050700@mac.com> On 07/01/2011 12:29 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Most installations are in invididual houses. Unless you live in a > renewable-disadvantaged country like the US. > We aren't renewable disadvantaged. We just don't do stupid things (well we come close) like stopping the use of the safest form of mainline power to date (nuclear). Although we might as well since it takes decades to license a new plant that uses more efficient and scads safer and cleaner nuclear technologies. >> capital up front, and that is it's weakness when people are mostly >> living from paycheck to paycheck and already up to their eyeballs in >> debt. > How did these people get to afford the houses they live in in > the first place? Oh, wait, they didn't. They got suckered in > by the bubble. Guess what, the bubble is not global. It might > have hit US, Spain and Canada, and a few other places. But world-wide, > it's an anomaly. Nope. Japan had a much worse bubble that crashed its 80s "miracle" and has had the country stagnating with 200% of GDP national debt since. The main thing that kept it from being worse is that Japan has a very favorable balance of trade. Post quake this may no longer be the case. China is in a major housing bubble about to pop very very messily. > >> Nanosolar is selling most of their panels these days to facilities in >> Germany. In a way, this is fair. Germany subsidizes the development of > I know, I've tried to buy some, and you can't get any as end user. > Same thing with Fist Solar. It will take a while until the overheated > market cools off enough that availability and prices are adequate. > >> solar energy, while we in the US subsidize Germany's security through >> military spending. I doubt they are on the same order of magnitude of > Dog knows the failing empire is doing everything to piss off the entire > world and get a half million of Manhattanites fried to a crisp by a nuke, > but I don't know what this autoexsanguination has to do anything with > anything else than people endorsing instituionalized insanity, bless > their black little hearts. W0Of. Subsidizing anything is a mis-allocation of resources by definition that is very likely to come back to chew a leg off. If solar was really good enough to affordably power my home I would do it in a heartbeat. It isn't - yet. The US produces half the oil it consumes. It wouldn't take that much to move the other half to something else better when it truly is better without lets pretend games of subsidies, free panels, and what-ifs with missing technologies. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 02:02:48 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:02:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> Message-ID: <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> On 06/30/2011 01:39 AM, BillK wrote: > On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> Default on a contract and you get called in front of the DRO (dispute >> resolution organization) agreed to as part of the contract. If you default >> on the DROs judgment or blow them off then others will be very unlikely to >> do business with you or trust you. There are also escrow type arrangements >> without involving a state. You don't need a state for such defaulting on >> agreements to receive much negative feedback. You don't get impartiality >> from a government. >> >> > The crooks don't care about negative feedback, or peoples' opinions. > Offer a cheaper price and people will avoid escrow systems. Not after getting burned a time or two they won't. > Look at the scam artists on the Internet. How many people do you think > do repeat business with them? Human stupidity is rampant and increases when you make it supposedly "safe" to be stupid. So? > None - but there are always new punters sending money in. So the huge > profits keep rolling in. > If eventually business winds down, start up a new company and carry on. Actually, not so huge at all. That there are bottom feeding scum suckers does not mean you need to somehow rejigger the entire ecology just for the sake of saying you did something to get rid of them. In a society where your reputation is valuable and where no one protects fools from the fruits of their foolishness I think you get far less of that than in the alternatives. > You don't even have to offer a product. Just offer hope of a cure, or > a hope of receiving more money back, or a hope of good luck in the > future, or............ I can't protect idiots from their idiocy and I refuse to bind free and honest people to attempt to do so. > If you can get the government in your pocket, like the banksters, then > just pay a fine occasionally and carry on ripping people off. The government is in my pocket - they take nearly 50% of everything that ever comes near my pocket. If I gave them more do you think they might give a little of it back? > To stop scams and white-collar crime you need a legal system of > justice, law enforcement, jail time and requisition of ill-gotten > gains. You need a legal system but this does not need to be run by a state. Jail is not effective. Ill-gotten is difficult to determine. We are so far off that people have had their house taken just because some busybody found a joint on the premises. I believe very much in full restitution by the perpetrator of any harm to a victim. It is hard to do that from prison where you harm more people to keep your sorry ass locked up. > The US used to have that. They should consider trying it again sometime. They used to have something a great deal closer to what I am describing. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 02:08:46 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:08:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <4E0C7FDC.2090505@susaro.com> References: <4E023E65.7060104@lightlink.com> <27193.48962.qm@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <4E0B7308.6040201@susaro.com> <4E0BDDCC.5010305@mac.com> <4E0C7FDC.2090505@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E0E7DAE.9040005@mac.com> On 06/30/2011 06:53 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote: >> On 06/29/2011 11:46 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >>> Stefano, your argument is fine .... except that you have neglected >>> to notice that I was talking about whether a PC could simulate a >>> mind "in real time". In other words, from the very beginning I have >>> been talking about anything EXCEPT the universal computation issue! >>> >>> I never disputed whether a tinkertoy or a bunch of marbles running >>> in a maze (or a Searlean idiot locked up in a room with pieces of >>> paper being passed under the door) could simulate a mind .... hey, >>> no problem: all of these things could simulate a mind if programmed >>> correctly. >>> >>> All I cared about was whether a PC could do it in real time. In >>> other words, fast enough to keep up with a human. >> >> Did you present you argument for operation throughput of the brain >> and show that that the same operation throughput can be done on a >> PC? If you did I missed it. If the PC cannot match the brain on >> operation throughput then I don't see how you can say it is possible >> for a PC to keep up with a human across all general intelligence tasks. > > You come into the middle of an argument and, not having understood the > thread, you imply that I said something that I did not, then imply > that I was negligent in not properly justifying the thing that I did > not say. > > Nice try. ;-) > I saw you say something that seemed to me very much like this. Do not waste my time implying that I am playing games with you. It was a serious question. If this is not what you said then what is your claim exactly? I did read back and saw not only the above but things like the below before I asked the above question you just wave away. "The point is that there are choices here. My own work tends to indicate that something around the cortical column level of functionality would be sufficient for most of the processing. Now, if that were true then an AGI could very well be built using something within an order of magnitude of a current PC. I don't think anyone pays sufficient atention to this little issue. Does anyone reading this post truly realize that the implication is that if cortical columns are the relevant functional level, and if someone figured out what the functionality is, that means someone could build an AGI that would fit in (probably) a single server rack, and do so by the end of the year...? " That sounds like a pretty substantial claim to me. So in what way am I putting words in your mouth? - samantha - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 03:11:57 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 23:11:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309530037.16946.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110701090541.GR26837@leitl.org> <1309530037.16946.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/1 john clark > --- On Fri, 7/1/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > and type it AI,AGI . You will see a graph of how often the words AI and AGI appeared in books from 1800 to 2000. And keep in mind that almost all the times AGI was used in a book it had to do with Adjusted Gross Income or Analytical Graphics Incorporated or American Gunsmithing Institute or the American Geological Institute and had nothing to do with smart computers. Think I'm exaggerating? A few months ago I did a Google search for "AGI", it was page 9 before I found anything about smart computers. Page 9 ! So what? If google decided to make AGI the relevant keyword tomorrow your "metric" would be inverted. I don't use the word "normalcy" because I think it sounds stupid. That's hardly going to stop anyone else from using it. The louder I complain about those who say things like "can't wait 'till things get back to normalcy 'round here" the more I sound equally stupid to them. You don't like the term "AGI"? Don't use it. If context requires a disambiguation between narrow AI, wide AI, some other kind of run-of-the-mill AI and the super-special kind of AI that warrants it's own moniker, let's use AI+. And when that loses all meaning/nuance, the bleeding edge nerds will have to further differentiate their cool new thing with AI++ or AI# or double-AI-plus or somesuch. whatever; it's as good a topic to complain about as anything else. :) From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 07:13:41 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 08:13:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I can't protect idiots from their idiocy and I refuse to bind free and > honest people to attempt to do so. > But that is the whole point of humans living together in society. Society is not just designed to make a nice life for the top 10%. Half the population is below average intelligence and apart from IQ, many have other disabilities that make life very difficult for them. A caring society should help them automatically as part of the system. Besides, if you banish them, who is going to do all the low-level jobs that keep society running? BillK From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 2 08:19:02 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 10:19:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <20110701090541.GR26837@leitl.org> <1309530037.16946.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110702081902.GO26837@leitl.org> On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 11:11:57PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > So what? If google decided to make AGI the relevant keyword tomorrow > your "metric" would be inverted. Google doesn't decide, it's just tracking frequency of what terms people publish. > I don't use the word "normalcy" because I think it sounds stupid. > That's hardly going to stop anyone else from using it. The louder I > complain about those who say things like "can't wait 'till things get > back to normalcy 'round here" the more I sound equally stupid to them. This isn't a Humpty Dumpty world. You see from the trend alone whether this is a pointless churn/rebranding, or a genuine novelty. The trend is flat, and the names associated never did anything interesting. It's dead, Jim. > You don't like the term "AGI"? Don't use it. If context requires a Guess what, nobody outside a very small bowl does. > disambiguation between narrow AI, wide AI, some other kind of > run-of-the-mill AI and the super-special kind of AI that warrants it's > own moniker, let's use AI+. And when that loses all meaning/nuance, > the bleeding edge nerds will have to further differentiate their cool > new thing with AI++ or AI# or double-AI-plus or somesuch. There's no new cool thing. That's the glory. (And by glory I mean 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'). > whatever; it's as good a topic to complain about as anything else. :) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 11:29:30 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 13:29:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 29 June 2011 05:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: > What if the Singularity can only be avoided if human beings and > corporations and countries stop acting in self-interested ways as > modeled by economists? > I suspect "self-interest" to be at the end of story an empty, formal concept. This is why the classic economic theory is not falsifiable in a Popperian sense, because whatever an economic subject chooses to do or prefers is by definition what he considers its "self-interest"; or, in other terms, the "self-interest" of an economic subject is defined as what it chooses to do or prefers. It remains to be seen *what* an economic subject actually considers its "self-interest" to be. And this is not a given, but is determined culturally. Not by the economy, not by the "nature". Nor it can be even remotely considered as "universal", since it varies wildly from an era to another, from an individual to another, from a civilisation to another. > This does not seem likely to me, so I think progress will > continue to march forward unabated until it all collapses into anarchy > or explodes into utopia (at least for some). > What if what we are inclined to see as "progress" from our peculiar perspective is nothing else than an arbitrary abstraction of the legacy of a number of rather dramatic revolutions and paradigm shifts which took place only because *a will was there* (and sometimes against all bets), and which could have very well never happened, or could have happened in an altogether different direction? If we zoom in on human history, stagnation and regression might well be the normal state of things, superficially and very rarely punctuated by extraordinary changes which were originally the feat of very small group of people. Bacteria remains amongst the very dominant species of our ecosystem, but their strategy has involved very little "progress" in the last gigayear... This is why I think that a self-aware trashumanist stance is crucial. Because if we embrace change and fight for it we have a chance to achieve what we dream of, if we do not, our best chance is that of congratulate ourselves for what are at best progressive refinements and fine-tunings operated by complacent dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 13:13:23 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 15:13:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> Message-ID: On 30 June 2011 03:30, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Bogus scenario as (a) it is difficult for any company to be the only one in > an area and (b) it is much too easy to move if local conditions get too bad. > If the conditions get too bad then the company can't hire and keep good > employees, especially not more than unskilled to semi-skilled labor. ?If it > gets too outrageous in its prices or other policies it will go uncompetitive > relative to other firms or possible firm in the same type of business. ?Self > limiting.. One wonders. This was also true for tribes, but they managed to develop into modern States. Moreover, who says that the company should be badly managed and end up being uncompetitive? In fact, its shareholders and/or employees may well participate in the advantages of increasing scale economies and economic ("horizontal") integration. > Sure. ?Actually it is perfectly legal for you or I to create our own > currency any time we want to. ?We might not find anyone that wants to accept > it though. No so in continental Europe. Actually, this is sovereign privilege, even though it has been transferred to private, monopolistic entities known as central banks. The problem is not that States are considered more trustworthy in the creation of money out of thin air (in fact, they have not been doing that themselves for a rather long time now). It is that if you try and establish you own currency, the police come. > Default on a contract and you get called in front of the DRO (dispute > resolution organization) agreed to as part of the contract. ?If you default > on the DROs judgment or blow them off ?then others will be very unlikely to > do business with you or trust you. ?There are also escrow type arrangements > without involving a state. ?You don't need a state for such defaulting on > agreements to receive much negative feedback. ? You don't get impartiality > from a government. Yes, you know the details better, but I was aware that in libertarian thought solutions are proposed with regard to enforcement of contracts without resorting to governmental intervention. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 12:53:15 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 14:53:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited. In-Reply-To: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/1 john clark > Organic brains may work by neural networks but they are no better at emulating one than a non organic metallic computer, in fact they're not nearly as good; if you doubt that then look at a very very small network of only a few hundred elements and through pure visualization (or "emulation" if you prefer that word) predict how this network will behave. It's hard as hell, we're just not very good at that; electronic computers can do it much better. There may me well tasks at which both organic brains *and* traditional computers do not really shine. Think of quantum computing probs (btw, this is one reason why I think that the idea that brain functioning would be based on quantum effects appears quite dubious to me). > As for?pattern recognition we still have an edge over the machines, but I doubt our superiority will last another decade. Yes, perhaps. It might however take a little longer if by "superiority" one means performance for cubic centimeter or per watt of power. So, if portability is an issue, it might be better for a while to bring along a few biological neurons... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 2 12:57:29 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 14:57:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited. In-Reply-To: References: <1309541777.39094.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/1 Kelly Anderson > One way to look at this is that when we "emulate" computers, by say doing math in our head, we do it at a rate that is thousands (if not millions) of times slower. Similarly when computers emulate the pattern recognition tasks that we are good at, they are thousands of times slower than us... I am not sure that we emulate computers when we do math, as we obviously do not when we play chess, unless of course we deliberately choose to do so. But yes, whatever the strategies concerned might be, contemporary processors and even much simpler device have a significant edge over us. > The difference of course is that computers keep getting faster, and we stay the same (so far). Therefore, even if computers are thousands of times slower at pattern recognition, someday computers will be thousands of times faster than they are today, and then eventually a trillion times faster. "Fast" remains however a meaningful term only measured against a specific task. For instance, GPUs are in a sense much faster than CPUs, but it may well not be efficient to abandon the CPUs altogether. -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Jul 2 14:42:51 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 07:42:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ?On Fri, 7/1/11, Mike Dougherty wrote: "So what?? If google decided to make AGI the relevant keyword tomorrow your "metric" would be inverted." If that were to happen and so many people knew what the term meant that Steven Spielberg made a multimillion dollar blockbuster movie called "AGI", then the dilettantes would dream up yet another obscure term that they were certain was unknown by most because, as I've said before, when your ideas are shallow clarity of expression is not your friend.? You don't like the term "AGI"?? No. Don't use it. I don't. If context requires a disambiguation between narrow AI, wide AI, some other kind of run-of-the-mill AI and the super-special kind of AI [...] So you want us to believe that if you were to say something like "AI will likely bring on the extinction of biological human beings and lead to computers able to engineer the universe" you worry that people will misunderstand you and think you are referring to "run-of-the-mill AI", so purely in the interests of clarity you will use "AGI" instead, a recently made up term that virtually nobody is familiar with. I flat out don't believe you. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 2 18:39:34 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:39:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> If batteries and inverters remain expensive but solar panels are very cheap, why not use the panels where it's not an issue? For instance, running systems that are only (or typically) needed when the sun is shining? Anything that's ordinarily a daytime activity, particularly limited to good weather days. Or where activity can be scheduled around the weather. Most people go to the beach during the daytime, on days when the weather's nice. Thought: How about creating photovoltaic cloth and making hot-air balloons, parasails, hang gliders, and parachutes? All tend to be used by day, in good weather. Or clothing. Recharge your laptop or cell phone off your shirt. Power a cooling system, to provide wearable air conditioning. Or to come back to a comfortable car, cool the vehicle powered by PV paint or the seats with seats by PV fabric. Or keep your canteen cool with a PV-powered cooling system. Or a pushcart's Italian ices. -- David. From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 2 23:27:58 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:27:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> Message-ID: <1B2922ED-41D5-4140-8121-F13238F61A3A@mac.com> On Jul 2, 2011, at 12:13 AM, BillK wrote: > On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> I can't protect idiots from their idiocy and I refuse to bind free and >> honest people to attempt to do so. >> > > > But that is the whole point of humans living together in society. The point is to bind free and honest people to the protection of fools from the effects of their foolishness? If I believed that I would be a hermit. > > Society is not just designed to make a nice life for the top 10%. Who is talking about the top 10%? Freedom helps everyone and did historically help far more segments rise than ever in history. > Half the population is below average intelligence and apart from IQ, > many have other disabilities that make life very difficult for them. > So what? How is that a claim check on my life or yours? By what right? If they have such a "right" then why does it trump our right to live our lives as we see fit? > A caring society should help them automatically as part of the system. That is not "caring"? Being forced to contribute to the well-benig of strangers has nothing to do with "caring" as caring can only be voluntary. > > Besides, if you banish them, who is going to do all the low-level jobs > that keep society running? Who said anything about banishing anyone? - samantha From msd001 at gmail.com Sun Jul 3 00:36:37 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 20:36:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/2 john clark > So you want us to believe that if you were to say something like "AI will likely bring on the extinction of biological human beings and lead to computers able to engineer the universe" you worry that people will misunderstand you and think you are referring to "run-of-the-mill AI", so purely in the interests of clarity you will use "AGI" instead, a recently made up term that virtually nobody is familiar with. I flat out don't believe you. I don't worry that people will misunderstand me. I pretty much expect it. We are in agreement on the "dilettantes" dreaming up obscure words. A recent new hire is apparently a Battlestar Galactica fan because when he is frustrated to the point of swearing he loudly exclaims "Frak!" I have considered responding with the more-popular expletive "Fuck" but there's probably some work policy that forbids it. Instead I consider it a beacon indicating his membership in a small group with their own language. (He also swears in Klingon in addition to Italian and Spanish) If my audience already assigns some nuance to AGI, then yes I'd use that term. If not (which should be assumed to be the default) then I'd probably express the special property of general intelligence possessing cross-domain-cleverness with commonly agreed-upon words if I really wanted to be understood. We both (all) know the meaning of AGI in the context of an artificial intelligence email list. Every domain has reserved words, doesn't it? When a mechanic informs you that you need a new tranny you probably should not assume he's suggesting you acquire for yourself a man that dresses as a woman. An electrician says he needs a new pair of dykes; he wants wire cutters. I wasn't trying to make an opposing argument. Perhaps more of a perpendicular comment. Maybe something else... something less right than exactly ninety degrees... From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sun Jul 3 14:12:40 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 10:12:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] shale ain't what it's fracked up to be In-Reply-To: <20110627152159.GI26837@leitl.org> References: <20110627152159.GI26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ?Looks like crap,? the Schlumberger official wrote about the well?s > performance, according to the regulator, ?but operator will flip it based > on > ?potential? and make some money on it.? > > ?Always a greater sucker,? the e-mail concluded. > This about sums it all up too. It doesn't matter that millions will pay the price for something, so long as we can flip it and make some money in the process....period. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 3 17:09:33 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 11:09:33 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: >>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Kelly Anderson >>> >>>> Ok Jeff. So what do we do about homelessness? >>> >>> I consider homelessness part of the larger problem of social and >>> economic decay, >> >> I've heard some liberals state (seriously) that the biggest mistake >> mankind ever made was to come in from the rain and begin agriculture. >> So according to that method of thinking, the purest, best state for >> humanity would be for us ALL to be essentially homeless. > > They were hippies. ?It's a narrow class of liberal. ?And even a narrow > class of hippie. The macrobiotic, Koom-bah-yah, crystal vibration, > back-to-nature kind of hippie. ?Not all us old hippies slash liberals > are of that type. ?Not being a liberal yourself, it's understandable > you would not be fully versed in liberal phylogeny. I clearly said "some"... and I assumed it was a fairly small group. It does, however, include at least one Obama administration appointment. :-) I think I understand liberalism relatively well, except for the part how anyone could believe that sack of ideas. >> I don't state this to be provocative, but to point out that >> homelessness isn't the end of the world, >> just the end of access to a >> certain kind of civilization for those who are homeless. > > Interesting apologism for that sort of conservative heartlessness > exemplified by Reagan's "they're just camping" comment. ?Don't go > there. There are a few that are "just camping"... especially in Southern California and various national parks. We hear from time to time about people setting up homesteads in Yellowstone. Brrrr. But again, it is a fairly small piece of the overall problem. I just found it interesting that there was no mention of that segment in the government numbers. > Homelessness IS the "end of the world" -- which is to say the end of > dignity and the beginning of a sanity-destroying horror -- for most > homeless folks, in the same sense that falling from a tall building is > "the end". ?It's not relevant, but glib and heartless, to observe that > one remains perfectly healthy until impact with the pavement. Remember that you are talking to a formerly homeless person. It was only a few months, but long enough to know it wasn't the end of the world for me. >> I could be perfectly happy in a perpetual camp out, > > If it was involuntary? ?I doubt it. ?For one thing, as you yourself > observe below, involuntary homelessness -- in your case involuntary > "camping" -- might cost you your children. ?At the very least, the > financial causes of your homelessness would also mean a severe strain > on your ability to care for your kids, which is up there with the > worst horrors imaginable. And if somehow you managed to meet their > physical and emotional needs, you would be living in constant fear of > having them taking from you. ?Homelessness is NOT camping. ?If forced > on you, you would NOT be perfectly happy. Absolutely not. By myself, I would be happy enough though. With my kids, it would be a nightmare. There is an increase lately of homeless families, attributed mostly to government interference in housing leading to the recent "housing crisis." I can assure you that would never happen in a libertarian utopia. What would happen in a libertarian utopia is that every now and again, a structure would collapse, and people would be crushed because there would be no building codes in a libertarian utopia. You can see what happens because it's what happened in the Haiti earthquake. On the other hand, housing would be much cheaper, especially at the low end. I've also spend months in Brazilian favelas in Sao Paulo and about ten days in pre earthquake Haiti. These shanty towns steal electricity for tin roof shacks built out of plywood. But the vast majority of those shacks in Sao Paulo had a television in 1985 ;-) Weird huh? Now let's do an exercise. Suppose that we imposed US style building codes in Haiti after the earthquake. 90% of those people would remain homeless FOREVER. We have the same thing in America but it isn't as noticeable here because we are such a rich country. Shanty towns are a rarity in America. I did have friends living in old slave quarters in Georgia when I was small, that was as close as I've personally experienced here, and it was pretty horrible. Not as bad as the favella though. I have limited (but not zero) experience with personal poverty, but I have been around poverty quite a bit more than the average American. Especially the "real" poverty that exists in other parts of the world. I am sympathetic to poverty. But as Stewart Brand has noted, shanty towns are a step up from rural poverty. A step up that is not available to Americans. Would be in a libertarian utopia. I think living in a shanty town would really light a fire under most welfare recipients in the US. There would be many fewer "jobs Americans won't do" in such a state. >> but DCFS would >> remove my children from me if I did. Another example of the loss of >> liberty we face in our home-filled society. Normal has become overly >> important in the US. >> >>> and would prefer to discuss the larger challenge of a >>> new system of governance -- a rational system of governance -- >>> designed to address the circumstances -- social, cultural, political, >>> human behavioral, and technological -- of today's world. >> >> That sounds like a good goal. A bit much for one email :-) ?but my >> answer would be a system with the absolute maximum amount of freedom >> possible without impinging upon the freedom of others. Lest you think >> this a purely libertarian pov, I include protection of the environment >> as necessary to avoid damaging others. > > Thank you for that. ?By way of reciprocation let me say that I stand > with you in supporting every person's right to arm themselves, > particularly for community and self-defense. Good, it's nice that we have one point of agreement to work from. It might be enough. >>> If this seems like a dodge, then I defer to the practical and >>> compassionate and EXPLICIT suggestions of John Grigg, who to his great >>> credit, always seems to have his feet planted solidly on the ground >>> (unlike moi). >> >> I don't know exactly what you are referring to here. Could you be more explicit? > > Check John Grigg's post to this thread. Ah. >>> Simply put. if you create the conditions for people to feel safe, they >>> will work steadily to resolve problems both personal and societal. ?If >>> however, people are constantly stressed by unrelenting vulnerability >>> in a ruthless social environment, then any spark can unleash the dark >>> forces of barbarism. >> >> Ok, so the core of my proposed civilization >> is freedom, and the core of your proposed >> civilization is safety. > > ? ? ? ? ? > > My bad. ?I had introduced the larger overarching issue of governance, > but then kinda backtracked with a summarizing comment on the physical > and emotional safety of homeless persons. ?Not national safety, OK > I believe, regarding safety, that Franklin was speaking of threats to > national(and by extension, personal) safety from foreign aggressors . Perhaps, but I think it applies in this context too. >>> We've had thousands of years of seeing how humans behave and how that >>> gets us all in trouble. >> >> We have accomplished great things in >> the last few thousand years. > > Apologism again. ?Very lame argumentation. ?"Great accomplishments" do > not and cannot exculpate criminality. ?Hitler built the autobahn, so > he gets a free pass on the holocaust? ?I don't think so. Neither do > you. Doesn't even count toward mitigation. I think it mitigates the work and actions of the German people. It somewhat excuses them for following Hitler, at least at first. I think we can agree that he himself is beyond historical redemption. > Humanity has made very little progress toward preventing the damage > caused by human behavioral failings. But in no place is that damage as minimized as in America. >> I ask again, would you like to climb >> back up into the trees? > > First, you never asked. ?You implied, but failed to tell me about it. > Second, I'm not that kind of hippie. ?Third, "up into the trees" is a > bit further "back to nature" than the macrobiotic Koombahyah > lifestyle. ?Please. for the sake of a coherent discussion, try to > maintain continuity from one paragraph to the next. Fair enough. For the record, I didn't assume you were that kind of hippie, but asked this as more of a rhetorical question. There is a common liberal misconception that "savage" man lived more in harmony with nature and each other. I'm hoping that misconception is going away as we learn more about these cultures. >>>?Since we now have technology enabling a level >>> of productivity sufficient to meet ?-- AT LEAST -- everyone's BASIC >>> needs, there is no longer any reason for the war of all against all. >> >> But don't you see? We don't. > > But don't YOU see, we do? We may not be able to get past this one... however, I'll try one more time... While we are not very close to the carrying capacity of the earth for humans right now (except in some very limited ways) there will always be limits on resources. For example, there are limited amounts of "blood minerals" that we discussed a few weeks ago. In the general sense that the earth cannot hold 400 billion trillion people, there are limits. There will always be these sorts of limits. Saying that there happens to be enough for everyone at this particular moment in time is meaningless in the long term. You also have to look at WHY we have enough now. Partially, because in the past, we have had limited socialism. A recent poll showed that 30ish percent of Americans believe we are in PERMANENT decline now. I hope that isn't true, but if the socialist programs continue, I fear we will be. >> If everyone's basic needs were met >> without work, > > Huh? ?Without work? ?Where did I ever say anything like that? ?I didn't. The whole premise of socialism is that some people, at the economic bottom of things, don't need to work, and will be supported by society. Are you telling me you aren't THAT kind of liberal? >> very soon nobody's basic needs would be met. > > Presumably because no one would be working and then nothing would be > produced and then "nobody's basic needs would be met"? (State what you > mean explicitly. ?If I have to guess, then I'd just as well go off in > the corner and talk to myself.) Yes, exactly. You need look no further than communist Russia to see that. I did spend a week in communist China in 1987, and while it wasn't enough to see what was really going on, the service was horrible. I'd bet the service in China today is very good. >> We would >> either overpopulate to the point that the whole system would collapse >> into starving chaos, or we would just all stop doing things for each >> other outside of our local groups and collapse into tribalism. I don't >> think you can stop the basic forces of Darwinism, and that's what you >> are asking to have happen. I'd love to suspend the law of gravity now >> and again too. :-) > > This is conservative projection from conservative dogma. ?Nonsense out > of nonsense. ?I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we will have > to end our "discussion" and go our separate ways. ?So much of what you > say is founded on underlying assumptions that I find -- how can I say > this politely -- "unpersuasive". Perhaps, but let's go back to basics. Do you believe in basic economics? Adam Smith resonate with you at all? >>> To achieve that lasting peace, and reap the economic benefits of a >>> demilitarized world -- trillions saved on weapons and an end to the >>> cycle of destruction and rebuilding -- we have to find a way to >>> prevent the ruling elite -- those who start and benefit from wars -- >>> from victimizing the rest of us with their pathology of ambition and >>> power. >> >> Now there is something that is hard to disagree with. I would love to >> be able to demilitarize. The only problem with that is that everyone >> has to demilitarize together, > > Has to? ?Has to? ?You're so rigid. ?Loosen up. If one side demilitarizes unilaterally, they will be attacked by those who have not. Is that so hard to understand or believe? There are exceptions to this rule... e.g. Switzerland, Tahiti, but there are special circumstances in those cases. History is full of examples of soft societies being over run by the barbarian hordes. >> and I see no way to accomplish that. > > I understand. ?We all have our strengths. ?I for instance have some > suggestions about how to start this, and I feel confident that once we > all get together to work on it, synergy will take hold, and we'll find > our way.. Let's talk motivation. In your proposed society, is money a prime motivator? Perhaps you believe there are motivations that are more important than money. There are, if you are Bhutan... but would you like the whole world to become Bhutan? >> The United States could and probably will have to unilaterally >> decrease the size of their military presence around the world. > > Well there you go! ?So, (1) a START at disarmament can in fact be > unilateral. And (2) it's the first step in the necessary MULTILATERAL > effort. ?Excellent work! We've been taking starting steps to unilateral disarmament for years. We are disassembling our nuclear legacy from the cold war. We are helping the Russians to do the same. These are good things to do. But what enabled that? The END of the cold war did. Both the republicans and the democrats rule from positions of fear. Fear of different things, to be sure, but the ruling classes want us to all be afraid. Ron Paul is very good at explaining why we should get out of the rest of the world. I think he has a very good point, even if I can't quite go all the way there with him... not quite, yet. Almost... I keep going back to Charles Lindberg, and have to put on the brakes a bit. >> There >> are more US military service men protecting South Korea from North >> Korea than there are protecting the US southern border from Mexican >> drug lords! > > This is just what I'm talking about. ?You lump together the > conservative talking (bigotry, actually) points -- drugs(druggie > low-lifes), border security (spics, no one talks about the Canadian > border)), immigrant labor("illegal" spics), and Mexican drug gang > violence ?****IN MEXICO****(drugs and killer spics). ?This isn't > discussion. it's just a right-wing recitation, Koombahyah without the > poetry or uplift.. This isn't just talking. We have spent more to enforce Iraq's borders than our own. Do you believe we should have an open door policy with Mexico? Here is what I do believe. I believe we should increase the number of legal immigrants from Mexico by about 10x. I believe that the feds could come up with a reasonable "guest worker" program. I believe that if we legalized drugs, the whole border war problem would evaporate. Does that sound like "right wing" Koombahyah? >> But getting rid of the whole enchilada only kicks the ball >> down the field so far. Someone on this list recently said that 80% of >> our economy could be attributed to the rule of law, well friend, that >> same 80% comes from the power of the military too. > > After Bush and Obama the "Rule of Law" is clearly a fiction. Sad, but true in both cases. >?And > militarism is terminal criminal psychosis. ?Terminal because it kills > the nation, criminal because it's mass-murder done for profit, and > psychotic because, in contrast to a cannibal who feeds on others, > which is borderline rational, feeding on one's own until the nation > dies is clearly insane. I agree. The difference between us is that I see social programs as cannibalism too. >> But, if you can do it, that would be swell. >> >> Step one. Stop the western addiction to oil. That's what all the fuss >> is about in the Middle East, > > No. ?The US "addiction" to oil is a factor. ? However, while > economically problematic is not at all what ALL the fuss is about. > The owners of the oil are thrilled to sell it to us. ?Couldn't be more > thrilled, and love the idea of market forces setting the price. ?Is it > too expensive? ?Whose fault is that Mr. Free Market Capitalism? ?The > fuss is about Western support for Arab dictatorships. ?Support aimed > at getting the oil on the cheap. ?And of course, it's about Israel. Israel is certainly a complicating factor. I won't even pretend to know how to solve all of that... But if oil were not at issue, most Americans would be perfectly satisfied to let the arabs go back to fighting amongst themselves, as they did from 800 to 1900. >> which is the core of almost all the >> world's problems these days. > > This is the drunk slash liquor-store bandit blaming the liquor > companies for his "problem". I'm the one who said the US was drunk on oil. Again, I differ from most conservatives by being a strong advocate of smart application of alternative energy sources. It makes me cringe to hear Rush Limbaugh talk about oil and alternative energy. Nevertheless, I think this problem is solving itself, in much the same way that the whale oil crisis was solved, through capitalism. >> Something like 23 of the last 25 inter >> state wars have involved at least one Islamic country. > > Yeah. ?Islam is the problem. ?Why won't they let the West rob them, > subvert their governments, violate their culture, murder and expel > their peoples and replace them with Jewish colonists, and make > perpetual war on them to keep those colonists safe???!!! ?Those > barbaric Islamofascists!!! ?So damn touchy. How dare they??!!! Now who's spewing party line tripe. You KNOW it isn't that simple. You would probably agree with Ron Paul's international approach then... Also, half of those wars are Islam on Islam wars. How do you explain that if it's all the big bad west? >> Sad. > > Indeed. > >> >>> Can we design a system to do that? >> >> Probably not. But perhaps with more intelligence, it can be achieved. >> And I'm talking superhuman intelligence of the AGI sort. > > And I'm talking entirely human intelligence of the compassionate > liberal type. (NOT the spineless PC liberal type, which I despise.) So boil it down, what are your top ten beliefs? I'll give you mine (though I reserve the right to modify just what my top 10 are...): 1) Capitalism is the greatest single force for good in the history of the world because it promotes technology. 2) Power seeking governments impede capitalism and are thus counter productive. 3) There are evil people in the world that any system must compensate for. 4) Religion is worst when promoting anti-scientific positions. 5) Science is done by people and is not only not infallible, but also susceptible to human failings and politics. 6) We live in a resource constrained world. 7) Individual politicians are often worse than governments, and rule through fear. 8) Aliens did not help the Egyptians build the pyramids, and the pyramids built Egypt. 9) Freedom is the single most important political concept. 10) Mothers are the core of society, when we undermine motherhood, we do so at our peril. > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?***************************** > > For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I > currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". That is helpful. > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ***************************** > > It's not personal. ?I'm sure you're a fine fellow. ?We just disagree. I feel the same way, otherwise I would not continue the discussion. :-) -Kelly The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money. From glivick at sbcglobal.net Sun Jul 3 08:53:49 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (G. Livick) Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2011 01:53:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E102E1D.2070401@sbcglobal.net> A couple of days back, Stefano stated, in his own way, my usual clarification when the discussion of AI starts to drift toward the spiritual: Mmhhh. What defeated Kasparov was a program, not a computer. The computer merely offered sufficient power to choose moves in the time required. If we free Kasparov's opponent from tournament rules regarding time, and we execute this very program on*anything*, including a Chinese Room or a Turing machine or a Babbage engine or 30.000 slaves playing logic circuits in a plain, the end result would not change. I describe for people with who tend to see the computer as something more than what it is (a misunderstanding that is greatly aided with the widespread and deliberate misuse of terms such as artificial "intelligence") the fact that the basic element of the digital computer, the bit, is perfectly modeled by an empty beer can. A beer can is bi-stable, and can represent a 1 or a 0 in binary. Given enough time and space, and enough beer cans, the most fantastic operation of any computer anywhere could be exactly duplicated with beer cans. (I know exactly how computers work, I've built them, and I program them -- which I declare as sufficient background for making such a claim.) There's a bunch of talk that always goes on about computer "intelligence," with some predicting a time when the things, with the right software, will become actually intelligent. In order for me to accept such a concept, it would have to survive the envisioning of a warehouse full of beer cans being manipulated in response to the same algorithm, and with a result adequate to leave me convinced the warehouse was my intellectual superior. The digital computer is a tool, in my mind, as the abacus is a tool, and as the fingers are tools (for basic math). I'm not going to bother logging onto my computer, or get out my calculator, when I just want to double check that 4 + 3 = 7; I'll just use my fingers. On the other hand, if I want to know what 77! is, I'll crank up my computer. "The right tool for the job" is what my grandpa probably used to say. The computer is faster at multiplication than I will ever be, and it's a great tool for stuff like that. Beer cans would work, too, but that would take too long, and get too many of my friends hung over in preparing them for faster execution speed. There a lot of other tools around that we use to make our tasks easier, or to extend our own capabilities. Pliers, can openers, lawn mowers and TV clickers come to mind. If we improve each of them radically over a number of years, is the time foreseeable when these other tools will become, in fact, equal or superior to humans? FutureMan On 7/2/2011 7:42 AM, john clark wrote: > On *Fri, 7/1/11, Mike Dougherty //* wrote: > > > "So what? If google decided to make AGI the relevant keyword tomorrow > your "metric" would be inverted." > > If that were to happen and so many people knew what the term meant > that Steven Spielberg made a multimillion dollar blockbuster movie > called "AGI", then the dilettantes would dream up yet another obscure > term that they were certain was unknown by most because, as I've said > before, when your ideas are shallow clarity of expression is not your > friend. > > You don't like the term "AGI"? > > No. > > Don't use it. > > I don't. > > If context requires a disambiguation between narrow AI, wide AI, > some other kind of run-of-the-mill AI and the super-special kind > of AI [...] > > So you want us to believe that if you were to say something like "AI > will likely bring on the extinction of biological human beings and > lead to computers able to engineer the universe" you worry that people > will misunderstand you and think you are referring to "run-of-the-mill > AI", so purely in the interests of clarity you will use "AGI" instead, > a recently made up term that virtually nobody is familiar with. I flat > out don't believe you. > > 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 emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 07:00:00 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 16:30:00 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 3 July 2011 04:09, David Lubkin wrote: > If batteries and inverters remain expensive but solar panels are > very cheap, why not use the panels where it's not an issue? > Zackly. Inverters in the domestic market are mostly because we're set up for a high voltage AC grid, which is good for power companies but bad for users (my friendly neighborhood electronic engineers assure me that end users pay for the conversion waste rather than the providers). And so of course all appliances now are built to work with AC, usually by way of transformers (because they really want low voltage DC). Solar, which gives you low voltage DC, is coming into a grid setup not suited to it, and a commercial environment adjusted to that grid. So you end up with silly crap like Solar Panel(DC) -> Inverter(AC) -> Transformer(DC) -> appliance. Ridiculous. Lossy, and means installs are more expensive than they should be. Subsidies are helpful to bootstrap through this first phase of irrational systems. (Actually I think Inverters are commonly installed in Australia so power can feed back onto the grid, which is a massively subsidised thing. It might be a good example of subsidies warping the market (selling too many inverters), but it is having the effect of increasing solar takeup.) Eventually you want to see low voltage DC sockets in your house, along with some higher voltage AC for stuff that wants that (washing machine, fridge?). AC could be done with an inverter, or just come out of the grid as now, ignore the panels (so no inverter required). DC could be panels, with fallback to grid + transformer where necessary (night time). Obviously this is assuming a world where people begin making appliances that natively use, say, 12 volt DC, no power pack. No need for batteries, because there is still a grid. As far as storage on the grid goes, you don't really need it. When output from panels is high, it just means supply from power stations drops - those guys are all over the ability to ramp down when the grid doesn't need them. I think some of them can even "go in reverse", store a bit of power from the grid when the price is really low (demand is low), although I'm not sure what technology they use. That's something worth investing in probably, might be on the up. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 07:51:51 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 08:51:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Emlyn wrote: > Eventually you want to see low voltage DC sockets in your house, along > with some higher voltage AC for stuff that wants that (washing > machine, fridge?). AC could be done with an inverter, or just come out > of the grid as now, ignore the panels (so no inverter required). DC > could be panels, with fallback to grid + transformer where necessary > (night time). Obviously this is assuming a world where people begin > making appliances that natively use, say, 12 volt DC, no power pack. > > No need for batteries, because there is still a grid. As far as > storage on the grid goes, you don't really need it. When output from > panels is high, it just means supply from power stations drops - those > guys are all over the ability to ramp down when the grid doesn't need > them. I think some of them can even "go in reverse", store a bit of > power from the grid when the price is really low (demand is low), > although I'm not sure what technology they use. That's something worth > investing in probably, might be on the up. > > I doubt if you will end up with two classes of devices (AC or DC). You would have to design new plug standards to stop people plugging them into the wrong sockets. Look at the horrific mess of international plug standards at present! More likely you will get (more expensive) devices that include a transformer and intelligent switching that decides what the input electricity type is and runs on whatever they are plugged into. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jul 4 08:52:22 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 10:52:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20110704085222.GF28500@leitl.org> On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 08:51:51AM +0100, BillK wrote: > I doubt if you will end up with two classes of devices (AC or DC). You > would have to design new plug standards to stop people plugging them Such plug standards already exist. Look into automotive. Low-voltage takes giant wire crossection, and can be a fire hazard. It might make sense to pick 24 or 48 V instead of 12. 48 V is still reasonably safe, unless you get wet skin and current across the chest (in this case, even 9 V could be fatal, though the story could apocryphal). > into the wrong sockets. Look at the horrific mess of international > plug standards at present! Low-voltage halogens do it. > More likely you will get (more expensive) devices that include a About the only reason to use AC at home is for motors. Modern power electronics lets you build smart DC motors without even permanent magnets. > transformer and intelligent switching that decides what the input > electricity type is and runs on whatever they are plugged into. Much too complicated. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 09:09:15 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 10:09:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <20110704085222.GF28500@leitl.org> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20110704085222.GF28500@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Much too complicated. > > Agreed. But we have to start from where we are now. The mass market has to cater for the population that can't even work their selection of domestic remote control units or even use most of the functions on their mobile phone. That means no technical choices for the public. They just choose the red one or the silver one. The devices have to be idiot proof. That's why Windows is such a bad experience for the general public. BillK From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 11:45:45 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 21:15:45 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 4 July 2011 17:21, BillK wrote: > On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Emlyn wrote: > >> Eventually you want to see low voltage DC sockets in your house, along >> with some higher voltage AC for stuff that wants that (washing >> machine, fridge?). AC could be done with an inverter, or just come out >> of the grid as now, ignore the panels (so no inverter required). DC >> could be panels, with fallback to grid + transformer where necessary >> (night time). Obviously this is assuming a world where people begin >> making appliances that natively use, say, 12 volt DC, no power pack. >> >> No need for batteries, because there is still a grid. As far as >> storage on the grid goes, you don't really need it. When output from >> panels is high, it just means supply from power stations drops - those >> guys are all over the ability to ramp down when the grid doesn't need >> them. I think some of them can even "go in reverse", store a bit of >> power from the grid when the price is really low (demand is low), >> although I'm not sure what technology they use. That's something worth >> investing in probably, might be on the up. >> >> > > I doubt if you will end up with two classes of devices (AC or DC). You > would have to design new plug standards to stop people plugging them > into the wrong sockets. Look at the horrific mess of international > plug standards at present! > > More likely you will get (more expensive) devices that include a > transformer and intelligent switching that decides what the input > electricity type is and runs on whatever they are plugged into. > > > BillK Extension of switched mode power supply? USB3 might become the DC standard we're talking about. There's significant commercial impetus I think, which is that AC standards are all over the place; different in each country. A DC standard (eg: USB3) can be international, which is a huge boon given that all markets for appliances now are global. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Jul 4 15:24:27 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 08:24:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1309793067.89712.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ?On Wed, 6/29/11, Stefano Vaj wrote: "Mmhhh. What defeated Kasparov was a program, not a computer. " Yes, one way of organizing atoms (called Deep Blue) proved superior at playing Chess than another way of organizing atoms (called Kasparov); and organization can be fully differentiated by information alone because atoms are generic. "If we free Kasparov's opponent from tournament rules regarding time, and we execute this very program on *anything*, including a Chinese Room or a Turing machine or a Babbage engine or 30.000 slaves playing logic circuits in a plain, the end result would not change." Obviously. So what? ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Jul 4 16:09:38 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 09:09:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <4E102E1D.2070401@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <1309795778.81400.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Jul 3, 2011, at 4:53 AM, G. Livick wrote: "the fact that the basic element of the digital computer, the bit, is perfectly modeled by an empty beer can.? A beer can is bi-stable, and can represent a 1 or a 0 in binary.? Given enough time and space, and enough beer cans, the most fantastic operation of any computer anywhere could be exactly duplicated with beer cans." That is true and yes it is an amazing fact, almost as amazing as the fact that the most fantastic ideas anywhere can be modeled by 3 pounds of grey goo inside a box made of bone. "In order for me to accept such a concept, it would have to survive the envisioning of a warehouse full of beer cans being manipulated in response to the same algorithm, and with a result adequate to leave me convinced the warehouse was my intellectual superior." I submit that you would be forced to accept that something was your intellectual superior if it could consistently outsmart you, and this would be true regardless of whether you can envision how it operated, how a warehouse full of beer cans or Chinese slaves or Babbage engines could do such a thing. If you don't understand how the AI can be so smart that's your problem not the AI's. You have little understanding how the thing in a bone box sitting between the shoulders of your fellow human beings can do all sorts of smart things and behave as if it were conscious either, but nevertheless I have a hunch that you believe at least some of them are conscious and smart. "The computer is faster at multiplication than I will ever be" Yes, and that should give you a hint of what is to come. "Beer cans would work, too" Yes but so what? You seem to have a irrational prejudice against beer cans. I believe that beer cans are a perfectly respectable organization of atoms? "Pliers, can openers, lawn mowers and TV clickers come to mind.? If we improve each of them radically over a number of years, is the time foreseeable when these other tools will become, in fact, equal or superior to humans?" Certainly. How can there be any doubt? ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Jul 4 16:40:26 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 09:40:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <4E102E1D.2070401@sbcglobal.net> References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E102E1D.2070401@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <003d01cc3a69$144512f0$3ccf38d0$@att.net> Welcome to Exi-chat, FutureMan! May Extropy-chat be as great an education as it was for me over the years. {8-] spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of G. Livick Sent: Sunday, July 03, 2011 1:54 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited >.A couple of days back, Stefano stated, in his own way, my usual clarification when the discussion of AI starts to drift toward the spiritual... Pliers, can openers, lawn mowers and TV clickers come to mind. If we improve each of them radically over a number of years, is the time foreseeable when these other tools will become, in fact, equal or superior to humans? FutureMan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 17:59:59 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 14:59:59 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <384BD472A177463D8283A31CA01C339A@cpdhemm> If batteries and inverters remain expensive but solar panels are very cheap, why not use the panels where it's not an issue? For instance, running systems that are only (or typically) needed (...) Because: Nanosolar is selling most of their panels these days to facilities in Germany. In a way, this is fair. Germany subsidizes the development of I know, I've tried to buy some, and you can't get any as end user. Same thing with Fist Solar. It will take a while until the overheated market cools off enough that availability and prices are adequate. Those things need to be invented and these interesting gadgets are usually created by small companies, students and individuals. When innovators and inventors can't get panels, they can't invent things that make use of them. From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Jul 4 18:47:13 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:47:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <384BD472A177463D8283A31CA01C339A@cpdhemm> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <201107021935.p62JZSt6020703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <384BD472A177463D8283A31CA01C339A@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <201107041847.p64IldCl011548@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Henrique wrote: >Those things need to be invented and these interesting gadgets are >usually created by small companies, students and individuals. When >innovators and inventors can't get panels, they can't invent things >that make use of them. Depends on the tech. Sometimes someone's inability to get a hold of something they want to play with leads them to invent a better way to do it. It's particularly common in software, but has also happened with lasers, scanning electron microscopes, aircraft, chemistry, etc. -- David. From atymes at gmail.com Mon Jul 4 22:47:14 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 15:47:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wii controllers In-Reply-To: References: <004801cc34f0$f4466030$dcd32090$@att.net> <00fa01cc3545$2b9173f0$82b45bd0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The Kinect is the next mouse. It won't replace the mouse any more than > the mouse replaced the keyboard, but I think it will have just as much > impact, and not just in games. What I'm really excited about is > changing the focal length, and tweaking the recognition, so that the > Kinect will work on a person sitting at their desk from, say, the top > of their laptop. Then you can recognize individual finger joint > positions, facial expressions, and of course gross movements. That's > going to be really big. There is absolutely zero reason that this > can't and won't be the case in three years. I can. The mouse came with software and applications to do what could not previously be done as easily, such as spreadsheets (and the entire concept of a graphical operating system). The Kinect's suggested applications, so far that I've seen, are not that revolutionary. It's the applications that drive hardware. What task, that most people do (or would do if it were practical), does the Kinect enable? What can finger joint positions, facial expressions, and gross movements communicate to a computer that can not be communicated as readily through point and click? The only applications I can think of are niche (emotional context, which requires software to interpret and make use of that), not attributable to this ("this will make communication so much more intuitive" - not without other improvements that could as easily be piled on point and click too), ignorant of reality (see "gorilla arm" for why touch screens didn't catch on more widely), or outright false (such as assuming it is easier to master 100 hand signals than moving a cursor to the right point on a 10*10 grid and clicking). From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 02:34:45 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 12:04:45 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google+ Message-ID: Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: with a Google+ account? Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 05:07:33 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 14:37:33 +0930 Subject: [ExI] wii controllers In-Reply-To: <00c501cc35c2$39986d00$acc94700$@att.net> References: <004801cc34f0$f4466030$dcd32090$@att.net> <00fa01cc3545$2b9173f0$82b45bd0$@att.net> <00c501cc35c2$39986d00$acc94700$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike, grab yourself a nice Android phone (I'm using a Nexus One), and go to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/ . Playing with accelerometers (and compass, cameras, webby stuff, sms, phone calls, speech to text, etc etc etc) becomes, literally, child's play. 2011/6/29 spike : > > > > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg > Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 8:43 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] wii controllers > > > >>?Great thread! ?Hopefully the game companies are on the ball enough to >> continue on this path and use the current stuff as a base for better and >> better VR, then we can all see the awesome cyber-world we all desire a la >> snow crash or whatnot. > > > > > > > > The critically important thing here is that a new and (to me) unexpected > thing happened.? A remarkably competent very cheap three axis accelerometer > hit the market while I wasn?t even looking (too busy raising a toddler.)? So > here I am, a guy who used accelerometers professionally for years and years, > and even wished I owned some of them, but they were typically several > thousand dollars each, but how cool would it be to have some for various > things. > > > > Suddenly and unexpectedly, a somewhat scaled down lowish bandwidth version > of a three axis accelerometer with (apparently) imbedded firmware double > integrators, hit the market, selling for about 40 bucks!? And I, a controls > engineer, DIDN?T EVEN NOTICE until five years later. > > > > Oy. > > > > spike > > . > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From giulio at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 05:47:28 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 07:47:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Just added you to my circles. On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > I have been on Google+ since the first day. I have invited a few > people, but I have not been able to invite anyone since the second > day. They are still controlling access and opening the doors very > slowly. > > G. > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Emlyn wrote: >> Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >> with a Google+ account? >> >> Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. >> >> -- >> Emlyn >> >> http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, >> comments and all. >> http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog >> Find me on Facebook and Buzz >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > From glivick at sbcglobal.net Tue Jul 5 06:14:29 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (G. Livick) Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:14:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wii controllers In-Reply-To: References: <004801cc34f0$f4466030$dcd32090$@att.net> <00fa01cc3545$2b9173f0$82b45bd0$@att.net> <00c501cc35c2$39986d00$acc94700$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E12ABC5.2000706@sbcglobal.net> Spike, With the singularity approaching, things change fast! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM&feature=related >> >> Suddenly and unexpectedly, a somewhat scaled down lowish bandwidth version >> of a three axis accelerometer with (apparently) imbedded firmware double >> integrators, hit the market, selling for about 40 bucks! And I, a controls >> engineer, DIDN?T EVEN NOTICE until five years later. >> >> >> >> Oy. >> >> >> >> 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 Tue Jul 5 06:16:40 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 23:16:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] who knew? pollution halts global warming... Message-ID: <003c01cc3adb$1aed7440$50c85cc0$@att.net> Now global warming is the environmental movement's fault: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20 110704 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 05:46:32 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 07:46:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have been on Google+ since the first day. I have invited a few people, but I have not been able to invite anyone since the second day. They are still controlling access and opening the doors very slowly. G. On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Emlyn wrote: > Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: > with a Google+ account? > > Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. > > -- > Emlyn > > http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, > comments and all. > http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog > Find me on Facebook and Buzz > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 07:50:56 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:50:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:34 AM, Emlyn wrote: > Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: > with a Google+ account? > > Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. > > My Google+ account is suggesting that I add Extropy Chat to my Circles. How would that work? I haven't added it because I think adding mailing lists to Circles might be a bug in the system. BillK From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 10:05:31 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin Haskell) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 06:05:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: Natasha and Max, My sincere apologies if I didn't continue our correspondences. It isn't for lack of desire, it is just that I've grown used to communicating via FB pages, and find the mailing list method a bit archaic. What I've been doing is 'saving' the list discussions to involve myself for very last, after I've dealt with my FB page discusssions, for two reasons: First, because the comments in them/here are a highly relevant and necessary regarding the betterment of the human condition via technology, and second, because they don't have the "flow" of a FB discussion. Because of this, I end up not 'getting into the flow' of the discussion that normally happens as second nature on Facebook, and the mailing list entries end up just sitting there in my email. Then the order of the threads become discombobulated when I wait to answer. So, I was wondering two things (and forgive me if I am re-hashing ground that may have been covered in here, already,) but would you (Natasha and Max,) be willing to entertain the idea of having me setting up an Extropy FB page as the primary source for your discussions, with the extropy mailing list being a back-up for everybody? You both would be the main admins on the FB page, and whomever else you choose, and it could be directed specifically around the same Extropy discussions that go on within this extropy mailing list. It would just be a lot clearer for everyone to get in on every discussion with more ease. The principles of Extropy, and rules of the group, would be listed in the 'documents' section that can be posted to the right of the FB page. Anybody entering would know exactly what you both expect as soon as they enter, and it would be easily reachable by anyone in the "life-betterment and/or extention" groups that are on FB, as well as everyone subscribed to this list. You would have tight control on whomever you would allow in. I would just have to name it something other than simply 'extropy' because "Extropy" and "Extropianism" have been taken, but we could have it begin with one of those words so it could be easily searched. If you wanted, I could just set it up, we could invite everyone in now on this list, and you could take the reigns. The reason I mention this is that the FB method is just so much more open, clear, and flexible. Hope you don't mind the suggestion. Best, Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jul 5 10:55:08 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 12:55:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110705105508.GP28500@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 06:05:31AM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > Natasha and Max, When you're writing to just Max and Natasha, why are you including the mailing list? > My sincere apologies if I didn't continue our correspondences. It isn't for > lack of desire, it is just that I've grown used to communicating via FB > pages, and find the mailing list method a bit archaic. What I've been doing Given that the walled garden model failed both with CompuServe and AOL I find your choice of a doomed propretary model curious. > is 'saving' the list discussions to involve myself for very last, after I've > dealt with my FB page discusssions, for two reasons: > > First, because the comments in them/here are a highly relevant and necessary > regarding the betterment of the human condition via technology, and second, > because they don't have the "flow" of a FB discussion. Because of this, I The problem with the 'flow' that it's not part of the Internet. It's not self-archiving, doesn't offer full-text local searches and has a business model based on selling you as a product. > end up not 'getting into the flow' of the discussion that normally happens > as second nature on Facebook, and the mailing list entries end up just > sitting there in my email. Then the order of the threads become > discombobulated when I wait to answer. Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better mailer. > So, I was wondering two things (and forgive me if I am re-hashing ground > that may have been covered in here, already,) but would you (Natasha and > Max,) be willing to entertain the idea of having me setting up an Extropy FB > page as the primary source for your discussions, with the extropy mailing > list being a back-up for everybody? You both would be the main admins on > the FB page, and whomever else you choose, and it could be directed > specifically around the same Extropy discussions that go on within this > extropy mailing list. It would just be a lot clearer for everyone to get in > on every discussion with more ease. > > The principles of Extropy, and rules of the group, would be listed in the > 'documents' section that can be posted to the right of the FB page. Anybody > entering would know exactly what you both expect as soon as they enter, and > it would be easily reachable by anyone in the "life-betterment and/or > extention" groups that are on FB, as well as everyone subscribed to this > list. You would have tight control on whomever you would allow in. > > I would just have to name it something other than simply 'extropy' because > "Extropy" and "Extropianism" have been taken, but we could have it begin > with one of those words so it could be easily searched. > > If you wanted, I could just set it up, we could invite everyone in now on > this list, and you could take the reigns. The reason I mention this is that > the FB method is just so much more open, clear, and flexible. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. > Hope you don't mind the suggestion. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 10:53:35 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 20:23:35 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have that too. Can't see it being a good idea... On Jul 5, 2011 5:22 PM, "BillK" wrote: > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:34 AM, Emlyn wrote: >> Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >> with a Google+ account? >> >> Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. >> >> > > > My Google+ account is suggesting that I add Extropy Chat to my Circles. > > How would that work? > I haven't added it because I think adding mailing lists to Circles > might be a bug in the system. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > 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 bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue Jul 5 13:12:05 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 06:12:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1309871525.14533.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> john clark observed: >> ?On Wed, 6/29/11, Stefano Vaj >> wrote: >> "If we free Kasparov's opponent from tournament rules >> regarding time, >> and we execute this very program on *anything*, including a >> Chinese >> Room or a Turing machine or a Babbage engine or 30.000 >> slaves playing >> logic circuits in a plain, the end result would not >> change." > Obviously. So what? Sadly, John, this is far from obvious to a disturbingly large number of people. Why this should be, I don't know, but imo it ranks among the most significant and dangerous problems that the human race faces. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue Jul 5 13:28:28 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 06:28:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Emlyn wrote: > Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: > with a Google+ account? > > Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. Emlyn also wrote, in a different thread: > Given that the walled garden model failed both with CompuServe and AOL > I find your choice of a doomed propretary model curious. Mmhmmm. Do give us a /Wave/ as you go past... Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jul 5 13:47:22 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 15:47:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309871525.14533.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1309871525.14533.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110705134722.GQ28500@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 06:12:05AM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > john clark observed: > > >> ?On Wed, 6/29/11, Stefano Vaj > >> wrote: > >> "If we free Kasparov's opponent from tournament rules > >> regarding time, > >> and we execute this very program on *anything*, including a > >> Chinese > >> Room or a Turing machine or a Babbage engine or 30.000 > >> slaves playing > >> logic circuits in a plain, the end result would not > >> change." > > > Obviously. So what? > > > Sadly, John, this is far from obvious to a disturbingly large number of people. Why this should be, I don't know, but imo it ranks among the most significant and dangerous problems that the human race faces. In practice you'll get a different result: the process will never finish but for trivial problem sizes. This is also far from obvious to a disturbingly large number of people. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 15:01:38 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:01:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Emlyn Subject: [ExI] Google+ >...Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: with a Google+ account? Emlyn Emlyn, How is that the Rapture of the Nerds? spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:00:24 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 17:00:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> References: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 27 June 2011 08:51, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Depends on why they're homeless. ?Some are perfectly well-adjusted > people with jobs who live out of cars because that's all they can > afford. The US are a pretty weird culture, where people who cannot afford what is required to build a hut or the ticket for a shelter may still own a car, that is a self-moving medium-tech product with some hundred of thousands of parts requiring maintenance and fuel. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:24:12 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:24:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > 2011/7/2 john clark > We are in agreement on the "dilettantes" dreaming up obscure words. ?A > recent new hire is apparently a Battlestar Galactica fan because when > he is frustrated to the point of swearing he loudly exclaims "Frak!" I'll have you know that Mormon missionaries have been using Frak in this fashion for well over thirty years... :-) It is a pretty common Utahism. Battlestar Galactica no doubt stole it as they have many other elements of Mormonism... :-) But I digress. All words have two meanings in a given usage. The meaning that the speaker intended, and the meaning that the listener understood. As long as those two meanings approximate each other, communication occurs. Otherwise, confusion abounds. Words are good for nothing more or less than this. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:28:00 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 16:28:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:01 PM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Emlyn > Subject: [ExI] Google+ > >>...Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >> with a Google+ account? Emlyn > > Emlyn, How is that the Rapture of the Nerds? > > Because it is supposed to be like Facebook without all the crap and demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had to restrict invites until they can cope with the demand. This leaves the Nerds with accounts enraptured at being one up on all the other nerds frothing at the mouth with impatience to try it out. :) (Google+ includes the killer feature of video-conferencing). BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 15:21:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:21:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] who knew? pollution halts global warming... In-Reply-To: <003c01cc3adb$1aed7440$50c85cc0$@att.net> References: <003c01cc3adb$1aed7440$50c85cc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <005a01cc3b27$29a934a0$7cfb9de0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike . Subject: [ExI] who knew? pollution halts global warming... Now global warming is the environmental movement's fault: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20 110704 Then this happened a couple weeks ago. I didn't see any discussion here about it, but I have been crazy busy with family matters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/us-usa-climate-lawsuit-idUSTRE75J3 JR20110620 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:36:50 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:36:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 07/01/2011 04:43 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: >> > Thanks be unto Rand. :) She is an interesting person with interesting ideas. She's pretty rigid, but you would almost have to be to be consistent enough to call yourself a philosopher. :-) > Just because a human being is needy in various ways, even really serious > ones, does not mean that person has an automatic valid claim on any part of > the life or possessions of any other human being. ? I don't think this is at > all heartless. ?I think it is the only view compatible with human freedom - > with humans not being in involuntary servitude to others. Yes. But maximum efficiency for a society can often be best achieved by providing a mechanism to recover from temporary emergencies (using Rand's term) with temporary external help. This help should be given (in Rand's view) only voluntarily, by the person giving assistance. And that giving "help" on an ongoing long term basis is evil. In the Rand world view, helping others is a good thing only when in an emergency. Giving help long term degrades the other person's humanity. In this matter, I agree with Rand. >> Homelessness IS the "end of the world" -- which is to say the end of >> dignity and the beginning of a sanity-destroying horror -- for most >> homeless folks, in the same sense that falling from a tall building is >> "the end". ?It's not relevant, but glib and heartless, to observe that >> one remains perfectly healthy until impact with the pavement. >> > > As someone who has been homeless (early 20s) that is a bit overstated. I thought so too. >?Yes > it was rough getting back on my feet. ?The key was inside my own head. ?As > long as I thought I was the victim of something some "they" did to me I was > stuck. ? At one time I was even lame enough to think it was obvious I was > better than "those people with a job, in the System" and that it was a major > injustice I didn't have what I needed without bothering to trade any sort of > values at all. Being outside the system is liberating. The rat race is for rats. There is great freedom in being a nature child. Unfortunately, it makes it more difficult to eat regularly and reproduce, which most people value enough to get back into the rat race. > I am not saying that every homeless is like this but all too many liberals > seem to look at the "plight of the homeless" from a position not that far > removed from what I thought way back then. Are you agreeing with the liberal viewpoint here Samantha? Just trying to be clear. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jul 5 15:45:20 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 17:45:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110705154520.GT28500@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 04:28:00PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:01 PM, spike wrote: > >>... On Behalf Of Emlyn > > Subject: [ExI] Google+ > > > >>...Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: > >> with a Google+ account? Emlyn > > > > Emlyn, How is that the Rapture of the Nerds? > > > > > > Because it is supposed to be like Facebook without all the crap and > demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had to restrict > invites until they can cope with the demand. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/googleplus.png > This leaves the Nerds with accounts enraptured at being one up on all > the other nerds frothing at the mouth with impatience to try it out. > :) > > (Google+ includes the killer feature of video-conferencing). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Jul 5 15:41:12 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:41:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <20110705134722.GQ28500@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Tue, 7/5/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: ?"the process will never finish but for trivial problem sizes." It irritates me when people say something like "never finish" when all they mean is it will take a long time. It also bothers me when the word "infinite" is used when what is meant is very very very large; the two things have quite different properties. ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 15:42:20 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:42:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> Message-ID: <006701cc3b2a$20c61760$62524620$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) On 27 June 2011 08:51, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> Depends on why they're homeless. ?Some are perfectly well-adjusted >> people with jobs who live out of cars because that's all they can afford. >...The US are a pretty weird culture, where people who cannot afford what is required to build a hut or the ticket for a shelter may still own a car, that is a self-moving medium-tech product with some hundred of thousands of parts requiring maintenance and fuel.--Stefano Vaj It might seem weird, but once you ponder it, living in a car makes complete sense. Some cars make a reasonably good shelter. At the lower end of the scale, they are almost free: if they are sufficiently thrashed, no one with a 9 to 5 wants them, so their only value is for scrap metal, which isn't much. Plenty of people will donate cars to the poor ( I have.) Cars allow one to go around locally to find spot employment, they qualify as homeless for those who would carry signs (when they say Homeless, will work for food, they aren't claiming to be carless as well) they allow the homeless person to move on every few days or whenever they attract the attention of the local authorities, no taxes, no water bill, no utility bill, none of the regular expenses associated with home ownership or rental, which are much higher than a spot of petrol on occasion. Possibly paradoxically, living in a car is likely a safer existence than occupying a home in a bad neighborhood. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:55:12 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:55:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/2 Stefano Vaj : > On 29 June 2011 05:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> What if the Singularity can only be avoided if human beings and >> corporations and countries stop acting in self-interested ways as >> modeled by economists? > > I suspect "self-interest" to be at the end of story an empty, formal > concept. > > This is why the classic economic theory is not falsifiable in a Popperian > sense, because whatever an economic subject chooses to do or prefers is by > definition what he considers its "self-interest"; or, in other terms, the > "self-interest" of an economic subject is defined as what it chooses to do > or prefers. > > It remains to be seen *what* an economic subject actually considers its > "self-interest" to be. And this is not a given, but is determined > culturally. Not by the economy, not by the "nature". Nor it can be even > remotely considered as "universal", since it varies wildly from an era to > another, from an individual to another, from a civilisation to another. My point is that what people perceive currently to be in their self interest is unlikely to turn on a dime. >> This does not seem likely to me, so I think progress will >> continue to march forward unabated until it all collapses into anarchy >> or explodes into utopia (at least for some). > > What if what we are inclined to see as "progress" from our peculiar > perspective is nothing else than an arbitrary abstraction of the legacy of a > number of rather dramatic revolutions and paradigm shifts which took place > only because *a will was there* (and sometimes against all bets), and which > could have very well never happened, or could have happened in an altogether > different direction? > > If we zoom in on human history, stagnation and regression might well be the > normal state of things, superficially and very rarely punctuated by > extraordinary changes which were originally the feat of very small group of > people. > > Bacteria remains amongst the very dominant species of our ecosystem, but > their strategy has involved very little "progress" in the last gigayear... > > This is why I think that a self-aware trashumanist stance is crucial. > Because if we embrace change and fight for it we have a chance to achieve > what we dream of, if we do not, our best chance is that of congratulate > ourselves for what are at best progressive refinements and fine-tunings > operated by complacent dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. The thing is that by the time the meme is widespread enough to prevent the Singularity, it will already be too late for most people to change their minds. This is a timing issue. I don't disagree that people could catch the transhumanist meme (whatever that is to you) and prevent catastrophy. However, history is full of examples to the contrary. Easter Island, Mohenjo Daro, etc. where the people didn't understand the problem until it was too late to change the outcome. And at that point the laggards were still using up the limited resources. So here is an interesting question... looking at the impending singularity as an Easter Island type event, what is the "limited resource" we are all blindly consuming now? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:40:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:40:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 27 June 2011 08:51, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> Depends on why they're homeless. ?Some are perfectly well-adjusted >> people with jobs who live out of cars because that's all they can >> afford. > > The US are a pretty weird culture, where people who cannot afford what > is required to build a hut or the ticket for a shelter may still own a > car, that is a self-moving medium-tech product with some hundred of > thousands of parts requiring maintenance and fuel. It's all about building codes. You can't build a shack, but you can live in a car. If someone complains, you buy a gallon of gas, and move the car. It is an irrational system compared to the rest of the world ONLY in the fact that we strongly enforce building codes here. That is what leads to the strange outcome. The poor can afford to build a hut. They just can't build a new one every week when some bureaucrat comes by and smashes it down. Cars are much better in that regard. The strangeness that you see only comes from a particular lack of liberty. The liberty to build and live in whatever shelter suits you and your circumstances. I miss my liberty the most on the fourth of July. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 15:46:57 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:46:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/5 Kevin Haskell : > Natasha and Max, > > My sincere apologies if I didn't continue our correspondences.? It isn't for > lack of desire, it is just that I've grown used to communicating via FB > pages, and find the mailing list method a bit archaic. I find just the opposite. FB doesn't support large messages very well, and I get all confused about what's happening there. Stick with the mailing list, it's more like a letter... something we've been using successfully for a couple of centuries in large numbers. Please don't put this list on FB. Maybe I'm a cave man, but FB confuses me. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 16:15:16 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:15:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <4E0E7524.8010907@mac.com> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0E7524.8010907@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 07/01/2011 11:45 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> >>> 2011/7/1 Stefano Vaj: >>>> >>>> Wrong. You seem to equate corporate state-ism with libertarian views. >>>> Corporate state conglomeration is fascism, not libertarianism. >>> >>> This might well be the case (actually, "state corporativism" IMHO >>> describes >>> better fascism, rather than the other way around, but this is not the >>> issue >>> here), even though this scenario need not be neither more, nor less, >>> totalitarian than our average State today. >>> >>> My real point however is: how a radically libertarian view could ever >>> prevent a company from going down this path? And if the end result is >>> neither better nor worse than our average State today, what's the point? >>> >>> I am referring to the kind of libertarian view which postulates that we >>> can >>> go without a State legal system at all, not to more moderate ones. >> >> Stefano, There you go again... :-) >> >> The "kind of libertarian view" you are speaking of in Anarchy. > > I am an anarcho-capitalist. ?Anarchy, in case anyone is confused, means > without the State. No confusion on that here. > It does not mean chaos though most may have difficulty > imagining a stateless society that is not chaotic. I certainly have trouble imagining a stateless society that is not chaotic, particularly if there are states organized with different strategies nearby. I have difficulty seeing an anarchy defending itself against, say a neighboring totalitarian dictatorship. > I am libertarian (small > l) in the sense that I hold the NAP as one of the most concise correct > statements of proper human interaction ever conceived. Sorry NAP is not in the Wikipedia disambiguation page... is my ignorance showing? ;-) > ?I am not a > Libertarian in that the party is no longer the "Party of Principles". > Nominating an ex drug czar as presidential candidate was the final > irrevocable proof for me. While I am a big L Libertarian, all I really know about big L Libertarians is that it's not Democrat and it is not Republican, and it's closer to what I believe than either of those. All I did was donate $20 to the party, and I'm IN! I meant to learn more... >> Libertarianism is no more anarchy than it is fascism. If you define >> libertarianism as anything that seems dangerous, then you aren't going >> to like it. My definition of libertarianism is most closely >> approximated in the real world by the VERY early United States. That >> is, there are very few laws, but the laws that exist are followed by >> the majority of the citizenry, and are respected. In part, the law is >> respected when it is understood by the citizen. When the law is so >> voluminous that not only the citizen can not read it, but even the >> lawmaker is challenged, then this is FAR from the libertarian ideal. >> > > Where is the "principle" in that? ?Is it merely very few laws or the proper > kind of laws adhering to the missing and not mentioned principles? > Bastiat is the best person to state my principles. He's the man. >> So government yes, absolutely you need government. > > No, you don't. Processing.... processing... processing... nope, still does not compute. >> ?But the very >> smallest amount that can possibly do. Just enough to prevent invasion, >> and protect me from my fellow citizens when they run amok. > > I can protect myself. So can you. The rest is a matter of voluntary > agreements. I cannot, as an individual, effectively protect myself against an armed foe consisting of a large group of individuals. Nor can I assume that my anarchistic brethren will suddenly fall in line and start following orders to repel such an invasion. >> So no, I am not an anarchist. I am a libertarian! (As a libertarian, I >> get to define what that means to me, this being one of the greatest >> benefits of being a libertarian... ;-) ?(kidding, just a little bit >> here.) > > Unfortunately it is only a little bit as libertarian now means very little > you can pin many libertarians (and certainly not the Party) down on. > To me, it means Bastiat was right. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jul 5 16:20:25 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 18:20:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110705134722.GQ28500@leitl.org> <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110705162025.GU28500@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 08:41:12AM -0700, john clark wrote: > On Tue, 7/5/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ?"the process will never finish but for trivial problem sizes." > It irritates me when people say something like "never finish" when all they mean is it will take a long time. If it takes longer than a decade it will never finish. People's activities are quite ephemeral. Even this planet has been around for only a few gigayears. Spacetime might cease to exist in less than 100 gigayears. > It also bothers me when the word "infinite" is used when what is meant is very very very large; the two things have quite different properties. I didn't say ininite. I just said it won't finish. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 16:21:37 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 18:21:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] trying to post In-Reply-To: <4E11EDF1.8040706@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E10B503.2070805@sbcglobal.net> <4E11EDF1.8040706@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: On 4 July 2011 18:44, G. Livick wrote: > Here is where we may have a difference in understanding. ?The physical brain > is not a finite state machine, it is largely analog. Why, irrespective of some fundamental questions as to whether really "analog" and continuous system exist, or it is just a matter of high granularity, I think we are satisfied by now that a digital computing device can emulate any analog system with arbitrary degree of accurateness. > Because the workings of the brain are so > complex, and so poorly understood, I regard modeling a digital system to > emulate one unforeseeable at this point in time. In real life, performance matters. It makes nevertheless a difference when we know for sure that something is possible, albeit perhaps unpractical. At the very least in our worldview. > But even when (and if) > that is ever actually done, the question about whether the program running > in the background gives rise to actual intelligence doesn't get answered > with the solution. Beyond universal computation capability, the only reasonable definition for "intelligence" in a qualitative sense is the ability to emulate well enough system which we consider intelligent (we might add to that "real-time", but as already mentioned elsewhere it is not clear why we should, given that we would be likely to consider intelligent a slowed-down human being). Other questions are akin IMHO to whether a PC-emulating program running on an old Macintosh was actually giving rise to actual PC-ness or not. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 16:31:10 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 18:31:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <20110701190029.GI26837@leitl.org> References: <4E08F5E9.7030408@lightlink.com> <20110628083514.GS26837@leitl.org> <4E0A222E.2000901@susaro.com> <20110629085740.GN26837@leitl.org> <4E0B48E6.6030608@susaro.com> <20110629165112.GV26837@leitl.org> <20110701065226.GP26837@leitl.org> <20110701190029.GI26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 1 July 2011 21:00, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 07:11:33PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> As long as you go on, replacing along the way dead humans (and perhaps dead >> planets, since the time I suspect it would take) what's the problem? > > The problem is that it doesn't happen, in practice. The longest > supercomputer batch jobs I know of are all 2-3 years (and have > to be re-run in order to validate them, despite all the error > correction tens of thousands of nodes running that long will > produce uncatched errors). > > A typical run takes days to weeks. Most supercomputer > installations have a lifetime of much less than a decade > without upgrades. Business upgrade cycles are 2-3 years, > as older hardware is not worth the juice to keep running. No, but we are in agreement upon that. There are computations which are unpractical ("unusable") on insufficiently powerful and/or adept hardware. What else is new? The issue here is whether it makes sense to consider AGI as an emerging property of powerful systems. Or rather, a kind of program which requires a quite specialised hardware, or more time to be run than you and I are ready to accept. > How does less than a second versus a century sound like? Like a few orders of magnitudes, indeed? :-) > It would not just be not very performing. It would never finish. Yes. Hardware which is dramatically inefficient to run a given program is switched off before completion. This tells us nothing about magical thresholds, it simply tells us that already beyond the pole of usefulness, which BTW is much shorter than the remaining time of universe, things do not get done, *even though they could*. > My point was that in theory, there's no difference between theory > and practice. In practice, there is. Here, I lose you... :-) > Of course it's less than ideal, taking a theoretical limit. But in > practice the hardware is both extremely powerful and extremely efficient, > given the energy constraints. Yes, this is also my assumption, and this is why I am not buying into the runaway AGI scenario as the most likely development. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 16:53:22 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:53:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110705134722.GQ28500@leitl.org> <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/5 john clark > On Tue, 7/5/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > ?"the process will never finish but for trivial problem sizes." > > It irritates me when people say something like "never finish" when all they mean is it will take a long time. It also bothers me when the word "infinite" is used when what is meant is very very very large; the two things have quite different properties. > John, While we have many billions of years ahead of us, there does come a time in the history of the universe that there is no longer any useful energy gradient left. It's all slowly evaporating black holes and other useless stuff like neutron stars at the end... Entropy wins in the end, so time does matter, at least in the VERY long run. There will be no intelligence in the universe at some point. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 17:07:25 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 19:07:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 3 July 2011 02:36, Mike Dougherty wrote: > We both (all) know the meaning of > AGI in the context of an artificial intelligence email list. I am not sure I understand what the choice of using or non-using it might imply, but if AGI indicated Artificial *General* Intelligence, there might be something mystifying in the term "general", since either it refers to universal computing - and in that case it must be noted for the umpteenth time that almost everything is a universal computer - or it implies that some more fundamental differences would exist amongst different universal computers other than a performance edge at a given task, which is basically false. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 17:09:26 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 11:09:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry In-Reply-To: <20110701192915.GK26837@leitl.org> References: <20110701095220.GU26837@leitl.org> <20110701192915.GK26837@leitl.org> Message-ID: I'll attempt one reply to the whole thread... I believe Eugen said that inverters were getting cheaper. I haven't seen it, but I haven't done a lot of inverter shopping lately. Are they going down in price linearly because they are built in larger numbers and in China, or are they following a power curve downward in price. I suspect linear price decreases, and there is a bottom for that. As to DC appliances, I like the USB3 idea. How much power can a USB3 provide? I can't even buy a decent sized propane refrigerator. A half sized fridge is twice what my Sears fridge costs. And that is proven technology. While converting all appliances to DC is theoretically possible, I think it would be on the same order of difficulty as converting all cars to run on hydrogen. The advantage of A/C is that when you have extra, you can move it large distances. DC doesn't do that very well. So at some point, you have to convert back and forth. This is the job of inverters. Having too many inverters in the overall system means a lack of efficiency because you lose a percentage of your power every time you go back and forth. Even living on solar, I have yet to find a DC appliance that I want. As was stated elsewhere, you have to start from where we are. We have a building sized battery here in Utah. I like the economy of scale that you get with such devices. Tie it to a field of solar panels, and feed the grid. That's nanosolar's view of the future, and I think they are right. Scale, but not HUGE scale. We don't need Hoover dam sized solar fields. Just neighborhood sized... -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 16:46:12 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:46:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Human stupidity is rampant and increases when you make it supposedly "safe" > to be stupid. ?So? > > I can't protect idiots from their idiocy and I refuse to bind free and > honest people to attempt to do so. Ok, Samantha, I'm going to give you the opportunity to try and convert me into an Anarchist/Capitalist. First, I buy the idea that the less government, the better. You state that an A/C state would have a private legal system. I agree that there is a need for some kind of legal system, but when you have one body (call it government or not) without a balance of power, does it not make sense that the unbalanced power, in this case the judicial, would become all powerful? How does your proposed system prevent this NGO legal system from becoming the most powerful element of society? Also, since stupidity is so common and rampant, (also agreed) how do we protect the smart from mobs of hungry stupid people? Do we have a non-governmental police force/army? How do you keep that system from becoming the most powerful element of society? How do you keep them from accepting bribes and thus corrupting the system. Corruption is at least as common as stupidity. Finally, how do we protect the environment such that everyone has the same ability to exploit nature without destroying it at the expense of everyone else? To me, this is one area where the early USA did not live up to the zeitgeist of today, and I don't want to go back. I don't want environmentalist terrorism or dictatorship, but I do want to protect the environment so that we don't get strip mines everywhere leaking heavy metals into the water sources. This was pretty common in the early western united states and I don't want to go back to that sort of anarchy. Also, how do you strike a balance in protecting children from their parents, and parental rights? Who does this if there is no government? The closest thing we have in history to anarchy/capitalism is the wild west, no? It did not seem to be the best system in history to me. I am sincere in that if you can answer my questions, I'm more than willing to give up my psychological crutch of the necessity of government. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 17:15:52 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 19:15:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] AI Motivation revisited In-Reply-To: <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110705134722.GQ28500@leitl.org> <1309880472.35634.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/5 john clark > > On Tue, 7/5/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > ?"the process will never finish but for trivial problem sizes." > > It irritates me when people say something like "never finish" when all they mean is it will take a long time. I suspect that Eugen's meaning is that things that are not going to complete because people get bored (or the universe reach its thermic death) before actually "never finish". Personally, I think that such things belong to an altogether different class than those who *cannot* finish, and do, or would, go on forever. If anything because there is no point in considering whether and how and how much the latter can be accelerated. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 17:17:49 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 11:17:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] wii controllers In-Reply-To: References: <004801cc34f0$f4466030$dcd32090$@att.net> <00fa01cc3545$2b9173f0$82b45bd0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> The Kinect is the next mouse. It won't replace the mouse any more than >> the mouse replaced the keyboard, but I think it will have just as much >> impact, and not just in games. What I'm really excited about is >> changing the focal length, and tweaking the recognition, so that the >> Kinect will work on a person sitting at their desk from, say, the top >> of their laptop. Then you can recognize individual finger joint >> positions, facial expressions, and of course gross movements. That's >> going to be really big. There is absolutely zero reason that this >> can't and won't be the case in three years. > > I can. ?The mouse came with software and applications to do what > could not previously be done as easily, such as spreadsheets (and the > entire concept of a graphical operating system). ?The Kinect's > suggested applications, so far that I've seen, are not that revolutionary. I suggest that they will be at least evolutionary. It may be that they are niche, like today's use of voice recognition. Or, it could be that the computer being able to read your emotional state and respond appropriately will be so useful that everyone will want it. > It's the applications that drive hardware. ?What task, that most people > do (or would do if it were practical), does the Kinect enable? ?What > can finger joint positions, facial expressions, and gross movements > communicate to a computer that can not be communicated as > readily through point and click? Body language is widely understood to communicate more than voice. Why shouldn't computers be able to read body language? I realize it is somewhat theoretical to make the jump from Kinect to being able to read body language, but it leads in that direction. > The only applications I can think of are niche (emotional context, > which requires software to interpret and make use of that), not > attributable to this ("this will make communication so much more > intuitive" - not without other improvements that could as easily be > piled on point and click too), ignorant of reality (see "gorilla arm" for > why touch screens didn't catch on more widely), or outright false > (such as assuming it is easier to master 100 hand signals than > moving a cursor to the right point on a 10*10 grid and clicking). To be successful, the computer must adjust to the human, not vice versa. While I agree that it takes an immense amount of imagination to see the kinds of applications that are enabled by Kinect and similar technologies, I respectfully submit that you will be amazed, eventually. :-) We aren't at the 1984 point yet. Remember the mouse was invented several years earlier at Xerox. It took Steve Jobs and the boys at apple to take that technology and finally apply it properly. We may have six years or so before we see the same level of competence in NUI interfaces. But trust me, it will come. Hopefully, not just in niche markets. My niche market is people who don't "do" computers, who need help, who might lose a remote or wireless keyboard. I want to help elderly people continue to live with dignity in an independent setting. While it is a niche market, the Kinect really does enable what I'm trying to accomplish very well. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 17:20:51 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:20:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ...then suddenly... Message-ID: <001801cc3b37$e462c4e0$ad284ea0$@att.net> .... > 2011/7/2 john clark We are in agreement on the > "dilettantes" dreaming up obscure words... A remarkable change that comes with readily-available mobile internet is that suddenly there are no longer obscure words. If one doesn't know a definition, it can be easily found quickly. This really has made me hip. Even though I read Kerouac's excellent On the Road, I was so tragically not hip about "mod" slang that the young hepcats use these days. Now with the internet and IP phones, I am a far out groovy hipster daddio. I love being alive now. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 17:35:14 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:35:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <006701cc3b2a$20c61760$62524620$@att.net> References: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> <006701cc3b2a$20c61760$62524620$@att.net> Message-ID: <001901cc3b39$e69a2c60$b3ce8520$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike ... >>...The US are a pretty weird culture, where people who cannot afford >what is required to build a hut or the ticket for a shelter may still own a car... >...It might seem weird, but once you ponder it, living in a car makes complete sense...spike Another angle on it: if you were to have a piece of ground somewhere where you can do it, and needed to set up some kind of shelter from indigenous materials, a non-functional old car or van would be an excellent choice as a bedroom. It is wind and rain proof, or can be made so, it usually already has some of the things you might need or want, such as two padded chairs for instance, you can push or pull it into place if you can get someone to help you, it affords some thermal protection, better than a lean-to. If you want to see a number of people who have apparently come to this same conclusion and have incorporated old cars and vans into a living structure, go out south and east of Phoenix and Mesa Arizona. There are hundreds of people who have set up a combination of car/lean-to arrangements and appear to be living out there. It has been a long time since I have been down that way. Have we any Phoenix-hipsters here who know if those extended squatter villages are still out that way? spike From max at maxmore.com Tue Jul 5 16:43:07 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:43:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. --Max On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/7/5 Kevin Haskell : > > Natasha and Max, > > > > My sincere apologies if I didn't continue our correspondences. It isn't > for > > lack of desire, it is just that I've grown used to communicating via FB > > pages, and find the mailing list method a bit archaic. > > I find just the opposite. FB doesn't support large messages very well, > and I get all confused about what's happening there. Stick with the > mailing list, it's more like a letter... something we've been using > successfully for a couple of centuries in large numbers. > > Please don't put this list on FB. Maybe I'm a cave man, but FB confuses me. > > -Kelly > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 18:48:11 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 20:48:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Extropy-Chat on Facebook would be like drinking champagne in a plastic glass. Systems like Facebook (and the recent Google+, and I hope also the open and distributed Diaspora) will probably replace mailing lists... like plastic glasses will probably replace proper crystal champagne glasses. But let's continue to enjoy some class until it lasts. 2011/7/5 Max More : > The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. > > --Max > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Kelly Anderson > wrote: >> >> 2011/7/5 Kevin Haskell : >> > Natasha and Max, >> > >> > My sincere apologies if I didn't continue our correspondences.? It isn't >> > for >> > lack of desire, it is just that I've grown used to communicating via FB >> > pages, and find the mailing list method a bit archaic. >> >> I find just the opposite. FB doesn't support large messages very well, >> and I get all confused about what's happening there. Stick with the >> mailing list, it's more like a letter... something we've been using >> successfully for a couple of centuries in large numbers. >> >> Please don't put this list on FB. Maybe I'm a cave man, but FB confuses >> me. >> >> -Kelly >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 > 877/462-5267 ext 113 > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 19:38:15 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 12:38:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007301cc3b4b$164b2070$42e16150$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) >...Extropy-Chat on Facebook would be like drinking champagne in a plastic glass. >...Systems like Facebook (and the recent Google+, and I hope also the open and distributed Diaspora) will probably replace mailing lists... like plastic glasses will probably replace proper crystal champagne glasses. But let's continue to enjoy some class until it lasts. 2011/7/5 Max More : > The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. > > --Max Ja. The forum and the medium impact the content. This medium is ideal for maximizing memetic depth. One cannot usually express profound concepts in 140 characters. Something like twitter is great for maximizing the number of posts and the amount of communication, but the cost is to be swamped in How RU and such banal bullshit, one wishes for merciful death to come quickly. Contrast with the depth we often see right here, self-restricted to the crowd that understands why depth is more important than width. Max, I am honored to have made your acquaintance so many years ago. You did this forum exactly right. I wouldn't change a thing. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 20:03:08 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 13:03:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? Message-ID: <008901cc3b4e$8fa7abc0$aef70340$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike ... >...Ja. The forum and the medium impact the content. This medium is ideal for maximizing memetic depth. One cannot usually express profound concepts in 140 characters. Something like twitter is great for maximizing the number of posts and the amount of communication, but the cost is to be swamped in How RU and such banal bullshit, one wishes for merciful death to come quickly...spike Oops disregard, apologies. I conflated two recent hip media, Facebook and Twitter. I don't use either, but actually I think I am in good company. I didn't follow the stories in the newsmedia, but apparently a US congressman did almost the same thing. He accidentally tweeted his penis to thousands of followers, then said his Facebook account was hacked? As I understand it he lied, accused others, eventually resigned. A congressional congress term ended, a political career ruined, all over one little penis? Just one little tiny penis? spike From max at maxmore.com Tue Jul 5 21:00:22 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 14:00:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <007301cc3b4b$164b2070$42e16150$@att.net> References: <007301cc3b4b$164b2070$42e16150$@att.net> Message-ID: Thanks, spike. But it was (I think) Perry Metzger who actually set up the list. I just provided the excuse to talk about lots of stimulating topics with smart people. This year is the 20th year for the List. We should throw a virtual party of some kind. --Max On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 12:38 PM, spike wrote: > Max, I am honored to have made your acquaintance so many years ago. You > did > this forum exactly right. I wouldn't change a thing. > > spike > > -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 5 21:37:51 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 14:37:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? Message-ID: <00bc01cc3b5b$cc1b84c0$64528e40$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More Subject: Re: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) >.Thanks, spike. But it was (I think) Perry Metzger who actually set up the list. Cool, where is Perry now? >. I just provided the excuse to talk about lots of stimulating topics with smart people. Interesting side note on that. There was a core of extropy-minded people at my college who predated the ExI-chat list by about 10 years. That kind of people always seems to find each other somehow on a campus. We were the math/engineering/computer geeks who really focused on the question of what are the practical limits to what computers can do, and how can we prove it? For instance, philosophers confidently stated that we could never know what processes are going on at the center of the sun. But we eventually figured out how it works, discovered neutrinos and now we pretty much know what is going on there. So we were interested in figuring out how to take our knowledge of how algorithms work and use some kind of educated extrapolation to determine if for instance, we would ever be able to write code to perform heart surgery? We couldn't see why not. Today it seems likely we can. This year is the 20th year for the List. We should throw a virtual party of some kind. --Max Virtual schmirtual. We should get together with the locals and do something next time you are in town. In the meantime, virtual might hafta do. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 23:16:17 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 19:16:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ...then suddenly... In-Reply-To: <001801cc3b37$e462c4e0$ad284ea0$@att.net> References: <001801cc3b37$e462c4e0$ad284ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:20 PM, spike wrote: > A remarkable change that comes with readily-available mobile internet is > that suddenly there are no longer obscure words. ?If one doesn't know a > definition, it can be easily found quickly. ?This really has made me hip. > Even though I read Kerouac's excellent On the Road, I was so tragically not > hip about "mod" slang that the young hepcats use these days. ?Now with the > internet and IP phones, I am a far out groovy hipster daddio. ?I love being > alive now. after googling your unintelligible use of a body part as an adjective, hepcat, groovy, hipster daddio I am forced to conclude that one (or both) of us are horribly out of date. ;) actually, I think it's done more to blur the signatures of any kind of identifying information. Welcome to the new oldschool. From mlatorra at gmail.com Tue Jul 5 23:29:30 2011 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 17:29:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: <20110705154520.GT28500@leitl.org> References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> <20110705154520.GT28500@leitl.org> Message-ID: Ha-ah! Yes, that cartoon nails it! I'm on Google+ and Facebook...and I don't know why. Mike LaTorra On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 04:28:00PM +0100, BillK wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:01 PM, spike wrote: > > >>... On Behalf Of Emlyn > > > Subject: [ExI] Google+ > > > > > >>...Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: > > >> with a Google+ account? Emlyn > > > > > > Emlyn, How is that the Rapture of the Nerds? > > > > > > > > > > Because it is supposed to be like Facebook without all the crap and > > demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had to restrict > > invites until they can cope with the demand. > > http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/googleplus.png > > > This leaves the Nerds with accounts enraptured at being one up on all > > the other nerds frothing at the mouth with impatience to try it out. > > :) > > > > (Google+ includes the killer feature of video-conferencing). > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Jul 5 23:59:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 16:59:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ...then suddenly... In-Reply-To: References: <001801cc3b37$e462c4e0$ad284ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00eb01cc3b6f$88194d70$984be850$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] ...then suddenly... On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:20 PM, spike wrote: >> ... ?This really has made me hip. Even though I read Kerouac's excellent On the Road, I was so >> tragically not hip about "mod" slang that the young hepcats use these days... >...after googling your unintelligible use of a body part as an adjective, hepcat, groovy, hipster daddio I am forced to conclude that one (or both) of us are horribly out of date. ;) Alas it is I. On the Road was published in 1957. Furthermore it was actually written several years before that, but it was so ahead of its time, it took a long time to find a publisher who wasn't so squaresville as to recognize it's brilliance. Fun story: I actually read Kerouac accidentally. I was going on a business trip soon after I started my career which was in 1983. I went to the library to find a suitable book, saw the title On the Road, seemed appropriate since that is what I was going to do. The guy who sat beside me was a technician who actually had a graduate degree in American Literature. He saw me with the book and explained that when he was in graduate school in 1957 and 58, aaaall the lit students wanted to read Kerouac, but one needed to be sure never to be caught by any of the professors, who deplored that book and everything associated with it. Lit students discussed On the Road, but quietly, conspiratorially, in small groups or pairs only, off campus, with a solemn agreement to never tell. The brilliance of Kerouac is in shaping a passage to pattern a literary passage after a musical genre that he loved, jazz. He has passages in there that remind one of a blues number, followed by a dizzying frenetic saxophone riff, with thrumming percussion dazzling from behind the beat, the horns dashing about on a syncopated cosnapsody, dancing, gyrating, dancing, gyrating, the melody like a passage of poetry moving, with the hipsters being carried along with the bliss of the rock and the roll to an ever ascending ecstasy... spike From aleksei at iki.fi Wed Jul 6 05:50:53 2011 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 08:50:53 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 6:28 PM, BillK wrote: > > demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had > to restrict invites until they can cope with the demand. Or at least that's what their marketing department wants us to believe. I suspect that in actuality they wouldn't need to restrict invites; restricting them just creates a rather strong PR dynamic beneficial to them. (I don't mean there to be negativity in this comment, though. I'd probably do the very same thing if I was in charge of launching the thing. I also do think Google+ is a rather promising service.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 06:19:13 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 23:19:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Exactly what I was thinking. (Yeah, quoting almost the entire post even though I'm responding with a one line "me too". In this case, I really am agreeing with that much.) On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Emlyn wrote: >> Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >> with a Google+ account? >> >> Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. > > Emlyn also wrote, in a different thread: > >> Given that the walled garden model failed both with CompuServe and AOL >> I find your choice of a doomed propretary model curious. > > Mmhmmm. > Do give us a /Wave/ as you go past... From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 06:23:41 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 23:23:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <007301cc3b4b$164b2070$42e16150$@att.net> Message-ID: Dear Extropy List, Happy 20th Birthday!!! We first met when you were only 8 years old, and you were so cute back then! I look forward to seeing you grow into a tall, intelligent and very handsome AGI! Best wishes, John : ) 2011/7/5 Max More > Thanks, spike. But it was (I think) Perry Metzger who actually set up the > list. I just provided the excuse to talk about lots of stimulating topics > with smart people. > > This year is the 20th year for the List. We should throw a virtual party of > some kind. > > --Max > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 12:38 PM, spike wrote: > >> Max, I am honored to have made your acquaintance so many years ago. You >> did >> this forum exactly right. I wouldn't change a thing. >> >> spike >> >> > > > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 > 877/462-5267 ext 113 > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Jul 6 06:30:25 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 23:30:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <001901cc3b39$e69a2c60$b3ce8520$@att.net> References: <20110627065134.GA29167@ofb.net> <006701cc3b2a$20c61760$62524620$@att.net> <001901cc3b39$e69a2c60$b3ce8520$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike wrote: > If you want to see a number of people who have apparently come to this same > conclusion and have incorporated old cars and vans into a living structure, > go out south and east of Phoenix and Mesa Arizona. There are hundreds of > people who have set up a combination of car/lean-to arrangements and appear > to be living out there. It has been a long time since I have been down > that > way. Have we any Phoenix-hipsters here who know if those extended squatter > villages are still out that way? I live in Mesa, but have never witnessed what you describe. The heat and sun here are brutal to the often exposed homeless, but at least they don't have to fear freezing to death, like in some places. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 06:55:22 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 23:55:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The FDA is at it again! Message-ID: The FDA continues their war against supplements... http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-new-sneak-attack-on-supplements/ John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 07:04:48 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:34:48 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 6 July 2011 15:20, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 6:28 PM, BillK wrote: >> >> demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had >> to restrict invites until they can cope with the demand. > > Or at least that's what their marketing department wants us to > believe. I suspect that in actuality they wouldn't need to restrict > invites; restricting them just creates a rather strong PR dynamic > beneficial to them. > > (I don't mean there to be negativity in this comment, though. I'd > probably do the very same thing if I was in charge of launching the > thing. I also do think Google+ is a rather promising service.) > > -- > Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei I agree re: load (although I do notice slight comms glitches here and there). Watching their extremely rapid iteration of G+ now, I think their actual motive is to iron out the kinks particularly around privacy before doing an open release. You just have to cast your mind back to the hoopla around Buzz (which they just released open to all at day one), and see the damage it did. They're really working hard to not have that happen again. It's fascinating to see all those Googlers in there, actively participating. From Page and Brin on down, massive representation. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 06:54:16 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:24:16 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >> Emlyn wrote: >>> Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >>> with a Google+ account? >>> >>> Shout out, an extropian circle would be a Good Thing. >> >> Emlyn also wrote, in a different thread: >> >>> Given that the walled garden model failed both with CompuServe and AOL >>> I find your choice of a doomed propretary model curious. Nope, Eugen wrote that. >> >> Mmhmmm. >> Do give us a /Wave/ as you go past... Sounds like something the Nonplussed would say. See you when you finally get in :-) -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 06:56:37 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:26:37 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <005001cc3b24$716d9450$5448bcf0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 6 July 2011 00:58, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:01 PM, spike wrote: >>>... On Behalf Of Emlyn >> Subject: [ExI] Google+ >> >>>...Who else has found themselves part of the Rapture of the Nerds, ie: >>> with a Google+ account? Emlyn >> >> Emlyn, How is that the Rapture of the Nerds? >> >> > > Because it is supposed to be like Facebook without all the crap and > demand for accounts is so astronomical that Google has had to restrict > invites until they can cope with the demand. Yup. That terminology came originally from Buzz (on which I've been quite active), because some were taken up into Google+, and some were Left Behind. They are now known as the Nonplussed. > > This leaves the Nerds with accounts enraptured at being one up on all > the other nerds frothing at the mouth with impatience to try it out. > :) > > (Google+ includes the killer feature of video-conferencing). > Google+ is smooth, damned fine social networking. It is to social networking what Gmail was to email, imo. Takeoff looks promising. We'll see though. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 09:16:28 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:16:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: trying to post In-Reply-To: References: <4E10B503.2070805@sbcglobal.net> <4E11EDF1.8040706@sbcglobal.net> <4E135397.7060403@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stefano Vaj Date: 6 July 2011 11:16 Subject: Re: trying to post To: "G. Livick" Cc: Damien Broderick On 5 July 2011 20:10, G. Livick wrote: > I'm not convinced that it is possible (general simulation of the human > mind). We have no direct or for that matter indirect experience of the whole space of arithmetical operations, yet we are convinced that barring division by zerr all of ?them are "possible", even though not necessarily in practical terms. Now, I would not see how the human (or any biological) mind, or entire system, would escape the principle of computational equivalence, as far as producing a given output to a given input is concerned. > Assuming that it is possible for a human to program such an > emulation might arguably require having first favorably resolved the seldom > asked question of whether there are some phenomena beyond the ability of the > (present state) human mind to comprehend. "Comprehend" literally means to contain. Of course any limited-memory system cannot contain things the complexity of which goes beyond the relevant threshold. But, thank gods, we can profit from external devices and adopt metaphors allowing us to operate with such things. > If ever there was a skeptic, it would be me. But ?I see no demonstrable > limit to what we will be able to emulate in software in the future, if for > no other reason than our current progress can be quantified and plotted on a > graph to allow such projections. ?The machines that play chess, the ones > that fly planes, and the ones that predict weather, all outperform humans, > and it is only obvious to the average person that a machine is engaged in > these tasks when he sees the actual machine. ?But I don't consider > human-equivalent performance in a machine as representative of intelligence > in the same metaphysical sense as the intelligence revealed through the > novel use of tools by chimps in the wild. ?One is 'artificial' in my mind, > the other is 'actual.' Yes, the point is that I am with the Circle of Vienna in not considering metaphysical senses to make any sense in any context... :-) > If the term "Artificial Intelligence" was replaced with "Simulated > Intelligence," the distinction, which is real, would be more obvious. A simulated PC is something which pretends to be a PC, perhaps very superficially, for some purpose or another. An emulated PC is something functionally equivalent for what we care for (not the cabinet, eg, but the ability to run PC programs). -- Stefano Vaj -- Stefano Vaj From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Jul 6 16:19:15 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 09:19:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fw: Re: Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? Message-ID: <1309969155.89891.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > Max More wrote: > > The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. :DD Ben Zaiboc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 14:40:03 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:40:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 1 July 2011 20:45, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Stefano, There you go again... :-) > > The "kind of libertarian view" you are speaking of in Anarchy. > Libertarianism is no more anarchy than it is fascism. If you define > libertarianism as anything that seems dangerous, then you aren't going > to like it. Not necessarily. You are making assumptions as to my personal opinions in discussing such issues. In fact, if we accept that any view discussing the abolition or minimisation tending to nihil of the State should be called Anarchy (terminology is not my point here), then I find some anarchist arguments more compelling, at least in terms of consistency or intellectual provocation or thought experiments, than many "libertarian-moderate" approaches. And, btw, those who you define anarchist have their own Stateless historical examples of allegedly well-functioning societies. Ancient Iceland as described by Posner, eg. -- Stefano Vaj From ddraig at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 15:37:33 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 01:37:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi well, if anyone has any spare invites [waves arm] Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From rloosemore at susaro.com Wed Jul 6 14:39:40 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:39:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Universal Computing Red Herring [WAS AI Motivation revisited] In-Reply-To: References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E1473AC.2030505@susaro.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 3 July 2011 02:36, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> We both (all) know the meaning of >> AGI in the context of an artificial intelligence email list. >> > > I am not sure I understand what the choice of using or non-using it > might imply, but if AGI indicated Artificial *General* Intelligence, > there might be something mystifying in the term "general", since > either it refers to universal computing - and in that case it must be > noted for the umpteenth time that almost everything is a universal > computer - or it implies that some more fundamental differences would > exist amongst different universal computers other than a performance > edge at a given task, which is basically false. > Can I just reiterate that universal computing has absolutely NOTHING to do with any of the issues related to Artificial General Intelligence, or the possibility of a hard takeoff, or the viability of human-like artificial intelligence. I do not remember who first raised the topic of "universal computing" in this context, but it is a red herring. Richard Loosemore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 14:32:40 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:32:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5 July 2011 17:55, Kelly Anderson wrote: > My point is that what people perceive currently to be in their self > interest is unlikely to turn on a dime. I am not sure I understand the idiom, but my point is that perceived self-interest may equally create a "market demand" for Singularity as for regression to paleolithic scenarios... > The thing is that by the time the meme is widespread enough to prevent > the Singularity, it will already be too late for most people to change > their minds. Let us hope so. My concern is that contrary to the opinion widespread in the H+ circles the momentum of change is not that of an object merrily flying in intergalactic space out of any resisting influence, is actually more similar to that of a man trying to run in quicksand. A constant, overhuman effort is required to keep it up. Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or another on our lap. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 14:13:16 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:13:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> Message-ID: On 5 July 2011 17:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: > And that giving "help" on an ongoing long term basis is evil. I am not entirely comfortable myself with the "humanitarian" angle which seems the invariable Leitmotif of US liberals - who, btw, used to be ferocious Social Darwinists just a century or two ago. But socialism has other conceivable rationales. For instance, libertarians accept that shareholders in private corporations touch dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when they do absolutely nothing and certainly cannot be counted as A-type individuals in Ayn Rand's sense. Now in the example of the conglomerate becoming a political community and a State for all practical purposes, why shouldn't they continue to do so? And if this is the case, why existing States should not pay citizenship dividends, in cash or in nature, to their members? -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 6 16:37:53 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:37:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> Message-ID: <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> Samantha wrote: On 07/01/2011 01:29 PM, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > Kelly, why don't you look beyond political borders? Who gives a > flying monkey's ass what the political party is - or ism?! We have > world problems to solve and need smart strategic thinking that > arguably understands the transhumanist perspective. Forgive me, but > talking about libertarianism and/or Markism or socialism, etc. is so > old world it causes my skin to crawl. (Actually I would like my skin > to crawl, but preferably with nanorobots rather than political > bot-tlenecking.) "Sometimes we need to talk about these things because it is obvious people still have a difficult time thinking about politics and economics in a sane way or even having a fruitful discussion with others on these topics. Granted the old labels are pretty useless. However the underlying issues are very much alive." Agreed and thus my email. It's time to take a Buckminster Fuller approach and start talking strategic insights that defuse borders that propagate dogmatic and restrictive thinking. Take postmodernism for example: while it has value for feminists, its rigidity is problematic. Take objectivists for example: while the theory has value for discerning issues of existence, its lack of objectivity is problematic. Take democracy for example: while the political perspective has value for the inclusive of all voices regardless of race, color, etc., its lack of logic is problematic. Take conservatism for example: while the ideological view has value for historical traditions, its lack of futurology is problematic. Take art for example: while the field has value for creatives, its lack of insight about the future is highly and unequivocally problematic. I have been saying this for 15 years on this list: if we want to be future-oriented about socio-political issues, then we need a new strategy. Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 6 16:39:26 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:39:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Writing: Scrivener - Mac or PC? In-Reply-To: References: <20110629145802.2px1hrwgcg4sc04w@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: Thank you Bill. This is very helpful! Natasha Natasha Vita-More Chair: Humanity+ PhD Researcher: Univ. of Plymouth, UK Fellow: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Visiting Scholar: 21st Century Medicine Advisor: Policy, Law & Ethics Track, Singularity University -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 3:20 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Writing: Scrivener - Mac or PC? On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 7:58 PM, natasha wrote: > Hi - ? I was just looking at Scrivener and it is mighty nice to look at. > ?But when I went to purchase it, it did not look so hot for the PC: > > Mac: ?http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php > PC: ? http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/ > > Is this because more designers use Macs and marketing hooks them with ? > a pretty webpage? ?It certainly made me want to get a Mac and toss my PC. > > According to the Scrivener website the PC version is an early beta version. i.e. not fully tested or function complete yet. They are still working on it. This article might be useful for alternatives for the PC, as suggested by the author of Scrivener--- BillK _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 6 16:40:02 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:40:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fw: Re: Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? In-Reply-To: <1309969155.89891.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1309969155.89891.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9BB70AE48FC74550B9587ACFBC40F8F6@DFC68LF1> > Max More wrote: > > The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. :DD :-) From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed Jul 6 17:18:24 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 13:18:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> Message-ID: <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Stefano Vaj wrote: > (snip) > For instance, libertarians accept that shareholders in private > corporations touch dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when > they do absolutely nothing (snip) Wait, please. Absolutely nothing? How I look at it: Shareholders are renting money to the company, with the risk that they may not get it back. Bondholders do much the same. If a company is in a rented workspace the landlord does "absolutely nothing" just like the shareholder. Regards, MB From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 6 18:04:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:04:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> Stefano Vaj wrote: >...US liberals - who, btw, used to be ferocious Social Darwinists just a century or two ago... A subtle aside: we know what is meant by the term "social Darwinist," one who believes in a hardline don't feed the poor because they just overbreed sort of person. I think of this as misuse of Darwin's name for something he didn't really mean. If you read Origin of Species carefully, there is a surprising slant there often overlooked. He mentions survival of the fittest as a mechanism for evolution, but spends far more time on mate selection as a more important mechanism. So more properly, a social Darwinist would be one who believes that societies are shaped by how people select their mates. Would anyone want to argue with the notion that societal characteristics are driven primarily by mate selection? > ... libertarians accept that shareholders in private corporations touch dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when they do absolutely nothing... Shareholders are doing something. They are keeping their money in the company in which they are shareholders. There is a subtle point of view here I want to understand without criticizing at all. I sometimes hear comments about how elderly people use up resources without actually producing anything. But if the elderly person owns a ton of money, they do produce something: they invest that money somewhere or loan it to someone else who invests it somewhere and turns it into more money. So in that sense, rich old people produce value for society, but poor old people do not. Lesson: be rich by the time you get old. Otherwise you become a burden to society. If you are a rich geezer, you are a blessing to society, providing jobs to the poor (at the nursing home) and investing in industry, which provides jobs to the young and vigorous. So making a ton of money and keeping it in your working years equals doing right. Or the equivalent: don't be poor, it's a sin. It's going to be fun to hear rebuttals to that last bit. {8^D spike From max at maxmore.com Wed Jul 6 18:21:51 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:21:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, > but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the > future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and > expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or > another on our lap. "Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. --Max -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 18:44:22 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 19:44:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/6 Max More wrote: > ??"Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. > > Stefano might have just made it up, but according to dictionaries it is computer slang popular from the mid 1970s. origin * This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon and probably much earlier. The word "automagic" occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 18:34:07 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 11:34:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/6 Max More : > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> >> Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, >> but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the >> future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and >> expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or >> another on our lap. > > > ??"Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. Been around a long time. Google it. Keith From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Jul 6 19:02:50 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:02:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> Message-ID: <4E14B15A.80903@mac.com> On 07/06/2011 07:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 5 July 2011 17:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> And that giving "help" on an ongoing long term basis is evil. > I am not entirely comfortable myself with the "humanitarian" angle > which seems the invariable Leitmotif of US liberals - who, btw, used > to be ferocious Social Darwinists just a century or two ago. > No, they were not. They simply asserted that charity by force is not charity at all. Social Darwinism was not all that big in the US. > But socialism has other conceivable rationales. > > For instance, libertarians accept that shareholders in private > corporations touch dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when > they do absolutely nothing and certainly cannot be counted as A-type > individuals in Ayn Rand's sense. This shows no understanding of investing or of what Rand actually said either. Go ahead and pick a bunch of companies at random on the basis of their dividends and see how much money you make over time. > Now in the example of the > conglomerate becoming a political community and a State for all > practical purposes, why shouldn't they continue to do so? And if this > is the case, why existing States should not pay citizenship dividends, > in cash or in nature, to their members? Since you think it is all causeless manna flow then why not. Please let us know how that works out for you. Note the countries around the world in serious trouble simply because they did promise more than could possibly be delivered. - samantha From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 19:21:43 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 20:21:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <4E14B15A.80903@mac.com> References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <4E14B15A.80903@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Since you think it is all causeless manna flow then why not. ?Please let us > know how that works out for you. ? ?Note the countries around the world in > serious trouble simply because they did promise more than could possibly be > delivered. > > As we approach the era of no jobs for humans, some form of manna will have to be given to the population. We are in the transition phase at present. Countries around the world are in serious economic trouble also because libertarian bankers understood 'freedom' to mean freedom to steal as much as they could get away with. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 6 19:26:53 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:26:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E14B6FD.9050702@satx.rr.com> On 7/6/2011 1:44 PM, BillK wrote: > origin > > * This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in > jargon and probably much earlier. The word "automagic" occurred in > advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late > 1940s. And now I think about it, I recall with a shudder that Elron Hubbard used it for an execrable short story in ASTOUNDING: The Automagic Horse (1949) Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 19:40:45 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 20:40:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E14B6FD.9050702@satx.rr.com> References: <4E14B6FD.9050702@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And now I think about it, I recall with a shudder that Elron Hubbard used it > for an execrable short story in ASTOUNDING: > > The Automagic Horse (1949) > > Another dictionary indirectly credits Clarke................ Blend of automatic and magic; from the principle (often called Clarke's third law) that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 6 18:40:46 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:40:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> On 7/6/2011 1:21 PM, Max More wrote: > "Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. I think I came across that idiom some 15 years ago, on this list, and many times here since. Probably via a posting from Eugen, in his wonderful compacted English. Damien Broderick From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Jul 6 23:47:37 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:47:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <4E14B15A.80903@mac.com> Message-ID: <4E14F419.8070401@mac.com> On 07/06/2011 12:21 PM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> Since you think it is all causeless manna flow then why not. Please let us >> know how that works out for you. Note the countries around the world in >> serious trouble simply because they did promise more than could possibly be >> delivered. >> >> > > As we approach the era of no jobs for humans, some form of manna will > have to be given to the population. We are in the transition phase at > present. > Let's wait and see on that. This coming period has been claimed due to automation since the cotton gin. Yes, this time is likely different. But don't count your AGIs just yet. :) There will never be a time when there are no jobs at all for humans for the simple reason that some things will be preferred to be done by humans, at least by other humans. Also there is the regrettable fact that we don't have any manna to give out right now, at least not remotely to the level that politicians who can't or won't count have already promised to voters who can't or won't count. > Countries around the world are in serious economic trouble also > because libertarian bankers understood 'freedom' to mean freedom to > steal as much as they could get away with. This is the most outrageously wrong statement I have read in some time.. The economies are in trouble because almost all countries tried to do just exactly what you say should be done which is to promise and pass out as many goodies as possible. I hope you like the world you advocate. The bankers were not the primary cause and the environment they work under has nothing at all to do with free markets or anything close. - samantha From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 01:48:40 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:18:40 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> References: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 7 July 2011 04:10, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/6/2011 1:21 PM, Max More wrote: > >> ? "Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. > > I think I came across that idiom some 15 years ago, on this list, and many > times here since. Probably via a posting from Eugen, in his wonderful > compacted English. > > Damien Broderick It's pretty common in developer circles. Often used to describe how a feature should work. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 03:58:31 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 13:28:31 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Fw: Re: Natasha and Max - Apologies, but FB? In-Reply-To: <1309969155.89891.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1309969155.89891.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: It's been abundantly clear for years that the exi chat can never be anything other than email. If I go by Clay Shirky's "promise, tool, bargain" model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody), then the list is not just the tool, it is actually part of the bargain. On 7 July 2011 01:49, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> Max More wrote: >> >> The Extropy-Chat is NOT moving to Facebook. > > ? > > :DD > > Ben Zaiboc > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 04:34:56 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:34:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> References: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/6/2011 1:21 PM, Max More wrote: > >> ? "Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. > > I think I came across that idiom some 15 years ago, on this list, and many > times here since. Probably via a posting from Eugen, in his wonderful > compacted English. I first encountered the term in Neuro-Linguistic Programming circles. Don't know if that's the first place it was used... but I think they have been using it for a long time. -Kelly From moulton at moulton.com Thu Jul 7 06:28:30 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:28:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E15520E.30403@moulton.com> On 07/06/2011 09:34 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Damien Broderick > wrote: >> On 7/6/2011 1:21 PM, Max More wrote: >>> "Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. >> I think I came across that idiom some 15 years ago, on this list, and >> many >> times here since. Probably via a posting from Eugen, in his wonderful >> compacted English. > I first encountered the term in Neuro-Linguistic Programming circles. > Don't know if that's the first place it was used... but I think they > have been using it for a long time. I think I first heard it in the late 1970s. The term "automagically" was likely developed independently in several areas and by several groups. I have seen a reference to the term "automagic" used in the 1940s in advertising. Fred From moulton at moulton.com Thu Jul 7 06:07:57 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:07:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Info about Aubrey de Grey in San Francisco Friday July 8 Message-ID: <4E154D3D.9060106@moulton.com> See the following URL for info about Aubrey de Grey in San Francisco on July 8 answering questions at the showing of the movie How To Live Forever http://www.liveforevermovie.com/tickets-theaters From giulio at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 07:57:54 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:57:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Suzanne Gildert on Hack the Multiverse!, OpenQwaq, July 31 2011, 10am PST In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Suzanne Gildert on Hack the Multiverse!, OpenQwaq, July 31 2011, 10am PST http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/suzanne-gildert-on-hack-the-multiverse-openqwaq-july-312011-10am-pst/ Talk title: Hack the Multiverse! Presented by: Dr. Suzanne Gildert Quantum Computer Programmer (D-Wave Systems Inc.) William Gibson famously said: ?The future is already here ? it?s just not very evenly distributed.? The same is true of quantum computing. This mysterious subject is often relegated to ivory tower discussions and shrouded in a language of complex mathematics. Yet there are many people out there who feel an itch to start hacking with quantum computers ? a desire to program the very fabric of reality ? no matter how early the adoption may seem. This talk will be a call to arms ? I?ll excite you about quantum physics ? our deepest understanding of the Universe. I?ll explain why quantum computing is not as mysterious as everyone thinks. And I?ll show you how to become a quantum computer programmer in less than 10 minutes? Join me for an hour of both deep learning and fun, as I proudly stand up for those who are turning an abstract science into a powerful computational resource, and deliver the message that quantum computing is not spooky, it?s just misunderstood. About the speaker: Dr. Suzanne Gildert is currently working at D-Wave Systems, Inc. Suzanne obtained her PhD and MSci degree from The University of Birmingham UK, focusing on the areas of experimental quantum device physics and superconductivity. OpenQwaq is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). There are a limited number of seats available, please contact us if you wish to attend. Join our mailing list, our Facebook group, or our Linkedin group. From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 07:54:51 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 00:54:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Remember that you are talking to a formerly homeless person. It was only a few months, but long enough to know it wasn't the end of the world for me. And I was "homeless" for many years. And after the first week, it was voluntary. And I loved it. It was very close to the freedom that most people talk about, and buy sailboats to dream about. It was in the SF Bay Area. I started out in an econoline van and worked my way up to a small motorhome. If my wife would let me, I'd go back in a minute. Houses are monstrous money-eating tar pits where you collect your "stuff" until you're buried alive in the responsibility to take care of it all. When I was living in my van/motorhome I had only what I needed, could easily keep track of it, and never had to pack when I went on a trip. I think everyone should have the liberating experience of a "successfully homeless" -- thrifty-yet-comfortable -- lifestyle. Instead, it's enslavement to "home ownership", The Johnny Rocco ("Yeah. That's it. More. That's right! I want more!") lifestyle standard. Ah well, to each his own. I mention this because, after Samantha's comment (that my characterization of homelessness was overblown), and upon further reflection, I realize that my attitude is the liberal-standard-outrage v. 1.9.70. I've taken the word "homeless", fleshed it out with imaginary (ie projected) unpleasant details, thrown in some imaginary (ie projected) human suffering, submitted these briefly to my mirror neurons for some first person vicarious "experience" -- okay, it's bad -- and then mounted my liberal high horse to tilt at windmills or conservatives, as it pleased me. So seeing as my attitude is concocted out of fictional musings -- except perhaps for the couple I read about from Oregon who had lived in their house for 28 years until it was foreclosed on -- don't recall why -- and then committed suicide, or the street woman in my Mission District neighborhood in San Francisco, whose face was always hidden in the hooded darkness of her geasy(?) black parka and onto who's known unknown narrative I layered my vague but horrific imaginings, or the women in the parking lot in Santa Barbara, now houseless, now husbandless living in their cars -- so I'll get off my horse. "Go, my four-legged brother, run free!" >> Humanity has made very little progress toward preventing the damage >> caused by human behavioral failings. > > But in no place is that damage as minimized as in America. The American experiment is over. The cancer of militarism is terminal. For me personally, it allows me to notice the irrationality of my own nationalism, and try in some degree to let it go. Change is a constant. > There is a > common liberal misconception that "savage" man lived more in harmony > with nature and each other Is it a misconception? Were you there? They didn't have traffic noise, or asthma,... or taxes. ;-) > We may not be able to get past this one... however, I'll try one more > time... While we are not very close to the carrying capacity of the > earth for humans right now I just love it. Note the "right now". "But in the future you better just look out! We're doomed! We're all doomed! All the stuff will be used up, and, and...." ... there are limits. There will always be these sorts of limits. > Saying that there happens to be enough for everyone at this particular > moment in time is meaningless in the long term. There is 13.7 million times more light energy coming from the sun than is intercepted by the disk of the Earth. There is the asteroid belt, the oort cloud and the Kuiper belt, for raw materials. We are in fact headed into a regime of ever more "stuff", ever diminishing limits. That's what I see in "the long term". i believe what is happening here is that you are naturally concerned about having enough stuff (to survive), an instinct to be protective of your "stuff" and a narrative of "limits" that complements your perceived need to protect your stuff. I understand. Mammals are acquisitive and territorial by nature. So when someone says "Oh, don't worry, there's plenty of stuff for everybody", you naturally start to worry about your stuff, that they'll maybe notice all your stuff, and probably want to come and take some of it. There's plenty of stuff on the planet for now, and the future for humanity is off planet and out of the gravity well, where there's waaaaaay more stuff. And by the way, robots will do so much work for us, that there'll be lots more finished goods for everyone, for way cheaper than now. And the basics, the necessities,... well, being necessities, they'll be free. You project the limits of today onto the future. I project the abundance of future onto a social model of the present. I think your projections are flawed because the future will not be so limited. And my projection is likely to fail because, abundances aside, the social model of the present will not be the social model of the future, a whole raft of unforeseen synergies will see to that. > You also have to look > at WHY we have enough now. Partially, because in the past, we have had > limited socialism. Finally you see that socialism is the source of all progress. Out of darkness you've come to the Extropian's list and seen the light. Bless you, my child. (Do I actually have to put a friggin' smiley here!!??) "Ahem." (clears his throat) "Where's my damn horse? Yo! Trigger, git over here you four-legged victim of anthropic superiority." Sorry, bro, but the above screed is all human greed, "It's mine you can't have it!" "Property rights! Property rights!" Let us rise above that. > The whole premise of socialism is that some people, at the economic > bottom of things, don't need to work, and will be supported by > society. Are you telling me you aren't THAT kind of liberal? I'm telling you that the whole premise of socialism is that we're all in this together, and that you don't throw Aunt Lavinia into the landfill because her kids were all killed in the war and her husband Elmo got colon cancer and spent all their money on coffee enema alternative therapy at a clinic in Guadalajara. Socialism is ACTUALLY caring for people, not dumping them on the side of the road with a sign that says "Rand Inevitably Provides." > Perhaps, but let's go back to basics. Do you believe in basic > economics? Adam Smith resonate with you at all? "Wealth of Nations". I Googled it and then Wikipediaed it and okay, your basic economic theory. But then, quite by accident I came across this article in the Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MG02Dj03.html wherein I find the following quote: "...I pointed out that I wasn't sure why economists still refer so extensively to Adam Smith. He's been dead for centuries; didn't live in China or India; and he had a colonial view of the world; and when the world's population was well under 1 billion...." I'm not challenging the value of Smith's contribution or the validity of his observations or axioms. But since the world is changing so fast that it makes my head spin, I'd like some kind of sense of what the future conditions will be like -- in regards to productivity -- before guessing about what future economics will look like. Central to that future context, in my view, will be a level of automation and consequent productivity, that will overtake the demand what we currently think of as basic human needs. Such an Economy of Abundance could result in two classes of goods, non-market-based (entitlements, free basic necessities), and market-based (limited for whatever reason). But that's as far as I want to go into future fantasy. Now it's your turn. > Let's talk motivation. In your proposed society, is money a prime > motivator? Perhaps you believe there are motivations that are more > important than money. There are, if you are Bhutan... but would you > like the whole world to become Bhutan? Can't say. Haven't been there. Do they make a good meatball sandwich? Chow fun? > Ron Paul is very good at explaining why we should get out of the rest > of the world. I think he has a very good point, I like Ron Paul. He's a good man, a decent man, a principled man, a truthful man. Clearly unelectable. ;-) Which is why I'll vote for him. > > Do you believe we should have an open door policy with Mexico? Mostly. It's basically what we have now, but sullied by politics and bigotry. They come here, they work, they're part of our community, economy, culture, and identity as a nation of immigrants. It is a black mark on America that they are treated so disrespectfully. > > Here is what I do believe. I believe we should increase the number of > legal immigrants from Mexico by about 10x. I believe that the feds > could come up with a reasonable "guest worker" program. I believe that > if we legalized drugs, the whole border war problem would evaporate. > Does that sound like "right wing" Koombahyah? Hell no! Sounds damn fine to me. What's the rationale for the 10x increase? And hey immigration peoblem solved, drug problem solved, drug war problem solved. Excellent work' What by the way is the right wing Koombahyah? Ballad of the Green Berets? >The difference between us is that I see social programs as cannibalism too. And I acknowledge the "moral hazard" problem. Maybe we can talk about that another time. >...about oil and alternative energy. ... I think this > problem is solving itself, in much the same way that the whale oil > crisis was solved, through capitalism. I feel the same way, that's why I don't pay much attention to either the energy "crisis" or the global warming "crisis". > So boil it down, what are your top ten beliefs? I'll give you mine > (though I reserve the right to modify just what my top 10 are...): > > 1) Capitalism is the greatest single force for good in the history of > the world because it promotes technology. Science is the greatest because it promotes understanding and technology. > 2) Power seeking governments impede capitalism and are thus counter productive. "Power-seeking goverments" is redundant. Efficient government is a contradiction. The best government is that which governs least. . > 3) There are evil people in the world that any system must compensate for. Holding those in the highest positions of power accountable to the law will markedly reduce the "evil" in the world. > 4) Religion is worst when promoting anti-scientific positions. Science works, religion doesn't. Religion is obsolete. > 5) Science is done by people and is not only not infallible, but also > susceptible to human failings and politics. Of course.. > 6) We live in a resource constrained world. Once true, now mostly a myth. > 7) Individual politicians are often worse than governments, and rule through fear. Politicians should at all times live in fear of the rule of law,...or be honest. > 8) Aliens did not help the Egyptians build the pyramids, and the > pyramids built Egypt. Huh?. > 9) Freedom is the single most important political concept. Everybody says freedom is important. It's iconic. But is it true? I can't say. I've lived in a free (so they say) society all my life and, without meaning to be cute, I'm not sure I know what freedom is, having nothing really to compare it to. To me money is freedom and lack of money is non-freedom. > 10) Mothers are the core of society, when we undermine motherhood, we > do so at our peril. I will not sully motherhood with a snarky remark. Whoops! Too late. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." Sophia Loren From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 7 16:41:59 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:41:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004d01cc3cc4$cb796950$626c3bf0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis >... To me money is freedom and lack of money is non-freedom... {...sniffle, honk...wipes tear of joy from eyes...} Jeff, I am proud of you, my son. ... >...And I was "homeless" for many years. And after the first week, it was voluntary. And I loved it. It was very close to the freedom that most people talk about, and buy sailboats to dream about. It was in the SF Bay Area. I started out in an econoline van and worked my way up to a small motorhome... Best, Jeff Davis Jeff made a number of interesting comments, but do let me go off on a fun tangent with this one. An innovation more recent than young Jeff's time in the econoline van makes living on the road waaay more interesting and practical: wifi. In the old days (anything before 2000) anyone who is good with a wrench could set up a ratty old van to be an acceptable rolling shelter for one person. You could build a bed back there, arrange a rudimentary cooking facility, with only an old toilet seat, a lawn chair, some plastic garbage bags one can create a functional portable toilet of sorts (gory details available on request, but do use your imagination.) It isn't luxury or anything, but it is much easier than tent camping, sleeping on the ground, the kind my wife and I did, over 11 days, circumambulating Mount Rainier voluntarily. But any ratty old van that runs? All the necessities of life. But now we have all that Jeff had in the 70s, plus access in a hundred places in every little town to the internet, so you can look up stuff, find out what goes on, keep in touch with friends, and perhaps most importantly, you can make notes or write your road novel. On that last comment, consider two excellent road novels, Kerouac's On the Road, and my own personal favorite Travels With Charlie. This last is my favorite of all road stories, and my second favorite of all of Steinbeck's excellent body of work, of which I have read all. If Steinbeck had had internet, how would that work have been different? Being able to write while actually on the road has made some excellent vacation narratives for me, better than the photos I took. Do check out Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie, the book for which he won the Nobel Prize. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 7 17:45:23 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 10:45:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <004d01cc3cc4$cb796950$626c3bf0$@att.net> References: <004d01cc3cc4$cb796950$626c3bf0$@att.net> Message-ID: <006b01cc3ccd$a647fe40$f2d7fac0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike >...But now we have all that Jeff had in the 70s, plus access in a hundred places in every little town to the internet, so you can look up stuff, find out what goes on, keep in touch with friends, and perhaps most importantly, you can make notes or write your road novel... spike To expand on that a bit, I would like to see a really talented expressive writer such as Jeff Davis, write a road novel based on his time as a homeless person. Some of my own most fun stuff comes from my summer of 83 experience as an almost homeless person in Seattle. I had a 50 dollar a month "apartment" of sorts, which wasn't actually an apartment, but rather a homebrew free standing wooden structure with a bed in it, set up in an enclosed garage. But it made sense at the time: it was safer and somewhat warmer than actually living on the streets (didn't have electricity or running water, but it was good shelter from the wind) with reduced risk of being injured or seriously killed by others in similar circumstances. I was an oddball among the semi-homeless: I had a bachelor's degree in engineering, used no alcohol, no drugs, no tobacco, just a 22 yr old kid trying to make it all summer on a bit less than 400 dollars. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 21:00:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:00:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 5 July 2011 17:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> And that giving "help" on an ongoing long term basis is evil. > > I am not entirely comfortable myself with the "humanitarian" angle > which seems the invariable Leitmotif of US liberals - who, btw, used > to be ferocious Social Darwinists just a century or two ago. Hard to see how the switch happened, but yes, you are right. > But socialism has other conceivable rationales. Go on... ;-) > For instance, libertarians accept that shareholders in private > corporations touch dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when > they do absolutely nothing and certainly cannot be counted as A-type > individuals in Ayn Rand's sense. I'm not sure I followed you here. Are you saying stock holders don't earn their money? I'm sure you are familiar with the banker Midas Mulligan in Atlas Shrugged... He didn't do anything but provide the money that made their economy work. > Now in the example of the > conglomerate becoming a political community and a State for all > practical purposes, why shouldn't they continue to do so? And if this > is the case, why existing States should not pay citizenship dividends, > in cash or in nature, to their members? In some ways, multinational corporations are replacing governments internationally today. I'm not entirely sure it's a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. I don't see this as a justification for socialism... If you are equating social security with corporate dividends, then I think you are way off track. Dividends are based upon the profitability of the company, and can be issued in no other way. Social security is paid with some money that comes in for the purpose, and by printing money. There just is no comparison of those two systems. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 21:03:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:03:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:04 PM, spike wrote: > Would anyone want to argue with the notion that > societal characteristics are driven primarily by mate selection? I would make that argument, but only over the VERY long term. Millions of years. Irrelevant now, of course. > There is a subtle point of view here I want to understand without > criticizing at all. ?I sometimes hear comments about how elderly people use > up resources without actually producing anything. ?But if the elderly person > owns a ton of money, they do produce something: they invest that money > somewhere or loan it to someone else who invests it somewhere and turns it > into more money. ?So in that sense, rich old people produce value for > society, but poor old people do not. > > Lesson: be rich by the time you get old. ?Otherwise you become a burden to > society. ?If you are a rich geezer, you are a blessing to society, providing > jobs to the poor (at the nursing home) and investing in industry, which > provides jobs to the young and vigorous. ?So making a ton of money and > keeping it in your working years equals doing right. ?Or the equivalent: > don't be poor, it's a sin. > > It's going to be fun to hear rebuttals to that last bit. ?{8^D You won't get any rebuttals from me on that one... -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 21:32:27 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:32:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:54 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Remember that you are talking to a formerly homeless person. It was only a few months, but long enough to know it wasn't the end of the ?world for me. > > And I was "homeless" for many years. ?And after the first week, it was > voluntary. ?And I loved it. ?It was very close to the freedom that > most people talk about, and buy sailboats to dream about. So you were one of the people that the government did not count. ;-) > It was in the SF Bay Area. ?I started out in an econoline van and > worked my way up to a small ?motorhome. ? If my wife would let me, I'd > go back in a minute. ?Houses are monstrous money-eating tar pits where > you collect your "stuff" until you're buried alive in the > responsibility to take care of it all. My girl friend is a hoarder. I'm with you there brother. > When I was living in my van/motorhome I had only what I needed, could > easily keep track of it, and never had to pack when I went on a trip. Lots of people retire to that, and I don't think they are considered homeless in the sense that they need government handouts. > I think everyone should have the liberating experience of a > "successfully homeless" -- thrifty-yet-comfortable -- lifestyle. > Instead, it's enslavement to "home ownership", The Johnny Rocco > ("Yeah. That's it. More. That's right! I want more!") lifestyle > standard. I can't disagree with that. > Ah well, to each his own. > > I mention this because, after Samantha's comment (that my > characterization of homelessness was overblown), and upon further > reflection, I realize that my attitude is the liberal-standard-outrage > v. 1.9.70. ?I've taken the word "homeless", fleshed it out with > imaginary (ie projected) unpleasant details, thrown in some imaginary > (ie projected) human suffering, submitted these briefly to my mirror > neurons for some first person vicarious "experience" -- okay, it's bad > -- and then mounted my liberal high horse to tilt at windmills or > conservatives, as it pleased me. ROFLMAO. Thanks. > So seeing as my attitude is concocted out of fictional musings -- > except perhaps for the couple I read about from Oregon who had lived > in their house for 28 years until it was foreclosed on -- don't recall > why -- and then committed suicide, or the street woman in my Mission > District neighborhood in San Francisco, whose face was always hidden > in the hooded darkness of her geasy(?) black parka and onto who's > known unknown narrative I layered my vague but horrific imaginings, or > the women in the parking lot in Santa Barbara, now houseless, now > husbandless living in their cars -- so I'll get off my horse. > > "Go, my four-legged brother, run free!" You're the man! >>> Humanity has made very little progress toward preventing the damage >>> caused by human behavioral failings. >> >> But in no place is that damage as minimized as in America. > > The American experiment is over. ?The cancer of militarism is > terminal. ?For me personally, it allows me to notice the irrationality > of my own nationalism, and try in some degree to let it go. ? Change > is a constant. I think the militarism is reversible. At least I hope that it is. Perhaps when we are no longer the single world superpower, and can't afford to be the police state of the world, we'll get back to founding principles. Might happen sooner if Bachmann or Paul are elected... ;-) >> There is a >> common liberal misconception that "savage" man lived more in harmony >> with nature and each other > > Is it a misconception? ?Were you there? ?They didn't have traffic > noise, or asthma,... or taxes. ?;-) They also drove herds of buffalo off of the cliff to eat one or two of them. >> We may not be able to get past this one... however, I'll try one more >> time... While we are not very close to the carrying capacity of the >> earth for humans right now > > I just love it. ?Note the "right now". ?"But in the future you better > just look out! ?We're doomed! ?We're all doomed! ?All the stuff will > be used up, and, and...." > > >>... there are limits. There will always be these sorts of limits. >> Saying that there happens to be enough for everyone at this particular >> moment in time is meaningless in the long term. > > There is 13.7 million times more light energy coming from the sun than > is intercepted by the disk of the Earth. ?There is the asteroid belt, > the oort cloud and the Kuiper belt, for raw materials. ?We are in fact > headed into a regime of ever more "stuff", ever diminishing limits. > That's what I see in "the long term". Eventually, we'll run out of some of the important stuff, like oil or blood minerals. Temporarily, at least, that's going to cause friction. > i believe what is happening here is that you are naturally concerned > about having enough stuff (to survive), an instinct to be protective > of your "stuff" and a narrative of "limits" that complements your > perceived need to protect your stuff. ?I understand. ?Mammals are > acquisitive and territorial by nature. ?So when someone says "Oh, > don't worry, there's plenty of stuff for everybody", you naturally > start to worry about your stuff, that they'll maybe notice all your > stuff, and probably want to come and take some of it. No, it just has to do with the nature of exponential growth. > There's plenty of stuff on the planet for now, and the future for > humanity is off planet and out of the gravity well, where there's > waaaaaay more stuff. ?And by the way, robots will do so much work for > us, that there'll be lots more finished goods for everyone, for way > cheaper than now. That pushes the problem out, but does not solve it entirely. > And the basics, the necessities,... well, being necessities, they'll be free. I hope not. > You project the limits of today onto the future. ?I project the > abundance of future onto a social model of the present. ?I think your > projections are flawed because the future will not be so limited. ?And > my projection is likely to fail because, abundances aside, the social > model of the present will not be the social model of the future, a > whole raft of unforeseen synergies will see to that. No doubt it will be interesting. I don't think I made a prediction, other than that at some point, we will have shortages of some things... as long as we have Malthusian growth. Perhaps AI will save us from Malthus. It's possible. > ?> You also have to look >> at WHY we have enough now. Partially, because in the past, we have had >> limited socialism. > > Finally you see that socialism is the source of all progress. ?Out of > darkness you've come to the Extropian's list and seen the light. > Bless you, my child. (Do I actually have to put a friggin' smiley > here!!??) You're soooo funny. ;-) > ? ? ? > > > "Ahem." (clears his throat) ?"Where's my damn horse? ?Yo! Trigger, git > over here you four-legged victim of anthropic superiority." > > Sorry, bro, but the above screed is all human greed, "It's mine you > can't have it!" ?"Property rights! ?Property rights!" > > Let us rise above that. I can get above property rights once all property is digital. Until then, I think property rights are the only thing that will get us there. >> The whole premise of socialism is that some people, at the economic >> bottom of things, don't need to work, and will be supported by >> society. Are you telling me you aren't THAT kind of liberal? > > I'm telling you that the whole premise of socialism is that we're all > in this together, and that you don't throw Aunt Lavinia into the > landfill because her kids were all killed in the war and her husband > Elmo got colon cancer and spent all their money on coffee enema > alternative therapy at a clinic in Guadalajara. Look, I never said that disadvantaged people shouldn't be helped. I am all for charity. I'm not Ayn Rand on that point, she's a cold heartless beast in some regards. However, I just don't see it being the government's job to provide all charity. I think there is more room for NGOs to care for Aunt Lavinia. You keep saying that I'm an animal that hates useless people. I am not. I merely want the government out of Aunt Lavinia's bedroom, and kitchen, and living room and roof. > Socialism is ACTUALLY caring for people, not dumping them on the side > of the road with a sign that says "Rand Inevitably Provides." No. Socialism is everyone being EQUALLY miserable. Together. > > >> Perhaps, but let's go back to basics. Do you believe in basic >> economics? Adam Smith resonate with you at all? > > "Wealth of Nations". ?I Googled it and then Wikipediaed it and okay, > your basic economic theory. ?But then, quite by accident I came across > this article in the Asia Times: > > http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MG02Dj03.html > > wherein I find the following quote: > > "...I pointed out that I wasn't sure why economists still refer so > extensively to Adam Smith. > > He's been dead for centuries; didn't live in China or India; and he > had a colonial view of the world; and when the world's population was > well under 1 billion...." > > I'm not challenging the value of Smith's contribution or the validity > of his observations or axioms. ?But since the world is changing so > fast that it makes my head spin, I'd like some kind of sense of what > the future conditions will be like -- in regards to productivity -- > before guessing about what future economics will look like. ?Central > to that future context, in my view, will be a level of automation and > consequent productivity, that will overtake the demand what we > currently think of as basic human needs. ?Such an Economy of Abundance > could result in two classes of goods, non-market-based (entitlements, > free basic necessities), and market-based (limited for whatever > reason). > > But that's as far as I want to go into future fantasy. ?Now it's your turn. Do you believe in the future of money? It basically boils down to that. > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?never get the tiara with ***this*** nose> > >> Let's talk motivation. In your proposed society, is money a prime >> motivator? Perhaps you believe there are motivations that are more >> important than money. There are, if you are Bhutan... but would you >> like the whole world to become Bhutan? > > Can't say. ?Haven't been there. ?Do they make a good meatball > sandwich? ?Chow fun? I'm sure they make some mean dishes using sour goat's milk. Bhutan has become important because they measure Gross National Happiness... as the most important national measurement as opposed to GDP. It is an interesting exercise, really. > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? > >> Ron Paul is very good at explaining why we should get out of the rest >> of the world. I think he has a very good point, > > I like Ron Paul. ?He's a good man, a decent > man, a principled man, a truthful man. > Clearly unelectable. ?;-) ?Which is why I'll vote for him. I would too. How did that happen? >> Do you believe we should have an open > door policy with Mexico? > > Mostly. ?It's basically what we have now, but sullied by politics and > bigotry. ?They come here, they work, they're part of our community, > economy, culture, and identity as a nation of immigrants. ?It is a > black mark on America that they are treated so disrespectfully. It is a black mark on congress that it has been allowed to get to this point. Once again, politicians create division, then eat off the power of the chaos. >> Here is what I do believe. I believe we should increase the number of >> legal immigrants from Mexico by about 10x. I believe that the feds >> could come up with a reasonable "guest worker" program. I believe that >> if we legalized drugs, the whole border war problem would evaporate. >> Does that sound like "right wing" Koombahyah? > > Hell no! ?Sounds damn fine to me. ?What's the rationale for the 10x > increase? We need more growth, especially at the low end of the economic spectrum. We aren't building enough new Americans to do that stuff, and we think we don't have to anymore. Maybe it should be 100x. The point is that we don't let enough Mexicans in legally, and I don't know why. > And hey immigration peoblem solved, drug problem solved, > drug war problem solved. ?Excellent work' Yeah!! > ?What by the way is the right wing Koombahyah? ?Ballad of the Green Berets? Sure. Whatever. >>The difference between us is that I see social programs as cannibalism too. > > And I acknowledge the "moral hazard" problem. > Maybe we can talk about that another time. OK >>...about oil and alternative energy. ?... I think this >> problem is solving itself, in much the same way that the whale oil >> crisis was solved, through capitalism. > > I feel the same way, that's why I don't pay much attention to either > the energy "crisis" or the global warming "crisis". I'm more concerned about energy than global warming... and I am more concerned with long term trends than with crises. > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? > >> So boil it down, what are your top ten beliefs? I'll give you mine >> (though I reserve the right to modify just what my top 10 are...): >> >> 1) Capitalism is the greatest single force for good in the history of >> the world because it promotes technology. > > Science is the greatest because it promotes understanding and technology. Capitalism has turned the number of scientists from dozens in 1750 to millions today. Science is good, and capitalism creates more of it, so I stick with my original stance. >> 2) Power seeking governments impede capitalism and are thus counter productive. > > "Power-seeking goverments" is redundant. ?Efficient government is a > contradiction. ?The best government is that which governs least. Why are we arguing? >> 3) There are evil people in the world that any system must compensate for. > > Holding those in the highest positions of power accountable to the law > will markedly reduce the "evil" in the world. Yeah, that worked for DSK. :-) >> 4) Religion is worst when promoting anti-scientific positions. > > Science works, religion doesn't. ?Religion is obsolete. OK. >> 5) Science is done by people and is not only not infallible, but also >> susceptible to human failings and politics. > > Of course.. But it isn't recognized enough. >> 6) We live in a resource constrained world. > > Once true, now mostly a myth. Oh, well, we got through the first five... >> 7) Individual politicians are often worse than governments, and rule through fear. > > Politicians should at all times live in fear of the rule of law,...or be honest. What if Anthony Weiner were honest? :-) >> 8) Aliens did not help the Egyptians build the pyramids, and the >> pyramids built Egypt. > > Huh?. Without the work projects the Egyptian nation would have collapsed. >> 9) Freedom is the single most important political concept. > > Everybody says freedom is important. ?It's iconic. ?But is it true? ?I > can't say. ?I've lived in a free (so they say) society all my life > and, without meaning to be cute, I'm not sure I know what freedom is, > having nothing really to compare it to. ?To me money is freedom and > lack of money is non-freedom. So now, you're promoting property rights... You are fun. :-) >> 10) Mothers are the core of society, when we undermine motherhood, we >> do so at our peril. > > I will not sully motherhood with a snarky remark. ? Whoops! ?Too ?late. Except for Mother Theresa, she can burn in hell. Except, dog damn it, there is no hell. Crap!! -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 21:39:05 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:39:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > Samantha wrote: > > On 07/01/2011 01:29 PM, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: >> Kelly, why don't you look beyond political borders? ?Who gives a > > "Sometimes we need to talk about these things because it is obvious people > still have a difficult time thinking about politics and economics in a sane > way or even having a fruitful discussion with others on these > topics. ? Granted the old labels are pretty useless. ?However the > underlying issues are very much alive." > > Agreed and thus my email. ?It's time to take a Buckminster Fuller approach > and start talking strategic insights that defuse borders that propagate > dogmatic and restrictive thinking. ?Take postmodernism for example: ?while > it has value for feminists, its rigidity is problematic. Take objectivists > for example: while the theory has value for discerning issues of existence, > its lack of objectivity is problematic. ?Take democracy for example: while > the political perspective has value for the inclusive of all voices > regardless of race, color, etc., its lack of logic is problematic. Take > conservatism for example: while the ideological view has value for > historical traditions, its lack of futurology is problematic. Take art for > example: while the field has value for creatives, its lack of insight about > the future is highly and unequivocally problematic. > > I have been saying this for 15 years on this list: if we want to be > future-oriented about socio-political issues, then we need a new strategy. The biggest problem America faces is that we don't have any REAL choices. You can choose Republicrat A or Republicrat B. So I agree that belief systems do need to be finer grained. But isms give you a bit of a head start on what someone MOSTLY believes, and you can go from there. Every system has some downsides, absolutely. It's just that universal slavery never seemed all that appealing to me. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 21:51:32 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:51:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 5 July 2011 17:55, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> My point is that what people perceive currently to be in their self >> interest is unlikely to turn on a dime. > > I am not sure I understand the idiom, but my point is that perceived > self-interest may equally create a "market demand" for Singularity as > for regression to paleolithic scenarios... An ocean liner cannot turn on a dime, but a Segway can. It refers to the speed of change a system is capable of. Economics is not a system that can be quickly ditched. We do see some movement away from money driven economics in Wiki...Land and the Open Source movement, but those are merely growing niches for the moment. I see the market demand pushing much more in the direction of the Singularity than in the direction of neopaleolithic scenarios. >> The thing is that by the time the meme is widespread enough to prevent >> the Singularity, it will already be too late for most people to change >> their minds. > > Let us hope so. My concern is that contrary to the opinion widespread > in the H+ circles the momentum of change is not that of an object > merrily flying in intergalactic space out of any resisting influence, > is actually more similar to that of a man trying to run in quicksand. > A constant, overhuman effort is required to keep it up. OK. > Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, > but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the > future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and > expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or > another on our lap. We do have to keep working at it, for sure. And until someone comes up with a different rationale, I'll stick with Kurzweil as a first approximation to what is likely to happen. Perhaps, you'll just have to call it faith in human nature. -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 7 22:17:06 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:17:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E163062.4060908@mac.com> On 07/07/2011 02:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> On 5 July 2011 17:55, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> My point is that what people perceive currently to be in their self >>> interest is unlikely to turn on a dime. >> I am not sure I understand the idiom, but my point is that perceived >> self-interest may equally create a "market demand" for Singularity as >> for regression to paleolithic scenarios... > An ocean liner cannot turn on a dime, but a Segway can. It refers to > the speed of change a system is capable of. Economics is not a system > that can be quickly ditched. We do see some movement away from money > driven economics in Wiki...Land and the Open Source movement, but > those are merely growing niches for the moment. I see the market > demand pushing much more in the direction of the Singularity than in > the direction of neopaleolithic scenarios. > I do not understand the use of paleolithic or neopaleolithic as opposed to singularity in this context. It seems like a rather loose way of speaking. Care to clarify what is meant? Economics will never be ditched in most of its critical components. There is always the need to choose how to utilize less than infinite resources (yes, even post-singularity) in a way that gains the most of what is valued. There are always more possible uses for resources than resources. These fundamentals will not go away post-singularity. Money at its most fundamental is a fungible value token. Hence it is rather crucial in any society complex enough to need more than direct barter and gift economy. - samantha From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Jul 7 22:53:20 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:53:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <20110707185320.c3928h4s3k0kkgo0@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Kelly Anderson : > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Natasha Vita-More > wrote: >> >> Samantha wrote: >> >> On 07/01/2011 01:29 PM, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: >>> Kelly, why don't you look beyond political borders? ?Who gives a >> >> "Sometimes we need to talk about these things because it is obvious people >> still have a difficult time thinking about politics and economics in a sane >> way or even having a fruitful discussion with others on these >> topics. ? Granted the old labels are pretty useless. ?However the >> underlying issues are very much alive." >> >> Agreed and thus my email. ?It's time to take a Buckminster Fuller approach >> and start talking strategic insights that defuse borders that propagate >> dogmatic and restrictive thinking. ?Take postmodernism for example: ?while >> it has value for feminists, its rigidity is problematic. Take objectivists >> for example: while the theory has value for discerning issues of existence, >> its lack of objectivity is problematic. ?Take democracy for example: while >> the political perspective has value for the inclusive of all voices >> regardless of race, color, etc., its lack of logic is problematic. Take >> conservatism for example: while the ideological view has value for >> historical traditions, its lack of futurology is problematic. Take art for >> example: while the field has value for creatives, its lack of insight about >> the future is highly and unequivocally problematic. >> >> I have been saying this for 15 years on this list: if we want to be >> future-oriented about socio-political issues, then we need a new strategy. > > The biggest problem America faces is that we don't have any REAL > choices. You can choose Republicrat A or Republicrat B. So I agree > that belief systems do need to be finer grained. But isms give you a > bit of a head start on what someone MOSTLY believes, and you can go > from there. Every system has some downsides, absolutely. It's just > that universal slavery never seemed all that appealing to me. We have very real choices, one of which is social networking. Recently a jury determined that a woman was not guilty even though substantial evidence indicated that she commited a murder or intentionally covered up an accidental death, thereby contributing to a serious legal offense worthy of jail time. Shocked by the outcome and within minutes of the verdict, a social networking project exposed a Petition to create a new law, which has obtained over 400,000 signatures so far. It is this type of passion that outspeaks left or right. Natasha From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 23:12:16 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:12:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: <4E15520E.30403@moulton.com> References: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> <4E15520E.30403@moulton.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:28 PM, F. C. Moulton wrote: snip > I think I first heard it in the late 1970s. ?The term "automagically" > was likely developed independently in several areas and by several > groups. ?I have seen a reference to the term "automagic" used in the > 1940s in advertising. Looks like Fred got it right. http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=automagically&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_min:Jan%201_2%201900,cd_max:Jan%2031_2%201950&num=10 Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 7 23:57:52 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 17:57:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: <20110707185320.c3928h4s3k0kkgo0@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> <20110707185320.c3928h4s3k0kkgo0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 4:53 PM, wrote: > Quoting Kelly Anderson : > >> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Natasha Vita-More ? >> wrote: >> The biggest problem America faces is that we don't have any REAL >> choices. You can choose Republicrat A or Republicrat B. So I agree >> that belief systems do need to be finer grained. But isms give you a >> bit of a head start on what someone MOSTLY believes, and you can go >> from there. Every system has some downsides, absolutely. It's just >> that universal slavery never seemed all that appealing to me. > > We have very real choices, one of which is social networking. > > Recently a jury determined that a woman was not guilty even though > substantial evidence indicated that she commited a murder or intentionally > covered up an accidental death, thereby contributing to a serious legal > offense worthy of jail time. Shocked by the outcome and within minutes of > the verdict, a social networking project exposed a Petition to create a new > law, which has obtained over 400,000 signatures so far. ?It is this type of > passion that outspeaks left or right. I respect you Natasha, however, this is just details... today's weather. The climate is Republicrat. As to the outcome of the trial, better that 100 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man go to jail. If they get their law changed, I hope it doesn't endanger double jeopardy. -Kelly From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Jul 8 00:38:28 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:38:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Philanthropy In-Reply-To: References: <20110701162943.y87y4xpgcg0gcgkk@webmail.natasha.cc> <4E0E72FA.7030906@mac.com> <996719E2D0044ABDB1F9F8DB360A5453@DFC68LF1> <20110707185320.c3928h4s3k0kkgo0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <20110707203828.dnuvelvsw0ks800g@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Kelly Anderson : > On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 4:53 PM, wrote: >> Quoting Kelly Anderson : >> >>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Natasha Vita-More ? >>> wrote: >>> The biggest problem America faces is that we don't have any REAL >>> choices. You can choose Republicrat A or Republicrat B. So I agree >>> that belief systems do need to be finer grained. But isms give you a >>> bit of a head start on what someone MOSTLY believes, and you can go >>> from there. Every system has some downsides, absolutely. It's just >>> that universal slavery never seemed all that appealing to me. I did not write the above statement. I wrote: >> We have very real choices, one of which is social networking. >> >> Recently a jury determined that a woman was not guilty even though >> substantial evidence indicated that she commited a murder or intentionally >> covered up an accidental death, thereby contributing to a serious legal >> offense worthy of jail time. Shocked by the outcome and within minutes of >> the verdict, a social networking project exposed a Petition to create a new >> law, which has obtained over 400,000 signatures so far. ?It is this type of >> passion that outspeaks left or right. > > I respect you Natasha, however, this is just details... today's > weather. The climate is Republicrat. I have no idea what you are talking about, but please don't bother to explain because it is not interesting to me. > As to the outcome of the trial, better that 100 guilty men go free > than 1 innocent man go to jail. It is far better that 100 guilty men do get convicted and 1 innocent man does go free. > If they get their law changed, I hope > it doesn't endanger double jeopardy. I am not sure what you are referring to. I did not say any law should be changed. Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Jul 8 00:40:08 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:40:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4E14AC2E.3060204@satx.rr.com> <4E15520E.30403@moulton.com> Message-ID: <20110707204008.7rkbrt0plwsk0sog@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Keith Henson : > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:28 PM, F. C. Moulton wrote: > > snip > >> I think I first heard it in the late 1970s. ?The term "automagically" >> was likely developed independently in several areas and by several >> groups. ?I have seen a reference to the term "automagic" used in the >> 1940s in advertising. > > Looks like Fred got it right. > > http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=automagically&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_min:Jan%201_2%201900,cd_max:Jan%2031_2%201950&num=10 Yes - right. Thanks Fred! Natasha From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 8 01:45:47 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 18:45:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] stem cell matrix artificial organ implanted Message-ID: <012b01cc3d10$c2bd78f0$48386ad0$@att.net> Hey cool, check this: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/07/trachea.transplant/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 8 03:53:13 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 20:53:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 3 d printer with moving parts Message-ID: <015101cc3d22$90f5ec00$b2e1c400$@att.net> This is a hell of a cool trick. I don't know how they can do it with moving parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 10:43:06 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 12:43:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Universal Computing Red Herring [WAS AI Motivation revisited] In-Reply-To: <4E1473AC.2030505@susaro.com> References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E1473AC.2030505@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/6 Richard Loosemore : > Stefano Vaj wrote: >> I am not sure I understand what the choice of using or non-using it >> might imply, but if AGI indicated Artificial *General* Intelligence, >> there might be something mystifying in the term "general", since >> either it refers to universal computing - and in that case it must be >> noted for the umpteenth time that almost everything is a universal >> computer - or it implies that some more fundamental differences would >> exist amongst different universal computers other than a performance >> edge at a given task, which is basically false. > > Can I just reiterate that universal computing has absolutely NOTHING to do > with any of the issues related to Artificial General Intelligence, or the > possibility of a hard takeoff, or the viability of human-like artificial > intelligence. Such an unqualified assumption sounds quite weird. Do you seriously expect that AGIs could be implemented on non-universal computing devices? After all, human beings themselves do exhibit universal computing capabilities... :-/ -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 15:57:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 09:57:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 3 d printer with moving parts In-Reply-To: <015101cc3d22$90f5ec00$b2e1c400$@att.net> References: <015101cc3d22$90f5ec00$b2e1c400$@att.net> Message-ID: If the model leaves enough space between the parts, then you can blow out the powder between the moving parts once you are done printing. I think they skipped the step where they modified the cad to make the hidden parts of the wrench work. Notice on the big gear thingy, that the movement is a little loose. I would suspect that it would be possible to get spaces about the size of a human hair, but the smaller you go, the harder it would be to get the non-bound powder out. I wouldn't want to depend on that wrench to get me down from space... :-) He didn't torque it very hard the way I was looking at it. Nevertheless, very cool indeed. Now, if it could just print a brain... :-) -Kelly On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:53 PM, spike wrote: > This is a hell of a cool trick. ?I don't know how they can do it with moving > parts: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw > > 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 Fri Jul 8 16:51:05 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:51:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" Message-ID: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> The Strange Silencing of Liberal America JOHN PILGER - New Statesman Obama's greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the US. How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? Year Zero had already alerted much of the world to Pol Pot's horrors, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia. Six months later, a PBS official told me: "This wasn't censorship. We're into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry." In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, deniable censorship. The journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of more than 50 television films that were never shown or indefinitely delayed. The word "ban" was rarely used, and those responsible would invariably insist they believed in free speech. The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free speech. The foundation's website says it is "dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity". Authors, film-makers and poets make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford. The foundation also awards "grants" to America's liberal media, such as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio programme Democracy Now!. In Britain, it has been a supporter of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. In 2008, Patrick Lannan backed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is "devoted" to Obama. World of not-knowing On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, The War You Don't See, which investigates the false image-making of warmakers, especially Obama. I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the Lannan Foundation official organising my visit. The tone was incredulous. "Something has come up," she wrote. Patrick Lannan had called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. "I have no idea what this is all about," she wrote. Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead, as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that "all" my events were cancelled, "and this includes the screening of your film". On the Lannan Foundation website, "cancelled" appeared across a picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls was returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing descended. The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the foundation put out a terse statement that too few tickets had been sold to make my visit "viable", and that "the Foundation regrets that the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr Pilger or to the public at the time the decision was made". Doubts were cast by a robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The paper, which has long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan Foundation events, disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be pulled hurriedly. "Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre]." The manager of The Screen, the Santa Fe cinema that had been rented for the premiere, was called late at night and told to kill all his online promotion for my film. He was given no explanation, but took it on himself to reschedule the film for 23 June. It was a sell-out, with many people turned away. The idea that there was no public interest was demonstrably not true. Symptom of suppression Theories? There are many, but nothing is proven. For me, it is all reminiscent of long shadows cast during the cold war. "Something is going to surface," said Barsamian. "They can't keep the lid on this." My 15 June talk was to have been about the collusion of American liberalism in a permanent state of war and in the demise of cherished freedoms, such as the right to call governments to account. In the US, as in Britain, serious dissent -- free speech -- has been substantially criminalised. Obama the black liberal, the PC exemplar, the marketing dream, is as much a warmonger as George W Bush. His score is six wars. Never in US presidential history has the White House prosecuted so many whistleblowers, yet this truth-telling, this exercise of true citizenship, is at the heart of America's constitutional First Amendment. Obama's greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the US, including the anti-war movement. The reaction to the cancellation has been illuminating. The brave, such as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, were appalled and said so. Similarly, many ordinary Americans called in to radio stations and have written to me, recognising a symptom of far greater suppression. But some exalted liberal voices have been affronted that I dared whisper the word censorship about such a beacon of "cultural freedom". The embarrassment of those who wish to point both ways is palpable. Others have pulled down the shutters and said nothing. Given their patron's ruthless show of power, it is understandable. For them, the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote: "When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 17:03:11 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 19:03:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 6 July 2011 20:34, Keith Henson wrote: > 2011/7/6 Max More : >> ??"Automagically" -- Stefano, did you just make that up? I like it. > > Been around a long time. ?Google it. Yes, I am afraid I have not any serious copyright claim... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 17:08:50 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 19:08:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 7 July 2011 23:51, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I see the market > demand pushing much more in the direction of the Singularity than in > the direction of neopaleolithic scenarios. Well, it depends on... the market demands. Which is not an independent variable. See for instance all the issue pertaining to Global Warming. What is the "market demand" for emission reduction? It depends. > We do have to keep working at it, for sure. And until someone comes up > with a different rationale, I'll stick with Kurzweil as a first > approximation to what is likely to happen. Perhaps, you'll just have > to call it faith in human nature. I have more faith in human *action*. Im Anfang war die Tat... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 17:15:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 19:15:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E163062.4060908@mac.com> References: <4E163062.4060908@mac.com> Message-ID: On 8 July 2011 00:17, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Economics will never be ditched in most of > its critical components. ?There is always the need to choose how to utilize > less than infinite resources (yes, even post-singularity) in a way that > gains the most of what is valued. ?There are always more possible uses for > resources than resources. ?These fundamentals will not go away > post-singularity. ? Money at its most fundamental is a fungible value token. > ? Hence it is rather crucial in any society complex enough to need more than > direct barter and gift economy. I agree that economics is economics. Money is simply a measure of perceived value which is utilised to simplify transactions. Open source, Wikipedia or more traditional philanthropy or volunteer work - or vacations in the Caribbeans or acquiring a trophy wife for that matter - have a perceived value for those engaged in them even though they do not directly translate directly in any additional revenues. Such value, by the way, can usually be waived exchanged against money or other benefits. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 16:48:46 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 18:48:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Space Renaissance In-Reply-To: <3d1fc3bf-d9f1-47af-844f-3cdb165fb329@n28g2000vbs.googlegroups.com> References: <3d1fc3bf-d9f1-47af-844f-3cdb165fb329@n28g2000vbs.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: Space Renaissance? I would rather say Space Middle Age... :-( ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Walter Putnam Date: 7 July 2011 20:55 Subject: Space Renaissance To: cosmic-engineers+owner at googlegroups.com Results from Space Renaissance International's first Congress -- an online conference involving dozens of participants from around the world: Space Renaissance International ?s First Online Congress world wide web - July 6th, 2011 With a membership composed of space enthusiasts all over the world, holding a meeting on the Internet seems like just the thing to do. On two days, June 25 and 26, 2011, Space Renaissance International lived up to its name by holding its first Congress on line. Hosted by SRI President Adriano Autino and moderated by Florida space writer G B Leatherwood, the Congress was attended by over 85 members and observers from countries including Italy, the US, Australia, Chile, Mexico, Sri Lanka and many others. The main topics for discussion were downsizing the cost to orbit, space industrialization, conveying public support and private investment for the new space industry, urging governments to develop space based solar power, and developing a space policy harmonizing the interests of all countries. To implement these broad and extensive objectives, three projects were presented for group discussion and approval: A civilization risk assessment and management project; ?identifying the most promising space industrialization development line; and a project to determine the feasibility and design of a virtual O?Neill Habitat to be settled at an Earth-Moon Lagrange point. In its 2009 ?Space Renaissance Manifesto,? SRI said ?The resources of the Solar System are nearly limitless, whether measured in energy (clean, renewable, readily harvested,) valuable physical materials, or simply space to live and grow. Even a tithe of those resources would allow every person who will live this millennium to enjoy a standard of living higher than any currently available on Earth.? During the conference, Mr. Walter Putnam put it this way: ?We need to open new ways of looking at Earth and the Cosmos, with shared values of humanity, rather than remaining locked into philosophies from the 19th and 20th centuries, many from much earlier in history.? Former NASA engineer and risk management specialist Dr. Feng Hsu added, ?Space renaissance is a new ideology which must replace socialism and capitalism altogether. SRI is not just about space, it?s about sustainable human development and survival.? The Congress reconvenes on Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, June 10, 2011, again by Internet to finalize plans and accept individual responsibilities for leadership of the projects approved in the first session. Anyone interested in human expansion into the unlimited realm of space is invited to attend by registering at the SRI web site, www.spacerenaissance.org. Contact: Adriano V. Autino (EU) ? ? ? ?email: aa at tdf.it ? ? ? ? tel.: +39 335 8244435 G. B. Leatherwood (US) ? ? ? ?email: gleatherwood at gmail.com ? ? tel.: +1 3522 328460 Kim Peart (Australasia) ? ? ? ?email: kimpeart at iinet.net.au ? ?tel.: +61 0400 856 523 -- Stefano Vaj From sjatkins at mac.com Fri Jul 8 18:25:41 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:25:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> On 07/08/2011 10:08 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 7 July 2011 23:51, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> I see the market >> demand pushing much more in the direction of the Singularity than in >> the direction of neopaleolithic scenarios. > Well, it depends on... the market demands. Which is not an independent > variable. See for instance all the issue pertaining to Global Warming. > What is the "market demand" for emission reduction? It depends. > Some day I will believe humanity has become more rational. It will be just after it stops talking about GW as being its main concern in the next few decades. Even the IPCC studies to no support the kind of alarm bandied about on this subject. The median temperature gain over the century from the many studies presented is 1.5 C. I think it is pretty obvious that that isn't going to wipe out humanity any time soon and is not anywhere near as pressing a threat as say economic meltdown and/or major energy wars. But when I say as much even extremely bright people act as if I am promoting creationism. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Fri Jul 8 18:30:51 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:30:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> One possible take home from this is that government funding of broadcast media opens the way for political culling of content. Not a big surprise. This happens in research grants as well. At the best a lot of enshrining of pre-established viewpoints inevitably occurs. - s On 07/08/2011 09:51 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > The Strange Silencing of Liberal America > > JOHN PILGER - New Statesman > > > > > Obama's greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced > much of liberal opinion in the US. > > > How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film > Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia was banned in the United > States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were > ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. > But what? Year Zero had already alerted much of the world to Pol Pot's > horrors, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon > administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of > Cambodia. > > Six months later, a PBS official told me: "This wasn't censorship. > We're into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would > have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry." > > In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, > deniable censorship. The journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of more > than 50 television films that were never shown or indefinitely > delayed. The word "ban" was rarely used, and those responsible would > invariably insist they believed in free speech. > > The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free > speech. The foundation's website says it is "dedicated to cultural > freedom, diversity and creativity". Authors, film-makers and poets > make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the > billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford. > > The foundation also awards "grants" to America's liberal media, such > as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of > the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio > programme Democracy Now!. In Britain, it has been a supporter of the > Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. > In 2008, Patrick Lannan backed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. > According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is "devoted" to Obama. > > World of not-knowing > > On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a > platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. > The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, The > War You Don't See, which investigates the false image-making of > warmakers, especially Obama. > > I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the > Lannan Foundation official organising my visit. The tone was > incredulous. "Something has come up," she wrote. Patrick Lannan had > called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. "I have no idea > what this is all about," she wrote. > > Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead, > as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that "all" > my events were cancelled, "and this includes the screening of your > film". On the Lannan Foundation website, "cancelled" appeared across a > picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls was > returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing > descended. > > The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the > foundation put out a terse statement that too few tickets had been > sold to make my visit "viable", and that "the Foundation regrets that > the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr Pilger or to > the public at the time the decision was made". Doubts were cast by a > robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The paper, which has > long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan Foundation events, > disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising > and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be > pulled hurriedly. "Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to > a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre]." > > The manager of The Screen, the Santa Fe cinema that had been rented > for the premiere, was called late at night and told to kill all his > online promotion for my film. He was given no explanation, but took it > on himself to reschedule the film for 23 June. It was a sell-out, with > many people turned away. The idea that there was no public interest > was demonstrably not true. > > Symptom of suppression > > Theories? There are many, but nothing is proven. For me, it is all > reminiscent of long shadows cast during the cold war. "Something is > going to surface," said Barsamian. "They can't keep the lid on this." > > My 15 June talk was to have been about the collusion of American > liberalism in a permanent state of war and in the demise of cherished > freedoms, such as the right to call governments to account. In the US, > as in Britain, serious dissent -- free speech -- has been > substantially criminalised. Obama the black liberal, the PC exemplar, > the marketing dream, is as much a warmonger as George W Bush. His > score is six wars. Never in US presidential history has the White > House prosecuted so many whistleblowers, yet this truth-telling, this > exercise of true citizenship, is at the heart of America's > constitutional First Amendment. Obama's greatest achievement is having > seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the US, > including the anti-war movement. > > The reaction to the cancellation has been illuminating. The brave, > such as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, were appalled and > said so. Similarly, many ordinary Americans called in to radio > stations and have written to me, recognising a symptom of far greater > suppression. But some exalted liberal voices have been affronted that > I dared whisper the word censorship about such a beacon of "cultural > freedom". The embarrassment of those who wish to point both ways is > palpable. Others have pulled down the shutters and said nothing. Given > their patron's ruthless show of power, it is understandable. For them, > the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote: "When truth > is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sjatkins at mac.com Fri Jul 8 18:48:56 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:48:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> Message-ID: <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> On 07/05/2011 09:46 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> Human stupidity is rampant and increases when you make it supposedly "safe" >> to be stupid. So? >> >> I can't protect idiots from their idiocy and I refuse to bind free and >> honest people to attempt to do so. > Ok, Samantha, I'm going to give you the opportunity to try and convert > me into an Anarchist/Capitalist. First, I buy the idea that the less > government, the better. > > You state that an A/C state would have a private legal system. I agree > that there is a need for some kind of legal system, but when you have > one body (call it government or not) without a balance of power, does > it not make sense that the unbalanced power, in this case the > judicial, would become all powerful? How does your proposed system > prevent this NGO legal system from becoming the most powerful element > of society? > Who said it was unbalanced? Not I. Just DRO organizations are mostly just private businesses for settling disputes. If a DRO gets out of line too much it loses business or is censured by its peers. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard133.html http://www.amazon.com/New-Liberty-Libertarian-Manifesto/dp/0930073029 > Also, since stupidity is so common and rampant, (also agreed) how do > we protect the smart from mobs of hungry stupid people? Do we have a > non-governmental police force/army? How do you keep that system from > becoming the most powerful element of society? How do you keep them > from accepting bribes and thus corrupting the system. > People largely defend themselves. Crime goes down when the possible victims are or are thought to be armed. Your question also assumes that the less capable will be less well off which is an unwarranted assumption. And yes, there are also private security forces but not a monopolistic centralized police force and especially not a para-military one with weapons that most people cannot own. Here again you are presuming a problem in something you thought up which was not advocated by me. > Corruption is at least as common as stupidity. Don't put near unanswerable power in a group with a monopoly on the initiation of aggression (definitive of government). There is then a lot less convenient, overly tempting, legalized force backed power to buy. Can you corrupt a DRO? Sure. And it, unlike the government, can fully be brought to trial and sued into oblivion is corruption is proven. > Finally, how do we protect the environment such that everyone has the > same ability to exploit nature without destroying it at the expense of > everyone else? Rothbard word extensively about this in For a New Liberty and other works. Best to refer there. > To me, this is one area where the early USA did not > live up to the zeitgeist of today, and I don't want to go back. Actually, the zietgeist of today is seriously warped on environmental and many other issues and I would happily "go back". > I > don't want environmentalist terrorism or dictatorship, but I do want > to protect the environment so that we don't get strip mines everywhere > leaking heavy metals into the water sources. This is direct property damage and damage to health of your neighbors and would be an offense in a anachist society as well. What makes you think it would not or that you need all the machinery of government to successfully prosecute such cases? > This was pretty common in > the early western united states and I don't want to go back to that > sort of anarchy. You are confusing anarchy with lack of rational law which is a classic mistake. > Also, how do you strike a balance in protecting children from their > parents, and parental rights? Who does this if there is no government? Government doesn't do this well today. Children in an anarchist society as well as other interested adults can charge parents if there is evidence of abuse. > The closest thing we have in history to anarchy/capitalism is the wild > west, no? It did not seem to be the best system in history to me. Nope. Not in the least. Read Rothbard and get back to me. > I am sincere in that if you can answer my questions, I'm more than > willing to give up my psychological crutch of the necessity of > government. > Cool. I think you will enjoy the reading. - samantha From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 19:33:38 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 12:33:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Something completely different (there is hope afterall) Message-ID: This is something that has not been covered by news nor (as near as I can tell) has it been the subject of a press release. But it is fairly well known to those in the business. NASA Ames brought a 1.2 MW, 110 GHz gyrotron for testing beamed energy propulsion. They still need the power supply, which is 70 kV at 30 A but it's a relatively small cost. Up close it will provide well over 10 MW/m^2.to test hydrogen heaters. They intend to offer it the same way as the wind tunnels, as a national engineering test asset. I think it is an accepted truth that you need single stage to orbit and that it must be a reusable launch vehicle to get the cost to GEO down to where power satellites make sense economically. Given the current state of material science and the best exhaust velocity you can get from chemical propulsion, neither of these are feasible. To put numbers on the problem, it takes 9000 m/s to get into LEO. For 4500 m/s rocket engines, that's a delta V of twice the exhaust velocity. The rocket equation gives a mass ration of 7.4 which means the vehicle and payload can't be more than 13.5% of the takeoff mass. For a vehicle to be reusable, the accepted minimum structure is 15%, leaving less than zero for payload. (Skylon cheats by burning air partway up, but it's not enough to get a lot of payload to LEO.) But if you have 9000 m/s exhaust velocity, which can be done with hydrogen heated with microwaves or lasers, then the mass ratio is a little less than 3. So vehicle and payload can be 36% of takeoff mass. If half vehicle and half payload, that's 18% each. So a 300 ton vehicle with a dry mass of 54 tons could put 54 tons in LEO. The falling cost of microwave power and laser power makes these options possible. Beamed power doesn't make economic sense unless you are talking cargo volumes in the hundreds of thousands of tons per year. I should also add that I never thought NASA would do something so sensible. Those of you who know Pete Warden might send him a thank you note.. Keith Henson From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 19:50:56 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 12:50:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: snip > Some day I will believe humanity has become more rational. ?It will be just > after it stops talking about GW as being its main concern in the next few > decades. ?Even the IPCC studies to no support the kind of alarm bandied > about on this subject. ?The median temperature gain over the century from > the many studies presented is 1.5 C. ?I think it is pretty obvious that that > isn't going to wipe out humanity any time soon and is not anywhere near as > pressing a threat as say economic meltdown and/or major energy wars. ? ?But > when I say as much even extremely bright people act as if I am promoting > creationism. The really silly part is that solutions to both the economic meltdown and staying out of energy wars take exactly same steps as reducing carbon emissions. That seems to be something that seems impossible to get across. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 8 20:00:50 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:00:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Webb scope to be killed Message-ID: <4E1761F2.5050600@satx.rr.com> Sigh. From rloosemore at susaro.com Fri Jul 8 20:39:16 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> Message-ID: <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > One possible take home from this is that government funding of > broadcast media opens the way for political culling of content. Not > a big surprise. This happens in research grants as well. At the best > a lot of enshrining of pre-established viewpoints inevitably occurs. Garbage. The foundation referred to in John Pilger's essay is not "government funded". And by contrast one of the most respected neutral media organizations in the world, for all its limitations and drawbacks, is government funded: the British Broadcasting Corporation. Richard Loosemore From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Jul 9 03:51:29 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 20:51:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Webb scope to be killed In-Reply-To: <4E1761F2.5050600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310183489.90255.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sigh. Even by government standards canceling the Webb Telescope would be brain dead dumb, if NASA needs to save money then kill the Idiotic Shit Station. When you think about it lately the surprising discoveries in fundamental physics have all come from astronomical instruments, Black Holes, Neutron Stars, Dark Mass, Dark Energy, Neutrino mass and oscillation; particle accelerators haven't discovered anything unexpected in 35 years. I wish they'd named it the Ronald Reagan Telescope, the Tea Party people wouldn't dare to even hint about killing it then. ? ?John K Clark ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 05:08:36 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 01:08:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: CNN - Time Warner FOX - News Corp NBC - GE/Vivendi Political culling via government? Please. More like corporate cultoids playing games with/ruining the brains of millions of unsuspecting dopes. Money run wild. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 05:02:12 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 01:02:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > Government doesn't do this well today. Children in an anarchist society as > well as other interested adults can charge parents if there is evidence of > abuse. > > Are you serious? This isn't an answer, and I doubt you can give one. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 06:17:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 00:17:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/8 Will Steinberg : > On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> >> Government doesn't do this well today. ?Children in an anarchist society >> as well as other interested adults can charge parents if there is evidence >> of abuse. > > Are you serious? ?This isn't an answer, and I doubt you can give one. So in an anarchy, everyone is a police man? Sounds a bit like East Germany, in the bad old days... I think I'm with Will on this one... there is no good answer to child abuse in a free society... That being said, Samantha's suggestion is really pretty much how it works here in the US today. Absolutely not a perfect system, FAR from it. Take it from someone who has dealt with DCFS a lot more than he should have. The other thing to throw in is busybody teachers looking for unexplained bruises... My friend who is Korean has to go into the teacher on the first day of school, show them the blue marks on the backs of his children, and explain that they are common in the genetic pool of Koreans, and NOT bruises... sad that he has to take that defensive a position just to start with. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 06:32:18 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 00:32:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 7 July 2011 23:51, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> I see the market >> demand pushing much more in the direction of the Singularity than in >> the direction of neopaleolithic scenarios. > > Well, it depends on... the market demands. Which is not an independent > variable. See for instance all the issue pertaining to Global Warming. > What is the "market demand" for emission reduction? It depends. I don't think the ECONOMICS of global warming are in any question whatsoever. There are too many people who won't pay to offset global warming in any significant way until the tipping point is reached, and the climate change is VERY hard to reverse. It is just too expensive to do anything about it, unless we come up with economic methods of CO2 sequestration, which is conceivably possible. >> We do have to keep working at it, for sure. And until someone comes up >> with a different rationale, I'll stick with Kurzweil as a first >> approximation to what is likely to happen. Perhaps, you'll just have >> to call it faith in human nature. > > I have more faith in human *action*. Im Anfang war die Tat... :-) But there are thousands of humans in action keeping to the curves in question. Time will tell, of course. -Kelly "Predicting the future is easy, if you wait long enough." From max at maxmore.com Sat Jul 9 05:36:37 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 22:36:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: Your argument -- "garbage" -- is very impressive. What Samantha said is not garbage at all. For those willing to look, the evidence is all around. It's especially abundant in the areas of climate change and nutrition. But, go ahead, nationalize (monopolize) all the media and then see how much freedom of speech remains. Because that's always worked so well in the past. --Max On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> One possible take home from this is that government funding of broadcast >> media opens the way for political culling of content. Not a big surprise. >> This happens in research grants as well. At the best a lot of enshrining >> of pre-established viewpoints inevitably occurs. >> > Garbage. > > > -- > Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 06:39:26 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 00:39:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 07/08/2011 10:08 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Some day I will believe humanity has become more rational. ?It will be just > after it stops talking about GW as being its main concern in the next few > decades. ?Even the IPCC studies to no support the kind of alarm bandied > about on this subject. ?The median temperature gain over the century from > the many studies presented is 1.5 C. ?I think it is pretty obvious that that > isn't going to wipe out humanity any time soon and is not anywhere near as > pressing a threat as say economic meltdown and/or major energy wars. ? ?But > when I say as much even extremely bright people act as if I am promoting > creationism. Global Warming may be a big problem, but not so large as the overall economy, IMHO. So I agree with Samantha on this one. However, a 2-4 C change can have pretty large impacts... Probably the biggest single risk of global warming I am aware of is the chance that the gulf stream will stop circulating. That would honestly be very bad for Europe, causing it to develop a climate similar to Canada at the same latitude. Looking at the globe, this would be bad, really bad. Probably good for somewhere else, but we have a lot of infrastructure in Europe, and it would be a real shame to lose that. This may be one reason that Europeans are generally more alarmed about GW than Americans. The problem is that so many people aren't concerned about it, that it will likely be impossible to do anything about it. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 08:04:50 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 09:04:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/9 Max More wrote: > What Samantha said is not garbage at all. For those willing to look, the > evidence is all around. It's especially abundant in the areas of climate > change and nutrition. > > But, go ahead, nationalize (monopolize) all the media and then see how much > freedom of speech remains. Because that's always worked so well in the past. > > The discussion is opposing two extreme views. East German state-controlled media where the people only see the government approved news and opinions, versus Corporate state controlled media where the people see news and opinion that will produce benefits for the corporations that run the state. The best the real world can achieve is a balance between the two, like the BBC. It is equally bad to assume (like Samantha) that all evil - and only evil- comes from the government as to assume that all good - and no evil- comes from businesses. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 9 12:06:10 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 14:06:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 12:39:26AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Global Warming may be a big problem, but not so large as the overall > economy, IMHO. So I agree with Samantha on this one. However, a 2-4 C Global warming can push 2 gigapeople over the brink of starvation. This will trigger migrations and wars, including wars with the potential to turn nuclear. (But, hey, what is a nuclear war compared to burning issues the "teh economy"?) This is not a financial or even economic crisis. It is far, far worse. We're facing a systemic crisis through confluence of some ten factors, but the core driver behind all these is overshoot. This is serious, and it needs to be addressed three to four decades ago. > change can have pretty large impacts... Probably the biggest single > risk of global warming I am aware of is the chance that the gulf > stream will stop circulating. That would honestly be very bad for > Europe, causing it to develop a climate similar to Canada at the same That's distinctly a first world problem. > latitude. Looking at the globe, this would be bad, really bad. > Probably good for somewhere else, but we have a lot of infrastructure > in Europe, and it would be a real shame to lose that. This may be one > reason that Europeans are generally more alarmed about GW than > Americans. > > The problem is that so many people aren't concerned about it, that it > will likely be impossible to do anything about it. Climate change is only one aspect of overshoot, and even there you're completely ignoring major issues like precipitation shifts and food crop loss leading to starvation and war, ocean acidification and anoxification with further degradation of sea ecosystem and food web, infrastructure destruction due to extreme weather events and multiple other factors which we'll learn as the situation develops. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 13:01:48 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 14:01:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Global warming can push 2 gigapeople over the brink of starvation. > This will trigger migrations and wars, including wars with the potential > to turn nuclear. (But, hey, what is a nuclear war compared to burning > issues the "teh economy"?) > > This is not a financial or even economic crisis. It is far, far worse. > We're facing a systemic crisis through confluence of some ten factors, > but the core driver behind all these is overshoot. This is serious, > and it needs to be addressed three to four decades ago. > > Climate change is only one aspect of overshoot, and even there you're completely > ignoring major issues like precipitation shifts and food crop loss > leading to starvation and war, ocean acidification and anoxification > with further degradation of sea ecosystem and food web, infrastructure > destruction due to extreme weather events and multiple other factors > which we'll learn as the situation develops. > > So, apart from that, we'll be OK then???? BillK From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jul 9 14:40:45 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 10:40:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: The sad thing is that so much Libertarian thought completely ignores the good deeds of the federal government. I recently read a story about a Native American family in Nevada who got chased out of a gas station by skinheads in a car, forced into an accident, and then beaten. The skinheads were friends with the cops and they didn't get in any trouble. Of course, this is wrong, so the FBI is investigating. I guess it is easy to think everyone would play nice if we erased all the rules, if you live in San Francisco or something and can't see the rest of America over the mountains, but keep in mind that there are places all too willing to slip back into Wild West chaos. You don't have to support Big Brother to support sensible infrastructure. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rloosemore at susaro.com Sat Jul 9 15:43:18 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:43:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E187716.1030307@susaro.com> Max More wrote: > Your argument -- "garbage" -- is very impressive. > > What Samantha said is not garbage at all. For those willing to look, > the evidence is all around. It's especially abundant in the areas of > climate change and nutrition. > > But, go ahead, nationalize (monopolize) all the media and then see how > much freedom of speech remains. Because that's always worked so well > in the past. The word "garbage" was the opening summary, it was not the argument. If you had read a few more words you would have seen the argument. You made no attempt to address the information I gave following the word "garbage". Instead, you just waved your hands. Now get down to the facts. The BBC is government funded. It has some grave shortcomings, but it is also credited as being one of the most valuable, unbiased news sources to billions of people around the world. In addition, the organization that committed the offence that John Pilger referred to -- the censorship -- was NOT government funded. On both counts, no evidence that government funded media is the source of the problem in the article by John Pilger. That makes Samantha's complaint garbage, since it pointed the finger at goverment funded media, contra the two pieces of evidence I gave. Now, on a more general level, yes, government funded media in many countries is pure propaganda. But completely non-government-funded media (e.g. Fox) is also pure propaganda. My point is that there is no strong correlation: you can have the one with, or without, the other. Richard Loosemore From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 9 16:28:23 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 18:28:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110709162823.GA16178@leitl.org> On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 02:01:48PM +0100, BillK wrote: > So, apart from that, we'll be OK then???? To manage overshoot (we're in the early phases of where we state to deviate from the exponential) you need to improve the carrying capacity of the underlying ecosystem. If we fail to do that for a while we'll get a die-off. This is awful, no good, pretty bad. Don't want to do that. In an ideal world we have begun addressing these problems around 1975 latest. We do not live in an ideal world. The peak fossil issue is a kind of a touching stone. Will we be able to ace that, we're likely to be able to address the food and resource issue, as well as develop the ability to sustainably innovate in a steady-state population with according demographic. We stumble and fall on this first step, we're unlikely to ever claw our way back. We can do it. Will we do it? We'll know soon enough. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From max at maxmore.com Sat Jul 9 19:33:32 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 12:33:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Oakland police with body cameras Message-ID: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43696646/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ This would be a good thing -- but only if policy are prevented from editing the videotapes (not merely prohibited) and if citizens are equally allowed to record police in these encounters. --Max -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Jul 10 00:15:32 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:15:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Wikipedia - Need Information about Editing Picture In-Reply-To: <20110709162823.GA16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110709162823.GA16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110709201532.iqllqzwogsg8wk4w@webmail.natasha.cc> Hi all, I have a question: how do I edit the picture someone put on my Wikipedia page to remove the text?? Someone recently added a profession for me which is not accurate.? I tried to change it but I cannot find how to edit the text added to an image. I appreciate your help. Thanks, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nymphomation at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 00:31:07 2011 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:31:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Wikipedia - Need Information about Editing Picture In-Reply-To: <20110709201532.iqllqzwogsg8wk4w@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110709162823.GA16178@leitl.org> <20110709201532.iqllqzwogsg8wk4w@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: 2011/7/10 : > Hi all, > > I have a question: how do I edit the picture someone put on my Wikipedia > page to remove the text?? Someone recently added a profession for me which > is not accurate.? I tried to change it but I cannot find how to edit the > text added to an image. > > I appreciate your help. Click on 'Edit', top right of the page, between 'Read' & 'View History'? Seems to work.. :o) Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 00:49:50 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 17:49:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wikipedia - Need Information about Editing Picture In-Reply-To: <20110709201532.iqllqzwogsg8wk4w@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110709162823.GA16178@leitl.org> <20110709201532.iqllqzwogsg8wk4w@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: I fixed it Keith 2011/7/9 : > Hi all, > > I have a question: how do I edit the picture someone put on my Wikipedia > page to remove the text?? Someone recently added a profession for me which > is not accurate.? I tried to change it but I cannot find how to edit the > text added to an image. > > I appreciate your help. > > Thanks, > > Natasha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 02:09:59 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 22:09:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E187716.1030307@susaro.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E187716.1030307@susaro.com> Message-ID: On Jul 9, 2011 11:44 AM, "Richard Loosemore" wrote: > > Max More wrote: >> >> Your argument -- "garbage" -- is very impressive. >> What Samantha said is not garbage at all. For those willing to look, the evidence is all around. It's especially abundant in the areas of climate change and nutrition. >> But, go ahead, nationalize (monopolize) all the media and then see how much freedom of speech remains. Because that's always worked so well in the past. > > > The word "garbage" was the opening summary, it was not the argument. If you had read a few more words you would have seen the argument. > > > You made no attempt to address the information I gave following the word "garbage". > > Instead, you just waved your hands. > > Now get down to the facts. The BBC is government funded. It has some grave shortcomings, but it is also credited as being one of the most valuable, unbiased news sources to billions of people around the world. > In addition, the organization that committed the offence that John Pilger referred to -- the censorship -- was NOT government funded. > > On both counts, no evidence that government funded media is the source of the problem in the article by John Pilger. > > That makes Samantha's complaint garbage, since it pointed the finger at goverment funded media, contra the two pieces of evidence I gave. > > Now, on a more general level, yes, government funded media in many countries is pure propaganda. But completely non-government-funded media (e.g. Fox) is also pure propaganda. My point is that there is no strong correlation: you can have the one with, or without, the other. > Yes, and the real kicker is...blaming government for our woes conveniently leaves out the fact, that our government sucks because it's sold out it's population for less than half a billion dollars, to the big moneyed interests who'd supposedly do a much better job if there just were no pesky middle man to pay off. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 03:20:27 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 21:20:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/9 Will Steinberg : > The sad thing is that so much Libertarian thought completely ignores the > good deeds of the federal government. ?I recently read a story about a > Native American family in Nevada who got chased out of a gas station by > skinheads in a car, forced into an accident, and then beaten. ?The skinheads > were friends with the cops and they didn't get in any trouble. ?Of course, > this is wrong, so the FBI is investigating. And yet, this incident, as regrettable as it is, is absolutely NOTHING compared to what the government has done to the Native Americans. We regular white folk think the government is heavy on us, but we haven't seen anything compared to the near genocide perpetrated by the US government on the Native American population. The good deeds of the federal government towards Native Americans can be counted on one hand... In fact, I can't think of ONE outside of favorable judicial review of the government breaking the hell out of old treaties. Of course the one I'm thinking of took 80 years to come up to the supreme court where they found in favor of the Native Americans. If anyone can show that light government works, it is the Native Americans prior to being overrun by the whites. It's a good example of why pure anarchy, even though it can produce a very nice lifestyle, isn't quite enough to insure that lifestyle's longevity in the face of foreign invaders. I think it is absolutely funny as hell that you would bring up good deeds of the federal government and native americans in the same argument. It's just too easy. :-) > I guess it is easy to think everyone would play nice if we erased all the > rules, if you live in San Francisco or something and can't see the rest of > America over the mountains, but keep in mind that there are places all too > willing to slip back into Wild West chaos. ?You don't have to support Big > Brother to support sensible infrastructure. I don't think libertarianism, or even anarchy as Samantha explains it, means lawlessness. -Kelly From anders at aleph.se Sun Jul 10 07:59:18 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 09:59:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E195BD6.5010603@aleph.se> On 2011-07-06 16:32, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, > but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the > future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and > expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or > another on our lap. Especially since there are reasons to think that just getting superintelligence, massive automated manufacturing, mental editing or other of our favorite things could be very, very harmful without the right safeguards and social framing. (consider Robin's paper on upload economics, the corpus of unfriendly AI analysis, CRNs worries about destabilization from easy weapon manufacturing with first mover advantages, as well as creepy uses of cognotech - I am still horrified by seeing how happy a senior government figure was with a near future scenario we developed where mind control was becoming feasible) Optimism about technological progress and acceleration might lead to complacency that prevents good things from being developed, but optimism about that the effects will be benign is even worse: it makes people promote acceleration but not trying to make it safer. Of course, the above concerns might be too pessimistic, but we better find that out by further proactive research rather than just being lucky. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat Jul 9 10:52:28 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:52:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Universal Computing Red Herring [WAS AI Motivation revisited] In-Reply-To: References: <1309617771.97239.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E1473AC.2030505@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E1832EC.2010409@aleph.se> On 2011-07-08 12:43, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/7/6 Richard Loosemore: >> Can I just reiterate that universal computing has absolutely NOTHING to do >> with any of the issues related to Artificial General Intelligence, or the >> possibility of a hard takeoff, or the viability of human-like artificial >> intelligence. > > Such an unqualified assumption sounds quite weird. Do you seriously > expect that AGIs could be implemented on non-universal computing > devices? After all, human beings themselves do exhibit universal > computing capabilities... :-/ Humans approximate universal computation, but since we are finite systems we are not universal. And neither are our computers. However, we are rarely close to the limits of these approximations, at least in the computer case. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun Jul 10 08:26:50 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:26:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Progress curves In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E19624A.5020703@aleph.se> I have been thinking about progress a bit recently, mainly because I would like to develop a mathematical model of how brain scanning technology and computational neuroscience might develop. In general, I think the most solid evidence of technological progress is Wrightean experience curves. These are well documented in economics and found everywhere: typically the cost (or time) of manufacturing per unit behaves as x^a, where a<0 (typically something like -0.1) and x is the number of units produced so far. When you make more things you learn how to make the process better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects On the output side we have performance curves: how many units of something useful can we get per dollar. The Santa Fe Institute performance curve database http://pcdb.santafe.edu/ is full of interesting evidence of things getting better/cheaper. Bela Nagy has argued that typically we see "Sahal's Law": exponentially increasing sales (since a tech becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous) together with exponential progress produces Wright's experience curves: http://192.12.12.16/events/workshops/images/4/4f/Nagy.ModelingOrganizationalComplexity.pdf http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bn/workingpapers/NagyFarmerTrancikBui.pdf One interesting problem might be that some techs are limited because of the number of units sold will eventually level off. In sales of new technology we see Bass curves: a sigmoid curve where at first a handful of early adopters get it, then more and more get it (since people copy each other this is roughly exponential) and then a leveling off as most potential buyers already got it. Lots of literature on it, useless for forecasting (due to noise sensitivity in the early days). If Bela is right, this would mean that a technology obeying the Moore-Sahal-Wright relations would certainly follow a straight line in the "total units sold" vs. "cost per unit" diagram, but there would be a limit point since the total units sold eventually levels off (once you have railroads to every city, building another one will not be useful; once everybody has good enough graphics cards they will buy much fewer). The technology stagnates, and this is not because of any fundamental physics or engineering limit. The real limit is lack of economic incentives for becoming much better. Another aspect which I find really interesting, is whether a field has sudden jumps or continuous growth. Consider how many fluid dynamics you can get per dollar. You have an underlying Moore's law exponential, but discrete algorithmic improvements create big jumps as more efficient ways of calculating are discovered. Typically these improvements are big, a decade of Moore or so. But this mainly happens in some fields like software (chess program performance behaves like this, and I suspect - if we ever could get a good performance measure - AI does too) where a bright idea changes the process a lot. It is much more rare in fields constrained by physics (mining?) or where the tech is composed of a myriad interacting components (cars?) Any other approaches you know of in thinking quantitatively about technological progress? -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun Jul 10 17:18:59 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:18:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Oakland police with body cameras In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1310318339.31776.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Max More wrote: > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43696646/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ > > This would be a good thing -- but only if policy are > prevented from editing > the videotapes (not merely prohibited) and if citizens are > equally allowed > to record police in these encounters. > > --Max Cool. And it's only fair that if the police have them, everyone else does, too (which potentially helps with the editing problem). Where can I get one? Ben Zaiboc From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 17:31:21 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin Haskell) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:31:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? Message-ID: Perhaps there is some honesty shining through about the "Global Warming" BS. http://www.facebook.com/l/4AQAsWRoBAQB7mTEVaZ6i2BAKj7ydrFBhZ0DQaOtBEYrsUg/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/pnas-201102467.pdf Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 17:59:45 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:59:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] build a cooler mousetrap Message-ID: This sort of thing is why I don't worry about the energy "crisis". http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/sandias-cooler-technology-offers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29 It's just a gadget. Nevertheless, let a million gadgets bloom. If necessity is the mother of invention then market forces are the father. A Fundamentally New Approach to Air-cooled Heat Exchangers(48 pages) http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2010/100258.pdf Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 18:15:50 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 12:15:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/10 Kevin Haskell : > Perhaps there is some honesty shining through about the "Global Warming" > BS. > > http://www.facebook.com/l/4AQAsWRoBAQB7mTEVaZ6i2BAKj7ydrFBhZ0DQaOtBEYrsUg/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/pnas-201102467.pdf > The global warming apologists claim that the lack of a change in global warming over this decade is explained by the increased particulate matter emitted by China in their dash to use coal on a massive scale. So, either, they are right, or global warming is a religion. The global warming apologists remind me so much of the religious apologists, that it makes it seem less scientific. Whether it is or is not is probably largely dependent upon the specific scientist. The big problem is if some scientist is sincere in his quest for the truth, he may inadvertently use data coming from a scientist with less sincerity towards science. I would like to think that most GW scientists are sincere, but it is at least provable that some have not been. And that is a data point that will be beaten to death by the anti-global warming crowd. What is not up for debate in my mind is what we should do about the whole thing. Carbon credits is just a way to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer, while at the same time siphoning money from the developed world to the developing world. That solution is too "convenient" as it supports an existing agenda. If Al Gore weren't making so much money off of his voluntary carbon credit system, I would be slightly more inclined to listen to him. But the man is clearly a politician first, and as a scientist, he has very limited credibility. In a way, it's too bad that he is the front man for global warming, if it is true that it is happening, is man caused, and is reversible. Seems to me that the global warming crowd needs a new spokesperson who is actually a scientist. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Sun Jul 10 18:40:50 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:40:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 12:15:50PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The global warming apologists claim that the lack of a change in > global warming over this decade is explained by the increased > particulate matter emitted by China in their dash to use coal on a > massive scale. I'm sorry, this has has got to be one of the stupidest things you've wrote in a whole long while. You have a beef with climate science models, you go straight to the primary peer-reviewed publications. Politics doesn't belong on this list. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 18:53:09 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:53:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 7:40 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 12:15:50PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> The global warming apologists claim that the lack of a change in >> global warming over this decade is explained by the increased >> particulate matter emitted by China in their dash to use coal on a >> massive scale. > > You have a beef with climate science models, you go straight to the > primary peer-reviewed publications. Politics doesn't belong on > this list. > > I thought that claim was science - not politics. Quote: "People normally just focus on the warming effect of CO2 (carbon dioxide), but during the Chinese economic expansion there was a huge increase in sulfur emissions," which have a cooling effect, explained Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University. He's the lead author of the study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But sulfur's cooling effect is only temporary, while the carbon dioxide from coal burning stays in Earth's atmosphere a long time. Chinese coal consumption doubled between 2003 and 2007, and that caused a 26 percent increase in global coal consumption, Kaufmann said. Now, Chinese leaders have recognized the effects of that pollution on their environment and their citizens' health and are installing equipment to scrub out the sulfur particles, Kaufmann said. Sulfur quickly drops out of the air if it is not replenished, while carbon dioxide remains for a long time, so its warming effects are beginning to be visible again, he noted. The plateau in temperature growth disappeared in 2009 and 2010, when temperatures lurched upward. ------------------ BillK From eugen at leitl.org Sun Jul 10 19:03:43 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:03:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110710190343.GL16178@leitl.org> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 07:53:09PM +0100, BillK wrote: > I thought that claim was science - not politics. > > I don't see Physorg in the list of http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/journals.html If you think http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/pnas-201102467.pdf has problems, take it up with the authors and PNAS. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Sun Jul 10 19:19:14 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:19:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: <20110710190343.GL16178@leitl.org> References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> <20110710190343.GL16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 07:53:09PM +0100, BillK wrote: > >> I thought that claim was science - not politics. >> > > I don't see Physorg in the list of > http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/journals.html > > Nit-pick. It is a science news report of a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS is No2. in your list of journals. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Sun Jul 10 19:28:27 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:28:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> <20110710190343.GL16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110710192827.GM16178@leitl.org> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 08:19:14PM +0100, BillK wrote: > Nit-pick. It is very much not that. My whole point was: you have a problem with climate science publications, hit the primary peer-reviewed journals. Not cutesy little sciency news outlets. Go right for the jugular. > It is a science news report of a paper in Proceedings of the National > Academy of Sciences. > > > PNAS is No2. in your list of journals. Eggzackly. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From rloosemore at susaro.com Sun Jul 10 19:43:22 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:43:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> <20110710190343.GL16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4E1A00DA.8060707@susaro.com> A curious discussion, this. Eugen: you criticized a paragraph from Kelly Anderson, but were you criticizing the *content* of that paragraph, or Kelly's apparent *attack* on that content? I assumed the latter (in other words, you agree with the science that says Chinese economic activity has caused a cloud of particulates that has slowed down global warming slightly). But I think BillK may (?) have interpreted you the other way around, thinking that you were aligning yourself with Kelly in pouring scorn on that science. As far as I can see, you are both arguing for the same side, but due to a misunderstanding each thinks the other is attacking....? ...... In any case: Kevin Haskell, Kelly Anderson: the science behind global warming is so completely supported by the facts that the case is closed. The only people who have a problem with that are (a) non-scientists and (b) a tiny minority of scientists who are either being paid vast amounts of money by corporate interests (e.g. Willie Soon) or are nakedly motivated by politics, and incapable of answering the science. Richard Loosemore From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 05:03:33 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:03:33 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 12:15:50PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> The global warming apologists claim that the lack of a change in >> global warming over this decade is explained by the increased >> particulate matter emitted by China in their dash to use coal on a >> massive scale. > > I'm sorry, this has has got to be one of the stupidest things you've wrote > in a whole long while. Saying that politics doesn't belong on this list.... well, that's one of the stupidest things you've written in some time. ;-P We talk about politics ALL THE TIME here! You've never complained before. > You have a beef with climate science models, you go straight to the > primary peer-reviewed publications. Politics doesn't belong on > this list. Let me be VERY clear. Personally, I tend to think that global warming is highly likely to be human caused or at the very least human exacerbated. Certainly, there is no denying that CO2 levels are very high now, and that is human caused, and that is likely to have an effect on climate. I am not a global warming denier, nor am I willing to throw away the world economy trying to fix a problem of unknown size, length and impact. So, is global warming a fact? Yes, in my mind it is a fact. Is global warming human caused? Yes, at least partially, it is human caused. So is the temporary global cooling, if you read the paper. What is the proper response to global warming? This is where I diverge significantly from Al Gore and friends. Your post makes my point that there is an aura on both sides of this particular argument that REEKS of religion. You seem to have fallen into your religious view here, as pointed out by your violent outburst. What I would encourage you to do is to lose the religion, and deal with this on a basis of simple pure science. Both climate science, and more importantly political science as to what to do about it all. Also, if you want to reach global warming deniers, starting the argument by calling them stupid and uneducated is a pretty bad way to get what you want. Science is supposed to ALWAYS be open to new facts. To my mind, climate science is so new and so incompletely understood, that it is silly to say there isn't more to be learned about what is happening, and what will happen. For example, are there automatic systems that will compensate over the long term for what we're doing to the planet? Just one possibility is that algal blooms and other small plants in the oceans may (over the long term) absorb much of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Darwin teaches us that evolution will fill ecological niches, and there is a huge ecological niche being created right now for organisms that benefit from higher levels of CO2. Right? Thus, it seems possible that life in the oceans may begin to consume the CO2 at a higher rate by reproducing faster in the now more favorable environment (for that kind of plant life). This is not likely to be good for the oceans, because it will result in huge numbers of jelly fish, algae and other microscopic plants. Now, this may not happen, but it seems to be consistent that it COULD happen. "good" in the previous paragraph is open to question. The changes to the ocean that excess CO2 may eventually cause are changes, but calling them good or bad is a political statement. Is it bad that the oceans might adapt to mitigate climate change? That's a value judgement. I think it is good that the planet may be self regulating through the processes of life. Even if the ocean changes significantly, the planet itself and life on it may be saved. But who knows, this is just a hypothesis. The first step in the scientific method. I have never heard any serious scientists discuss whether this might be the case. Just as there are stories you will never hear on CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN, there are scientific studies that climate scientists will never investigate because they can't get funding for those studies. This is really the planet of bacteria, not people. Bacteria may have more to say about CO2 concentrations than we do, over the long term. We just don't know all of the variables. The science is too new. Asking this sort of question does not make me a global warming denier. I just think it's good science to keep asking questions, rather than state categorically that "X is a fact, and there are no mitigating contextual facts." That is unscientific. Calling it global warming is also problematic. I tend to agree with those who call it climate change, because we don't know if warming will continue, or whether there will be a careening out of control that leads to a new ice age... Some models seem to indicate that is possible too. Finally, solving our energy problems will likely help solve the global warming issues. I think I have made my position as a fan of alternative energy projects very clear. Not BECAUSE of its effects on global climate change, but because it's the right thing to do politically and economically. I would not propose building up alternative energy JUST to avoid global warming, but since it happens to coincide with other good goals that I do support, I end up supporting just the things that end up mitigating global warming. The story on CO2 sequestration has also not yet been written. That could turn out to be very interesting. In this case though, you have to do it for the sake of global warming, not because there is some other good reason to do it. I think that's one reason it hasn't gotten a huge amount of traction yet. I look forward to continuing a scientific, and not a religious, conversation on these topics. -Kelly From amara at kurzweilai.net Mon Jul 11 12:00:33 2011 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:00:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Progress curves In-Reply-To: <4E19624A.5020703@aleph.se> References: <4E19624A.5020703@aleph.se> Message-ID: <03ac01cc3fc2$23e61bb0$6bb25310$@net> Posted here: http://www.kurzweilai.net/thinking-quantitatively-about-technological-progre ss -- comments welcome -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 1:27 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Progress curves I have been thinking about progress a bit recently, mainly because I would like to develop a mathematical model of how brain scanning technology and computational neuroscience might develop. In general, I think the most solid evidence of technological progress is Wrightean experience curves. These are well documented in economics and found everywhere: typically the cost (or time) of manufacturing per unit behaves as x^a, where a<0 (typically something like -0.1) and x is the number of units produced so far. When you make more things you learn how to make the process better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects On the output side we have performance curves: how many units of something useful can we get per dollar. The Santa Fe Institute performance curve database http://pcdb.santafe.edu/ is full of interesting evidence of things getting better/cheaper. Bela Nagy has argued that typically we see "Sahal's Law": exponentially increasing sales (since a tech becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous) together with exponential progress produces Wright's experience curves: http://192.12.12.16/events/workshops/images/4/4f/Nagy.ModelingOrganizational Complexity.pdf http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bn/workingpapers/NagyFarmerTrancikBui.pdf One interesting problem might be that some techs are limited because of the number of units sold will eventually level off. In sales of new technology we see Bass curves: a sigmoid curve where at first a handful of early adopters get it, then more and more get it (since people copy each other this is roughly exponential) and then a leveling off as most potential buyers already got it. Lots of literature on it, useless for forecasting (due to noise sensitivity in the early days). If Bela is right, this would mean that a technology obeying the Moore-Sahal-Wright relations would certainly follow a straight line in the "total units sold" vs. "cost per unit" diagram, but there would be a limit point since the total units sold eventually levels off (once you have railroads to every city, building another one will not be useful; once everybody has good enough graphics cards they will buy much fewer). The technology stagnates, and this is not because of any fundamental physics or engineering limit. The real limit is lack of economic incentives for becoming much better. Another aspect which I find really interesting, is whether a field has sudden jumps or continuous growth. Consider how many fluid dynamics you can get per dollar. You have an underlying Moore's law exponential, but discrete algorithmic improvements create big jumps as more efficient ways of calculating are discovered. Typically these improvements are big, a decade of Moore or so. But this mainly happens in some fields like software (chess program performance behaves like this, and I suspect - if we ever could get a good performance measure - AI does too) where a bright idea changes the process a lot. It is much more rare in fields constrained by physics (mining?) or where the tech is composed of a myriad interacting components (cars?) Any other approaches you know of in thinking quantitatively about technological progress? -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 13:08:44 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:08:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: On 9 July 2011 10:04, BillK wrote: > The discussion is opposing two extreme views. > East German state-controlled media where the people only see the > government approved news and opinions, > versus > Corporate state controlled media where the people see news and opinion > that will produce benefits for the corporations that run the state. > > The best the real world can achieve is a balance between the two, like the BBC. A balance between two evils in real world is not even a second best. The prob today, however, is mainly IMHO self-censorship. In the United States the First Amendment is already a good starting point, in legal terms. If on the other hand entities controlling *mass* media not only serve their own corporate interest, but are also in the business of complying with intellectual terrorism requirements *and* of pleasing the establishment which serves them in anything which be not in direct contrast with said corporate interest, one cannot really expect subversive opinions to be submitted to their public. As Ezra Pound used to say "freedom of speech without freedom of radio speech is nothing". We can just be happy that the Net exists, but of course background noise takes there the place of active censorship. -- Stefano Vaj From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 14:06:01 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:06:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:03 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I look forward to continuing a scientific, and not a religious, > conversation on these topics. Seems like scientific conversations end much too quickly. Are you sure you don't want to throw in at least a little religious-style bickering just to keep things going? :) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 15:43:56 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:43:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Global Surface Temps Unchanged Ffrom 98 to 08? In-Reply-To: References: <20110710184050.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:03 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> I look forward to continuing a scientific, and not a religious, >> conversation on these topics. > > Seems like scientific conversations end much too quickly. ?Are you > sure you don't want to throw in at least a little religious-style > bickering just to keep things going? ?:) Yes, I am sure. Those don't lead to any kind of enlightenment. You probably haven't spent much time watching Jerry Springer.. ;-) -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 16:25:34 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:25:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/9 Will Steinberg : > On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> >> Government doesn't do this well today. ?Children in an anarchist society >> as well as other interested adults can charge parents if there is evidence >> of abuse. > > Are you serious? ?This isn't an answer, and I doubt you can give one. I would not be too quick in assuming that a multicultural, well-defined concept of "children abuse" exists. Ancient Rome was far from a libertarian (o anarco-capitalist?) regime, yet the pater familias had a jus vitae ac necis on its children. Remarkably nothing similar existed in other neighbouring, and sometimes more "primitive", societies/legal systems. Issues such as abortion and/or cases for "wrongful life", not to mention paedopornography statutes extended to ephebic individuals or computer-graphic images, of course complicate things. So, no, I do not believe that protection of children is a serious argument against anarco-capitalism. The nature and degree of such protection depends to a much larger extent on cultural factors than on the existence of "public" enforcement methods of the kind disliked by libertarians. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 16:30:06 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:30:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 9 July 2011 10:04, BillK wrote: >> The best the real world can achieve is a balance between the two, like the BBC. Bill, I don't think that is the best we can achieve... It is better than the two alternatives you suggested, so you're not wrong. It's just that I think we can do better than mass media altogether. > A balance between two evils in real world is not even a second best. Balance is good, but not best. When I mixed all my paints together, all I got was mud. Let's go find a new color! > The prob today, however, is mainly IMHO self-censorship. In the United > States the First Amendment is already a good starting point, in legal > terms. I totally, 100% agree here! The problem isn't so much that CBS itself is liberal, or that FOX itself is conservative, but that they hire liberal and conservative people because they are the kind of people who would be conservative there. Take for example Glenn Beck... who started his television career at CNN, a liberal leaning channel. It did not take long for FOX to see that he was a conservative star, and he naturally migrated there. It's just the gradient magnetism that attracted him away from liberals towards a more like minded place. When Beck went from CNN to FOX, it made CNN more liberal, and it made FOX more conservative. Separating oil and water, so to speak. This kind of separation is happening more and more these days because people want to hear stuff that supports their world view. With FOX's ratings, a lot of people must have that world view. > If on the other hand entities controlling *mass* media not only serve > their own corporate interest, but are also in the business of > complying with intellectual terrorism requirements *and* of pleasing > the establishment which serves them in anything which be not in direct > contrast with said corporate interest, one cannot really expect > subversive opinions to be submitted to their public. Agreed. Probably one of the best counters to this we have today is youtube. Every now and again someone in a crowd in Tunisia posts something to youtube that changes the world as we know it. This consumer broadcasting is probably a big part of the future of news. If everyone is a broadcaster, then you are sure to have a good cross section of ideas. Someone today could put together a news cast built up of just the youtube videos posted today that supported a particular interest or point of view. Commentary mixed freely with facts. You don't have the professional fact checked news that you get from NBC, but just how important is that in today's world? Very few people, I would guess trust what they see on ABC or FOX, let alone what they see on youtube without doing their own fact checking. It's a side effect of the Internet that people have become naturally more suspicious of the sources of their information. I think that is a GOOD THING. Especially when that person lives in a country with state controlled mass media (e.g. China) and their only source of real news is the Internet. > As Ezra Pound used to say "freedom of speech without freedom of radio > speech is nothing". Or Internet free speech... :-) > We can just be happy that the Net exists, but of course background > noise takes there the place of active censorship. The signal to noise ratio on the Internet is indeed very high. Fortunately, we have many modalities of filters such as this mailing list and thousands like it to help reduce the noise and get to the vital information. Some people like Facebook filters, and that's OK. Some like web pages or youtube channels or whatever... the point is that you can be your own network now. You SHOULD be your own network. It's the only way to get past the propaganda from all sides. The thing I like most about this list, and why it's part of my network, is that here there is a group of people who can disagree without being disagreeable. There aren't many groups with the level of political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. That's pretty special. I'm glad you guys are part of my personal network of news. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 16:34:32 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:34:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/9 Will Steinberg : > I guess it is easy to think everyone would play nice if we erased all the > rules, if you live in San Francisco or something and can't see the rest of > America over the mountains, but keep in mind that there are places all too > willing to slip back into Wild West chaos. Are you referring to the period when Native Americans still managed to operate their own political units and were able to protect themselves from attacks from invaders of European or African origin, including in possible militia, police or army uniforms? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:05:42 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:05:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/7/9 Will Steinberg : > I would not be too quick in assuming that a multicultural, > well-defined concept of "children abuse" exists. Clearly, this is the case. Today in America, for example, there exists a great gulf between the older generation that was brought up with ubiquitous corporal punishment, and the younger generation that has been brought up in what I call the "Simpson's Age"... The older generation seeks the younger as "soft" and the younger sees the older as "barbaric". DCFS often has to "reeducate" the older generation to the new zeitgeist of today's "child abuse". As a survivor of these modern "reeducation camps" I can tell you that they are quite persuasive in their techniques. The basic approach is "accept our zeitgeist, or lose your children" and that is a LOT of leverage. I have now drunk the cool-aid, and accept the new zeitgeist, even though I can still remember the benefits and experiences of the old one. > Ancient Rome was far from a libertarian (o anarco-capitalist?) regime, > yet the pater familias had a jus vitae ac necis on its children. > Remarkably nothing similar existed in other neighbouring, and > sometimes more "primitive", societies/legal systems. The surely Romans had a unique view of the rights of society over the individual. It was no accident that Hitler called his little regime the third reich.... meaning the third instantiation of Rome... because I think he would have gone back to public executions and other barbaric (by our modern reckoning) Roman practices if he had won. > Issues such as abortion and/or cases for "wrongful life", not to > mention ?paedopornography statutes extended to ephebic individuals or > computer-graphic images, of course complicate things. What happens in the virtual world stays in the virtual world... ;-) > So, no, I do not believe that protection of children is a serious > argument against anarco-capitalism. Are you saying you liked the Roman system? > The nature and degree of such > protection depends to a much larger extent on cultural factors than on > the existence of "public" enforcement methods of the kind disliked by > libertarians. What the authorities go after you for is less important than the fact that they have the power to go after you. After having dealt with DCFS for the last three years, I can tell you for a fact that America is a less free society than most people think. Until you've been through the reeducation system, you think America is free, and that you are free within her. But once you've been to the camp... there is no turning back from the knowledge that the America of freedom is Gone Baby Gone... People who have dealt in depth with other aspects of the government tell me the same thing. Spike's farming experiences... My experiences with the health department when I wanted to put in a novel type of sewage treatment system... It's just Government Gone Wild!!! Anyone who believes in socialist policies of more statism just has never had a significant interaction with the state. My girl friend, for example, worked for DCFS for 12 years as a CPS investigator. It was her job to remove children. Now that she has seen the system from the other side, I think it just makes her sick what she did all those years... even though she was acting in good faith, and worked hard to help the individuals with whom she had to interact. She often bent the rules within the system, by, for example, letting people get away with stuff when teenage children were completely out of control. But many other case workers would have thrown the book at those folks. It's really really sad where we're going. -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 11 17:18:40 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:18:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> On 7/11/2011 11:30 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > There aren't many groups with the level of > political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:24:38 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:24:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: On 11 July 2011 19:05, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Ancient Rome was far from a libertarian (o anarco-capitalist?) regime, >> yet the pater familias had a jus vitae ac necis on its children. >> Remarkably nothing similar existed in other neighbouring, and >> sometimes more "primitive", societies/legal systems. > > The surely Romans had a unique view of the rights of society over the > individual. It was no accident that Hitler called his little regime > the third reich.... meaning the third instantiation of Rome... because > I think he would have gone back to public executions and other > barbaric (by our modern reckoning) Roman practices if he had won. Same as in the US executions, you mean? :-) A frightening prospective indeed. > Are you saying you liked the Roman system? My implication is simply that children can be abused or not irrespective of whether the regime is authoritarian or libertarian or anarchist, and depending on the contrary on the concept of "abuse" which is dominant in one's society. Thus, governments do not guarantee children per se, and the lack or weakness thereof does not imply that they are especially threatened under any definition of "threatened" (involving perhaps computer-graphic "exploitment"?). > What the authorities go after you for is less important than the fact > that they have the power to go after you. After having dealt with DCFS > for the last three years, I can tell you for a fact that America is a > less free society than most people think. Until you've been through > the reeducation system, you think America is free, and that you are > free within her. I have no fantasies about the real "freedom" of US citizens, even though I suspect that it may be better to have a First or the Fifth Amendment in one's constitution rather than not (see for instance what their non-existence implies for the UK - or the western puppet regime of Afghanistan, for that matter). -- Stefano Vaj From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:26:11 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:26:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: Stefano, Kelly: I can't write a long-winded response because I'm at work, but it will suffice to say that things like nixing your special sewage system is at most a nuisance...and that even grievous government intrusions on specific persons are just that--on specific persons--and pale in comparison to the chaos that those persons will cause in concert if government is abolished. Obviously we have very different viewpoints. When considering 'individualism,' it might help you to note that most individuals are unlike yourselves, and have no real concept of how they relate to land, country, or government. What's even worse is that without the government's monopoly on uber-collectivization, cabals, cadres and militias of 'collected individuals' will fracture our economy, way of life, etc. It can already be seen in the emergence of the 'Tea Party'--a group composed of those who know NOTHING about politics and those who know EVERYTHING, and where the latter have decided to use that knowledge to evilly control the former. Libertarianism is foolish. It is the result of taking intuitive feelings about freedom and performing little analysis on them to yield results that are oversimplified to the point of being completely incorrect--sort of like signal aliasing. Anybody who has spent time interacting with regular people should know this. There is a happy middle ground somewhere, but that middle ground does not lie 1000 km rightwards. NB: Stefano, have you spent long periods of time living in America? I can see how being European might give you some biases or preconceptions that don't hold here in the states. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:40:19 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:40:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: To emphasize: yesterday I saw a car with a Ron Paul bumper sticker (for those who don't know, Paul is USA's gonzo libertarian flavor of the month.) The other three bumper stickers? "If at first you don't secede, try try again" "If you're going the wrong way, God allows U-turns" and of course, my personal favorite, "Question Darwin" Ladies and gentlemen, the state of libertarianism in the United States. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:44:07 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:44:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 11 July 2011 19:05, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> Ancient Rome was far from a libertarian (o anarco-capitalist?) regime, >>> yet the pater familias had a jus vitae ac necis on its children. >>> Remarkably nothing similar existed in other neighbouring, and >>> sometimes more "primitive", societies/legal systems. >> >> The surely Romans had a unique view of the rights of society over the >> individual. It was no accident that Hitler called his little regime >> the third reich.... meaning the third instantiation of Rome... because >> I think he would have gone back to public executions and other >> barbaric (by our modern reckoning) Roman practices if he had won. > > Same as in the US executions, you mean? :-) US executions have not been public for many decades. Also, it is an entirely different thing for a public system to take a life after many second chances, and a father taking the life of his child just because he can. I would suspect that fathers in the Roman system who took advantage of this system and killed their children were often sorry later. You need checks and balances and time to reconsider before doing something as serious as taking a life. Capital punishment and nuclear power in the US have one important thing in common. They are both too expensive and take too long because of lawyers. For either to be effective, they have to be somewhat streamlined. Of course, it is easy to take that too far in both cases, as extreme caution is necessary when wielding that kind of power. > A frightening prospective indeed. I think we are all glad we won. :-) >> Are you saying you liked the Roman system? > > My implication is simply that children can be abused or not > irrespective of whether the regime is authoritarian or libertarian or > anarchist, and depending on the contrary on the concept of "abuse" > which is dominant in one's society. And on that point, I concur 100%. It's all about the zeitgeist, and that changes. I would not be surprised, for example, if sex with some children is legal in 50 years. It seems to be the direction society is headed. I don't think it is a good thing, it just seems possible. > Thus, governments do not guarantee children per se, and the lack or > weakness thereof does not imply that they are especially threatened > under any definition of "threatened" (involving perhaps > computer-graphic "exploitment"?). I don't think I'm following you here. Could you try again please? >> What the authorities go after you for is less important than the fact >> that they have the power to go after you. After having dealt with DCFS >> for the last three years, I can tell you for a fact that America is a >> less free society than most people think. Until you've been through >> the reeducation system, you think America is free, and that you are >> free within her. > > I have no fantasies about the real "freedom" of US citizens, even > though I suspect that it may be better to have a First or the Fifth > Amendment in one's constitution rather than not (see for instance what > their non-existence implies for the UK - or the western puppet regime > of Afghanistan, for that matter). I am grateful for the entire Bill of Rights. I just don't think it is being interpreted in ways the founding fathers would recognize. Of course, they also knew things would evolve. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 17:59:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:59:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/11 Will Steinberg : > Stefano, Kelly: > I can't write a long-winded response because I'm at work, but it will > suffice to say that things like nixing your special sewage system is at most > a nuisance... In this case, it was more than a nuisance. It nearly rendered me unable to build a house at all. It added tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of building the house, and it delayed construction by a year. In the end, all the cost overruns (many of which were directly due to government interference) caused the house to go into default, and I lost it. It wasn't ALL the government's fault of course, but they delayed construction by well over a year, and added at least $200K to the cost of building the house. > and that even grievous government intrusions on specific > persons are just that--on specific persons--and pale in comparison to the > chaos that those persons will cause in concert if government is abolished. I am not in favor of abolishing government, just downsizing it. I am not in favor of everyone "doing their own thing" at the expense of others. There needs to be IMHO an authority, and laws. But when there are so many laws that not even those practicing law know what the law implies, that is a recipe for authoritarian abuse. I had a legal question last week, was X legal or illegal? I spent nearly an hour researching the topic. Even emailed back and forth a couple of times to a lawyer. We could not conclusively determine whether the activity in question was legal or illegal. That is a problem. > Obviously we have very different viewpoints. ?When considering > 'individualism,' it might help you to note that most individuals are unlike > yourselves, and have no real concept of ?how they relate to land, country, > or government. I understand that not everyone has thought these things through as completely as I have. I know that there exist many people who would abuse any system. That's why I can't imagine complete anarchy working very well, though I'm willing to go through the thought exercise to see if I am wrong. The government messes up everything it touches. It should touch less. Much less. > What's even worse is that without the government's monopoly > on uber-collectivization, cabals, cadres and militias of 'collected > individuals' will fracture our economy, way of life, etc. ?It can already be > seen in the emergence of the 'Tea Party'--a group composed of those who know > NOTHING about politics and those who know EVERYTHING, and where the latter > have decided to use that knowledge to evilly control the former. > Libertarianism is foolish. ?It is the result of taking intuitive feelings > about freedom and performing little analysis on them to yield results that > are oversimplified to the point of being completely incorrect--sort of like > signal aliasing. ?Anybody who has spent time interacting with regular people > should know this. ?There is a happy middle ground somewhere, but that middle > ground does not lie 1000 km rightwards. So Will, do you think the current system is about the best we can do? 14 trillion dollars in debt. Open borders. Tightly limited immigration. Foreign entanglements. Policies that will turn this country into an economic wasteland over the next few years. The tea party is just a reaction to Government Gone Wild! There wouldn't be a need for a revolution if the government was perceived as listening to the people. I suspect the results of the next election will be another wild swing to the right. I believe in the collective intelligence of the American people. Where this all goes in the future is anyone's guess... but I think eventually there will be a third political party. In all honesty, I can't see that libertarianism is foolishness at all. It is the only wise way to go forward. That is an opinion. Since it's never been tried perhaps we will never know how it will work. On the other hand, the Interenet, that we are all using is largely the result of anarchy. So we have one example of anarchy working to build something of great value. I hope that the states don't take it over and mess it up. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 18:03:31 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:03:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/11 Will Steinberg : > To emphasize: yesterday I saw a car with a Ron Paul bumper sticker (for > those who don't know, Paul is USA's gonzo libertarian flavor of the month.) > The other three bumper stickers? > "If at first you don't secede, try try again" > "If you're going the wrong way, God allows U-turns" > and of course, my personal favorite, "Question Darwin" > Ladies and gentlemen, the state of libertarianism in the United States. > ?Thank you. Libertarians in the US are a collection of people who don't fit in anywhere else. Of course there is an extra big helping of crazy in this tent, which is by far the most inclusive political movement in America. We need more crazy in this country. Raising the debt ceiling is both necessary AND suicidal. It is a sucky position that the politicians have put us in. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 18:15:12 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:15:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/11/2011 11:30 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> There aren't many groups with the level of >> political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. > > You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? Jeff Davis described himself the other day with these words: >>For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I >>currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". While that is not communist, it's in the the same basic neighborhood. Will sometimes comes across as very left leaning and there are others. While I'm not an anarchist, I would say I'm in that neighborhood, just for comparison. I don't think there is anyone on this list that would come out and say directly "I am a communist", because Russian communism showed so definitively how inefficient such a system is. Yet the ideas of Marx and others are very much alive here on this list and in our world today. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 18:33:56 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:33:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 6:06 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 12:39:26AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Global warming can push 2 gigapeople over the brink of starvation. Possibly. But I think it is unlikely to do so, even if the globe does warm in the most nightmarish scenario. We are developing tools that can be brought to the problem if it does happen. The thing that I think you have to recognize is that climate change means not only that the climate gets worse in some places, but that it also will get better in other places. More to the point, what do you want us all to do to prevent global warming? What is the solution Eugen? Do you want us to give up gasoline based transportation en masse? Shall we kill every cow on the planet? Or should we just bomb the Sasol coal gassification plant in South Africa? > This will trigger migrations and wars, including wars with the potential > to turn nuclear. (But, hey, what is a nuclear war compared to burning > issues the "teh economy"?) If the economy collapses, it could result in a lot of the same sorts of things that you predict. Our world is interconnected and fragile. Just look at the rippling effects from a very small area of Japan. > This is not a financial or even economic crisis. It is far, far worse. > We're facing a systemic crisis through confluence of some ten factors, > but the core driver behind all these is overshoot. This is serious, > and it needs to be addressed three to four decades ago. I agree that we are over extended in many aspects. It's the inevitable outcome of living beyond our resources. I can't remember if it was you who was saying we have enough resources for everyone, but someone said that recently. To that point, we don't have enough carbon free air for everyone if global warming is the catastrophe that you're making it out to be. >> change can have pretty large impacts... Probably the biggest single >> risk of global warming I am aware of is the chance that the gulf >> stream will stop circulating. That would honestly be very bad for >> Europe, causing it to develop a climate similar to Canada at the same > > That's distinctly a first world problem. Believe me, if the first world goes to hell, the developing world will go to the 9th circle of hell. They live off of our discard and charity in many ways. Without western charity, half of Africa would be dead of AIDS. If the first world collapses, there won't be anyone to stop it. >> latitude. Looking at the globe, this would be bad, really bad. >> Probably good for somewhere else, but we have a lot of infrastructure >> in Europe, and it would be a real shame to lose that. This may be one >> reason that Europeans are generally more alarmed about GW than >> Americans. >> >> The problem is that so many people aren't concerned about it, that it >> will likely be impossible to do anything about it. > > Climate change is only one aspect of overshoot, and even there you're completely > ignoring major issues like precipitation shifts and food crop loss > leading to starvation and war, ocean acidification and anoxification > with further degradation of sea ecosystem and food web, infrastructure > destruction due to extreme weather events and multiple other factors > which we'll learn as the situation develops. Yes, I admit that it could get very bad. But you have to remember that this is a problem that is unlikely to get REALLY bad for some time. Our weather was really screwed up this year because of the La Nina pattern. Yet, in reality, not too many people died from it. A few hundred from tornadoes, probably some from fire and being over heated. We have had a rash of drownings here in Utah, about 10 this spring. People die in these numbers from random crap in this world. It is always sad, but you can't prevent all bad things from happening. Again, what is the solution? Stop the economy? That seems like shooting yourself because you have stage one cancer. What would you have us do? As I understand it if all the Kyoto protocols and other such nonsense were implemented, it would only push the problem out ten years or so... Spending tens of trillions of dollars to push a problem out, well that isn't going to happen in today's NOW focused society. So what is the solution? -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 11 18:53:16 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:53:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1B469C.8070300@satx.rr.com> On 7/11/2011 1:15 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? > > Jeff Davis described himself the other day with these words: > >>> >>For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I >>> >>currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". > > While that is not communist, it's in the the same basic neighborhood. Jeff Davis a *communist*?! Mwahahahaha. I'm sure Jeff will provide his own inimitable commentary, but I'd parse that as: "hard left" = "much tougher minded than squish soft feel-good Kumbaya left," and "progressive" (in what I gather is its original sense, the sense that Heinlein was originally one**) means "proceeding by steps, not by an instantaneous and bloody overthrow of current oppressions." Obviously it also has overtones of "progress is good change, stationary is dull, reaction against change is bad," where all these value-terms are themselves up for semantic grabs. **see William Patterson's fascinating biography, part 1 (1907-1948), of Heinlein. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 19:48:12 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:48:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 6 July 2011 20:04, spike wrote: > Stefano Vaj wrote: >>...US liberals - who, btw, used to be ferocious Social Darwinists just a > century or two ago... > > A subtle aside: we know what is meant by the term "social Darwinist," one > who believes in a hardline don't feed the poor because they just overbreed > sort of person. Why, once upon a time, Social Darwinism was a "progressive" POV where the main concern was to fight the fact that upper, parasitic classes existed that were very much protected from social competition. Such as landed gentry, rentiers, etc. So, S-D was mainly about ?lite circulation, and some socialists such as Julien Sorel were speaking of new proletarian aristocracies taking over the power from "weak", "misfit", decadent, old ruling classes... Then, at a point in time, S-D strangely started being perceived as a defence of status quo. >> ... libertarians accept that shareholders in private corporations touch > dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when they do absolutely > nothing... > > Shareholders are doing something. ?They are keeping their money in the > company in which they are shareholders. What would prevent us from consider citizens as "shareholders" of their own political community? After all, States were established through conquest, and they still own assets... -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 20:23:20 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:23:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1B469C.8070300@satx.rr.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> <4E1B469C.8070300@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/11/2011 1:15 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> >>> You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? >> >> Jeff Davis described himself the other day with these words: >> >>>> >>For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I >>>> >>currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". >> >> While that is not communist, it's in the the same basic neighborhood. > > Jeff Davis a *communist*?! Mwahahahaha. I can't wait to be torn limb from limb... :-/ > I'm sure Jeff will provide his own inimitable commentary, but I'd parse that > as: > > "hard left" = "much tougher minded than squish soft feel-good Kumbaya left," OK. So what is the definition of "left". My understanding is that the first leftist was Robin Hood. Steal from the rich give to the poor. Is there some other definition of left that I am unfamiliar with? > and "progressive" (in what I gather is its original sense, the sense that > Heinlein was originally one**) means "proceeding by steps, not by an > instantaneous and bloody overthrow of current oppressions." Obviously it > also has overtones of "progress is good change, stationary is dull, reaction > against change is bad," where all these value-terms are themselves up for > semantic grabs. I assumed he meant it in the same sense Hillary Clinton uses progressive to define her position. > **see William Patterson's fascinating biography, part 1 (1907-1948), of > Heinlein. > > Damien Broderick -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 11 20:28:03 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:28:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living) In-Reply-To: References: <4E0E7269.7070901@mac.com> <48576c329a1fc83033de26f2e0df719d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <002a01cc3c07$36db6f90$a4924eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E1B5CD3.4040702@satx.rr.com> On 7/11/2011 2:48 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >>> ... libertarians accept that shareholders in private corporations touch >> > dividends, possibly very high dividends, even when they do absolutely >> > nothing... >> > >> > Shareholders are doing something. They are keeping their money in the >> > company in which they are shareholders. > > What would prevent us from consider citizens as "shareholders" of > their own political community? After all, States were established > through conquest, and they still own assets... This is precisely the position advanced by Robert Heinlein in his early political and writing work.** Damien Broderick **then he married an ardent Republican From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Jul 11 20:57:46 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:57:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] META: Over posting In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110711165746.ecm8fbvm4osookgs@webmail.natasha.cc> Hi everyone -- Please make sure you are not overposting! Thank you, Natasha From rlitzkow at gmail.com Mon Jul 11 19:39:37 2011 From: rlitzkow at gmail.com (Richard Litzkow) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 05:39:37 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: [quote] Hi well, if anyone has any spare invites [waves arm] Dwayne [/quote] Dwanye, do you still need an invite, also dose anyone still want an invite, I just got onto google+ so have 8 invites. Long time reader, almost as long time lurker - Richard -- "For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible..." Nietzsche -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Jul 11 21:14:36 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:14:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: <007f01cc400f$89eeafb0$9dcc0f10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg . >.The other three bumper stickers? >."If at first you don't secede, try try again" >."If you're going the wrong way, God allows U-turns" >.and of course, my personal favorite, "Question Darwin" >.Ladies and gentlemen, the state of libertarianism in the United States. Thank you. How are these last two in any way related to libertarianism? That they are on the same bumper is weak correlation indeed. Perhaps the last two were put on there by a previous owner of the car, or the current owner with the libertarian sticker by the previous owner. Or they could have been placed on there by other members of the family. I see no connection between libertarian and creationism. Actually none of the four examples you cite above have much to do with libertarianism. Gary Johnson is an actual candidate now, and is a far better example of libertarian thinking as I know it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Jul 11 21:49:25 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:49:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110711174925.ms07i2e0gssco00c@webmail.natasha.cc> I'd love an invite too!!! Quoting Richard Litzkow : > [quote] > Hi > > well, if anyone has any spare invites [waves arm] > > Dwayne > [/quote] > > Dwanye, do you still need an invite, also dose anyone still want an invite, > I just got onto google+ so have 8 invites. > > Long time reader, almost as long time lurker > - Richard > -- > "For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are > there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then > set yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I > know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and > the impossible..." Nietzsche > From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Jul 11 22:17:08 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:17:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] META: Over posting In-Reply-To: <20110711165746.ecm8fbvm4osookgs@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110711165746.ecm8fbvm4osookgs@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <201107112233.p6BMXkW9027330@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Natasha wrote: >Hi everyone -- > >Please make sure you are not overposting! Or overposturing.... -- David. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 10:11:49 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:11:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Humanity+ July 2011 Newsletter In-Reply-To: <9704a83080-stefano.vaj=gmail.com@mail.vresp.com> References: <9704a83080-stefano.vaj=gmail.com@mail.vresp.com> Message-ID: Congratulations, Natasha! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Humanity+ Date: 11 July 2011 04:16 Subject: Humanity+ July 2011 Newsletter To: stefano.vaj at gmail.com Humanity+ Management Changes We are proud to welcome Natasha Vita-More, Director of Humanity+, as the new Chair of the Humanity+ Board of Directors. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 10:16:04 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:16:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Oakland police with body cameras In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/9 Max More : > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43696646/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ > > This would be a good thing -- but only if policy are prevented from editing > the videotapes (not merely prohibited) and if citizens are equally allowed > to record police in these encounters. Indeed. OTOH, filming police action is either a crime, or an informally-but-violently-repressed activity in many countries. I have not read it yet, but I believe this article is exactly on the subject: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brin20110619 -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 11:26:13 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:26:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: On 8 July 2011 20:25, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Some day I will believe humanity has become more rational. It will be just > after it stops talking about GW as being its main concern in the next few > decades. Even the IPCC studies to no support the kind of alarm bandied > about on this subject. The median temperature gain over the century from > the many studies presented is 1.5 C. I think it is pretty obvious that that > isn't going to wipe out humanity any time soon and is not anywhere near as > pressing a threat as say economic meltdown and/or major energy wars. But > when I say as much even extremely bright people act as if I am promoting > creationism. > Economics tells us that economic subjects behave "rationally" (or at least according to game theory and if taken in large enough numbers) in maximising their own interests and preferences. But it does not imply in the least that such interests are "rational" in any plausible sense of the word (btw, even the accumulation of exchange units, that is money, may be plausibly considered as irrational in certain contexts). As a consequence, rather than the so-traditional argument between "selfishness" and "altruism", I am ready to concede that all behaviours are fundamentally selfish, and are more interested in considering what motivate the value choices which are *behind* economic behaviours, that is, all behaviours. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 11:34:36 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:34:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 9 July 2011 14:06, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 12:39:26AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Global Warming may be a big problem, but not so large as the overall > > economy, IMHO. So I agree with Samantha on this one. However, a 2-4 C > > Global warming can push 2 gigapeople over the brink of starvation. > This will trigger migrations and wars, including wars with the potential > to turn nuclear. (But, hey, what is a nuclear war compared to burning > issues the "teh economy"?) > > This is not a financial or even economic crisis. It is far, far worse. > We're facing a systemic crisis through confluence of some ten factors, > but the core driver behind all these is overshoot. This is serious, > and it needs to be addressed three to four decades ago. > In history, we have had weather cycles, some of which have been much warmer than what is forecast even in a worst case scenario for the next century. Moreover, some of those have been periods blossoming with innovation and growth. Now, it may well be the case that this would not be the outcome of any contemporary change in the average temperature, be it on the minus or the plus sign. One should however consider whether the actual risk is such a change, or rather the implied, increasing fragilisation/sclerosis of our economic and civilisational framework, which may easily lead to scenarios where only absolute, unlikely stability (and stagnation) of all factors can prevent catastrophic developments. This, btw, sounds as a distinctly anti-transhumanist prospective... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 11:33:43 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:33:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: <1309872508.38483.YahooMailClassic@web114406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/12 Richard Litzkow : > Dwanye, do you still need an invite, also dose anyone still want an invite, > I just got onto google+ so have 8 invites. Nope, I'm on, thank you - and have been sending invites out to everyone I can think of. And it seems to nto be turned off - so if anyone needs an invite, let me know ;p > Long time reader, almost as long time lurker > - Richard Mostly the same, I pop up every now and then. Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 11:59:44 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:59:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <4E195BD6.5010603@aleph.se> References: <4E195BD6.5010603@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 10 July 2011 09:59, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2011-07-06 16:32, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> Past success (sometimes against all bets...) may be an encouragement, >> but has no predictive value as to what is going to happen in the >> future. Especially if we chose to rest on our great past laurels and >> expect Kurzweil's curves to land automagically a Singularity or >> another on our lap. >> > > Especially since there are reasons to think that just getting > superintelligence, massive automated manufacturing, mental editing or other > of our favorite things could be very, very harmful without the right > safeguards and social framing. > There are two ways to see that. The first is based on the tacit assumption that we should see things from a "humankind" point of view. As discussed other times, this is not obvious, but above all the very concept hardly bears closer inspection. Even ignoring that, it remains the case that our current chances of dying of old age, starvation, aggression, incidents or pathologies is pretty close to 100%, so that it is unclear on which metrics such risk would be lower or more acceptable than that involved in betting on the (certainly not entirely predictable or controllable) chances that radical breakthrough might offer us. As to the second, if we accept that no center of interest exists that can be defined as "humankind", what actually risks to be very harmful in "superintelligence, massive automated manufacturing, mental editing or other of our favorite things" is the fact of... not having it, in comparison with competing communities and entities that do. As Gregory Stock remarks, the prob is usually not with defective, dangerous or failing technologies, but with technologies that simply *work*, and thus lend a significant competitive edge to societies controlling them. This was true with the neolithic revolution, and it seems to have become clear enough to contemporary entities, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is principle should incline instead towards traditionalism rather than pursuing a nuclear programme. One may of course choose to try and evade such literal or metaphoric "race to arms" through more or less plausible global governance mechanisms, etc., fighting for control and repression of technological developments. As long as the thresholds for their implementation progressively lowers, however, this inevitably appears to lead to increasingly Brave-New-Worldish scenarios, where the very "humanist" values of the proponents are defeated anyway, only in an ever more stagnant and decadent landscape only waiting for the first natural event on a large enough scale to wipe it off. I am certainly not advocating for ignoring safety issues, for implenting all and everything which can be implemented as soon as possible, or for a total deregulation of all kind of tech-related activities. I am only pointing out that the precautionary principle is the long term a sure recipe for exinction and "dehumanisation", while for the alternative, even for developments involving some alleged x-risks, well, it remains to be seen. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 12:11:33 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:11:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/12 Stefano Vaj wrote: > Economics tells us that economic subjects behave "rationally" (or at least > according to game theory and if taken in large enough numbers) in maximising > their own interests and preferences. > > But it does not imply in the least that such interests are "rational" in any > plausible sense of the word (btw, even the accumulation of exchange units, > that is money, may be plausibly considered as irrational in certain > contexts). > That's the main fault in traditional economics. Investors don't behave the way the theory says they should. Investors are more like herds of lemmings, piling in to bubbles, fashions and current fads. The wisdom of crowds only applies in very specific circumstances where the voters do not know each other's estimates and are not subject to peer pressure. Either the theory is wrong or people are. I suspect the latter. ;) BillK From rloosemore at susaro.com Tue Jul 12 13:51:36 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:51:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> On 7/11/2011 11:30 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> >>> There aren't many groups with the level of >>> political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. >>> >> You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? >> > > Jeff Davis described himself the other day with these words: > > >>> For the record, while I warmly embrace both "liberal" and "hippie", I >>> currently favor, for myself, the term "hard left progressive". >>> > > While that is not communist, it's in the the same basic neighborhood > What a hoot! :-) Communists (= dictatorship of the proleteriat, state ownership of the means of production, violent overthrow of the bourgoisie, etc etc) are as far to the left of "hard left progressives" as "hard left progressives" are to the left of Ollie North. Most Americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by right-wing propaganda that they genuinely *believe* that anything non-conservative is basically in the socialist/communist/Trotskyist/Maoist nexus. Richard Loosemore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue Jul 12 13:27:38 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:27:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] H+ Flash Media Team Message-ID: Flash media comment group now open for general membership on Facebook. So if anyone has a desire to mouth off in public on H+ topics in newspapers etc, go for it! Details here: http://tinyurl.com/645hbdh and the group itself here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/218570128181012 The purpose of this project is to provide a rapid response in online media to H+ related stories. For example, the comments pages of newspapers. The idea is that editors want to maximize readership and reader feedback helps them do so. So if an article is slanted against H+ and receives a lot of criticism from the readers comments the editor may well decide its not good for business and shift bias accordingly. This of course impacts literally millions of other readers minds and is a very cheap and powerful method of media influence. The mechanism envisaged is an online alert between team members, hopefully hundreds eventually, followed by a percentage of them logging onto the site in question and dominating the discussion. So, a number of points which have arisen: a) This is now an -inter-org project and as such will not be exclusively ZS, nor necessarily dominated by ZS b) A neutral forum will be used for member alerts, probably FaceBook, bearing in mind that this is about the most popular common connection point c) The idea is that people who are interested in the project sign up to a FB group (to be created), and receive alerts about articles of interest. Similarly, anyone who sees an article of interest posts it on the FB group. d) Not everyone has to post on everything they see - just dive in on articles or publications that are of interest to you. Try to make one comment per day as a minimum. If a thousand of us do that, it's 365,000 per year! e) Try to focus on major media outlets, and not waste time with "lone nuts" mouthing off on YouTube or whatever. Unless they are very popular lone nuts! f) I would like to try to recruit people from the major orgs and lists to spread the word in their own environment g) This needs to be international, and not merely focused on the English speaking world. Once a successful project template has been established I would hope that various people or orgs in different nations copy the format and modus operandi using their local FB in the local language. h) No "party line" or pre-scripted response, because we all know why we are here and all have our own opinions within that remit and can explain in our own words. We should also be free to disagree about methods, but not aims in public (we *do* want an H+ future, I assume?) i) MOST IMPORTANT! - only post URLs on this group for members to respond to. It is not designed for chat. The reason should be obvious, but if we had 1000 members who all felt like saying something on the group every day every member would be getting 1000 emails a day and the whole thing would go down in flames. Argue and discuss at the URL site - not on the FB group please. Could those interested please pass this message onto other groups and lists that may contain people interested in joining. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jul 12 14:45:09 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:45:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:34:36PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > In history, we have had weather cycles, some of which have been much warmer In Earth's history, we've had everything from steamy jungle to snowball Earth. In *human* history, particularly recorded history, we haven't seen a lot. In human history where more than a billion lives were on the line we've seen jack squat. Every mosquito is going to look like a black swan. CO2 emissions at the current rate until end of this century will produce atmospheric concentrations last seen 30-100 megayears ago. Nobody knows what exactly is going to happen, but definitely something is going to happen, and it can be Damn Big. Even low-probability events are worth hedging against if the outcome amplitude is large enough. > than what is forecast even in a worst case scenario for the next century. > Moreover, some of those have been periods blossoming with innovation and > growth. I have serious issues with people dismissing some potential two billion loss to starvation and war as no big deal. > Now, it may well be the case that this would not be the outcome of any > contemporary change in the average temperature, be it on the minus or the > plus sign. > > One should however consider whether the actual risk is such a change, or > rather the implied, increasing fragilisation/sclerosis of our economic and > civilisational framework, which may easily lead to scenarios where only > absolute, unlikely stability (and stagnation) of all factors can prevent > catastrophic developments. This, btw, sounds as a distinctly > anti-transhumanist prospective... Extremely unlikely stability. We're up to our ears in alligators for the foreseeable future. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Jul 12 18:15:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:15:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E1C8F2C.1020005@satx.rr.com> On 7/12/2011 8:51 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Communists (= dictatorship of the proleteriat, state ownership of the > means of production, violent overthrow of the bourgoisie, etc etc) are > as far to the left of "hard left progressives" as "hard left > progressives" are to the left of Ollie North. > > Most Americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by right-wing propaganda > that they genuinely *believe* that anything non-conservative is > basically in the socialist/communist/Trotskyist/Maoist nexus. It's a profound confusion that keeps surfacing on this list, and really needs to be put out of its misery. Hard to know how to achieve that, though, when as you say it seems that many USians have been so conditioned by the likes of Fox and all its predecessors that accurate assessment of political variants seems out of reach. And that's dangerous; it leads straight into toxic Us v Them brain shutdown. It was my hope that by reposting the John Pilger article I'd provoke some more nuanced discussion of the ways in which exactly this kind of foolishness pervades USian perceptions of the media, but hardly anyone responded to its substance. (Note that Pilger, a man clearly of the left, was originally shut out *without formal bans* because of his *attacks* on *Pol Pot* and on US involvement with that disgusting communist regime.) Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jul 12 18:32:01 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:32:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1C8F2C.1020005@satx.rr.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> <4E1C8F2C.1020005@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > It's a profound confusion that keeps surfacing on this list, and really > needs to be put out of its misery. Hard to know how to achieve that, though, > when as you say it seems that many USians have been so conditioned by the > likes of Fox and all its predecessors that accurate assessment of political > variants seems out of reach. And that's dangerous; it leads straight into > toxic Us v Them brain shutdown. > > It was my hope that by reposting the John Pilger article I'd provoke some > more nuanced discussion of the ways in which exactly this kind of > foolishness pervades USian perceptions of the media, but hardly anyone > responded to its substance. (Note that Pilger, a man clearly of the left, > was originally shut out *without formal bans* because of his *attacks* on > *Pol Pot* and on US involvement with that disgusting communist regime.) > > I see that Obama has threatened that he might not send out the US Social Security checks in August if Congress won't agree to let him print more money. The US people should ask him who he is running the country for. It is supposed to be North Korea that starves their population to pay for the military and the boss class. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Jul 12 19:43:01 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:43:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists Message-ID: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Far from the whole story, but worth considering (since we've been discussing political perceptions): ========================== Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t KRISTINA CHEW ============================== To which I add: Medicare is not, of course, "aid"--it's supposed to be an investment people are obliged to make. The fact that the money has been (mis)used for other purposes (wars, subsidies for the very wealthy, etc) does not change this implied contract. Damien Broderick From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jul 12 19:37:55 2011 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:37:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1310499475.5622.YahooMailClassic@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Damien wrote: You think there are posts here from "near communists"? What's an example? Tovarisch Broderick, if you cannot see the communist in the room, *you* are the communist. Or so I heard from that nice Joe McCarthy. In terms of "near communism", there's a few examples - the british on the list who are deeply suspicious of any form of medical care that doesn't resemble the NHS (I am one, as a teenager I applied to medical school partly out of a conviction that working in that socialised health care system was a noble thing) - the admiration of modern China, with its mix of central planning and markets - this is found across the mainstream media these days - those looking to the day we are all uploads in a planet of computronium, and wondering how we fairly share out the processing time resource (the only one left at that point) - the "homo ludens" activists, who on seeing that most of us are going to be automated out of a job, think it only fair that we tax what wealth creation remains, and share it out among those who need to play for a living. Tom From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 12 20:31:39 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:31:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... ========================== Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t KRISTINA CHEW > 2011/7/12 Richard Litzkow : > > > also dose anyone still want an invite, > > I just got onto google+ so have 8 invites. I'll take one. I'll probably have to get on there eventually anyway. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 13 00:48:59 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:48:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Biohacking Message-ID: <1310518139.994.YahooMailNeo@web65605.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Hey all. I won't bore you all by extolling the virtues of green tea.?The problem is that green tea is nutritious but doesn't have the kick of a?strong cup of java. The reason for this is that tea leaves, although having a higher caffeine content than coffee beans, are used in smaller?quantity.?I found an?efficient way around?the dilemma?is brewing loose leaf green tea leaves,?including?them?when?I pour my cup, swirling my?cup when it gets low to suspend the tea leaves, and then?*eating* them. They don't taste?half bad;?I can hardly taste them at all against the background of the tea. They provide the subjective stimulant effect of between 1-2 cups of coffee at least in my body. Plus it's?antioxidant city and some small amount of dietary fiber to boot. Just thought I would share.?? ? Stuart LaForge "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke From glivick at sbcglobal.net Wed Jul 13 00:56:00 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:56:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1CED20.8030006@sbcglobal.net> Tax credits for dependents is government aide? Insurance that the government requires us to purchase from them is aide when it pays out? Medicare is insurance, Social Security is insurance. FOOD STAMPS are aide!! Couched in the words of the leftists, federal student loans, which are actually only guarantees, are bailouts, not aide. Good grief. Nevertheless, it's a good thing we have all this stuff. Government isn't all, or even mostly, bad. FutureMan On 7/12/2011 12:43 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Far from the whole story, but worth considering (since we've been > discussing political perceptions): > ========================== > Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t > KRISTINA CHEW > > services believe that they have not 'used a government social > program.? These include: > > 53.3 percent of those who?ve received federal student loans > 51.7 percent of those who?ve received child and dependent care tax > credits > 43 percent of those who?ve received unemployment insurance > 39.8 of those who?ve received Medicare > 28.7 of those who?ve received Social Security Disability > 25.4 of those who?ve received food stamps > > As Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing comments, > > It?s the 'Keep your government hands off my Medicare? phenomena writ > large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and > redistributive policies who?ve been conned (and conned themselves) > into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone > else is a parasite. > > [...] > > On GOOD magazine, Nona Willis Aronowitz - after pointing to reports of > Michele Bachmann?s husband getting farm subsidies and also, > reportedly, $137,000 in Medicaid money - makes a thoughtful point > about what the above figures say about our culture of 'rugged > individualism?: > > ?the point isn?t really whether or not these people are hypocrites or > uneducated or ungrateful; more compelling is why they?d see themselves > as exceptions. Shame about government help is ingrained into our > culture, and so is the narrative of the 'culture of dependence.? It?s > not only rightwingers and deficit hawks who feel this way. When my > contract position ended temporarily, it didn?t even occur to me to > apply for unemployment to fill the gap until my father suggested it to > me. When I waved him off, feeling embarrassed, he balked. 'Are you > kidding?? he replied. 'That?s what those deductions on your paychecks > were for.? > > We?re on the verge of forgetting (if we haven?t already) that our > government isn?t just taking our tax dollars for 'its own? purposes. > 'Its own? purposes are ours - we just prefer not to remember until > we?re really in need. > > ============================== > To which I add: Medicare is not, of course, "aid"--it's supposed to be > an investment people are obliged to make. The fact that the money has > been (mis)used for other purposes (wars, subsidies for the very > wealthy, etc) does not change this implied contract. > > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 13 01:11:55 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:11:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310519515.47598.YahooMailNeo@web65611.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Damien Broderick > To: 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 12:43 PM > Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists ? Damien wrote: ?============================== > To which I add: Medicare is not, of course, "aid"--it's supposed > to be an investment people are obliged to make. The fact that the money has been > (mis)used for other purposes (wars, subsidies for the very wealthy, etc) does > not change this implied contract. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well its like they say: When life gives you lemons, the rich steal them and make lemonade to sell back to you. Stuart LaForge "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 13 01:20:03 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:20:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CED20.8030006@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1CED20.8030006@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <017101cc40fa$fed07de0$fc7179a0$@att.net> > 53.3 percent of those who?ve received federal student loans > 51.7 percent of those who?ve received child and dependent care tax > credits > 43 percent of those who?ve received unemployment insurance > 39.8 of those who?ve received Medicare > 28.7 of those who?ve received Social Security Disability > 25.4 of those who?ve received food stamps >... On Behalf Of GLivick >Tax credits for dependents is government aide? Insurance that the government requires us to purchase from them is aide when it pays out? Medicare is insurance, Social Security is insurance. FOOD STAMPS are aide!! Couched in the words of the leftists, federal student loans, which are actually only guarantees, are bailouts, not aide. >Good grief. >Nevertheless, it's a good thing we have all this stuff. Government isn't all, or even mostly, bad. >FutureMan Agreed, but here's another spin on it. Regardless of our feelings about libertarianism, it is being thrust upon us. We have spent the money to do all the stuff we have done for a long time, and it isn't clear to me it can be sustained. Whether we like it or not, governments will be diminished in the immediately foreseeable. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 13 02:15:27 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:15:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CED20.8030006@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1CED20.8030006@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <4E1CFFBF.9010302@satx.rr.com> On 7/12/2011 7:56 PM, GLivick wrote: > Tax credits for dependents is government aide? Insurance that the > government requires us to purchase from them is aide when it pays out? > Medicare is insurance, Social Security is insurance. FOOD STAMPS are > aide!! Couched in the words of the leftists, federal student loans, > which are actually only guarantees, are bailouts, not aide. ========================== You'll notice that while the headline I quoted uses the term "aid" (which I immediately rejected, since many of the examples cited are enforced *insurance*), the question used in the poll specified "social programs." >> Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t >> KRISTINA CHEW >> >> > services believe that they have not 'used a government social >> program.? Many other examples of social programs could have been cited: roads, public lighting, public hospitals (whatever they're called here), policing, sewage provided by the city or State, etc etc. Then there's all the military expenditure, from which most people gain at least some return they value ("The oil must flow!" "Slay the terrorists!" and so on). As I quoted: "We?re on the verge of forgetting (if we haven?t already) that our government isn?t just taking our tax dollars for 'its own' purposes. 'Its own' purposes are ours - we just prefer not to remember until we?re really in need." Rugged individuals might claim (with whatever degree of honesty and consistency) that they don't get these services as efficiently and cheaply as they might if left each to his or her own devices, and without a boot stamping on a human face forever--but they ought not claim that they "have not used a government social program.? Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Jul 13 06:15:14 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:15:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Can he lead a normal life?" Message-ID: I dedicate this to Spike and the rest of his ilk... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOtoujYOWw0&feature=share John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 13 11:03:57 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:03:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> Message-ID: On 12 July 2011 14:11, BillK wrote: > 2011/7/12 Stefano Vaj wrote: > > Economics tells us that economic subjects behave "rationally" (or at > least > > according to game theory and if taken in large enough numbers) in > maximising > > their own interests and preferences. > > > > But it does not imply in the least that such interests are "rational" in > any > > plausible sense of the word (btw, even the accumulation of exchange > units, > > that is money, may be plausibly considered as irrational in certain > > contexts). > > That's the main fault in traditional economics. Investors don't behave > the way the theory says they should. Investors are more like herds of > lemmings, piling in to bubbles, fashions and current fads. > Yes, this is an additional angle. But even in a "perfect market", where everybody *does* behave rationally, what decides the price a consumer is ready to pay, say, for a holiday trip, which does not generate any additional income? How much would you have him to pay to make him renounce it? Present values are not determined economically in any sense, but by cultural factors. Either the theory is wrong or people are. I suspect the latter. ;) > I have another say. Either the theory is right, but it is not falsifiable (any behaviour is rational since it reflects the perceived best interest in the broadest sense of the subject concerned, including philanthropy or gambling or laziness), or the theory is falsifiable but is wrong (everybody is ready to exchange money for non monetary goals, such as power, pleasure, moral satisfaction, goodwill, status, peer approval, rest, security...) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 13 11:10:35 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:10:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 12 July 2011 16:45, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Moreover, some of those have been periods blossoming with innovation and > > growth. > > I have serious issues with people dismissing some potential > two billion loss to starvation and war as no big deal. > I am not saying that two billion deaths are no big deal. Just saying that if last time that Greenland was green was a very happy period, and now a few centigrades while not really an x-risk might actually represent a catastrophic prospective this should give us pause. > > One should however consider whether the actual risk is such a change, or > > rather the implied, increasing fragilisation/sclerosis of our economic > and > > civilisational framework, which may easily lead to scenarios where only > > absolute, unlikely stability (and stagnation) of all factors can prevent > > catastrophic developments. This, btw, sounds as a distinctly > > anti-transhumanist prospective... > > Extremely unlikely stability. We're up to our ears in alligators for the > foreseeable future. > It is because of that that my bets remain on change and becoming. Because of that, and because I have no great interest in continuing a history where nothing more would happen. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 13 14:56:47 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:56:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] five dollar camaro Message-ID: <000301cc416d$172b0dc0$45812940$@att.net> Check out this crazy story from a game theory perspective: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/07/12/dnt.camaro.sells.for.five.buc ks.wnem?hpt=hp_c2 This looks like a great way to harness the human propensity for gambling and the love of competition to create great profits. This one news story will likely make a fortune for the owner of the penny auction site. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Wed Jul 13 21:49:25 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:49:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Sorry about coming late to the party. On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:15 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: >> On 7/11/2011 11:30 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >>> There aren't many groups with the level of >>> political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. I thought this comment was valid, and a praiseworthy attribute of the list. Kudos to all, and Kelly for noticing. Then there was a bit of a diversion re "near communists", me, and the proximity of neighborhoods we inhabit. It's all a non-issue. I take no offense. I've been a Communist, and gotten over it. I save Tuesday afternoons -- it's something of a slow day -- for what I refer to as "recreational" Communism. You know, just to keep my hand in. The label by far the most accurate for me is Wise-ass. I've been making snarky comments since I was five. All the adults took notice and it made an impression. I've been trying ever since to reprise that past glory. Bottom line: being entertaining (to myself mostly) is what I'm mostly about; being serious,... not so much. > While I'm not an anarchist, I would say I'm in that > neighborhood, just for comparison. It's a nice neighborhood. > I don't think there is anyone on this list that would come out and say > directly "I am a communist", because Russian communism showed so > definitively how inefficient such a system is. Yet the ideas of Marx > and others are very much alive here on this list and in our world > today. This boilerplate anti-communism is so 50s. So nostalgia. Even more out-dated now, what with the "Soviet menace" more than twenty years gone. Regarding Communism's "definitive inefficiency", I would like to point out that the Commies first had to fight the Whites, had to endure Stalin, had to defeat the Nazi war machine (in which case Stalin was a plus) , and then had to deal with the unrelenting hostility of the West. Despite all these impediments, a backward Russia became something of a super power under the Commies, before the Commie system was retired. and it took just 72 years. Ditto the Chink version of the Commie system. Sixty-three years in, a billion dirt poor rice farmers are poised to become the preeminent economic power on the planet, taking over from the US of destitute A in what, the next decade? Not too shabby, that. And the Vietnamese Commies? Well, they stood up to and outlasted (defeated?) the greatest military power the world has ever known. What's "inefficient" about that? I did -- and yes, still do -- a bit of this ideology thing in the past. It's a fool's game. I'm trying to get over it. I'm all about technology now. You're here on the list to challenge us with your views -- thesis -- and we're going to challenge you back with ours -- antithesis. Out of which will arise the synthesis of tomorrows ideas. Let's get on with it. Welcome to the list. Later on, you wrote: "My understanding is that the first leftist was Robin Hood. Steal from the rich give to the poor." Mmmmmmmm. Tasty. Then regarding my self-characterization as progressive you wrote: "I assumed he meant it in the same sense Hillary Clinton uses progressive to define her position." That's just hurtful. (Excellent snark!) Best, Jeff Davis "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." Winston Churchill From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 13 23:17:13 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:17:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> <4E0BD1BC.1010009@mac.com> <4E0E7C48.3080005@mac.com> <4E175118.4070202@mac.com> Message-ID: On 11 July 2011 19:44, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Stefano Vaj > wrote: > > Same as in the US executions, you mean? :-) > > US executions have not been public for many decades. I was not referring to secret executions, but to those administered in front of the lawyers, parties, relatives, press, prison personnel, etc. > A frightening prospective indeed. > I think we are all glad we won. :-) > The US won the second war, but they did not manage to extend the life of capital punishment and extensive imprisonment in Europe, thank gods. And on that point, I concur 100%. It's all about the zeitgeist, and > that changes. I would not be surprised, for example, if sex with some > children is legal in 50 years. It seems to be the direction society is > headed. I don't think it is a good thing, it just seems possible. > I have no especially strong opinion in this respect, but my impression as to the direction where society is headed in western country is actually quite the opposite. > > > Thus, governments do not guarantee children per se, and the lack or > > weakness thereof does not imply that they are especially threatened > > under any definition of "threatened" (involving perhaps > > computer-graphic "exploitment"?). > > I don't think I'm following you here. Could you try again please? > One objection raised here against libertarianism in the anarchist sense was the need for children protection. I countered that by remarking on the basis of historical experience that governments need not protect children in any plausible sense any more than anarchist regimes. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 02:00:06 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:00:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading Message-ID: Extropes, I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, duh!". You know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up now. I was reading this piece from Brian Wang's Blog, Next Big Future: How long until there is a significantly independent robot economy and how quickly could computer brain interfaces improve ? http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/how-long-until-there-is-significantly.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail Focusing on the brain interface aspect, Brian provides the following: Kyle [Munkittrick] recently made the case for a Cybernetic Singularity http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/06/25/towards-a-new-vision-of-the-singularity/ "The Singularity should be re-imagined as a cybernetic process in which the human mind is progressively augmented with better and more complimentary artificial left-brain capacities. The Singularity will be the perfection of the mind-computer interface, such that where the mental processes of the human right-brain ends and the high-powered computer left-brain ends will be indistinguishable both externally by objective observation and internally by the subjective experience of the individual. I call this event the Cybernetic Singularity." Then Brian continues: "If we get enough memory and a high traffic wetbrain to computer brain connection so that there is a shared consciousness from the wetbrain with the added part. Then over days/months and years there is consciousness over both parts. Memory and visual stimuli spanning both systems and we can ensure thorough copying and duplication." [Here I paraphrase Brian's text]: If then you suffer a "shutoff"(as used below) of the wetbrain, consciousness and identity continue, and you achieve a full and seamless upload (ie transfer of consciousness). "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be less issue over is consciousness preserved." ********************************************** The article and its links provide a wealth of info showing just how far along this process has advanced. Over the years the list has hashed and rehashed -- delightfully -- the upload and its related identity issue(s). Brain scanning of the biological self followed by transfer into an alternative substrate -- "cloned" or manufactured biological, android cybernetic, or pure boxed computronium. This is the first time I have encountered an upload scenario that feels like a real world real tech roadmap. Persuasively achievable. Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine connection goes down. That was however a case of computer brain crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. Not just reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. Each time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. By which I mean superficially, to be sure. Now things are coming at me so fast I can't keep up, not even superficially. Anyone else feel similar? What about you younger folks (I'm sixty-two, now. How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? Best, Jeff Davis "My guess is that people don't yet realize how "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." J Corbally From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Jul 14 02:09:04 2011 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:09:04 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1C8F2C.1020005@satx.rr.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> <4E1C8F2C.1020005@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jul 2011, Damien Broderick wrote: [...] > It was my hope that by reposting the John Pilger article I'd provoke some more > nuanced discussion of the ways in which exactly this kind of foolishness > pervades USian perceptions of the media, but hardly anyone responded to its > substance. (Note that Pilger, a man clearly of the left, was originally shut > out *without formal bans* because of his *attacks* on *Pol Pot* and on US > involvement with that disgusting communist regime.) > > Damien Broderick About the substance. I think that giving Pilger some explanation about their actions would show organisers in better light. True, there is power asymmetry which asks for a bit of mutual respect (also called good manners sometimes). If I am to believe Pilgers' version, he didn't show disrespect but was not returned the favor. Only much later was he told why he had been treated in such way. Liberal or not, showing a bit of respect wouldn't hurt at all. Some people explain their decisions to their children and dogs, so the case described in an article allows us to see a bit. 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Jul 14 04:23:00 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:23:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E1E6F24.1030502@canonizer.com> Hi Jeff, It's great to hear from you, and to hear about this kind of 'seamless' uploading from yet another source! I think I remember you in some of our great old time conversations about identity way back when? That was before we could ever make any progress without a tool to track and amplify such conversations like we now have with canonizer.com. This information your provide is kind of getting some of the details wrong, but it is precicely the kind of seamless 'effing' of the ineffable uploading that will be possible, as predicted by the current leading scientific consensus camp at the consciousness survey project at canonizer.com on what consciousness is (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 , and let me know if you want to review the latest state of the art version of the camp statement the experts are currently about ready to submit to replace that now year old version. And notice that this theory is already accepted by far more diverse leading experts, including Lehar, Chalmers, Smythies, Hameroff, Ramachandran..., and continues to extend the lead the more comprehensive the survey becomes, than even the second next leading theory.) One of the things missing about a critical difference between current 'wet' and 'computer brains', as predicted by the leading expert consensus, is that, for computer brains, it doesn't matter what you represent red with, as long as whatever is doing the representation (whether it be water pipes, silicone, 5 volts, 0 volts, or whatever) the only important thing is that the representation be interpreted appropriately. If 5 volts represents red, and 0 volts represents green, and you swap these two, and still properly interpret them, the computer will go on picking the strawberry from the green leaves just as capably - -there will be no difference. What is representing the red and green knowledge, by design, doesn't matter - only the correct interpretation of such representations matters. But, if you invert our knowledge of the strawberries and leaves, made of redness and greenness, such that the leaves are now represented with redness, and the strawberries now with greenness, sure, we'll be picking the strawberies just as intelligently, but our consciousness experience of it will be phenomenally very different - and that ineffable difference is what consciousness is all about. If you shine a light on whatever it is, in our brain, that has this reddnes (if it is greay matter, it will reflect grey light) and if you interpret it as 'grey' you will surely be misinterpreting the representation incorrectly (this is refereed to as the "qualia interpretation problem" in the new draft version being collaboratively developed by the consensus experts). The Representational Qualia Theory predicts we will soon be effing and sharing these sensations between minds, by connections that will work like the Corpus Callosum must be working, to join all this redness and greenness that our knowledge is made of together. You quoted: "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be less issue over is consciousness preserved." But this is a little bit off, and surely no time will be required, once we start effing and merging minds like this. It also totally misses such ideas as there will surely be way more phenomenal properties being discovered and added in that nobody has ever experienced yet... There is a more precise description of this kind of seamless upload, and what it will be like, as predicted by this expert leading consensus theory, described in the 5th chapter of a fictional narrative in my story "1229 years after Titanic" here if you are interested: http://home.comcast.net/~brent.allsop/1229.htm#_Toc22030742 I'd love to know if you agree that this is what 'seamless' uploading will be like and how there will soon be no 'problem of other minds', everyone will look forward to uploading, and that the turning test is only an ignorant test, since the only important question to ask such a machine, is a question like what is red like for you? And, by the way, you pointed out how hard it is to keep up, with things like what are currently the leading theories of consciousness and how well accepted are each. How can you keep up with this, when there is now more than 20K publications in Chalmers bibliography, all mostly saying yes, no, yes, no in a childish, stuck in ever deeper trivial rat wholes debate...? That is precisely why we created canonizer.com, so we could better keep up with all the important stuff, and amplify the intelligence of the entire crowd about all such scientific and moral things as ever more demonstrable scientific proof comes in at ever increasing rates. Brent Allsop On 7/13/2011 8:00 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Extropes, > > I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, duh!". You > know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up now. > > I was reading this piece from Brian Wang's Blog, Next Big Future: > > How long until there is a significantly independent robot economy and > how quickly could computer brain interfaces improve ? > > http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/how-long-until-there-is-significantly.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail > > Focusing on the brain interface aspect, Brian provides the following: > > Kyle [Munkittrick] recently made the case for a Cybernetic Singularity > > http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/06/25/towards-a-new-vision-of-the-singularity/ > > "The Singularity should be re-imagined as a cybernetic process in > which the human mind is progressively augmented with better and more > complimentary artificial left-brain capacities. The Singularity will > be the perfection of the mind-computer interface, such that where the > mental processes of the human right-brain ends and the high-powered > computer left-brain ends will be indistinguishable both externally by > objective observation and internally by the subjective experience of > the individual. I call this event the Cybernetic Singularity." > > Then Brian continues: > > "If we get enough memory and a high traffic wetbrain to computer brain > connection so that there is a shared consciousness from the wetbrain > with the added part. Then over days/months and years there is > consciousness over both parts. Memory and visual stimuli spanning both > systems and we can ensure thorough copying and duplication." > > [Here I paraphrase Brian's text]: If then you suffer a "shutoff"(as > used below) of the wetbrain, consciousness and identity continue, and > you achieve a full and seamless upload (ie transfer of consciousness). > > "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain > for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness > operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be > less issue over is consciousness preserved." > > > ********************************************** > > The article and its links provide a wealth of info showing just how > far along this process has advanced. > > Over the years the list has hashed and rehashed -- delightfully -- the > upload and its related identity issue(s). Brain scanning of the > biological self followed by transfer into an alternative substrate -- > "cloned" or manufactured biological, android cybernetic, or pure boxed > computronium. This is the first time I have encountered an upload > scenario that feels like a real world real tech roadmap. Persuasively > achievable. > > Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 > by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who > experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine > connection goes down. That was however a case of computer brain > crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". > > Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living > in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. Not just > reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually > watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. Each > time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the > same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. By which I mean > superficially, to be sure. Now things are coming at me so fast I > can't keep up, not even superficially. > > Anyone else feel similar? What about you younger folks (I'm > sixty-two, now. How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel > sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? > > Best, Jeff Davis > > "My guess is that people don't yet realize how > "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." > J Corbally > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Jul 14 09:28:59 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:28:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Designer's Babies Message-ID: http://singularityhub.com/2009/02/25/designer-babies-like-it-or-not-here-they-come/ -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 09:22:38 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:22:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 03:00, Jeff Davis wrote: > > Anyone else feel similar? What about you younger folks (I'm > sixty-two, now. How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel > sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? Hi Jeff - Thanks for the post - very interesting! I'm 38, and feel exactly the way you describe. I'm a technophile and self-described transhumanist, but increasingly feel the need to take a moment just to breathe/relax/think when confronted with some of the rates of innovation and convergence we're seeing at the moment. Brian Eno once commented that in all forms of technological and cultural exploration there are two modes - "tunnel digging" and "surfing". Tunnel digging is the essential, join-the-dots type work which of course drives the kind of innovation we're seeing today. But if you take an "eye for the details" tunnel-digging mindset and look at the big picture - the sudden change exploding all around - then in my experience the result can be vertigo. Personally, I find that it relaxes me to switching the "surfing" mode. Surfing is that loosely creative, even artistic, right-brain approach in which you relax the need for control and just enjoy the ride, and watch out for any interesting novelties along the way. In short, I appreciate the technological details as much as anybody, but sometimes the sense of being able to "keep up" ironically comes from not trying to. I probably wouldn't have gone off on a hippy tangent here, except that this seems related to Brian's concept of "left brian" extended computational selves coupled to a "right brain" sense of self, identity, and centre. Maybe Brian is articulating a Singularitarian version of what Brian Eno was saying all along? Cheers, Amon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 09:26:46 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:26:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 10:22, Amon Zero wrote: > trying to. I probably wouldn't have gone off on a hippy tangent here, > except that this seems related to Brian's concept of "left brian" extended > computational selves... > "Left brian"?? Left *brain*! Too many brains and Brians for one sentence! ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 10:25:42 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:25:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: On 11 July 2011 18:30, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >There aren't many groups with the level of > political diversity we have here from near communists, to anarchists. > Yes and no. This is certainly true in terms of old politics. Yet I am inclined to think that transhumanism / anti-transhumanism is going to be the real political divide of the future... And we have preciously few neoluddites here. :-) As to politics in the old sense, I am inclined to keep an open mind, including for theories which are, or have become, quite out of the mainstream. On one hand, I think we may be too quick in believing that contemporary States are an insuperable paradigm which only can be discussed as to their optimal functioning, and I like the freshness, creativity and lateral thinking exhibited by the solutions envisaged by libertarians in the "anarco-capitalist" sense. On the other, the fact that the Soviet Union did not have the computing resources allowing a fully planned economy to outperform the market does not mean that such a thing cannot ever be done for some metaphysical reason. Does the latter thing make me a "near-communist"? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 10:48:06 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:48:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> <4E1C5168.10907@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/12 Richard Loosemore > Communists (= dictatorship of the proleteriat, state ownership of the means of production, violent overthrow of the bourgoisie, etc etc) are as far to the left of "hard left progressives" as "hard left progressives" are to the left of Ollie North. Really? Or simply somewhere else. > Most Americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by right-wing propaganda that they genuinely *believe* that anything non-conservative is basically in the socialist/communist/Trotskyist/Maoist nexus. Or perhaps the axis right-left has always been a rather stupid and confusing way to classify political families, except perhaps in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution. This is by no means less true for the "right" than for the "left". Does the "right" want the government to control the business or the business to control the government? Does it want a stronger, more authoritarian government or goes for "rugged individualism" and personal rebellion thereto? Does it support, as a class, landed gentry against capitalists, or old money, or (would-be) self-made men, tradition-fostering peasants or bigot micro-bourgeosie? Is it in favour of free trade or of nationalist protectionism? Is it imperialistic or would like to keep its community isolated from the rest of the world and left to its own way-of-life? Is it in favour of eugenics, or would like to bomb abortion clinics and genetic laboratories altogether? If, as it is the case, the answers to such question wildly vary depending on areas and eras, I wonder if the concept itself of "right" makes any sense. Even seeing Robin Hood himself as left-wing is problematic, because he embodied the individualistic, feodal and populist reaction of old Saxon rulers, Vandea-style, against the new, more "progressive" and centralised, government model of the Normans. Which of course included a higher taxation, exactly what is anathema to today's US "right". -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 14 11:31:41 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:31:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 07:00:06PM -0700, Jeff Davis wrote: > Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living > in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. Not just > reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually > watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. Each > time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the > same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. By which I mean > superficially, to be sure. Now things are coming at me so fast I > can't keep up, not even superficially. It's possible if you don't do anything else but keep up. > Anyone else feel similar? What about you younger folks (I'm > sixty-two, now. How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel > sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? I'm 45 and bored out of my wits. Trivial advances take some 30+ years. Most things don't move at all. Some even regress. We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to be aware or care. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 14 14:23:11 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again Message-ID: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It's been a while since I raised the topic of flooding the East African Rift Valley as a sort of poor person's macro-engineering project. Given that many believe global warming will cause sea levels to rise, doesn't this seem like something to discuss as one way to ameliorate on the cheap that potential problem? ? Regards, ? Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 14 14:26:54 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:26:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310653614.78449.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm not surprised. I used to debate with Republicans in the US who believed they were not being subsidized by the government (in other words, by stolen goods) when in fact they were overlooking the vast interferences of the government in the economy. ? But what does this ultimately mean? Government is good and everyone should support robbing everyone else? ? And what's the "implied contract" here? How does one opt out of it? Since one can't, it seems calling it a contract is self-deception at best. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 3:43 PM Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists Far from the whole story, but worth considering (since we've been discussing political perceptions): ========================== Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t KRISTINA CHEW ============================== To which I add: Medicare is not, of course, "aid"--it's supposed to be an investment people are obliged to make. The fact that the money has been (mis)used for other purposes (wars, subsidies for the very wealthy, etc) does not change this implied contract. Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 14 14:30:35 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:30:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> Message-ID: <1310653835.17832.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> No, these are subsidies since they exist because of government policy. Were they voluntary, this might be different, but then the whole schema might be different. For instance, the interest rates for student loans might be higher and I doubt there'd be such a thing as unemployment insurance absent the government. (And this is not a bad thing. There'd likely be less of problem in the first place because the economy would be far more productive. But also people would just save for a rainy day* and the overall cost of living would be much lower, especially without taxes and inflation.) ? Regards, ? Dan ? * The significant periods of mass unemployment are all government caused in my reading. ? From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 4:31 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] rugged individualists >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... ========================== Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don?t KRISTINA CHEW From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 16:39:05 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:39:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 12:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to > be aware or care. > Maybe you're watching the wrong trajectory? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 16:55:54 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:55:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 17:39, Amon Zero wrote: > On 14 July 2011 12:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> >> We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to >> be aware or care. >> > > > Maybe you're watching the wrong trajectory? > By which I'm not trying to be snide in any way, just saying that conceptions of "the future" have a tendency to shift over time. Just because the future we were expecting might not ever arrive, it doesn't mean that dramatic developments aren't in the post, you know? - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Jul 14 16:56:11 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:56:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1310662571.5315.YahooMailClassic@web114415.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Jeff Davis wrote: > Extropes, > > I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, > duh!".? You > know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up > now. Hm. You've just made me realise that this is something which is *not* necessarily blindingly obvious to everyone. It's a concept that seemed obvious before I'd even heard of transhumanism, and has been one of those ideas that's been running in the background, taken for granted, and no more remarkable than the fact that grass is green. Maybe I read too much science-fiction. Ben Zaiboc From giulio at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 16:55:55 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:55:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have always thought "slow" uploading via implants / BCI is one of the most promising paths to uploading. On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 4:00 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Extropes, > > I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, duh!". ?You > know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up now. > > I was reading this piece from Brian Wang's Blog, Next Big Future: > > How long until there is a significantly independent robot economy and > how quickly could computer brain interfaces improve ? > > http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/how-long-until-there-is-significantly.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail > > Focusing on the brain interface aspect, Brian provides the following: > > Kyle [Munkittrick] recently made the case for a Cybernetic Singularity > > http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/06/25/towards-a-new-vision-of-the-singularity/ > > ? ?"The Singularity should be re-imagined as a cybernetic process in > which the human mind is progressively augmented with better and more > complimentary artificial left-brain capacities. The Singularity will > be the perfection of the mind-computer interface, such that where the > mental processes of the human right-brain ends and the high-powered > computer left-brain ends will be indistinguishable both externally by > objective observation and internally by the subjective experience of > the individual. I call this event the Cybernetic Singularity." > > Then Brian continues: > > "If we get enough memory and a high traffic wetbrain to computer brain > connection so that there is a shared consciousness from the wetbrain > with the added part. Then over days/months and years there is > consciousness over both parts. Memory and visual stimuli spanning both > systems and we can ensure thorough copying and duplication." > > [Here I paraphrase Brian's text]: ?If then you suffer a "shutoff"(as > used below) of the wetbrain, consciousness and identity continue, and > you achieve a full and seamless upload (ie transfer of consciousness). > > "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain > for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness > operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be > less issue over is consciousness preserved." > > > ********************************************** > > The article and its links provide a wealth of info showing just how > far along this process has advanced. > > Over the years the list has hashed and rehashed -- delightfully -- the > upload and its related identity issue(s). ?Brain scanning of the > biological self followed by transfer into an alternative substrate -- > "cloned" or manufactured biological, android cybernetic, or pure boxed > computronium. ?This is the first time I have encountered an upload > scenario that feels like a real world real tech roadmap. ?Persuasively > achievable. > > Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 > by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who > experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine > connection goes down. ?That was however a case of computer brain > crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". > > Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living > in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. ?Not just > reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually > watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. ?Each > time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the > same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. ?By which I mean > superficially, to be sure. ?Now things are coming at me so fast I > can't keep up, not even superficially. > > Anyone else feel similar? ?What about you younger folks (I'm > sixty-two, now. ?How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel > sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? > > Best, Jeff Davis > > ?"My guess is that people don't yet realize how > ? ? "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? J Corbally > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jul 14 17:55:36 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:55:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dropping the ball, was RE: seamless uploading Message-ID: <008d01cc424f$3c9c7d40$b5d577c0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amon Zero Subject: Re: [ExI] seamless uploading On 14 July 2011 17:39, Amon Zero wrote: On 14 July 2011 12:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to be aware or care. Maybe you're watching the wrong trajectory? >.By which I'm not trying to be snide in any way, just saying that conceptions of "the future" have a tendency to shift over time. Just because the future we were expecting might not ever arrive, it doesn't mean that dramatic developments aren't in the post, you know? -A Ja. Consider the impact of the development of the internet, and the www in the early 90s, which is still rocking our world. Where would we be without having the world at our fingertips? That stunning development changed everything, and is still having an enormous impact. For those of us who are heavy internet users, that alone tacks on about 20 IQ points. Never was this so apparent as when I was involved in a lawsuit recently with four plaintiffs, none of which are internet users apparently. They needed their lawyers to do *eeeeverything* for them at 300 bucks an hour, and they did it all wrong anyway. We saw contradictory testimony, easily falsified sworn affidavits, self-contradictions eeeverywhere, irrelevant testimony which went on for days, all of which would have been avoided had they sat down with a good internet connection and learned a little about Oregon law. My ability to just look up a few laws and outline a case made it simple for my lawyer, and we won everything. We didn't get fully paid for legal expenses and probably never will, but at least we didn't lose our property. Without the internet, we probably would have lost it all. Those without an information pipe really are living in a different world than you and I inhabit. There are plenty of developments I can see coming. We have a crying need to replace the education system as we have known it, where one adult stands up in front of about 30 kids and talks. That needs to be replaced by computer based learning. I have watched my own son do his educational software, which isn't great but is improving all the time. I fear school will be mostly a waste of time for him. I look at what I have learned just since I became a heavy internet user in the past 15 years and how effective an education tool it is. Our world is slow to change, but it does eventually change. I can envision a world in which plenty of us live in homes which are mostly dark when it is dark outside, mostly cold when it is cold outside, but all with low-power high bandwidth internet connections. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Jul 14 18:38:29 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:38:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110714143829.leifj49pcgkcg8c8@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Giulio Prisco : > I have always thought "slow" uploading via implants / BCI is one of > the most promising paths to uploading. This brings us back home to to von Foerster and the Biological Computer Lab. Nice. > > On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 4:00 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: >> Extropes, >> >> I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, duh!". ?You >> know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up now. >> >> I was reading this piece from Brian Wang's Blog, Next Big Future: >> >> How long until there is a significantly independent robot economy and >> how quickly could computer brain interfaces improve ? >> >> http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/how-long-until-there-is-significantly.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail >> >> Focusing on the brain interface aspect, Brian provides the following: >> >> Kyle [Munkittrick] recently made the case for a Cybernetic Singularity >> >> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/06/25/towards-a-new-vision-of-the-singularity/ >> >> ? ?"The Singularity should be re-imagined as a cybernetic process in >> which the human mind is progressively augmented with better and more >> complimentary artificial left-brain capacities. The Singularity will >> be the perfection of the mind-computer interface, such that where the >> mental processes of the human right-brain ends and the high-powered >> computer left-brain ends will be indistinguishable both externally by >> objective observation and internally by the subjective experience of >> the individual. I call this event the Cybernetic Singularity." >> >> Then Brian continues: >> >> "If we get enough memory and a high traffic wetbrain to computer brain >> connection so that there is a shared consciousness from the wetbrain >> with the added part. Then over days/months and years there is >> consciousness over both parts. Memory and visual stimuli spanning both >> systems and we can ensure thorough copying and duplication." >> >> [Here I paraphrase Brian's text]: ?If then you suffer a "shutoff"(as >> used below) of the wetbrain, consciousness and identity continue, and >> you achieve a full and seamless upload (ie transfer of consciousness). >> >> "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain >> for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness >> operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be >> less issue over is consciousness preserved." >> >> >> ********************************************** >> >> The article and its links provide a wealth of info showing just how >> far along this process has advanced. >> >> Over the years the list has hashed and rehashed -- delightfully -- the >> upload and its related identity issue(s). ?Brain scanning of the >> biological self followed by transfer into an alternative substrate -- >> "cloned" or manufactured biological, android cybernetic, or pure boxed >> computronium. ?This is the first time I have encountered an upload >> scenario that feels like a real world real tech roadmap. ?Persuasively >> achievable. >> >> Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 >> by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who >> experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine >> connection goes down. ?That was however a case of computer brain >> crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". >> >> Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living >> in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. ?Not just >> reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually >> watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. ?Each >> time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the >> same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. ?By which I mean >> superficially, to be sure. ?Now things are coming at me so fast I >> can't keep up, not even superficially. >> >> Anyone else feel similar? ?What about you younger folks (I'm >> sixty-two, now. ?How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel >> sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? >> >> Best, Jeff Davis >> >> ?"My guess is that people don't yet realize how >> ? ? "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." >> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? J Corbally >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 natasha at natasha.cc Thu Jul 14 18:38:51 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:38:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110714143851.0s39hi480kg8cso0@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Giulio Prisco : > I have always thought "slow" uploading via implants / BCI is one of > the most promising paths to uploading. This brings us back home to von Foerster and the Biological Computer Lab. Nice. > > On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 4:00 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: >> Extropes, >> >> I want to apologize if this post here is a case of "Well, duh!". ?You >> know, obvious to all except me, and I'm just catching up now. >> >> I was reading this piece from Brian Wang's Blog, Next Big Future: >> >> How long until there is a significantly independent robot economy and >> how quickly could computer brain interfaces improve ? >> >> http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/how-long-until-there-is-significantly.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail >> >> Focusing on the brain interface aspect, Brian provides the following: >> >> Kyle [Munkittrick] recently made the case for a Cybernetic Singularity >> >> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/06/25/towards-a-new-vision-of-the-singularity/ >> >> ? ?"The Singularity should be re-imagined as a cybernetic process in >> which the human mind is progressively augmented with better and more >> complimentary artificial left-brain capacities. The Singularity will >> be the perfection of the mind-computer interface, such that where the >> mental processes of the human right-brain ends and the high-powered >> computer left-brain ends will be indistinguishable both externally by >> objective observation and internally by the subjective experience of >> the individual. I call this event the Cybernetic Singularity." >> >> Then Brian continues: >> >> "If we get enough memory and a high traffic wetbrain to computer brain >> connection so that there is a shared consciousness from the wetbrain >> with the added part. Then over days/months and years there is >> consciousness over both parts. Memory and visual stimuli spanning both >> systems and we can ensure thorough copying and duplication." >> >> [Here I paraphrase Brian's text]: ?If then you suffer a "shutoff"(as >> used below) of the wetbrain, consciousness and identity continue, and >> you achieve a full and seamless upload (ie transfer of consciousness). >> >> "By being able to have consciousness span current brain and new brain >> for a sufficient period of time and having real time consciousness >> operating throughout the upload and eventual shutoff there would be >> less issue over is consciousness preserved." >> >> >> ********************************************** >> >> The article and its links provide a wealth of info showing just how >> far along this process has advanced. >> >> Over the years the list has hashed and rehashed -- delightfully -- the >> upload and its related identity issue(s). ?Brain scanning of the >> biological self followed by transfer into an alternative substrate -- >> "cloned" or manufactured biological, android cybernetic, or pure boxed >> computronium. ?This is the first time I have encountered an upload >> scenario that feels like a real world real tech roadmap. ?Persuasively >> achievable. >> >> Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 >> by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who >> experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine >> connection goes down. ?That was however a case of computer brain >> crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". >> >> Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living >> in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. ?Not just >> reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually >> watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. ?Each >> time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the >> same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. ?By which I mean >> superficially, to be sure. ?Now things are coming at me so fast I >> can't keep up, not even superficially. >> >> Anyone else feel similar? ?What about you younger folks (I'm >> sixty-two, now. ?How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel >> sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? >> >> Best, Jeff Davis >> >> ?"My guess is that people don't yet realize how >> ? ? "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." >> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? J Corbally >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 18:48:06 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:48:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Bit of trivia here. Some years ago, I encountered the notion of a canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. The idea was -- or so I remember it -- that the water flowing down hill would generate hydroelectric power, and that the increased surface area of the Dead Sea. with the less dense sea water on top would increase the rate of evaporation such that the evaporative loss would match the rate of inflow. Almost a perpetual motion machine, kind of. There are at least a couple of other spots on the planet where the ground elevation is below sea level. Somewhere in the Mojave and a spot in Libya. The fact that all these depressions are in desert areas also makes one wonder about the possible benefit of more water vapor in the desert air, and, of course the possibility of more rain. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles 2011/7/14 Dan : > It's been a while since I raised the topic of flooding the East African Rift > Valley as a sort of poor person's macro-engineering project. Given that many > believe global warming will cause sea levels to rise, doesn't this seem like > something to discuss as one way to ameliorate on the cheap that potential > problem? > > Regards, > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 14 19:00:35 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:00:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110714190035.GJ16178@leitl.org> On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 05:39:05PM +0100, Amon Zero wrote: > On 14 July 2011 12:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to > > be aware or care. > > > > > Maybe you're watching the wrong trajectory? My mental models might be faulty, but I doubt it's due lack of data. Which developments do you see that help us achieve escape velocity? Let's compare notes. From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 19:28:12 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:28:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: <20110714190035.GJ16178@leitl.org> References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> <20110714190035.GJ16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 20:00, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > My mental models might be faulty, but I doubt it's due lack of data. > > Which developments do you see that help us achieve escape velocity? > Let's compare notes. Heh... Eugen, I have to say that I couldn't even begin to play that game - whatever your models are, it's safe to say they're better than mine. I'm just saying that there's a blizzard of convergent/emergent tech brewing, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one major paradigm shift catches us all sleeping. That could either be a good or bad thing, or more likely both at the same time. Out of curiousity, perhaps I might turn the tables on you and ask where you think we are most likely to drop the ball? What's the single biggest flavour of missed opportunity you see on the horizon? - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Jul 14 19:35:57 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:35:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> <20110714190035.GJ16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 20:28, Amon Zero wrote: > On 14 July 2011 20:00, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> >> My mental models might be faulty, but I doubt it's due lack of data. >> >> Which developments do you see that help us achieve escape velocity? >> Let's compare notes. > > > > Heh... Eugen, I have to say that I couldn't even begin to play that game - > whatever your models are, it's safe to say they're better than mine. > Although, to be fair, I'll hazard the following predictions, since you asked... most are surprisingly negative, for me! : - Neurological understanding doesn't catch up with scanning tech any time soon, which probably makes typical uploading scenarios problematic. That would probably just a matter of time to get that approach working, but identitities being distributed across (social) networks, plus cognitive prosthetics (e.g. artificial hippocampus), make full uploads slightly, though not entirely, redundant. - People get to mars and it doesn't matter. - Social and economic chaos (i.e. more than we have already). - Probably something like a hard-takeoff Singularity by 2075. Obviously not the kind of thing you can argue coherently without writing a doorstop-sized book, but my personal hunch. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Jul 14 19:31:36 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:31:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1310671896.29904.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Thu, 7/14/11, Eugen Leitl wrote: ?"Trivial advances take some 30+ years. Most things don't move at all." I don't think that's true in general but it is true for one thing and its the most important thing of all, medicine. If there were a Moore's Law for medicine I'd be satisfied with any nonzero advancement rate in everything else. Oh well, at least we don't use bloodletting to get the body's "humors" in balance anymore. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 19:25:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:25:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:34:36PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Even low-probability events are worth hedging against if the outcome > amplitude is large enough. True, if the cost of hedging is reasonable. For example, a few million dollars a year does a lot to hedge against asteroid impact. A few tens of millions of dollars a year keeps an eye on all the volcanoes on earth. But to put a dent in CO2 concentrations using any currently suggested methodology will cost tens of trillions of dollars and may not even help much. Hedge yes. Commit mutual economic suicide. I vote NO! > I have serious issues with people dismissing some potential > two billion loss to starvation and war as no big deal. It isn't so much that it is a small thing, it's just the sort of thing we have solved on a regular basis for many years in the face of many threats. How much did we spend in WWII to solve the Hitler problem? A lot. We had a big problem and we solved it. If global warming becomes as big an issue as Hitler's Germany, we will then apply the resources necessary to overcome the problem. By then, however, it may be very late to do anything useful. However, we'll have a lot more intellectual resources to attack the problem than we do now. > Extremely unlikely stability. We're up to our ears in alligators for the > foreseeable future. We have enjoyed unusual climatic stability in the last 10,000 years. It is unreasonable to assume that would continue forever in any case... In Risk assessment, you address the risks in order of ((threat potential damage * threat probability) / cost to address). Global warming doesn't come close to the top 20 global risks when you apply this formula. For example, the threat of dirty water is a daily reality in the lives of about a billion people. The cost to fix that problem is approximately 20 billion dollars, world wide. The probability of the problem is 1. So this is a threat we should address immediately, aggressively. Likewise, malaria. See the activities of the the Gates foundation. -Kelly From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:09:24 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:09:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/14 Stefano Vaj : > ... I am > inclined to think that transhumanism / anti-transhumanism is going to be the > real political divide of the future... > ... I am inclined to keep an open mind, > including for theories which are, or have become, quite out of the > mainstream. > ... I think we may be too quick in believing that > contemporary States are an insuperable paradigm > ... I like the freshness, creativity and > lateral thinking exhibited by the solutions envisaged by libertarians in the > "anarco-capitalist" sense. Masterful post. Dispose of the nation state? "Take my wife, ...please." It's a lumbering anachronism -- not my wife -- chock full of inefficiencies arising from the cobbling together of disparate, incompatible, unavoidably fractious, often actively hostile subpopulations with leadership and control of power held by an inherently despotic and socially distant political elite. So shall we start over again? Back to the drawing board? Clean slate? By all friggin' means. Years ago,... many years ago, ...when I was taking the first steps toward what would later become my transhumanist worldview, I encountered "Here Comes Immortality" by Jerome Touchille. JT was a Randian disciple and one of the founders in the early 70's of the Libertarian "thing". These days HCI would be almost mainstream, and "behind the curve" for those of a transhumanist bent. One of the ideas presented in HCI -- an idea which has not yet manifested -- is of an alternative social/governance structure: a kind of corporate mediated tribalism resulting in a diverse array of corporate mini-states. Now, "corporate" and "state" put together has some negative historical baggage, ie fascism. Let's just get beyond that. I'm talking "nice" corporate,... "corporate with a human face". (If how to make corporate "nice" rather than rapacious seems problematic, then just go back to corporate first principles and make "nice" the key to profitability. Essentially, under corporate guidance -- which is to say run as a business, rather than a gun-to-the-taxpayer's-head-concentration-camp-er-"nation" -- like-minded folks -- there's the tribalism -- are offered the corporate "product": a turn key community where they can live safely and efficiently in accordance with their mutually-held values, and free-from the discord of diversity (ie living with and putting up with discordant beliefs, values, practices, etc.) As innovative as this is, Touchille added another novelty: to avoid the siting problem -- the problem of the old bad govts having a monopoly on available land. These communities would be built at sea, floating communities. An obvious advantage to such a system is (1)voluntarism: the "citizen" chooses a community (ie his "country") which meets his needs (matches his meme set/values), and (2) efficiency (I will leave it to others to enumerate the list of efficiencies arising from this form of governance.) A more modern variant of this idea is of course communities sited outside the terrestrial gravity well. *********************************** I'm gonna leave it there. I would love to hear what other notions any of you might have. Kelly? Including the impact of the singularity and the possible "retirement" of the meat-based way of life. Once again, I am totally jazzed. Best, Jeff Davis "When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Buckminster Fuller From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:12:56 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:12:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Sorry about coming late to the party. > I thought this comment was valid, and a praiseworthy attribute of the > list. ?Kudos to all, and Kelly for noticing. Thanks, I thought you were going to disembowel me... Much appreciated... :-) >> While I'm not an anarchist, I would say I'm in that >> neighborhood, just for comparison. > > It's a nice neighborhood. I think so. > Regarding Communism's "definitive inefficiency", I would like to point > out that the Commies first had to fight the Whites, had to endure > Stalin, had to defeat the Nazi war machine (in which case Stalin was a > plus) , and then had to deal with the unrelenting hostility of the > West. ? Despite all these impediments, a backward Russia became > something of a super power under the Commies, before the Commie system > was retired. ?and it took just 72 years. Tsarist Russia was a powerhouse too. I think at the best the communists came near to recovering their Tzarist stature, briefly. > Ditto the Chink version of the Commie system. ?Sixty-three years in, a > billion dirt poor rice farmers are poised to become the preeminent > economic power on the planet, taking over from the US of destitute A > in what, the next decade? ?Not too shabby, that. When I visited China in 1987, it was pretty shabby. All the good stuff you talk about has come from the capitalist reformation since the early 80s... Giving communism the credit for China's economic well being today doesn't strike me as particularly intellectually honest. > And the Vietnamese Commies? ?Well, they stood up to and outlasted > (defeated?) the greatest military power the world has ever known. > What's "inefficient" about that? Nice jungles. ;-) > I did -- and yes, still do -- a bit of this ideology thing in the > past. ?It's a fool's game. ?I'm trying to get over it. ?I'm all about > technology now. Technology over the long haul is WAY more important than short term ideology. So we're in agreement there. I just think the best system for developing technology involves a lot of freedom. > You're here on the list to challenge us with your views -- thesis -- > and we're going to challenge you back with ours -- antithesis. ?Out of > which will arise the synthesis of tomorrows ideas. ?Let's get on with > it. > > Welcome to the list. Thanks! > Later on, you wrote: > > "My understanding is that the first leftist was Robin Hood. Steal from > the rich give to the poor." > > Mmmmmmmm. ?Tasty. > > Then regarding my self-characterization as progressive you wrote: > > "I assumed he meant it in the same sense Hillary Clinton uses > progressive to define her position." > > That's just hurtful. ?(Excellent snark!) So you aren't a Clinton progressive... so what sort of progressive are you then? I only know the one kind that started with T. Roosevelt and W. Wilson. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:18:26 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:18:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/14 Stefano Vaj : > On 11 July 2011 18:30, Kelly Anderson wrote: > "anarco-capitalist" sense. On the other, the fact that the Soviet Union did > not have the computing resources allowing a fully planned economy to > outperform the market does not mean that such a thing cannot ever be done > for some metaphysical reason. > > Does the latter thing make me a "near-communist"? :-) There is a metaphysical reason. As long as those doing the work experience emotion, participating in a command economy and being assigned your part in that economy (else, how is it planned) means that the daily drudgery of work isn't going to be any fun for the participants. And almost by definition will be less efficient. So perhaps you are a near-communist in some narrow way... in that maybe you think individual liberty to choose your occupation is not as important as a highly efficient state. With AGI workers, YMMV. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:26:00 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:26:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: I and my family have received government aid. I knew it was government aid. Every year since 1999 when I paid $502,000 in federal income tax, I have been trying my best to get it all back. But I don't like what it has done to me. It has made me much less of a rugged individualist than I ever wanted to be. It is a disease, and I want to fight back and kick the public heroin. I just haven't quite figured out how to do it yet. It is out of this experience and the experiences of "we're the government and we're here to help" that I have become a libertarian. Not because I am a rugged individualist. Perhaps that makes me a big fat hypocrite. Most likely, it does. But I'm just trying to live the best life I can under what I perceive to be a crappy system. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:32:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:32:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Bit of trivia here. ?Some years ago, I encountered the notion of a > canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. I think this is a great idea. It would be interesting to see what it did to climate models of course... and if it made Iran drier, it could lead to more political problems. But the first problem I see with it is that a number of fundamentalist Christians would see it as a fulfillment of prophecy... and that might cause some real problems. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:43:07 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:43:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: <1310671896.29904.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> <1310671896.29904.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/14 john clark > I don't think that's true in general but it is true for one thing and its the most important thing of all, medicine. If there were a Moore's Law for medicine I'd be satisfied with any nonzero advancement rate in everything else. Oh well, at least we don't use bloodletting to get the body's "humors" in balance anymore. > As an outsider, I have observed a lot of progress in medicine. I see a WHOLE lot more progress in medicine right around the corner. Once we crack protein folding, there will be a hard takeoff in certain parts of medicine. Likewise for autonomous nanobots small enough to be inside of us. Even the current DaVinci surgical robots are freaking amazing. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:48:00 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:48:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: References: <20110714113141.GB16178@leitl.org> <20110714190035.GJ16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/7/14 Amon Zero wrote: > Although, to be fair, I'll hazard the following predictions, since you > asked... most are surprisingly negative, for me! ?: > - Neurological understanding doesn't catch up with scanning tech any time > soon, which probably makes typical uploading scenarios problematic. That > would probably just a matter of time to get that approach working, but > identitities being distributed across (social) networks, plus cognitive > prosthetics (e.g. artificial hippocampus), make full uploads slightly, > though not entirely, redundant. > This new book reviewed in Boing Boing would support such pessimism. The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist's View David J. Linden at 11:15 AM Thursday, Jul 14, 2011 Kurzweil then argues that our understanding of biology?and of neurobiology in particular?is also on an exponential trajectory, driven by enabling technologies. The unstated but crucial foundation of Kurzweil's scenario requires that at some point in the 2020s, a miracle will occur: If we keep accumulating data about the brain at an exponential rate (its connection maps, its activity patterns, etc.), then the long-standing mysteries of development, consciousness, perception, decision, and action will necessarily be revealed. I contend that our understanding of biological processes remains on a stubbornly linear trajectory. In my view the central problem here is that Kurzweil is conflating biological data collection with biological insight. etc................ BillK From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 14 20:44:33 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:44:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <001201cc4266$d6ed38f0$84c7aad0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... >...When I visited China in 1987, it was pretty shabby. All the good stuff you talk about has come from the capitalist reformation since the early 80s... Giving communism the credit for China's economic well being today doesn't strike me as particularly intellectually honest. -Kelly Communism is what held China back. They had a highly intelligent, industrious resident population, but then the power grabbers decided communism was the way. They imprisoned or executed their intelligentsia, wrecked businesses, did everything that resulted in what you saw in 1987. But eventually the students realized there was a better way. Spring of 1989, massive protests in Tianenmen Square. Later that year, Mr. Gorbachev tore down the wall, and the whole world was able to compare capitalism on one side with communism on the other. China leadership decided perhaps they would allow capitalism to work its magic (giving up minimal control of course, human nature being inherently fond of wielding power.) Result: China today, growing, thriving, rich. Same with Vietnam and everywhere else: less government equals more economic freedom equals greater motivation of the individual and more prosperity. Money is freedom. Money motivates people. It really is that simple. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Jul 14 20:55:15 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:55:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading In-Reply-To: <4E1E6F24.1030502@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1310676915.12526.YahooMailClassic@web82903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Jul 14, 2011, at 12:23 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: "if you invert our knowledge of the strawberries and leaves, made of redness and greenness, such that the leaves are now represented with redness, and the strawberries now with greenness, sure, we'll be picking the strawberies just as intelligently, but our consciousness experience of it will be phenomenally very different" Hmm, if the experience is not just different but is VERY different it's odd that we would react to such very different things in exactly the same way. When I was young and giant reptiles ruled the Earth I took a psychology course and read about a experiment where the subjects wore goggles that turned everything upside down, they wore them for a long time. At first they were disorientated but over time their brain adjusted? and they went about their business normally, they forgot things were upside down. When they eventually took the goggles off and things were right side up again they were again temporally disorientated. ? "and that ineffable difference is what consciousness is all about." It's also odd that in spite of being "ineffable" some people do insist on talking about it a lot, and in spite of being completely effable they don't like to talk about the far more complicated and useful property of intelligence. ? "If you shine a light on whatever it is, in our brain, that has this reddnes (if it is greay matter, it will reflect grey light) and if you interpret it as 'grey' you will surely be misinterpreting the representation incorrectly " And on most computer monitors the following word "RED" will not produce red light, try it on your own monitor and you will probably see I am right. I claim that my thought experiment is just as profound as yours. Not very. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 20:10:17 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:10:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Brave New World? Message-ID: BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 21:28:03 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:28:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > 2011/7/14 Stefano Vaj : >> ... I am >> inclined to think that transhumanism / anti-transhumanism is going to be the >> real political divide of the future... > >> ... I am inclined to keep an open mind, Me too... though for now I will stick to my belief that freedom is the best system for the development of technology, and that technology is what matters to people's quality of life. >> including for theories which are, or have become, quite out of the >> mainstream. >> ?... I think we may be too quick in believing that >> contemporary States are an insuperable paradigm >> ... I like the freshness, creativity and >> lateral thinking exhibited by the solutions envisaged by libertarians in the >> "anarco-capitalist" sense. > > Masterful post. ?Dispose of the nation state? ?"Take my wife, > ...please." ?It's a lumbering anachronism -- not my wife -- chock full > of inefficiencies arising from the cobbling together of disparate, > incompatible, unavoidably fractious, often actively hostile > subpopulations with ?leadership and control of power held by an > inherently despotic and socially distant political elite. The state's future is very uncertain in the face of globalization, new non-governmental currencies, and other developments. If the US government defaults and collapses, for example, it doesn't mean the end of the US people... so what steps in? > So shall we start over again? ?Back to the drawing board? ?Clean slate? It would be good to do so. Thomas Jefferson never imagined us making it this far without a clean slate. He wanted a new revolution every 20-30 years. Perhaps we are in the beginnings of the first major revolution in some time, if the last election was any indicator. > By all friggin' means. > > Years ago,... many years ago, ...when I was taking the first steps > toward what would later become my transhumanist worldview, I > encountered "Here Comes Immortality" by Jerome Touchille. ?JT was a > Randian disciple and one of the founders in the early 70's of the > Libertarian "thing". ?These days HCI would be almost mainstream, and > "behind the curve" for those of a transhumanist bent. > > One of the ideas presented in HCI -- an idea which has not yet > manifested -- is of an alternative social/governance structure: a kind > of corporate mediated tribalism resulting in a diverse array of > corporate mini-states. Could still happen. Would it be good? I dunno. > Now, "corporate" and "state" put together has some negative historical > baggage, ie fascism. Ya. > Let's just get beyond that. ?I'm talking "nice" > corporate,... "corporate with a human face". ?(If how to make > corporate "nice" rather than rapacious seems problematic, then just go > back to corporate first principles and make "nice" the key to > profitability. How do you do that? > Essentially, under corporate guidance -- which is to say run as a > business, rather than a > gun-to-the-taxpayer's-head-concentration-camp-er-"nation" -- > like-minded folks -- there's the tribalism -- are offered the > corporate "product": a turn key community where they can live safely > and efficiently in accordance with their mutually-held values, and > free-from the discord of diversity (ie living with and putting up with > discordant beliefs, values, practices, etc.) When we each have more bandwidth than we do today, then perhaps a true democracy could work. > As innovative as this is, Touchille added another novelty: to avoid > the siting problem -- the problem of the old bad govts having a > monopoly on available land. ?These communities would be built at sea, > floating communities. ?An obvious advantage to such a system is > (1)voluntarism: the "citizen" chooses a community (ie his "country") > which meets his needs (matches his meme set/values), and (2) > efficiency (I will leave it to others to enumerate the list of > efficiencies arising from this form of governance.) A pirate's life for me!!! > A more modern variant of this idea is of course communities sited > outside the terrestrial gravity well. > > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? *********************************** > > I'm gonna leave it there. ?I would love to hear what other notions any > of you might have. ?Kelly? ?Including the impact of the singularity > and the possible "retirement" of the meat-based way of life. Like I said, if we each have enough bandwidth to think about everything we want all at once, then we can dedicate part of our processing power to governmental issues, and a true democracy could arise in scale for the first time in history. That is a very interesting prospect in my mind. Republican representation works best with limited human bandwidth... and barely at that when they can't even read the laws, and nobody really knows who writes the damn laws. > Once again, I am totally jazzed. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Hold on! -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 14 20:49:39 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:49:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 3:26 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Every year since 1999 when I paid $502,000 in federal income tax, Good grief. What follows might be regarded as a rude question (but you did volunteer that information): How did this happen? Was it cumulative non-paid tax over many years? Does it include some monstrous IRS fine? Did you make more than million bucks that year? (I gather that the top tax rate on regular income that year was 40%, and 20% on capital gains, which seems to imply that in 1999 you still managed to keep more money than I've ever made in my life, aside from selling my home and buying another with the proceeds.) Tax of half a mil in a single year seems a bit inconsistent with your woes about living on the street, etc. If this *is* an outrageously personal and offensive question, my apologies and please ignore it. Damien Broderick From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 21:41:53 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:41:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/14/2011 3:26 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Every year since 1999 when I paid $502,000 in federal income tax, > > Good grief. What follows might be regarded as a rude question (but you did > volunteer that information): Not at all. I think it is instructive. > How did this happen? Was it cumulative non-paid tax over many years? Does it > include some monstrous IRS fine? Did you make more than million bucks that > year? (I gather that the top tax rate on regular income that year was 40%, > and 20% on capital gains, which seems to imply that in 1999 you still > managed to keep more money than I've ever made in my life, aside from > selling my home and buying another with the proceeds.) Tax of half a mil in > a single year seems a bit inconsistent with your woes about living on the > street, etc. It was the year I sold the company (ViewSoft) that I co-founded in 1991. Years of near poverty before and after (although not immediately after), but the one year of astounding success was punished severely by the government. It was a capital gains tax on $1.8 million dollars. Despite the liberal hogwash to the contrary, there were NO tax dodges that would work. Rich people pay their fair share. If it had been regular income, as opposed to capital gains, the rate would have been even higher. > If this *is* an outrageously personal and offensive question, my apologies > and please ignore it. Not at all... http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/demotivators/mistakesdemotivationalposter.jpg Fortunately for my immortal soul (hehe) I shall pass through the eye of the needle with no effort thanks to my two ex-wives... -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 14 21:56:17 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:56:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1F6601.7040505@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 4:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > It was a capital gains tax on $1.8 million dollars. So you walked away with a measly $1,300,000. Dreadful! :) (I assume from what you add that your two ex-wives took their share of that, but you can't really blame the gummint for that, can you?) Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jul 14 22:08:23 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:08:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > It was the year I sold the company (ViewSoft) that I co-founded in > 1991. Years of near poverty before and after (although not immediately > after), but the one year of astounding success was punished severely > by the government. It was a capital gains tax on $1.8 million dollars. > Despite the liberal hogwash to the contrary, there were NO tax dodges > that would work. Rich people pay their fair share. If it had been > regular income, as opposed to capital gains, the rate would have been > even higher. > What you meant to say was that there were no tax dodges available to small businessmen. The tax dodges appear when you are a multi-national corporation that is best friends with a government that allows them to move profits to tax-free havens offshore. In the USA the small business environment is being punished severely and the middle class is being destroyed. BillK From lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Jul 14 22:50:02 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:50:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> Message-ID: <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> Spike wrote: >Ja, but unemployment insurance doesn't belong on this list. That is >insurance, not government aid. For some people it can be viewed as insurance. But as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited from collecting from it. That isn't insurance. -- David. From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 14 23:11:40 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:11:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> Message-ID: <4E1F77AC.3030907@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 5:50 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > But as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am > required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited > from collecting from it. Is it conceivable that you gain more financial benefits from this arrangement (given the existence of US as it is) than you might otherwise? Or than those not in this position who *can* collect unemployment benefits? Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 14 23:44:40 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:44:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> Message-ID: <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 5:50 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am > required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited > from collecting from it. This is certainly inequitable, but I gather that (in TX at least, and perhaps elewhere) the size of the tax depends on how many claims have been made by previous employees, and since you have not claimed against yourself I surmise that this tax might be a small portion of one percent. Annoying, and arguably unjust, but perhaps not overly onerous? Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 01:47:12 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:47:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Brave New World? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E1F9C20.6050504@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 3:10 PM, BillK wrote: > This use of cellphones (a la "Don't tase me, bro!") is a key moment in the third volume of Robert Sawyer's quite nice AI-out-of-the-net trilogy, WWW. There's a bully about to whale into a nerd; a gang of kids stands around them, some yelling "Fight! Fight!" as the miserable bastard will. Then another kid pulls out her cell, holds it high, and yells, "Sight! Sight!" Other kids take up the digital record crusade. My question: does anyone actually use this term, in such confrontations? I expect that they will now, even if they didn't before. Damien Broderick From glivick at sbcglobal.net Fri Jul 15 01:59:30 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:59:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1F9F02.1080007@sbcglobal.net> Taxes are only onerous to those who pay them. I wonder who they could be? Certainly not the people who make the most money, say the top 5%, who are all rich and pay NO taxes (everyone knows that), what with all the tax dodges they have and everything. It's not fair, those people just got lucky and landed good jobs, or somehow started some ridiculous business that made them rich off our backs. They should have to pay some of the tax burden. I'm thinking along the lines of, say, most of it. To start, those rich dummies who have employees working for next to nothing should at least pay half of all the money that goes into the Social Security Trust (now THERE's a word) Fund. We should also get them to pay all the money it takes to fund unemployment insurance, since, if it wasn't for them employing people to begin with, there wouldn't be any anybody to become unemployed. The way I see it, it's all their fault, those rich, lazy, lucky bastards! Really, I'm not just being snotty, I'm serious!!! FutureMan On 7/14/2011 4:44 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/14/2011 5:50 PM, David Lubkin wrote: >> as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am >> required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited >> from collecting from it. > > This is certainly inequitable, but I gather that (in TX at least, and > perhaps elewhere) the size of the tax depends on how many claims have > been made by previous employees, and since you have not claimed > against yourself I surmise that this tax might be a small portion of > one percent. Annoying, and arguably unjust, but perhaps not overly > onerous? > > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Jul 15 02:34:55 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:34:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E1FA74F.1080509@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 3:32 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > a number of fundamentalist Christians would see it as a > fulfillment of prophecy... and that might cause some real problems. Which prophecy is that? From thirdeyeoferis at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 02:37:11 2011 From: thirdeyeoferis at gmail.com (Thirdeye Of Eris) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:37:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1F9F02.1080007@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <4E1F9F02.1080007@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: two words, flat tax On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 9:59 PM, GLivick wrote: > Taxes are only onerous to those who pay them. I wonder who they could be? > Certainly not the people who make the most money, say the top 5%, who are > all rich and pay NO taxes (everyone knows that), what with all the tax > dodges they have and everything. It's not fair, those people just got lucky > and landed good jobs, or somehow started some ridiculous business that made > them rich off our backs. They should have to pay some of the tax burden. > I'm thinking along the lines of, say, most of it. To start, those rich > dummies who have employees working for next to nothing should at least pay > half of all the money that goes into the Social Security Trust (now THERE's > a word) Fund. We should also get them to pay all the money it takes to fund > unemployment insurance, since, if it wasn't for them employing people to > begin with, there wouldn't be any anybody to become unemployed. The way I > see it, it's all their fault, those rich, lazy, lucky bastards! > > Really, I'm not just being snotty, I'm serious!!! > > FutureMan > > > > > On 7/14/2011 4:44 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> On 7/14/2011 5:50 PM, David Lubkin wrote: >> >>> as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am >>> required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited >>> from collecting from it. >>> >> >> This is certainly inequitable, but I gather that (in TX at least, and >> perhaps elewhere) the size of the tax depends on how many claims have been >> made by previous employees, and since you have not claimed against yourself >> I surmise that this tax might be a small portion of one percent. Annoying, >> and arguably unjust, but perhaps not overly onerous? >> >> Damien Broderick >> ______________________________**_________________ >> 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 > -- "A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ?state? and?society? and ?government? have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame... as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world... aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure." -- Professor De La Paz from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 15 03:06:16 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:06:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Brave New World? In-Reply-To: <4E1F9C20.6050504@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1F9C20.6050504@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <002301cc429c$2a2c4ee0$7e84eca0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Subject: Re: [ExI] Brave New World? ... ... There's a bully about to whale into a nerd; a gang of kids stands around them, some yelling "Fight! Fight!" as the miserable bastard will. Then another kid pulls out her cell, holds it high, and yells, "Sight! Sight!" Other kids take up the digital record crusade. .... Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ It's being done already, and has likely cut short more than one criminal career. Here's a good example from your own continent: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/16/earlyshow/living/parenting/main200 43808.shtml What surprised me is that the debate, with actual criticism of the kid doing the body slam. The only thing I can see he did wrong was fail to stomp the bastard while he was down. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 03:39:03 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:39:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Brave New World? In-Reply-To: <002301cc429c$2a2c4ee0$7e84eca0$@att.net> References: <4E1F9C20.6050504@satx.rr.com> <002301cc429c$2a2c4ee0$7e84eca0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E1FB657.2050701@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 10:06 PM, spike wrote: > It's being done already, and has likely cut short more than one criminal > career. Here's a good example from your own continent: I should have been clearer. Are people shouting "Sight!" "Sight!" (a retort to ""Fight! Fight!") as they do it from numerous perspectives? From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 03:43:04 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:43:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <4E1F9F02.1080007@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <4E1FB748.3040401@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 9:37 PM, Thirdeye Of Eris wrote: > > two words, flat tax Two more words, flat income. Mwahahahaha. (Both inequitable in their different ways.) From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 15 03:47:41 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:47:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien B wrote: > This is certainly inequitable, but I gather that (in TX at least, > and perhaps elewhere) the size of the tax depends on how many > claims have been made by previous employees, and since you have not > claimed against yourself I surmise that this tax might be a small > portion of one percent. Annoying, and arguably unjust, but perhaps > not overly onerous? Spike was arguing it's insurance. At least for me it's not. The tax now caps at $444 per employee per year. It drops every year if you don't have claims. But if you stop having employees for a while, they'll close your account, even if you remain in business. When you hire again, you start back at the then-prevailing starter rate. And, like a lot of other government forms for businesses, they want the paper every quarter, whether you owe them or not, and there's a penalty if it's late. (Aside: Just got back from the first evening of Readercon. You'd have enjoyed Barry Malzberg expounding on Scott Meredith and John Campbell.) -- David. From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 04:05:09 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:05:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Readercon In-Reply-To: <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> On 7/14/2011 10:47 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > > (Aside: Just got back from the first evening of Readercon. You'd > have enjoyed Barry Malzberg expounding on Scott Meredith and > John Campbell.) That's the best sf con I ever attended (just once, about 15 years ago) and I keep meaning to get back there. Barry published a pretty scathing piece in F&SF on the vile "Scott" Meredith "business"/scam and I've discussed it with him. I got ripped off by the SM Agency when I was young and foolish. Damien Broderick From bkdelong at pobox.com Fri Jul 15 04:32:16 2011 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:32:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Readercon In-Reply-To: <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Good grief. I keep hearing about this Con from many of my circles and it's right in my backyard. Guess I need to really start going. On Jul 15, 2011 12:07 AM, "Damien Broderick" wrote: > On 7/14/2011 10:47 PM, David Lubkin wrote: >> >> (Aside: Just got back from the first evening of Readercon. You'd >> have enjoyed Barry Malzberg expounding on Scott Meredith and >> John Campbell.) > > That's the best sf con I ever attended (just once, about 15 years ago) > and I keep meaning to get back there. Barry published a pretty scathing > piece in F&SF on the vile "Scott" Meredith "business"/scam and I've > discussed it with him. I got ripped off by the SM Agency when I was > young and foolish. > > 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 Fri Jul 15 04:29:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:29:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun Message-ID: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> No particular justification for posting this. It just made me howl with laughter at the crazy fools that would do such a thing as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 05:11:14 2011 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:11:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Readercon In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Hello Dear List: I wish I had gotten it together and meet.. Perhaps on the extropy Nurdy Circle in Google+ I know it will happen but just how soon, lets make a hangout or a huddle soon. some of the conversations have bees such a wonderful ride. Joy, I hope we all find joy. Smile, with respect, Ilsa Ilsa Bartlett Institute for Rewiring the System 2951 Derby Street #139 Berkeley, CA 94705 510-423-3132 http://ilsabartlett.wordpress.com http://www.google.com/profiles/ilsa.bartlett www.hotlux.com/angel.htm www.grassroutesguides.com "Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person." -John Coltrane 2011/7/14 B.K. DeLong > Good grief. I keep hearing about this Con from many of my circles and it's > right in my backyard. Guess I need to really start going. > On Jul 15, 2011 12:07 AM, "Damien Broderick" wrote: > > On 7/14/2011 10:47 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > >> > >> (Aside: Just got back from the first evening of Readercon. You'd > >> have enjoyed Barry Malzberg expounding on Scott Meredith and > >> John Campbell.) > > > > That's the best sf con I ever attended (just once, about 15 years ago) > > and I keep meaning to get back there. Barry published a pretty scathing > > piece in F&SF on the vile "Scott" Meredith "business"/scam and I've > > discussed it with him. I got ripped off by the SM Agency when I was > > young and foolish. > > > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 ddraig at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 05:18:03 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:18:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/15 spike : > > No particular justification for posting this.? It just made me howl with > laughter at the crazy fools that would do such a thing as this: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU You didn't think it was a hoax? Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 05:03:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (kellycoinguy at gmail.com) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:03:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <4E1FA74F.1080509@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> There is a prophecy that when Jesus returns... There will be a huge earthquake that will split the temple mount and that water will run from there to the dead sea making it's waters sweet. I don't recall where it comes from... Maybe Revelations? But the way these things are twisted by some... The sweetening of the dead sea might be seen as a sign that Jesus had already returned... It doesn't have to make sense... :-( -Kelly -- Sent from my Palm Pre On Jul 14, 2011 8:35 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote: On 7/14/2011 3:32 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > a number of fundamentalist Christians would see it as a > fulfillment of prophecy... and that might cause some real problems. Which prophecy is that? _______________________________________________ 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 sjv2006 at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 05:53:27 2011 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:53:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: It looks like part of a viral campaign for the upcoming movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But I would be utterly unsurprised if someone actually did this, with similar or worse results. --s On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 10:18 PM, ddraig wrote: > 2011/7/15 spike : > > > > No particular justification for posting this. It just made me howl with > > laughter at the crazy fools that would do such a thing as this: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU > > > You didn't think it was a hoax? > > Dwayne > -- > ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat > ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... > http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg > our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Jul 15 06:20:44 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:20:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <008d01cc42b7$5586d590$009480b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of ddraig Subject: Re: [ExI] ape with a machine gun 2011/7/15 spike : > >> No particular justification for posting this.? It just made me howl with laughter at the crazy fools that would do such a thing as this: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU >...You didn't think it was a hoax? Dwayne -- Perhaps. Actually I hope it was a hoax. I despair of our species if any member of it would hand any member of any other species a loaded and ready to fire AK47. That the weapon was ready to fire without even the safety engaged is evidence of a hoax, but if so, they really went to a lot of effort. Notice when the ape begins to fire, there is apparently something hitting the ground right where he is pointing. To make a fake video of that would require some major effort. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 06:47:13 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:47:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> On 7/15/2011 12:03 AM, kellycoinguy at gmail.com wrote: > There is a prophecy that when Jesus returns... There will be a huge > earthquake that will split the temple mount and that water will run from > there to the dead sea making it's waters sweet. I don't recall where it > comes from... Maybe Revelations? I'm guessing you mean the biblical Book of Revelation (unless there's some other "holy book" called "Revelations"?). There's no such text in Revelation, although there are any number of earthquakes. Rivers tended to come to a bad end, as in "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up" What say you, Pastor Spike? Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 06:50:00 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:50:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... Message-ID: <4E1FE318.1040004@satx.rr.com> Check out this scary curve: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 08:13:16 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:13:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:47 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/15/2011 12:03 AM, kellycoinguy wrote: > >> There is a prophecy that when Jesus returns... There will be a huge >> earthquake that will split the temple mount and that water will run from >> there to the dead sea making it's waters sweet. I don't recall where it >> comes from... Maybe Revelations? > > I'm guessing you mean the biblical Book of Revelation (unless there's some > other "holy book" called "Revelations"?). There's no such text in > Revelation, although there are any number of earthquakes. Rivers tended to > come to a bad end, as in > > "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and > the water thereof was dried up" > > What say you, Pastor Spike? > > It is a combination of verses from two 'End Times' prophecies when God will return to restore the Jews as rightful rulers of the world and destroy their enemies. (Old Testament prophets tended to be a bit biased). Zechariah Chapter 14 3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fighteth in the day of battle. 4 And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleft in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, so that there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. 8 And it shall come to pass in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem: half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of them toward the western sea; in summer and in winter shall it be. Ezekiel 47:8 And he said to me, ?This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. --------------- Note: These verses do not come with a guarantee. ;} BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 15 08:26:00 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:26:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E1FF998.2020404@satx.rr.com> On 7/15/2011 3:13 AM, BillK wrote: > Ezekiel 47:8 > And he said to me, ?This water flows toward the eastern region and > goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows > into the sea, the water will become fresh. Well, knock me down and call me shorty! I see in Wiki: Man, those prophets knew their shit! Damien Broderick From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 15 11:04:21 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:04:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Readercon In-Reply-To: <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <201107151113.p6FBDBge014226@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien B wrote: >That's the best sf con I ever attended (just >once, about 15 years ago) and I keep meaning to get back there. It's the one I go to most often. It's near, cheap, fun, has the highest ratio of pros to fans, and is exclusively focused on the written word. Some years I'm feeling grouchy (? busy ? poor) and am not in a mood to go; then I look at who'll be there. I see over a hundred people I know, force myself to go, and have a great time. It's tiny compared to a Boskone or Westercon but it's reached the point where many people fly in. I just saw a friend from Oregon; Charles Platt is coming in today on his way back from Scotland. >Barry published a pretty scathing piece in F&SF >on the vile "Scott" Meredith "business"/scam and >I've discussed it with him. I got ripped off by >the SM Agency when I was young and foolish. It was a panel chaired by David Hartwell, with Barry, Eric Van, and Gordon Van Gelder. Eric and Gordon got about two sentences in. Barry did 80% of the talking, David filled in the rest. A hoot. Then Barry, Gordon, Scott Edelman, (someone who's name I missed), and I moved on to Campbell and Disch in the hallway. B.K. DeLong replied: >Good grief. I keep hearing about this Con from >many of my circles and it's right in my >backyard. Guess I need to really start going. Well, come on down! The con hasn't even started. (Thursday is a free night they added.) Say hello if you spot me. Navy sports jacket, curly brown hair, lip caterpillar. -- David. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 13:47:53 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:47:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310737673.48211.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Some libertarian anarchists have made the case that anyone who can should take whatever they can get from the government -- on the view that this both takes resources away from the government AND it's also stolen goods, so stealing from a thief is not morally wrong. I believe Walter Block takes this position. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Kelly Anderson To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 4:26 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] rugged individualists I and my family have received government aid. I knew it was government aid. Every year since 1999 when I paid $502,000 in federal income tax, I have been trying my best to get it all back. But I don't like what it has done to me. It has made me much less of a rugged individualist than I ever wanted to be. It is a disease, and I want to fight back and kick the public heroin. I just haven't quite figured out how to do it yet. It is out of this experience and the experiences of "we're the government and we're here to help" that I have become a libertarian. Not because I am a rugged individualist. Perhaps that makes me a big fat hypocrite. Most likely, it does. But I'm just trying to live the best life I can under what I perceive to be a crappy system. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 13:50:10 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:50:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1310737810.91898.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> To be sure, if something like this could work and justify the initial investment of digging such a canal and building a hydroelectric plant, this wouldn't be true perpetual motion. The Sun, after all, is inputing the extra energy to keep the system going. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Jeff Davis To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:48 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again Bit of trivia here.? Some years ago, I encountered the notion of a canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea.? The idea was -- or so I remember it -- that the water flowing down hill would generate hydroelectric power, and that the increased surface area of the Dead Sea. with the less dense sea water on top would increase the rate of evaporation such that the evaporative loss would match the rate of inflow.? Almost a perpetual motion machine, kind of. There are at least a couple of other spots on the planet where the ground elevation is below sea level.? Somewhere in the Mojave and a spot in Libya.? The fact that all these depressions are in desert areas also makes one wonder about the possible benefit of more water vapor in the desert air, and, of course the possibility of more rain. Best, Jeff Davis ? ? ? ? "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Ray Charles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 13:52:55 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:52:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <1310653391.92431.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1310737975.60594.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> One could some modeling now. Also, the plan could be to open up a small channel and monitor the impact over a few years. If there are adverse consequences of the sort you mention, the channel might be easily closed off. Then the water would slowly dry up and, after a few more years, the region would likely return to its former arid condition. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Kelly Anderson To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Bit of trivia here. ?Some years ago, I encountered the notion of a > canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. I think this is a great idea. It would be interesting to see what it did to climate models of course... and if it made Iran drier, it could lead to more political problems. But the first problem I see with it is that a number of fundamentalist Christians would see it as a fulfillment of prophecy... and that might cause some real problems. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 13:58:19 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:58:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310738299.96483.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> If you're playing at the level, you not only get dodges, but big fat subsidies and should you be really big the government will adjust the macroeconomics (Fed policy) to suit your needs. ? But it's not just the fabulously wealthy who benefit here. The poor often pay more in taxes to support all sorts of middle class stuff. E.g.,?public colleges. Really poor people don't go to college or go as often, as a group. Middle class people do. Sure, they get taxed, but so does the poor slob. So, the middle class person's?kid goes to a public college with a government loan?to become the manager of a company where the poor person's kid cleans the toilet. Yes, the middle class is being destroyed... ? Regards, ? Dan From: BillK To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 6:08 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] rugged individualists On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > It was the year I sold the company (ViewSoft) that I co-founded in > 1991. Years of near poverty before and after (although not immediately > after), but the one year of astounding success was punished severely > by the government. It was a capital gains tax on $1.8 million dollars. > Despite the liberal hogwash to the contrary, there were NO tax dodges > that would work. Rich people pay their fair share. If it had been > regular income, as opposed to capital gains, the rate would have been > even higher. > What you meant to say was that there were no tax dodges available to small businessmen. The tax dodges appear when you are a multi-national corporation that is best friends with a government that allows them to move profits to tax-free havens offshore. In the USA the small business environment is being punished severely and the middle class is being destroyed. BillK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 14:02:55 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:02:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <4E1F77AC.3030907@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F77AC.3030907@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310738575.44050.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Well, that's the key narrative behind statism: yeah, the state is robbing you and, heck, it might even shot you dead, but you do get some benefits from it. No doubt, the English told the same to the Irish (and the Scots, etc.)?when they invaded -- just as the US does today when it invades -- er, liberates some neighborhood* or country. "Hey, you could be worse off! Don't knock it! And crawl a little faster, boy!" ? Regards, ? Dan ? * Just thinking of the antiwar protest sign from the Vietnam Era: "US out of Brooklyn!" (This was alongside "US out of Vietnam!") From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 7:11 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] rugged individualists On 7/14/2011 5:50 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > But as the sole owner of a corporation that has hired me, I am > required to pay into the unemployment fund and am prohibited > from collecting from it. Is it conceivable that you gain more financial benefits from this arrangement (given the existence of US as it is) than you might otherwise? Or than those not in this position who *can* collect unemployment benefits? Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 14:19:37 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:19:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: <1310738299.96483.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> <1310738299.96483.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/15 Dan wrote: > If you're playing at the level, you not only get dodges, but big fat > subsidies and should you be really big the government will adjust the > macroeconomics (Fed policy) to suit your needs. > > But it's not just the fabulously wealthy who benefit here. The poor often > pay more in taxes to support all sorts of middle class stuff. E.g.,?public > colleges. Really poor people don't go to college or go as often, as a group. > Middle class people do. Sure, they get taxed, but so does the poor slob. So, > the middle class person's?kid goes to a public college with a government > loan?to become the manager of a company where the poor person's kid cleans > the toilet. Yes, the middle class is being destroyed... > > Your comment about the middle class is a few years out of date. The housing slump and unemployment has hit the middle class really hard. Most of those now living in cars used to be middle class. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 15 14:40:24 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:40:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00d901cc42fd$21cd3f00$6567bd00$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick [mailto:thespike at satx.rr.com] Subject: Re: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again On 7/15/2011 12:03 AM, kellycoinguy at gmail.com wrote: >> There is a prophecy that when Jesus returns... There will be a huge earthquake that will split the temple mount and that water will run from there to the dead sea making it's waters sweet. I don't recall where it comes from... Maybe Revelations? >I'm guessing you mean the biblical Book of Revelation (unless there's some other "holy book" called "Revelations"?). There's no such text in Revelation, although there are any number of earthquakes. Rivers tended to come to a bad end, as in >"And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up" >What say you, Pastor Spike? >Damien Broderick The prophecies are very vague and those who have expounded on them have taken great liberties with their meaning. If you read what these "prophets" wrote, you can see they are like astrology, in that the horoscopes are broad and flexible indeed. An exception would be the book of Daniel, which was very specific, but was written after the fact, with the book disguised as a prophecy supposedly written centuries before. Damien you are right, there are no specific prophecies about the details of the temple mount, but it burns the christians that there is currently a Methodist shrine sitting upon the site from which either Jesus or his twin brother Hoerkheimer (it is unclear which it was, but prevailing opinion generally holds that it was the former) ascended into the heavens. Speculation is that one of them will return to the same spot, but of course they wouldn't want to land on that vile Presbyterian structure, so evidently a major earthquake will wreck the place just beforehand. So the way it is often presented is an extrapolation of the vague horoscopish notions found in both Revelation and some of the old testament works, such as Isaiah. The great tragedy is that the exact site of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is considered most holy by three major religions for three different reasons. It might eventually be a flashpoint for half of humanity to engage in a horribly destructive war over the name of their favorite imaginary friend and protector. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 15 14:55:04 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:55:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <4E1FE318.1040004@satx.rr.com> References: <4E1FE318.1040004@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00da01cc42ff$2efabde0$8cf039a0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 11:50 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... Check out this scary curve: _______________________________________________ The curve is not scary, but rather misleading. We need not extrapolate the exponential and conclude that the entire planet will convert to Seventh Day Adventist by 2024. The number of members is perfectly arbitrary. The Africans discovered that if they baptize enough humans, that American dollars soon follow. So they arranged for that to happen. The scam came to light in the civil unrest in Rwanda in 1994. At that time there were more Seventh Day Adventists in Rwanda and Burundi combined than in the US and Canada combined, however the number of dollars flowing in was actually negative: donations from North America were flowing to Africa in the form of schools, teachers, doctors and other aid. In the civil war (open to suggestion for an alternate name, such as genocide) there were appalling numbers slain, yet never accounted for completely on the church roles. Another discovery during that period is that if one added the number of Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, Lutherans and Catholics (those five alone) in Rwanda and Burundi, the number was greater than the estimated population of those two countries. The important number is the income. The strength of any church or movement is measured not in the number of proles on the membership list, but rather in dollars. These numbers are public domain, although they do not present them in an easily seen trend. So I went through and studied the numbers, and found something interesting. If one takes the membership in North America only, and the income in North America only, the giving to the church per pew sitter is a four digit number. If one then takes all membership outside the US and Canada and all church income outside those two nations, the giving per pew sitter is a two digit number. If one then extracts Australia and repeats the experiment, the dollars per capita is a single digit number. The crisis for the SDA church is that membership growth is mostly outside the US, Canada and Australia. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 15 15:11:00 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:11:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00dc01cc4301$68563450$39029cf0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... > >It is a combination of verses from two 'End Times' prophecies when God will return to restore the Jews as rightful rulers of the world and destroy their enemies. (Old Testament prophets tended to be a bit biased). >Zechariah Chapter 14 >3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fighteth in the day of battle...BillK Note that it is a recurring theme in the old testament about the lord going to fighteth battles, but he never actually doeseth it. He always seems to be a no-show: the lord faileth to fighteth. Consequently, they raise the lord's army and do all the actual fighteth-ing and murdereth-ing. Such a horrifying tragedy is this. spike From artillo at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 15:32:09 2011 From: artillo at gmail.com (Artillo) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:32:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: <00dc01cc4301$68563450$39029cf0$@att.net> References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> <00dc01cc4301$68563450$39029cf0$@att.net> Message-ID: And this is exactly why we all need to don our strainers and go worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster! :D On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 11:11 AM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK > ... > > > >It is a combination of verses from two 'End Times' prophecies when God > will > return to restore the Jews as rightful rulers of the world and destroy > their > enemies. (Old Testament prophets tended to be a bit biased). > > >Zechariah Chapter 14 > >3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when > He > fighteth in the day of battle...BillK > > > Note that it is a recurring theme in the old testament about the lord going > to fighteth battles, but he never actually doeseth it. He always seems to > be a no-show: the lord faileth to fighteth. Consequently, they raise the > lord's army and do all the actual fighteth-ing and murdereth-ing. > > Such a horrifying tragedy is this. > > 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 rtomek at ceti.pl Fri Jul 15 16:34:52 2011 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:34:52 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: [...] > > > I have serious issues with people dismissing some potential > > two billion loss to starvation and war as no big deal. > > It isn't so much that it is a small thing, it's just the sort of thing > we have solved on a regular basis for many years in the face of many > threats. How much did we spend in WWII to solve the Hitler problem? A > lot. We had a big problem and we solved it. This is not the best example, really. Actually it is a half-example, at best. US spent a lot on WW2 and I don't deny it. On the other hand, US gained much more than they spent. Literally tons of German know-how (and some from other countries) had been transported to US, as well as thousands of scientists, engineers and other specialists (Operation Paperclip). Next, impending phantom of Soviet invasion asked for US military assistance in Western Europe - this was very good for Western Europe and even better for US, IMHO. Last but not least, a great number of folks running away from Hitler (and later, even years after the war, from living in communism, however good this could have been), mostly educated (we've got education thing right in this part of the world, event thou it undergoes a lot of downprovement recently). They all went mostly to US (including maybe half of my fellow students during first half of the 90-ties - all with technical masters degrees). Now, to make it all clear - I don't blame US for being US. However I think there is nasty tendency to constantly rewrite and reinterpret history along ideallistic-idyllic lines. I mean, do whatever you do, just make an effort and stick to the facts (this can be also called honesty - but of course I don't accuse you [Kelly] of not being honest). On the other hand, if US folk en masse chooses living in their own dream about the world, well, not quite my problem. Overally, what US gained during WW2 has kept them running for at least fifty years. Just my holy opinion. > If global warming becomes > as big an issue as Hitler's Germany, we will then apply the resources > necessary to overcome the problem. By then, however, it may be very > late to do anything useful. However, we'll have a lot more > intellectual resources to attack the problem than we do now. I'm too afraid of betting on future history, but I can bet they will make a number of Oscar winning films after that (with blood and shit censored, so as to not scare away families from the cinemas, or whatever they will call those places then). > > Extremely unlikely stability. We're up to our ears in alligators for the > > foreseeable future. > > We have enjoyed unusual climatic stability in the last 10,000 years. > It is unreasonable to assume that would continue forever in any > case... > > In Risk assessment, you address the risks in order of ((threat > potential damage * threat probability) / cost to address). Global > warming doesn't come close to the top 20 global risks when you apply > this formula. For example, the threat of dirty water is a daily > reality in the lives of about a billion people. The cost to fix that > problem is approximately 20 billion dollars, world wide. The > probability of the problem is 1. So this is a threat we should address > immediately, aggressively. Likewise, malaria. See the activities of > the the Gates foundation. Yes, let's hope they do something positive. Even if at the same time they evade taxes (don't know if they do), if this ends malaria I can accept it. 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 ddraig at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 17:10:36 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 03:10:36 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/15 Stephen Van Sickle : > It looks like part of a viral campaign for the upcoming movie Rise of the > Planet of the Apes. That was my thinking - the lighting and footage is just too smooth and perfect to be really the work of amateurs. > But I would be utterly unsurprised if someone actually did this, with > similar or worse results. Same. Sad, isn't it? Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 17:41:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:41:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] East African Rift Valley again In-Reply-To: References: <4e1fcbac.0568dc0a.0171.0f8d@mx.google.com> <4E1FE271.4080307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 2:13 AM, BillK wrote: > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:47 AM, Damien Broderick ?wrote: >> On 7/15/2011 12:03 AM, kellycoinguy wrote: >> >>> There is a prophecy that when Jesus returns... There will be a huge >>> earthquake that will split the temple mount and that water will run from >>> there to the dead sea making it's waters sweet. I don't recall where it >>> comes from... Maybe Revelations? >> >> I'm guessing you mean the biblical Book of Revelation (unless there's some >> other "holy book" called "Revelations"?). There's no such text in >> Revelation, although there are any number of earthquakes. Rivers tended to >> come to a bad end, as in >> >> "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and >> the water thereof was dried up" >> >> What say you, Pastor Spike? >> >> > > > It is a combination of verses from two 'End Times' prophecies when God > will return to restore the Jews as rightful rulers of the world and > destroy their enemies. (Old Testament prophets tended to be a bit > biased). > > Zechariah Chapter 14 > 3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as > when He fighteth in the day of battle. > 4 And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which > is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleft > in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, so that > there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall > remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. > 8 And it shall come to pass in that day, that living waters shall go > out from Jerusalem: half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of > them toward the western sea; in summer and in winter shall it be. > > Ezekiel 47:8 > And he said to me, ?This water flows toward the eastern region and > goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows > into the sea, the water will become fresh. > > --------------- > > > Note: These verses do not come with a guarantee. ? ?;} Thanks for pointing out the original sources! I hadn't remembered where it came from. The point is that building this canal will come with some prophetic overhead. I don't think you can take a dump in this area without prophetic overhead... so if they can get the money, and do the engineering, then I say go for it. What would be very interesting to calculate would be how much water could be evaporated, and how much power could be generated from such a facility. (Recognizing as another poster said that it is not a perpetual motion machine, but a large solar project). As for flooding the rift valley, I would have a real problem with that... I think it is a world heritage site because of the early human fossils. The information lost about our evolution would be irretrievable. I can imagine the typical anti-capitalists disguised as environmentalists will strive mightily to fighteth against the development of the dead sea, even though it isn't much to write home about. You would also have to replace the minerals that are now mined there somewhere else (not to mention financially compensating the folks who would have their living's disrupted by having their evaporation ponds and other lands flooded). So here's an interesting exercise for Samantha... if this were being developed in your ideal governmental form, how would that compensation be worked out? How do you get the social benefits of eminent domain in an anarchy? Do you assume it will all be worked out with voluntary contracts? I think that is unlikely seeing how this is the middle east, and people there are VERY attached to their little pieces of dirt. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 18:10:59 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:10:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > [...] >> >> > I have serious issues with people dismissing some potential >> > two billion loss to starvation and war as no big deal. >> >> It isn't so much that it is a small thing, it's just the sort of thing >> we have solved on a regular basis for many years in the face of many >> threats. How much did we spend in WWII to solve the Hitler problem? A >> lot. We had a big problem and we solved it. > > This is not the best example, really. Actually it is a half-example, at > best. US spent a lot on WW2 and I don't deny it. On the other hand, US > gained much more than they spent. I know families of dead soldiers and veterans who have suffered years of PTSD who would likely disagree with that statement, even though from a purely economic viewpoint, you make an interesting argument. The post WWII rise in the power of America probably also came from the fact that our industrial capacity wasn't blown to hell... just a thought. > Literally tons of German know-how (and > some from other countries) had been transported to US, as well as > thousands of scientists, engineers and other specialists (Operation > Paperclip). Indeed, this did mitigate the cost somewhat. I understand that there are European nations that still owe the US money that we "loaned" them to fight WWII... at least that's what my high school history teacher drummed into my head. Of course, if the US defaults on its loans now, it will make that look like a minor accounting incident. > Next, impending phantom of Soviet invasion asked for US > military assistance in Western Europe - this was very good for Western > Europe and even better for US, IMHO. Last but not least, a great number of > folks running away from Hitler (and later, even years after the war, from > living in communism, however good this could have been), mostly educated > (we've got education thing right in this part of the world, event thou it > undergoes a lot of downprovement recently). They all went mostly to US > (including maybe half of my fellow students during first half of the > 90-ties - all with technical masters degrees). Gee, you don't think some of those people were attracted by the freedom and opportunity offered in the United States at the time? This is a very interesting spin... Perhaps communism could be good, if it were real communism, and not dictatorship dressed up. There have been, here and there, small examples of communist type communities that worked. The Mormons, for example, early on had a thing called the "United Order", where all property was held in common by a group of people. It failed utterly every place it was tried except one, Orderville, UT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orderville,_Ut So this is evidence that people who are all poor, who are a small group, who are desperate, who have strong common belief systems, can live something like communism successfully. I would assume some of the Israeli kibitz communities worked too. The Wikipedia article doesn't mention that disassembling the united order in Orderville just about tore the community into bits. It was real ugly disassembling things at the end of the experiment from what locals have told me. If I can steal an idea of Alistair Cockburn (a local programming guru, one of the signers of the original Agile Manifesto), any form of teamwork (waterfall, agile, whatever in programming) will work well with a good enough team. And nearly any organizational patterns will fail with a bad enough team. So the fact that communism or pure democracy or Waterfall style programming was made to work in small instances is not good evidence that it's a good approach on a larger scale with more potential bad actors and complicating side effects. > Now, to make it all clear - I don't blame US for being US. However I think > there is nasty tendency to constantly rewrite and reinterpret history > along ideallistic-idyllic lines. I mean, do whatever you do, just make an > effort and stick to the facts (this can be also called honesty - but > of course I don't accuse you [Kelly] of not being honest). On the other > hand, if US folk en masse chooses living in their own dream about the > world, well, not quite my problem. I understand very clearly that the winners write the history that is read by most. So there MUST be a kernel of truth in what you are saying here. What I would like you to reflect upon though is just HOW the US BECAME the winner in this case... I would submit that it was through application of the tenants of freedom. I could be wrong about that, but I honestly don't think so. > Overally, what US gained during WW2 has kept them running for at least > fifty years. Just my holy opinion. The rise of the US in world power started right around 1898 with the Spanish American war and big industrial projects like the Panama Canal. We avoided most of the damage from WWI and WWII (other than a RELATIVELY small loss of life when compared to our allies), and had our production capacity increased at the expense of Europe. I don't think there is a counterargument to this point. Now, I also believe that Europe is not doing itself any favors in its rush to socialism over the past few decades, but this is another force entirely. The work laws in France, for example, are a joke. The tax rates in much of Europe are catastrophically high. >> If global warming becomes >> as big an issue as Hitler's Germany, we will then apply the resources >> necessary to overcome the problem. By then, however, it may be very >> late to do anything useful. However, we'll have a lot more >> intellectual resources to attack the problem than we do now. > > I'm too afraid of betting on future history, but I can bet they will make > a number of Oscar winning films after that (with blood and shit > censored, so as to not scare away families from the cinemas, or whatever > they will call those places then). At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-) >> > Extremely unlikely stability. We're up to our ears in alligators for the >> > foreseeable future. >> >> We have enjoyed unusual climatic stability in the last 10,000 years. >> It is unreasonable to assume that would continue forever in any >> case... >> >> In Risk assessment, you address the risks in order of ((threat >> potential damage * threat probability) / cost to address). Global >> warming doesn't come close to the top 20 global risks when you apply >> this formula. For example, the threat of dirty water is a daily >> reality in the lives of about a billion people. The cost to fix that >> problem is approximately 20 billion dollars, world wide. The >> probability of the problem is 1. So this is a threat we should address >> immediately, aggressively. Likewise, malaria. See the activities of >> the the Gates foundation. > > Yes, let's hope they do something positive. Even if at the same time they > evade taxes (don't know if they do), if this ends malaria I can accept it. If you had your choice between eradicating malaria AND eradicating polio AND giving fresh water to every man woman and child on earth AND giving a laptop to every urchin all over the world, OR reducing the global temperature by 0.002 degrees (an estimate I pulled out of my ass, but it is some number along those lines) for the same amount of money... Which would you choose? -Kelly From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 18:23:48 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:23:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: To anyone who did not understand that Steven was stating a fact, not making a suggestion, here is the text from *directly below the video*: "http://twitter.com/apeswillrise - For the latest 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' news & updates " This [http://www.youtube.com/user/apeswillrise] is the youtube user's channel. Observation is key, folks! ;) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 22:27:57 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:27:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Tsarist Russia was a powerhouse too. I think at the best the > communists came near to recovering their Tzarist stature, briefly. Mmhhh, I beg to differ. Tsarist Russia *had been* a *regional* powerhouse. In the XIX century, in spite of its enormous resources and territory was more blatantly anachronistic than Japan, and in contrast to the latter did not seem on the way of any kind of recovery. Fast-forward a little, and it industrialised at an incredible pace, even though admittedly by not keeping consumers too happy, won WWII (terrestrial contribution by US-UK was secondary at best...), quickly became the second world power in spite of the damages suffered, established egemony on eastern Europe, managed to colonise much of Siberia, developed leading space tech, etc. The decline did not start with Stalin, let alone Lenin, in spite of how little love Ayn Rand may have had for them. It started in the Kruscev era, and even more importantly during Breznev's stagnant gerontocracy. In this respect, Russian transhumanists do recognise that for long years commies had been anything but neoluddites ("Soviets plus electricity"...), and that fundamental research and its players enjoyed there a much higher status than in most other countries. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 15 23:24:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:24:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 14 July 2011 21:25, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:34:36PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> Even low-probability events are worth hedging against if the outcome >> amplitude is large enough. > > True, if the cost of hedging is reasonable. For example, a few million > dollars a year does a lot to hedge against asteroid impact. A few tens > of millions of dollars a year keeps an eye on all the volcanoes on > earth. But to put a dent in CO2 concentrations using any currently > suggested methodology will cost tens of trillions of dollars and may > not even help much. > > Hedge yes. Commit mutual economic suicide. I vote NO! I am not really the one you are quoting. As to the merits, I am pretty much persuaded that to avoid GW cannot be an end per se, irrespective to the price to be paid. -- Stefano Vaj From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 02:36:08 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:36:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <00da01cc42ff$2efabde0$8cf039a0$@att.net> References: <4E1FE318.1040004@satx.rr.com> <00da01cc42ff$2efabde0$8cf039a0$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike wrote: >The crisis for the SDA church is that membership growth is mostly outside >the US, Canada and Australia. The Mormon Church has a similar problem. Growth in Latin America is great (seen as a mixed blessing), and baptisms in Africa are beginning to really take off. The only nation in Europe with really strong gains is England. Germany was once seen as a moderate stronghold of Mormonism (by European standards), but the numbers have shrunk there. Mormon leadership dearly looks forward to sending missionaries to mainland China, and supposedly negotiations are moving steadily forward. I have friends who served missions in Russia and the Ukraine. A goodly number of young women have joined there, but not many young men, which can lead to problems. The young full-time elders are warned to "lock their hearts" and not try to find themselves a mate there. I think the Church should just help all the girls to immigrate to Provo, Utah and attend Brigham Young University... lol John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Sat Jul 16 03:44:51 2011 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:44:51 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 15 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > [...] > >> threats. How much did we spend in WWII to solve the Hitler problem? A > >> lot. We had a big problem and we solved it. > > > > This is not the best example, really. Actually it is a half-example, at > > best. US spent a lot on WW2 and I don't deny it. On the other hand, US > > gained much more than they spent. > > I know families of dead soldiers and veterans who have suffered years > of PTSD who would likely disagree with that statement, even though > from a purely economic viewpoint, you make an interesting argument. > The post WWII rise in the power of America probably also came from the > fact that our industrial capacity wasn't blown to hell... just a > thought. PTSD is nasty thing, especially when one is in a society unprepared to understand it (I think US is not). Next time I drink, I will drink one for those guys. Probably would not help much, however. > > Literally tons of German know-how (and > > some from other countries) had been transported to US, as well as > > thousands of scientists, engineers and other specialists (Operation > > Paperclip). > > Indeed, this did mitigate the cost somewhat. I understand that there > are European nations that still owe the US money that we "loaned" them > to fight WWII... at least that's what my high school history teacher > drummed into my head. Of course, if the US defaults on its loans now, > it will make that look like a minor accounting incident. Land Lease, very helpful indeed. From what they write here, [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Land_Lease ] a lot of congressmen opposed it. Maybe there is a connection to allegation that some US corporations have been doing their business with Nazis but on the other hand, this old dirty stuff gets boring sooner or later. BTW, pity that as far as I can tell, Land Lease wasn't sent to Poland, too - we had our own government in exile, residing in London, army, navy etc. We even managed to evacuate gold reserves via Romania, but from what I learned they have been confiscated by our British ally - I wonder why, especially because this had put us on pension, but again this is a bit boring, at least on this particular day. > > Last but not least, a great number of > > folks running away from Hitler (and later, even years after the war, from > > living in communism, however good this could have been), mostly educated [...] > > Gee, you don't think some of those people were attracted by the > freedom and opportunity offered in the United States at the time? This > is a very interesting spin... Ehem, I have kind of allergy for some words, like freedoom or emocracy. Perhaps they are so often repeated that they start to sound unnaturally and like they were to be recognised and reassured, over and over, until they are empty and without meaning. Opportunity, this I like. I cannot say what drove those other people, never asked them. I guess they wanted opportunity. > Perhaps communism could be good, if it were real communism, and not > dictatorship dressed up. It is rather hard for me to deliberate on virtues and demerits of communism. I don't remember having any clashes with it, even if I have been told of those who had. I think I owe a lot to people who surrounded me. As I grown up, however, I have learned this and that. I wonder, for example, if "real communism" is possible on big scale. I guess not. Then again, it would be cool to see model of this and negative proof with some graphs. > There have been, here and there, small > examples of communist type communities that worked. The Mormons, for > example, early on had a thing called the "United Order", where all > property was held in common by a group of people. It failed utterly > every place it was tried except one, Orderville, UT. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orderville,_Ut > > So this is evidence that people who are all poor, who are a small > group, who are desperate, who have strong common belief systems, can > live something like communism successfully. I would assume some of the > Israeli kibitz communities worked too. The Wikipedia article doesn't > mention that disassembling the united order in Orderville just about > tore the community into bits. It was real ugly disassembling things at > the end of the experiment from what locals have told me. The article sums up what I wanted to say: "The extreme poverty of these settlers likely contributed significantly to their devotion to the principles of the United Order." When one has close to nothing, one is willing to share with others similarly ill-fated individuals. > If I can steal an idea of Alistair Cockburn (a local programming guru, > one of the signers of the original Agile Manifesto), any form of > teamwork (waterfall, agile, whatever in programming) will work well > with a good enough team. And nearly any organizational patterns will > fail with a bad enough team. So the fact that communism or pure > democracy or Waterfall style programming was made to work in small > instances is not good evidence that it's a good approach on a larger > scale with more potential bad actors and complicating side effects. Perhaps it is also a matter of matching right methodology to a project. A team can be trained or changed (including leader - this is easy in programming, where every team member is accountable). Also, I sometimes read a book, but rememmber to not pray to it. The book's author is not authority on my project, he may be only advisor. > > Now, to make it all clear - I don't blame US for being US. However I think > > there is nasty tendency to constantly rewrite and reinterpret history > > along ideallistic-idyllic lines. I mean, do whatever you do, just make an > > effort and stick to the facts (this can be also called honesty - but > > of course I don't accuse you [Kelly] of not being honest). On the other > > hand, if US folk en masse chooses living in their own dream about the > > world, well, not quite my problem. > > I understand very clearly that the winners write the history that is > read by most. So there MUST be a kernel of truth in what you are > saying here. What I would like you to reflect upon though is just HOW > the US BECAME the winner in this case... I would submit that it was > through application of the tenants of freedom. I could be wrong about > that, but I honestly don't think so. First, losers have their history, too. However I think that those histories don't really differ so much (if done by historians). What I was addressing is that there is "cinematic/movie history", in which facts are dropped, rearranged and painted different colors as needed to make a fable "more interesting". From my point of view, these acts make a fable less interesting. Well I don't really care if some Kate or Laura finds herself love. One could argue, that those, say, movies are just love stories in historic costume. So they are not important. OTOH as I see it, such stories with their defecated version of history are going to reign so called public awareness. On the face of it, they deal with unfortunate love, but in the depth they can smuggle points of view. IMHO such twisted (hi)stories are doing harm. If nothing else, they help to lure people into mantraps and meat grinders. They make it so much easier to sell different kinds of shit to the gullible folk. Of course, as I mentioned above, whoever wants to buy shit is going to have it. But let's keep in mind that humans tend to err. So maybe I erred. > > Overally, what US gained during WW2 has kept them running for at least > > fifty years. Just my holy opinion. > > The rise of the US in world power started right around 1898 with the > Spanish American war and big industrial projects like the Panama > Canal. We avoided most of the damage from WWI and WWII (other than a > RELATIVELY small loss of life when compared to our allies), and had > our production capacity increased at the expense of Europe. I don't > think there is a counterargument to this point. Yep. As I lurk into history of various countries, I can see how, during last 150 years, they all first started to rise (some slower, some faster), few dropped out after WW1, some more after WW2 and from my point of view only States stayed in a game after that. Soviet Union & friends tried hard, but they--we have missed the idea of looking for new ideas. Even more, proponents of new ideas have been prosecuted until official recognition of those ideas (like, genetics, and before WW2 theory of relativity, if I am right, and maybe some more). It was like if race runners had their legs broken first (legally) and later, after official recognition of racing, healed and sent to olympic games. Pitiful attitude. > Now, I also believe that Europe is not doing itself any favors in its > rush to socialism over the past few decades, but this is another force > entirely. The work laws in France, for example, are a joke. The tax > rates in much of Europe are catastrophically high. I don't feel too well qualified to discuss European issues. I am still learning about them. I've found it easier to study States first. Strange, isn't it - it is rather hard to look oneself in the eyes, especially without good mirror. But if I was ever asked to talk bullshit about this, well I think that whoever says Europe is undergoing a crisis is right. But they later disagree about a reason for this. I suspect the reason is lack of faith - I don't mean religious faith. They don't dare to mention faith in their debates. Too bad. Without it, future cannot be done. All that is left is just shifting resources back and forth. BTW, from what I have read, neither China nor Russia have faith, too. It seems that Chinese top tovarischi recognised a problem (or part of it) and they try to go back to old style philosophies, like Confucianism. Russians seem to be stuck a little. I suspect Greeks and Romans had faith. I also suspect we have come a bit too far away from the roots. Oh, I mean, how to say it, maybe it's faith in underlying order of things. Or some other bullshit. It's nothing esotheric, however. But I must err, since otherwise some wiser guy would have got his Nobel for saying so. > At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-) Now the puzzle is, am I an optimist or a pessimist? [...] > > Yes, let's hope they do something positive. Even if at the same time they > > evade taxes (don't know if they do), if this ends malaria I can accept it. > > If you had your choice between eradicating malaria AND eradicating > polio AND giving fresh water to every man woman and child on earth AND > giving a laptop to every urchin all over the world, OR reducing the > global temperature by 0.002 degrees (an estimate I pulled out of my > ass, but it is some number along those lines) for the same amount of > money... Which would you choose? At first I thought you want me to choose between malaria, polio, water, laptop and glob-temp. And I thought 'wow, that is so cool question'. Nope :-). Well, why would I care about 0.002 degrees? Of course I would give all the cool stuff to people in need. As of 2 degrees - over how long, 200 years? If so, frak it. Glaciers are moving back since 18000 years. I understand, temps are going up during this period, too. I think most of Antropocentric GW talk is marketing, selling houses in Spain, or in tundra. GW is not antropocentric, I'm afraid. It is something else, probably. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period ] [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period ] However, I would like to not give them laptops. They are hard to maintain, they break, they can get stolen. I would build ruggedized kiosks, for a price close to 2-3 laptops (I guesstimate). Use reinforced concrete, old cpus (Pentium M, 1GHz or so), simple displays. Mouse optional. Keyboard - ruggedized, probably specially designed for this one adventure - like, it could be made of wood, wires and steel springs, with simple connector to the kiosk. Such keyboards can be easily repaired or build from locally available stuff. Give every child a pendrive, connect kiosks to the internet. No porn and no ads. Just wikipedia, usenet, free books, lectures, this kind of stuff. Games - I think some simple games will do. I have heard of something similar having been done in India once, wonder how they fare? Kiosks could be put inside communes/villages (if we are talking 3rd world), perhaps with participation of local schools and churches. So that children can meet there together and maybe learn from each other. 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 mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 03:44:36 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:44:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Google+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Is there anyone still in need of a Google+ invite? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 07:43:32 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:43:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 14 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Tsarist Russia was a powerhouse too. I think at the best the >> communists came near to recovering their Tzarist stature, briefly. > > Mmhhh, I beg to differ. I guess it depends on what you think is important. > Tsarist Russia *had been* a *regional* powerhouse. In the XIX century, > in spite of its enormous resources and territory was more blatantly > anachronistic than Japan, and in contrast to the latter did not seem > on the way of any kind of recovery. OK. My point is that Russia was a powerhouse at some point during the Tsarist period. Whether they were at their peak power at the point they were overthrown is rather irrelevant to the argument. Russia's big boost onto the world scene actually dates back quite a way further back than that, when they acted as the chief fence for the Vikings in their pillaging of western Europe. Fun days... ;-) > Fast-forward a little, and it industrialised at an incredible pace, > even though admittedly by not keeping consumers too happy, won WWII > (terrestrial contribution by US-UK was secondary at best...), quickly > became the second world power in spite of the damages suffered, > established egemony on eastern Europe, managed to colonise much of > Siberia, developed leading space tech, etc. They got lucky with stealing the atomic bomb. They did have tremendous resources that they were able to bring to bear in WWII, no denying that. A command economy is more compatible with the command structure of a war. In fact, I think you could easily make the argument that the USA also adapted it's economic style to something more akin to a command economy during WWII. For example, the war department asking Detroit for the Jeep, or Walt Disney for propaganda (ever seen Victory Through Air Power (1943)?). Or asking EVERYONE and their dog to sell war bonds, promote recycling, giving up nylons, fuel rationing, meat rationing, etc. The difference between Russia and the US in the 50s is more pronounced. The US (appropriately, I think) turned back to consumerism and making the populace happy for the fact that they had won the war. The Russians on the other hand, continued a command economy on a war footing, and were able to keep up and sometimes even beat the Americans in technological and warfare issues. i.e. Sputnik, First man to orbit earth, etc. But these covered up a suffering populace who were being taxed heavily to support these activities. The recent 60 minutes story on the East German's use of steroids and other medications to cheat at the Olympics showed what was typical, An all cost propaganda machine promoting the socialist state, nevermind what it cost the athletes. > The decline did not start with Stalin, let alone Lenin, in spite of > how little love Ayn Rand may have had for them. It started in the > Kruscev era, and even more importantly during Breznev's stagnant > gerontocracy. In this respect, Russian transhumanists do recognise > that for long years commies had been anything but neoluddites > ("Soviets plus electricity"...), and that fundamental research and its > players enjoyed there a much higher status than in most other > countries. True, because that is what supported the military state. You can have a state that is primarily militarily focused, and become a world power, FOR A WHILE. But then Reagan outspent them, and the rest of their economy could not keep up with the necessary expenditures, and they imploded. For this one thing, I put Reagan as either a genius or the luckiest bastard who ever lived. The Socialism in America, take from the rich, give to the poor, enabling them to stay poor forever... is just an alternative model to the Soviet Socialism, take from the rich, build the military, enabling everyone to stay poor forever... Same dance style, different tune. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 07:53:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:53:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: References: <4E1FE318.1040004@satx.rr.com> <00da01cc42ff$2efabde0$8cf039a0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/15 John Grigg : > Spike wrote: >>The crisis for the SDA church is that membership growth is mostly outside >>the US, Canada and Australia. > > > The Mormon Church has a similar problem.? Growth in Latin America is great > (seen as a mixed blessing), and baptisms in Africa are beginning to really > take off. As someone who baptized 70+ Brazilians into the Mormon church over a period of a year in country, I saw this growth first hand. It really was an astounding phenomenon in the 80s and remains so today. There were lots of growth related issues, such as training leadership fast enough, and a lot of the Brazilian missionaries were bishops within a year of returning home... I did not see that the Latin American Mormons were a financial burden on the church as a whole, and it could have been thought of as a "profit center" had people thought in those terms (which they did not). > The only nation in Europe with really strong gains is England. > Germany was once seen as a moderate stronghold of Mormonism (by European > standards), but the numbers have shrunk there.? Mormon leadership dearly > looks forward to sending missionaries to mainland China, and supposedly > negotiations are moving steadily forward. The BYU Young Ambassadors (a dance team) are as popular in China as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is here. The Mormons are great at PR, and pay attention to that aspect carefully because of the TERRIBLE job they did in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, resulting in relocation and a certain amount of suffering and death. Who can blame them given the history? They want to be liked, they want to be perceived as mainstream. Should Romney become president, many would say that they had become mainstream... and who could say they were wrong, despite the peculiar beliefs. Personally, I see that belief set as no more peculiar than other religions, but YMMV on that. > I have friends who served missions in Russia and the Ukraine.? A goodly > number of young women have joined there, but not many young men, which can > lead to problems.? The young full-time elders are warned to "lock their > hearts" and not try to find themselves a mate there.? I think the Church > should just help all the girls to immigrate to Provo, Utah and attend > Brigham Young University... lol Hey, this was one of the pressures leading to polygamy in the early church. In England many more girls than boys were converted, and they had to be taken care of somehow... Personally, I would welcome more pretty girls in Provo... it's nice enough as is... :-) -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 09:13:15 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:13:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Wind farms - New and Improved Message-ID: This research indicates that the familiar lines of propeller type wind farms are doing it all wrong. Vertical axis turbines generate 6 to 9 times the power for a given area as they can be clustered close together. The clustering actually helps the power generation. Quote: "Whereas modern wind farms consisting of (horizontal axis wind turbines) produce two to three watts of power per square meter of land area, these field tests indicate that power densities an order of magnitude greater can potentially be achieved by arranging (vertical-axis wind turbines) in layouts that enable them to extract energy from adjacent wakes and from above the wind farm," he wrote in a paper published Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy BillK From ddraig at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 11:17:24 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:17:24 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ape with a machine gun In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc42a7$cd495a90$67dc0fb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 16 July 2011 04:23, Will Steinberg wrote: . > Observation is key, folks! ?;) Wow we suck! ;p Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From spike66 at att.net Sat Jul 16 13:56:54 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 06:56:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wind farms - New and Improved In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002e01cc43c0$38b26920$aa173b60$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Wind farms - New and Improved >...This research indicates that the familiar lines of propeller type wind farms are doing it all wrong. Vertical axis turbines generate 6 to 9 times the power for a given area as they can be clustered close together. The clustering actually helps the power generation. >... >...BillK Excellent, thanks BillK. These types of generators also look to be more compatible with wildlife, less likely to swat birds all over the place. A wind turbine farm is noisy as all get out too. Perhaps these are quieter? Where can we get data on reliability, cost per kW-year, service life, maintenance costs, etc? They might also be more compatible with collocated solar. One of the problems I thought of with the horizontal shaft turbines is that they would be vulnerable to terrorists and Luddites. Some determined bird lover could fly over the installation in a Cessna with a thirty ought six, put one hole through and through, oil leaks out, gearbox seizes or catches fire, loss of unit. One person could do millions of dollars damage, and she might not even be caught. I am surprised this hasn't happened already. The vertical shaft turbines look a lot more robust against those who hate electric power and civilization in general. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 18:02:57 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 20:02:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 16 July 2011 09:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The recent 60 minutes story on the East German's use of steroids and > other medications to cheat at the Olympics showed what was typical, "Cheat"? Rather a strange POV for a transhumanist... :-) > The Socialism in America, take from the rich, give to the poor, > enabling them to stay poor forever... is just an alternative model to > the Soviet Socialism, take from the rich, build the military, enabling > everyone to stay poor forever... Same dance style, different tune. Or Russian capitalism, give the poor the liberty to actually starve and being unemployed like in the free world while creating a few ignorant billionaires to put Texan oil barons at shame... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sat Jul 16 18:14:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:14:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] end of an era Message-ID: <006501cc43e4$37f1f4f0$a7d5ded0$@att.net> This is a CNN story about my home town where I lived from ages 0.3 to 19. http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2011/07/04/foreman.space.town.far ewell.cnn.html Those of you who have seen the launches may recall seeing the Moonlight Drive In, where I and the lads used to hang out in our misspent youth. I recognized at least two of those interviewed, people I haven't seen in over 30 years. The US manned space program ends not with a bang but with a gradually fading contrail into the distant sky. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Jul 16 18:20:45 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:20:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" Message-ID: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> On 16 July 2011 09:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> The recent 60 minutes story on the East German's use of steroids and other medications to cheat at the Olympics showed what was typical... >..."Cheat"? Rather a strange POV for a transhumanist... :-) -- Stefano Vaj _______________________________________________ Ja. I propose we have two separate classes of competition. The regular Olympics, anything goes, any kind of performance enhancing whatever they want, all is welcome. Then as a separate class of competition, we keep the old school notion of not using anything, perhaps taking it to the extreme of disallowing exercise or practice, so the athletes are not pumped or sculpted wonders of bodybuilding magnificence, but rather just natures gifts only. Those competitions cost more to attend, with a much smaller audience and no world records, but it's all natural, the way evolution intended. Propose calling that the Organic Olympics. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Jul 16 18:38:22 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:38:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seamless uploading Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Extropes, snip > Reminiscent of a short-story fragment posted to the list In 98 or 99 > by Anders, about a cybernetically "connected" individual who > experiences a sense of severe intellectual deficit when his machine > connection goes down. ?That was however a case of computer brain > crash, rather than wet brain "retirement". This has already started. Humans are changing the way we remember things, from remembering the information itself to remembering or figuring out on the spot how to find it. Here is a popular account of an article in Science. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Internet Search Engines Are Changing the Way We Remember Things, Says Study By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor While we know the brain is an adaptable tool, what we don't know is exactly how adaptable. While individuals have different degrees of memory skills such as retaining memorized information, it turns out that the information age may be affecting those of us with access to computers and search engines. New research conducted at Columbia University has suggested that since the advent of the Internet search engine, we don't need to memorize as much information as before, since we know that data can be accessed quickly with just a few keystrokes. The information we are retaining is the means by which to look up the information we need, reported HealthDay's Serena Gordon on UN News and World Report. Essentially, says the study's authors, the Internet has become a primary form of external memory for us: a place where information is stored collectively outside ourselves. Sounds a bit like science fiction, but it makes sense. So how will this change the human brain in the long run, now that we no longer need to remember things like birthdays, phone numbers, address, sports statistics or how to convert kilos to pounds? Nobody really knows for sure, but one of the researchers who authored the study thinks it might have some benefits as well as drawbacks. ?I think [technology] might hurt the type of memorization that we usually think about, like remembering the name of an actress, but I think there might be some benefits, too,? said the study's author Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Columbia University in New York City. ?If you take away the mindset of memorization, it might be that people get more information out of what they are reading, and they might better remember the concept,? she said. The results study, which used college student volunteers, were published in the journal Science this month. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There are a lot of people who feel so lost without their "external memory" that they are reluctant to go where the internet does not reach. Personal computing is another "brain crutch" some of us find hard to get along without. Spell and grammar checkers help us write better, spreadsheets, Matlab and http://code.google.com/p/eie1/wiki/InferenceAlgorithm help us think about complicated problems. I recently modeled the power transfer for a beamed energy propulsion. The beam profile is Gausian. Is it better to pump the working fluid toward the high flux area or away from it? There is an unambiguous answer, the difference in energy absorbed is 80% efficient for one direction to 86% efficient the other at 2700 deg K. In some ways we are already in a runaway singularity. Without previous generations of computers, it would be impossible for humans to design the next generation of computers. > Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my utter delight at living > in and witnessing this juggernaut of science and technology. ?Not just > reading and dreaming about what might be possible, but actually > watching the wonders of imagination tumble forth into reality. ?Each > time, I thought to myself that the pace would remain more or less the > same, and that I could handle it, could absorb it. ?By which I mean > superficially, to be sure. ?Now things are coming at me so fast I > can't keep up, not even superficially. Even though I have been thinking about some of the things that come tumbling forth for decades, I still feel shock when they happen. > Anyone else feel similar? ?What about you younger folks (I'm > sixty-two, now. ?How the hell did that happen?! I don't feel > sixty-two)? Do you feel more in synch, more in control? Sixty-nine here so I can't say how younger people feel. Keith > Best, Jeff Davis > > ?"My guess is that people don't yet realize how > ? ? "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? J Corbally > > From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 00:34:36 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:34:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 16 July 2011 09:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> The recent 60 minutes story on the East German's use of steroids and >> other medications to cheat at the Olympics showed what was typical, > > "Cheat"? Rather a strange POV for a transhumanist... :-) It's like racing formula 1 vs. Nascar. Each sport has it's rules. I hope someday for an unlimited transhumanist olympics along side the regular one for non-enhanced humans (so long as we have any of those)... but to assume that everyone should compete on a level playing field is what sports should provide. Since they had rules, and the East Germans broke those rules, they cheated. Simple. You didn't address the main issue, being that it was communist propaganda. >> The Socialism in America, take from the rich, give to the poor, >> enabling them to stay poor forever... is just an alternative model to >> the Soviet Socialism, take from the rich, build the military, enabling >> everyone to stay poor forever... Same dance style, different tune. > > Or Russian capitalism, give the poor the liberty to actually starve > and being unemployed like in the free world while creating a few > ignorant billionaires to put Texan oil barons at shame... :-) What's going on in Russia today is a very weird form of capitalism. I don't know enough about what's going on there to comment intelligently, but I know enough to see that it is pretty messy. Lots of organized crime. How does anarchy address organized crime? Sort of like in modern Russia? If so, then no thanks. :-) -Kelly From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 04:39:01 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:39:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Readercon In-Reply-To: <201107151113.p6FBDBge014226@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <012601cc40d2$b42ed660$1c8c8320$@att.net> <201107142250.p6EMok0T004778@reva.xtremeunix.com> <4E1F7F68.7080200@satx.rr.com> <201107150348.p6F3mJsN008618@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E1FBC75.7030808@satx.rr.com> <201107151113.p6FBDBge014226@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: David Lubkin wrote: It's the one I go to most often. It's near, cheap, fun, has the highest ratio of pros to fans, and is exclusively focused on the written word. Some years I'm feeling grouchy (? busy ? poor) and am not in a mood to go; then I look at who'll be there. I see over a hundred people I know, force myself to go, and have a great time. >>> After having read this, I am setting a goal to attend ReaderCon sometime fairly soon. I am a fairly frequent con goer (within Arizona), and several authors have recommended to me that I attend (saying it's their favorite event!). I LOVE attending the H.P. Lovecraft focused MythosCon, put on for the first time this year in Tempe, Arizona. It will be happening next year, probably in March, and I can't wait! The size and quality of their guest list is truly amazing. https://mythoscon.org/Home_Page.html you wrote: It's tiny compared to a Boskone or Westercon but it's reached the point where many people fly in. I just saw a friend from Oregon; Charles Platt is coming in today on his way back from Scotland. >>> I miss Charles! The man sure gets around! lol I have not seen him in several years... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 11:51:42 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:51:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 17 July 2011 02:34, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Since they had rules, and > the East Germans broke those rules, they cheated. Simple. You didn't > address the main issue, being that it was communist propaganda. East-Germans have never been exempt from anti-doping tests, and those who resulted positive were disqualified. They simply have been actively searching ways to increase performances within what the rules did not (yet) forbid. Taking the risk, sure. > What's going on in Russia today is a very weird form of capitalism. Western-style capitalism may well be vanishing there, the Eltsin era has been over for a while. Which may be why the BRICs are believed to be the vanguard of the future... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 12:01:32 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:01:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 16 July 2011 20:20, spike wrote: > Ja. ?I propose we have two separate classes of competition. This has been debated for a while in the Italian H+ list. In fact, we may well have "special competition" rules with handicaps or restrictions (see car races, horses, "instant" chess, golf, etc.), but no matter how severe or complex they are, they will simply re-orient the "R&D" effort to what is not (yet) forbidden. Now, the point is simply to be aware of it, because some of the effects may be welcome (say, developing more efficient, rather than bigger, engines for car races), but some other may simply be distorsive, and direct the push towards solutions which aren't by any means more interesting or less dangerous or more creative, but simply harder to detect. "Natural" of course has little to do with all that in any event. -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 14:26:38 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 08:26:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:20 PM, spike wrote: > > On 16 July 2011 09:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> The recent 60 minutes story on the East German's use of steroids and > other medications to cheat at the Olympics showed what was typical... > >>..."Cheat"? Rather a strange POV for a transhumanist... :-) ?-- Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > > > Ja. ?I propose we have two separate classes of competition. ?The regular > Olympics, anything goes, any kind of performance enhancing whatever they > want, all is welcome. ?Then as a separate class of competition, we keep the > old school notion of not using anything, perhaps taking it to the extreme of > disallowing exercise or practice, so the athletes are not pumped or sculpted > wonders of bodybuilding magnificence, but rather just natures gifts only. > Those competitions cost more to attend, with a much smaller audience and no > world records, but it's all natural, the way evolution intended. > > Propose calling that the Organic Olympics. One thing that seems sure, no matter what, is that 1) Making the rules for the future Olympics is going to get much harder (Do you allow genetic alteration via "naturalish" evolution? Can anyone with gene XYZ compete in the high jump? Only if their parents have the gene? Do you X? Do you Y?) 2) Enforcing those rules is also going to get a lot harder. Detection of things is going to get harder. Nanobots that die at the end of the competition prior to testing, etc. The questions are two fold. Will anyone still care? And can they make rules of fair play and enforce them well enough that people will continue to care? When sports like baseball have their steroid conflicts, it turns some people off to the sport. I doubt it attracted very many new adherents. So the trend would seem to be... athletes will continue to cheat... they'll occasionally get caught... the size of the crowd interested in any given sport will decrease. At the same time the number of sports is likely to increase! New equipment gives rise to X-Games type sports, which are very interesting, novel, and fun. I just LOVE the new heavy duty pogo sticks! That looks like some ride! -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 15:30:47 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:30:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Fri, 15 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote: >> > This is not the best example, really. Actually it is a half-example, at >> > best. US spent a lot on WW2 and I don't deny it. On the other hand, US >> > gained much more than they spent. >> >> I know families of dead soldiers and veterans who have suffered years >> of PTSD who would likely disagree with that statement, even though >> from a purely economic viewpoint, you make an interesting argument. >> The post WWII rise in the power of America probably also came from the >> fact that our industrial capacity wasn't blown to hell... just a >> thought. > > PTSD is nasty thing, especially when one is in a society unprepared to > understand it (I think US is not). Next time I drink, I will drink one for > those guys. Probably would not help much, however. The US is better prepared for PTSD now than they were in Vietnam, and were better then than in WWII. Nobody was ready for it in WWI... There are now somewhat effecive treatments... The original point was that WWII was good for America. I would recast that and say that WWII was "less bad" for America than for her allies. And, it was "less bad" for the allies than for the axis power nations. The Marshal Plan moderated that impact to some extent, at least to the point where we didn't get all out WWIII... and if forced to point out government programs that worked, I would honestly have to say these worked (though that doesn't rule out that they MIGHT have been more efficiently handled in some other way): 1) Fighting WWII 2) The Marshal Plan 3) The Post WWII GI Bill (if you weren't black) 4) The Interstate Highway System 5) The Space Program These government programs are among the most successful ever in US history. And they did come as a direct result of WWII (and the cold war). >> > Literally tons of German know-how (and >> > some from other countries) had been transported to US, as well as >> > thousands of scientists, engineers and other specialists (Operation >> > Paperclip). >> >> Indeed, this did mitigate the cost somewhat. I understand that there >> are European nations that still owe the US money that we "loaned" them >> to fight WWII... at least that's what my high school history teacher >> drummed into my head. Of course, if the US defaults on its loans now, >> it will make that look like a minor accounting incident. > > Land Lease, very helpful indeed. From what they write here, > > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Land_Lease ] Interesting article. > a lot of congressmen opposed it. Maybe there is a connection to allegation > that some US corporations have been doing their business with Nazis but on > the other hand, this old dirty stuff gets boring sooner or later. I guess, but there are still living survivors... so a few more years, maybe it will be less interesting. I only bring stuff up when I think actions in the past might be indicative of results in the future. If LBJ did X and it resulted in Y, and now BHO is doing X, I might point out that Y might be an expected outcome. So for me, history is most useful as a predictive tool. > BTW, pity that as far as I can tell, Land Lease wasn't sent to Poland, too > - we had our own government in exile, residing in London, army, navy etc. > We even managed to evacuate gold reserves via Romania, but from what I > learned they have been confiscated by our British ally - I wonder why, > especially because this had put us on pension, ?but again this is a bit > boring, at least on this particular day. The difficulty for Poland seems to me to have been that they were always in the way of greater powers who wanted to fight each other. So Poland all too often became the battleground of a fight they had no real part in. >> > Last but not least, a great number of >> > folks running away from Hitler (and later, even years after the war, from >> > living in communism, however good this could have been), mostly educated > [...] >> >> Gee, you don't think some of those people were attracted by the >> freedom and opportunity offered in the United States at the time? This >> is a very interesting spin... > > Ehem, I have kind of allergy for some words, like freedoom or emocracy. > Perhaps they are so often repeated that they start to sound unnaturally > and like they were to be recognised and reassured, over and over, until > they are empty and without meaning. > > Opportunity, this I like. OK. Let me testify then, that I believe freedom creates more opportunity. ;-) Yes, the words get tired. They do get overused, and at times abused. Calling Afghanistan "free" is pretty funny. Same with Iraq. > I cannot say what drove those other people, never asked them. I guess they > wanted opportunity. I have talked to some of them. Many wanted to escape political systems where they saw a limited future. Most saw the USA as the beacon of the better life. Not so much economically, but as the land of opportunity. >> Perhaps communism could be good, if it were real communism, and not >> dictatorship dressed up. > > It is rather hard for me to deliberate on virtues and demerits of > communism. I don't remember having any clashes with it, even if I have > been told of those who had. I think I owe a lot to people who surrounded > me. As I grown up, however, I have learned this and that. I wonder, for > example, if "real communism" is possible on big scale. I guess not. Then > again, it would be cool to see model of this and negative proof with some > graphs. It is hard to graph the human spirit. (Of course, I mean by this the way humans react in the face of adversity and in the face of opportunity, not some ethereal spirit.) >> There have been, here and there, small >> examples of communist type communities that worked. The Mormons, for >> example, early on had a thing called the "United Order", where all >> property was held in common by a group of people. It failed utterly >> every place it was tried except one, Orderville, UT. >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orderville,_Ut >> >> So this is evidence that people who are all poor, who are a small >> group, who are desperate, who have strong common belief systems, can >> live something like communism successfully. I would assume some of the >> Israeli kibitz communities worked too. The Wikipedia article doesn't >> mention that disassembling the united order in Orderville just about >> tore the community into bits. It was real ugly disassembling things at >> the end of the experiment from what locals have told me. > > The article sums up what I wanted to say: "The extreme poverty of these > settlers likely contributed significantly to their devotion to the > principles of the United Order." Yes, and they also had only three industries, the biggest being the mill. It was easy for them to work together when they all had common goals. Once you get big enough that you need two mills, and they have to compete with each other, then this sort of thing starts to break down, IMHO. Even worse, if you have a Catholic mill and a Mormon mill in the same "in common" system... then differences start coming out in potentially culture shattering ways. A lot of the US "race relations" problems are of this nature. > When one has close to nothing, one is willing to share with others > similarly ill-fated individuals. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes (you'll never catch me in a fox hole, thank you very much ;-), extreme stress causes people to join together in ways that otherwise would be difficult to imagine. Sometimes the stress is manufactured, as in this case. Brigham Young sent people to these godforsaken places and "called" them to figure out how to make the place profitable to "the Kingdom". If they failed, which many did, I imagine that they saw it as a lack of faith. > Perhaps it is also a matter of matching right methodology to a project. A > team can be trained or changed (including leader - this is easy in > programming, where every team member is accountable). Also, I sometimes > read a book, but rememmber to not pray to it. The book's author is not > authority on my project, he may be only advisor. Programming methodology is at least as complex as politics. :-( >> > Now, to make it all clear - I don't blame US for being US. However I think >> > there is nasty tendency to constantly rewrite and reinterpret history >> > along ideallistic-idyllic lines. I mean, do whatever you do, just make an >> > effort and stick to the facts (this can be also called honesty - but >> > of course I don't accuse you [Kelly] of not being honest). On the other >> > hand, if US folk en masse chooses living in their own dream about the >> > world, well, not quite my problem. >> >> I understand very clearly that the winners write the history that is >> read by most. So there MUST be a kernel of truth in what you are >> saying here. What I would like you to reflect upon though is just HOW >> the US BECAME the winner in this case... I would submit that it was >> through application of the tenants of freedom. I could be wrong about >> that, but I honestly don't think so. > > First, losers have their history, too. But that isn't the history taught in schools, by the indoctrination machine. > However I think that those > histories don't really differ so much (if done by historians). You haven't read enough alternative histories then. I read a history of the US called something like "A people's history of the United States" written from a far left perspective. Only mentioned Benjamin Franklin ONE TIME. And that mention was only something about how he was mean to Indians or some such damn thing. That's an alternative history. > What I was > addressing is that there is "cinematic/movie history", in which facts are > dropped, rearranged and painted different colors as needed to make a > fable "more interesting". From my point of view, these acts make a fable > less interesting. Well I don't really care if some Kate or Laura finds > herself love. One could argue, that those, say, movies are just love > stories in historic costume. So they are not important. OTOH as I see it, > such stories with their defecated version of history are going to reign so > called public awareness. On the face of it, they deal with unfortunate > love, but in the depth they can smuggle points of view. Oliver Stone is the master of such twisted history. He did do a good job with the World Trade Center, I have to admit. Perhaps, he figured too many people would remember the real history for him to twist it too much... ;-) Or maybe he did it straight to give more credibility to his other movies, who knows? > IMHO such twisted (hi)stories are doing harm. If nothing else, they help > to lure people into mantraps and meat grinders. They make it so much > easier to sell different kinds of shit to the gullible folk. Agreed. > Of course, as I mentioned above, whoever wants to buy shit is going to > have it. I'm not worried as much about what people buy as who they elect. Elect shitheads, and you're going to have trouble. > But let's keep in mind that humans tend to err. So maybe I erred. I'm sure I have. Many times. >> > Overally, what US gained during WW2 has kept them running for at least >> > fifty years. Just my holy opinion. >> >> The rise of the US in world power started right around 1898 with the >> Spanish American war and big industrial projects like the Panama >> Canal. We avoided most of the damage from WWI and WWII (other than a >> RELATIVELY small loss of life when compared to our allies), and had >> our production capacity increased at the expense of Europe. I don't >> think there is a counterargument to this point. > > Yep. As I lurk into history of various countries, I can see how, during > last 150 years, they all first started to rise (some slower, some faster), > few dropped out after WW1, some more after WW2 and from my point of view > only States stayed in a game after that. Soviet Union & friends tried > hard, but they--we have missed the idea of looking for new ideas. Even > more, proponents of new ideas have been prosecuted until official > recognition of those ideas (like, genetics, and before WW2 theory of > relativity, if I am right, and maybe some more). It was like if race > runners had their legs broken first (legally) and later, after official > recognition of racing, healed and sent to olympic games. > > Pitiful attitude. Revisionist history is always ugly when caught. >> Now, I also believe that Europe is not doing itself any favors in its >> rush to socialism over the past few decades, but this is another force >> entirely. The work laws in France, for example, are a joke. The tax >> rates in much of Europe are catastrophically high. > > I don't feel too well qualified to discuss European issues. I am still > learning about them. I've found it easier to study States first. Strange, > isn't it - it is rather hard to look oneself in the eyes, especially > without good mirror. > > But if I was ever asked to talk bullshit about this, well I think that > whoever says Europe is undergoing a crisis is right. But they later > disagree about a reason for this. I suspect the reason is lack of faith - > I don't mean religious faith. They don't dare to mention faith in their > debates. Too bad. Without it, future cannot be done. All that is left is > just shifting resources back and forth. I define faith as the motive power to engage in activity. You have faith that your employer will give you a paycheck at the end of two weeks, so you continue to go to work. You have faith in a political candidate, so you work for his campaign. You have faith first, act second, get the reward third. If you don't get the reward, then your faith changes. > BTW, from what I have read, neither China nor Russia have faith, too. It > seems that Chinese top tovarischi recognised a problem (or part of it) and > they try to go back to old style philosophies, like Confucianism. Russians > seem to be stuck a little. > > I suspect Greeks and Romans had faith. I also suspect we have come a bit > too far away from the roots. > > Oh, I mean, how to say it, maybe it's faith in underlying order of things. > Or some other bullshit. It's nothing esotheric, however. > > But I must err, since otherwise some wiser guy would have got his Nobel > for saying so. I think you are right. Chinese are driven these days by chasing the almighty dollar (or yuan) and that is a kind of empty thing all by itself. It is important, but I think there is something vital missing. Not religion, but some more essential appreciation of the human condition. >> At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-) > > Now the puzzle is, am I an optimist or a pessimist? Depends on whether the movies are good or bad. Whether they are all propaganda, or some of them are educational and uplifting. Hitler's Germany had a lot of movies, but some are probably illegal to own in Germany now, not sure about that... Movies are a tool, like computers and hammers, that can be used for good or bad ends. > [...] >> > Yes, let's hope they do something positive. Even if at the same time they >> > evade taxes (don't know if they do), if this ends malaria I can accept it. >> >> If you had your choice between eradicating malaria AND eradicating >> polio AND giving fresh water to every man woman and child on earth AND >> giving a laptop to every urchin all over the world, OR reducing the >> global temperature by 0.002 degrees (an estimate I pulled out of my >> ass, but it is some number along those lines) for the same amount of >> money... Which would you choose? > > At first I thought you want me to choose between malaria, polio, water, > laptop and glob-temp. And I thought 'wow, that is so cool question'. Nope > :-). Well, why would I care about 0.002 degrees? Of course I would give > all the cool stuff to people in need. As of 2 degrees - over how long, 200 > years? If so, frak it. The pessimists are now saying 4 degrees Celsius change over the next 100 years. The more we learn about climate, the more we seem to discover that it can change in the blink of an eye. That part is truly frightening... but perhaps there will be enough civilization left to try and recover. But I believe we should solve the easier problems first. Polio, Malaria, Clean Water. Then, once we've proven that we can do those things with excellence, THEN I think we're ready to attack global warming. The other happy thing is that the development of alternative energy sources is happily a good thing for other reasons. > Glaciers are moving back since 18000 years. I > understand, temps are going up during this period, too. I think most of > Antropocentric GW talk is marketing, selling houses in Spain, or in > tundra. GW is not antropocentric, I'm afraid. It is something else, > probably. I think it is probably human caused. The science is fairly definitive in that direction. > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period ] > > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period ] > > However, I would like to not give them laptops. They are hard to maintain, > they break, they can get stolen. I would build ruggedized kiosks, for a > price close to 2-3 laptops (I guesstimate). Use reinforced concrete, old > cpus (Pentium M, 1GHz or so), simple displays. Mouse optional. Keyboard - > ruggedized, probably specially designed for this one adventure - like, it > could be made of wood, wires and steel springs, with simple connector to > the kiosk. Such keyboards can be easily repaired or build from locally > available stuff. That's an interesting thought. I saw some stuff like that for India. Seemed to work. > Give every child a pendrive, connect kiosks to the internet. No porn > and no ads. Just wikipedia, usenet, free books, lectures, this kind of > stuff. Games - I think some simple games will do. > > I have heard of something similar having been done in India once, wonder > how they fare? The people take care of them from the TED talk I watched. The point of the talk was how children teach themselves about computers, which was also interesting. > Kiosks could be put inside communes/villages (if we are talking 3rd > world), perhaps with participation of local schools and churches. So that > children can meet there together and maybe learn from each other. Thanks for the nice chat Tomasz all of the Poles I have talked to have been genuine seekers of the truth. It's a great national attribute if my sampling is accurate. Then again, there are a LOT of Catholics there... :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 15:40:58 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:40:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 17 July 2011 02:34, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Since they had rules, and >> the East Germans broke those rules, they cheated. Simple. You didn't >> address the main issue, being that it was communist propaganda. > > East-Germans have never been exempt from anti-doping tests, and those > who resulted positive were disqualified. They simply have been > actively searching ways to increase performances within what the rules > did not (yet) forbid. Taking the risk, sure. They were not within the rules. They were actively breaking the rules. The fact that they were not caught does not mean they were not breaking the rules, just that the enforcers of the rules weren't as good as they were. That doesn't make it legal or ethical. Particularly when these drugs had long term effects. Some of the East German women's swimmers have had to have their sex changed to male, just to get by. Some died. All this for the glory of communism... very sad. Transhumanism needs to be done in a careful way, with fully informed volunteers, not non-consensual guinea pigs. If we are to transcend this mortal body, we don't want it done on the back of Joseph Mengele... do we? >> What's going on in Russia today is a very weird form of capitalism. > > Western-style capitalism may well be vanishing there, the Eltsin era > has been over for a while. Which may be why the BRICs are believed to > be the vanguard of the future... :-) We'll meet up in the future and compare notes on this... :-) -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Sun Jul 17 16:09:17 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:09:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <004701cc449b$e1fb3c60$a5f1b520$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" _______________________________________________ > >> Ja. ?I propose we have two separate classes of competition. ?The >> regular Olympics, anything goes, any kind of performance enhancing >> whatever they want, all is welcome. ?Then as a separate class of > competition, we keep the old school notion of not using anything, > ... Propose calling that the Organic Olympics. ... >... New equipment gives rise to X-Games type sports, which are very interesting, novel, and fun. I just LOVE the new heavy duty pogo sticks! That looks like some ride! -Kelly The X-games and the Japanese take on this are two good examples of what I propose. In all the typical professional sports, the techniques are too well understood, so the top players are nearly indistinguishable. I want games where the optimal strategy isn't well known, or is being invented realtime. That injects a certain element of chance into sports, but think of it like professional golf vs miniature golf. The latter introduces enough randomness to make it interesting. The good golfers do better of course in the long run, but yesterday on a particular hole, my five year old scored a hole in one, on the same hole that both his parents still hadn't managed to sink the ball after six strokes. Some of the stuff they do on the Japanese games looks like a lot of fun for the non-athlete. I see this as valuable, since the opportunity cost of getting good enough to compete professionally in *any* of the mainstream sports is so great, it really only applies to a few people. We could invent sports where any reasonably good athlete could become world class in a summer. We have all these channels on TV now and all these websites. Seems to me we could proliferate sports wildly to match. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jul 17 16:59:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:59:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 17 July 2011 17:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > They were not within the rules. They were actively breaking the rules. > The fact that they were not caught does not mean they were not > breaking the rules, just that the enforcers of the rules weren't as > good as they were. That doesn't make it legal or ethical. Particularly > when these drugs had long term effects. Some of the East German > women's swimmers have had to have their sex changed to male, just to > get by. Some died. All this for the glory of communism... very sad. I do not know if you have any actual examples in mind, but regarding accepted practice in this respect I would contend that anything that that is compliant with the standards (or not detected by the tests) in place is "legal" by definition. In motor racing there are frequent objections of such nature to measures which losers maintain are against the "spirit" of existing regulations, but until and unless those are changed, their adopters go on winning the races. Moreover, do you seriously propose that transexuals should not be allowed to compete? Even though, in fact, I suspect that men becoming women and competing with women have always had more of an edge than women becoming men and competing with the latter, as you suggest... > Transhumanism needs to be done in a careful way, with fully informed > volunteers, not non-consensual guinea pigs. If we are to transcend > this mortal body, we don't want it done on the back of Joseph > Mengele... do we? What makes you think that an East-German citizen was less than enthusiastic for anything that could allow him or her to become an Olympic medallist, especially in the framework of East-German society? Given how keen the average western athlete is in spite of a punishing and prohibitionist, rather than rewarding, system, I find western propaganda on this point quite dubious indeed... -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sun Jul 17 17:09:41 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:09:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <004701cc449b$e1fb3c60$a5f1b520$@att.net> References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> <004701cc449b$e1fb3c60$a5f1b520$@att.net> Message-ID: <005401cc44a4$51afc1e0$f50f45a0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >... We could invent sports where any reasonably good athlete could become world class in a summer. We have all these channels on TV now and all these websites. Seems to me we could proliferate sports wildly to match...spike Challenge: invent a game or athletic activity in which you design the rules against your own particular strengths. If you do it right, you may be able to be four sigma or even world class. My example: the game is to carry on one's person all the food and water and everything needed for a hike along a paved road. The winner of the competition is the one who can walk the longest distance. But wait. In order to play to my own personal strengths, we start in the middle of July at Ridgecrest California at the crack of dawn. Reasoning: Every day is alike in July in the desert: http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/93555 Not all that many people can walk very far under those conditions. It will likely break 100F (38C) before noon and stay up there until after 1600. The air will be so dry it will feel like swimming in cotton. In those conditions, one can be sweating like a whore in church and not even realize it, because the humidity is so low it evaporates immediately. So most of the weight one carries will likely be water. I can imagine going through 30 pounds of water in one day. So it is unlikely one would bother carrying a sleeping bag or tent. This is a game that is likely to be over the first day. World class athletes would likely go about 50 miles, but few would get past Trona. Since I am designing the competition, I decree no children, these being defined as anyone under 50. With the techniques I already know, my oddball build and surprisingly large capacity for carrying stuff on my back, I think I could be a four sigma in that game, which nearly guarantees a first place in a typical oddball competition where one would be unlikely to attract more than a couple hundred participants. spike From rtomek at ceti.pl Mon Jul 18 00:08:06 2011 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 02:08:06 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, 17 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: [...] > > PTSD is nasty thing, especially when one is in a society unprepared to > > understand it (I think US is not). Next time I drink, I will drink one for > > those guys. Probably would not help much, however. > > The US is better prepared for PTSD now than they were in Vietnam, and > were better then than in WWII. Nobody was ready for it in WWI... There > are now somewhat effecive treatments... Well, you sure have better knowledge on this than I :-). And contacts with real people who tell you interesting things. [...] > 2) The Marshal Plan > 3) The Post WWII GI Bill (if you weren't black) > 4) The Interstate Highway System > 5) The Space Program > > These government programs are among the most successful ever in US > history. And they did come as a direct result of WWII (and the cold > war). Yep. Education and infrastructure - truly admirable connection. This is exactly what I was trying to state in my original post. All those things went into existence thanks to US involvement in WW2. Maybe some would happen anyway, but I doubt that they all would happen and to the same extent. [...] > actions in the past might be indicative of results in the future. If > LBJ did X and it resulted in Y, and now BHO is doing X, I might point > out that Y might be an expected outcome. So for me, history is most > useful as a predictive tool. As they say, history repeats itself but not in the same way. So don't overestimate the power of prediction :-). > > BTW, pity that as far as I can tell, Land Lease wasn't sent to Poland, too > > - we had our own government in exile, residing in London, army, navy etc. > > We even managed to evacuate gold reserves via Romania, but from what I > > learned they have been confiscated by our British ally - I wonder why, > > especially because this had put us on pension, ?but again this is a bit > > boring, at least on this particular day. > > The difficulty for Poland seems to me to have been that they were > always in the way of greater powers who wanted to fight each other. So > Poland all too often became the battleground of a fight they had no > real part in. That's part of it. However, in Europe, practically all countries have been a battlefield, some for 30 or 100 years (albeit not recently, heh). We were able to fight off Soviet Union because other countries (Great Britain, France, I think) were watching Germans to not attack us. I guess we would do better job with Germans 20 years later if Soviets didn't help them. I think Wehrmacht was slowly loosing steam and we could easily go on for another month, maybe even two, which would be very long, leading them on the verge of exhaustion. This wasn't an army that knocked off Russians in 1941, mind you. BTW, I have read that as later research showed, only Poles and Russians were able to fight Germans on equal terms when strength factor was close to 1:1. Western allies, when they won battles, had it more like 1:3 or 1:5 in their favor. However, this is alternative history :-). And it reflects my current knowledge which is subject to change, even five minutes from now if I am lucky enough. As a comment to recent 100 years, here goes a Polish "Polish joke". On the picture, God says to angels something like this: "And now let's have some fun and place Poland between Russia and Germany" :-) http://patrz.pl/zdjecia/polakom-zrobimy-numer [...] > > The article sums up what I wanted to say: "The extreme poverty of these > > settlers likely contributed significantly to their devotion to the > > principles of the United Order." > > Yes, and they also had only three industries, the biggest being the > mill. It was easy for them to work together when they all had common > goals. Once you get big enough that you need two mills, and they have > to compete with each other, then this sort of thing starts to break > down, IMHO. Even worse, if you have a Catholic mill and a Mormon mill > in the same "in common" system... then differences start coming out in > potentially culture shattering ways. A lot of the US "race relations" > problems are of this nature. Very interesting. I hope one day I explore this subject. > > When one has close to nothing, one is willing to share with others > > similarly ill-fated individuals. > > Just as there are no atheists in foxholes (you'll never catch me in a > fox hole, thank you very much ;-), extreme stress causes people to > join together in ways that otherwise would be difficult to imagine. > Sometimes the stress is manufactured, as in this case. Brigham Young > sent people to these godforsaken places and "called" them to figure > out how to make the place profitable to "the Kingdom". If they failed, > which many did, I imagine that they saw it as a lack of faith. Ouch! That's not the way to treat loyal guys. > Programming methodology is at least as complex as politics. :-( This why I like low level so much - 0s are 0s and 1s are 1s. The only real stuff. [...] > >> At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-) > > > > Now the puzzle is, am I an optimist or a pessimist? > > Depends on whether the movies are good or bad. Whether they are all > propaganda, or some of them are educational and uplifting. Hitler's > Germany had a lot of movies, but some are probably illegal to own in > Germany now, not sure about that... I guess such films are treated as normal nazi propaganda - in most coutries they are forbidden by constitution, from what I know (as hate spreading materials). Or, if not quite forbidden (because it is good to know errors we want to avoid and because there are free speech concerns), they are mostly forgotten. At least they very rarely (and only in fragments) appear in the mainstream. Some could have been destroyed during and after the war. Some could have been collected as proofs for future trials of war criminals. > Movies are a tool, like computers and hammers, that can be used for > good or bad ends. Right! I tend to forget it. Thanks for reminding this to me. [...] > > Glaciers are moving back since 18000 years. I > > understand, temps are going up during this period, too. I think most of > > Antropocentric GW talk is marketing, selling houses in Spain, or in > > tundra. GW is not antropocentric, I'm afraid. It is something else, > > probably. > > I think it is probably human caused. The science is fairly definitive > in that direction. > > > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period ] > > > > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period ] Well, I'm not really convinced. I think humans could have added something to the process, that started long before industrialisation, long even before agrarian revolution. Science is what it is - it is fluid thing, as new data come in, old hypotheses are revised. As far as I know, there is no good enough climate model. And it is quite possible that there are still some factors not taken into current best models. With no correct model we are unable to make longterm predictions. While daily meteorological prognosis have improved, the longest give some insight into the week-long future, AFAIK. Of course models don't bother themselves with exact temperature in my place in a day July 18st, 2110. But still, I see that climate modeling will improve a lot during next ten years. And then, who knows, maybe I become convinced, or maybe they will lead to some other conclusions. But I confess that I have never tried my hands on anything climate-related. So I am not even a novice. And I have no access to any data, so even if I had my hands stuck deeply in papers, without data all effort would be useless. However, I can look around. For example, they build a whole new city in Dubai, on a current sea level, and don't seem frightened that in hundred years all this investition will go under water. Maybe they are stupid, or maybe they do fraud, or maybe something else. Guess for some foreseeable future I will remain unconvinced. ;-) > > Kiosks could be put inside communes/villages (if we are talking 3rd > > world), perhaps with participation of local schools and churches. So that > > children can meet there together and maybe learn from each other. > > Thanks for the nice chat Tomasz all of the Poles I have talked to have > been genuine seekers of the truth. It's a great national attribute if > my sampling is accurate. Then again, there are a LOT of Catholics > there... :-) > > -Kelly Glad to hear you had good experiences with Poles (even thou, as in every group, there can be found examples of many different human behaviours). Truth is good and it makes us stronger, so seeking it is a worthy goal. As of Catholics, I am one of them (at least formally). I learned to be critical about institutions built upon humans, even if they are said to be rocks ;-) and I like critical thinking ability that I found in many Americans (must be somehow connected with individualism) - wish we had more of it in Poland :-). 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 18 03:30:33 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:30:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires? Message-ID: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> CBS news: July 17, 2011 6:07 PM Okla. governor calls for prayer to end heat wave CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports that it's been so hot for so long in Oklahoma, the governor called for a statewide day of prayer in hope of some divine intervention "I think if we have a lot of people praying, it moves the heart of God," Gov. Mary Fallin says. ... Six cities not only broke records for a single day, but set all time highs since records have been kept: Tallahassee, Fla. - 105 on June 15; Amarillo, Texas - 111 on June 26; Borger, Texas - 113 on June 26; Dalhart, Texas - 110 on June 26; Childress, Texas - 117 on June 26; and Gage, Okla. - 113. ... Extremely dry weather is blamed on fires that have already burned nearly 5 million acres in the southwest so far this summer. ============================ [Yep, those damned fires do create awfully dry weather.] From rtomek at ceti.pl Mon Jul 18 03:42:45 2011 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:42:45 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Jul 2011, Tomasz Rola wrote: > However, this is alternative history :-). And it reflects my current > knowledge which is subject to change, even five minutes from now if I am > lucky enough. Man, am I lucky :-). There is also alternative history, in which Poland goes with Germany, against Soviet Union, France, UK and US. War would have been lost, eventually. Or maybe not... If nothing else, Soviet Union would have had much harder times and would have lost (much more probable with Poland by German side). So would France. As of UK-USA alliance, not sure what would they do in such situation. Uhum, this is very offtopic. Sorry for this :-). 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 glivick at sbcglobal.net Mon Jul 18 04:12:35 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:12:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires? In-Reply-To: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> References: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E23B2B3.2020306@sbcglobal.net> Damien: God is behind everything. This whole things started because an especially devout person said a little too loudly, "I wish it wasn't so cold around here." FutureMan On 7/17/2011 8:30 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > CBS news: July 17, 2011 6:07 PM > > > Okla. governor calls for prayer to end heat wave > > > CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports that it's been so hot > for so long in Oklahoma, the governor called for a statewide day of > prayer in hope of some divine intervention > > "I think if we have a lot of people praying, it moves the heart of > God," Gov. Mary Fallin says. > > ... > > Six cities not only broke records for a single day, but set all time > highs since records have been kept: Tallahassee, Fla. - 105 on June > 15; Amarillo, Texas - 111 on June 26; Borger, Texas - 113 on June 26; > Dalhart, Texas - 110 on June 26; Childress, Texas - 117 on June 26; > and Gage, Okla. - 113. > > ... > > Extremely dry weather is blamed on fires that have already burned > nearly 5 million acres in the southwest so far this summer. > > ============================ > > [Yep, those damned fires do create awfully dry weather.] > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jul 18 04:38:02 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:38:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires? In-Reply-To: <4E23B2B3.2020306@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> <4E23B2B3.2020306@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <4E23B8AA.20009@satx.rr.com> On 7/17/2011 11:12 PM, GLivick wrote: > God is behind everything. Yeah, but I bet you didn't know before this that fires control the hot climate. From glivick at sbcglobal.net Mon Jul 18 04:53:47 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:53:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires? In-Reply-To: <4E23B8AA.20009@satx.rr.com> References: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> <4E23B2B3.2020306@sbcglobal.net> <4E23B8AA.20009@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E23BC5B.10303@sbcglobal.net> Do you mean to advance a theory of causality here that, were it extended, would bring into question the long held understanding that rivers above flood stage and mud puddles full of water cause weeks of heavy rain? [Confession: yeah, I missed that twist on words] On 7/17/2011 9:38 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/17/2011 11:12 PM, GLivick wrote: > >> God is behind everything. > > Yeah, but I bet you didn't know before this that fires control the hot > climate. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jul 18 05:06:15 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:06:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires?. In-Reply-To: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ?Sun, 7/17/11, Damien Broderick wrote: "Okla. governor calls for prayer to end heat wave" It is well known that the ultimate root cause of the flooding in New Orleans was not a hurricane but rather the gay lifestyle that was extensive in that city; so my modest proposal is that the governor invite some (but not too many) homosexuals to live in Oklahoma. By carefully adjusting the number of gays there you could precisely regulate God's displeasure and thus the amount of precipitation falling in the state. ?John K Clark? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 18 05:48:23 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:48:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires?. In-Reply-To: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E23C927.5020209@satx.rr.com> On 7/18/2011 12:06 AM, john clark wrote: > "Okla. governor calls for prayer to end heat wave" > > It is well known that the ultimate root cause of the flooding in New > Orleans was not a hurricane but rather the gay lifestyle that was > extensive in that city; so my modest proposal is that the governor > invite some (but not too many) homosexuals to live in Oklahoma. By > carefully adjusting the number of gays there you could precisely > regulate God's displeasure and thus the amount of precipitation falling > in the state. That might work, but it's not guaranteed. It's equally likely that a number of the tallest buildings (do they have tall buildings in Oklahoma?) will be destroyed instead by Islamic terrorists doing God's will, as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell explained in the case of 9/11. From spike66 at att.net Mon Jul 18 05:55:18 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:55:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires?. In-Reply-To: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E23A8D9.4090905@satx.rr.com> <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00e101cc450f$46696500$d33c2f00$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of john clark Sun, 7/17/11, Damien Broderick wrote: >.It is well known that the ultimate root cause of the flooding in New Orleans was not a hurricane but rather the gay lifestyle ... By carefully adjusting the number of gays there you could precisely regulate God's displeasure and thus the amount of precipitation falling in the state. John K Clark Stuff like this is exactly why I hang out here. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon Jul 18 08:29:45 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 01:29:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires?. In-Reply-To: <4E23C927.5020209@satx.rr.com> References: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E23C927.5020209@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Pah. Such a simplistic approach is an affront to the Great Weatherman in the Sky. Clearly what is needed is a well-formulated PGO equation ("Pissing God Off"). Only after deep meditation on scripture by the most faithful might such an equation be derived. I am not worthy. But I humbly suggest it include not only the number of wicked gay people (and other damned preverts) in a state or region, but also total number of prayer hours, depth of devotion, amount of tithing, degree of pain inflicted through self-flagellation, number of brave acts of faith-based denial of evidence (especially concerning the Devilish doctrine of evilution), and other factors that elude my unworthy mind. PGO Equation: Amount of precipitation and desired temperature = xGays x PH x DD x $T x P-SF x F All true believers must acknowledge, however, that (as St. Thomas Aquinas observed) God is All and Infinite. Thus any offense against God is an infinite offence deserving of infinite punishment (in this case high temperature). The PGO Equation cannot constrain God in his infinite power and wisdom. It can only serve as our completely irrational -- I mean faith-based -- attempt to retain a shred of self-importance in the face of an infinitely superior being. --Max On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/18/2011 12:06 AM, john clark wrote: > > "Okla. governor calls for prayer to end heat wave" >> >> It is well known that the ultimate root cause of the flooding in New >> Orleans was not a hurricane but rather the gay lifestyle that was >> extensive in that city; so my modest proposal is that the governor >> invite some (but not too many) homosexuals to live in Oklahoma. By >> carefully adjusting the number of gays there you could precisely >> regulate God's displeasure and thus the amount of precipitation falling >> in the state. >> > > That might work, but it's not guaranteed. It's equally likely that a number > of the tallest buildings (do they have tall buildings in Oklahoma?) will be > destroyed instead by Islamic terrorists doing God's will, as Pat Robertson > and Jerry Falwell explained in the case of 9/11. > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Jul 18 16:25:02 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:25:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] is god to blame? or is it the fires?. In-Reply-To: References: <1310965575.73636.YahooMailClassic@web82906.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E23C927.5020209@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Sorry guys, everyone knows all our Earthly events are caused by the transcended adolescent alien hypermind playing the newest release of the CreateYourUniverse M-Brain simulation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 18 19:40:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:40:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: <4E174BA5.8000700@mac.com> <20110709120610.GX16178@leitl.org> <20110712144509.GK16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/7/17 Tomasz Rola : > On Sun, 17 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > [...] >> 2) The Marshal Plan >> 3) The Post WWII GI Bill (if you weren't black) >> 4) The Interstate Highway System >> 5) The Space Program >> >> These government programs are among the most successful ever in US >> history. ?And they did come as a direct result of WWII (and the cold >> war). > > Yep. Education and infrastructure - truly admirable connection. This is > exactly what I was trying to state in my original post. All those things > went into existence thanks to US involvement in WW2. Maybe some would > happen anyway, but I doubt that they all would happen and to the same > extent. Look, I'm not going to stand up here and say that government never gets it right... but it is so little, so few and so far between, that I can't imagine that there isn't a better way! For every successful government program, I can name ten that I think are absolute disasters. That is a worse track record than startups taking venture capital. The difference is that a failed startup ENDS, and the bad government programs go on forever. Once a bureaucracy is instantiated, it is hard to get it to go away. I'll give you a small example of how things get messed up. And to be fair, this example even involves the government outsourcing, which is what I advocate for most things. The Crane Paper Company is the sole provider of paper for US currency to the US treasury. They employ around 150 people. About half of the paper provided by Crane Paper is used in the production of $1 bills. Roughly, that's 75 jobs tied to the $1 bill. The $1 bill wears out in about 18 months. On the other hand, the life expectancy of a typical US coin is 18 YEARS. Because of an accounting principle going back centuries in England and other places called seigniorage, the difference in price between the cost of the production of a coin, and it's face value, goes into the treasury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage, So, for example, if it cost 7 cents to coin a $1 coin, the treasury would gain 93 cents for that coin. This comes straight off the national debt. This principle DOES NOT APPLY to paper money in the US. The seigniorage on a 1 cent piece is just about break even. Warlords, drug lords, criminals, rich people all over the world and so forth have largely switched from carrying around large suitcases full of $100 bills for large suitcases full of $100 Euro bills, because those bills are worth more. This is worth a lot to the USA because these dollars kept overseas are counted against the trade deficit. So, if the US stopped minting the 1 cent piece and slowly demonetized it... Started minting a $1 coin (that could go into the coin drawer where the 1 cent piece was)... and stopped printing $1 bills (absolutely necessary to get adoption of the $1 coin)... and started printing $500 bills... It would bring benefits to the US worth well over $300,000,000 a year, probably much more. And why don't we do this simple thing? Go back to those 75 jobs at the Crane Paper Company. They have someone lobbying congress (the "Save the Greenback" lobby, I think it's called) to make sure that they keep those 75 jobs. How many more jobs would be created with $300 million dollars a year? Those 75 jobs cost the United States at least $2 million dollars per job, per year. Only government could get this SO wrong. Admittedly, they have a little help from a special interest group. But this is a classic case study of stupidity in Washington. When asked, most congressmen say "people like pennies"... but most people don't know the cost of maintaining the lowly cent. Hell, put Lincoln on the new dollar coin! Put Washington on the new $500 bill! It won't matter in a few months. > [...] >> actions in the past might be indicative of results in the future. If >> LBJ did X and it resulted in Y, and now BHO is doing X, I might point >> out that Y might be an expected outcome. So for me, history is most >> useful as a predictive tool. > > As they say, history repeats itself but not in the same way. So don't > overestimate the power of prediction :-). I don't, but homo sapiens are far more predictable than most people think. >> The difficulty for Poland seems to me to have been that they were >> always in the way of greater powers who wanted to fight each other. So >> Poland all too often became the battleground of a fight they had no >> real part in. > > That's part of it. However, in Europe, practically all countries have been > a battlefield, some for 30 or 100 years (albeit not recently, heh). We > were able to fight off Soviet Union because other countries (Great > Britain, France, I think) were watching Germans to not attack us. I guess > we would do better job with Germans 20 years later if Soviets didn't help > them. I think Wehrmacht was slowly loosing steam and we could easily go on > for another month, maybe even two, which would be very long, leading them > on the verge of exhaustion. This wasn't an army that knocked off Russians > in 1941, mind you. > > BTW, I have read that as later research showed, only Poles and Russians > were able to fight Germans on equal terms when strength factor was close > to 1:1. Western allies, when they won battles, had it more like 1:3 or 1:5 > in their favor. It doesn't matter how you win, just that you do! We all know how good a defense Poland had vs. Blitzkrieg... perhaps that made the Poles mad later... :-) > However, this is alternative history :-). And it reflects my current > knowledge which is subject to change, even five minutes from now if I am > lucky enough. > > As a comment to recent 100 years, here goes a Polish "Polish joke". On the > picture, God says to angels something like this: "And now let's have some > fun and place Poland between Russia and Germany" :-) Q: Where do Poles keep their armies? A: In their sleevies. > http://patrz.pl/zdjecia/polakom-zrobimy-numer > > Very interesting. I hope one day I explore this subject. There is one book on Orderville. The Wikipedia article is a bit short, and could be improved. Maybe I'll get to that some day. >> > When one has close to nothing, one is willing to share with others >> > similarly ill-fated individuals. >> >> Just as there are no atheists in foxholes (you'll never catch me in a >> fox hole, thank you very much ;-), extreme stress causes people to >> join together in ways that otherwise would be difficult to imagine. >> Sometimes the stress is manufactured, as in this case. Brigham Young >> sent people to these godforsaken places and "called" them to figure >> out how to make the place profitable to "the Kingdom". If they failed, >> which many did, I imagine that they saw it as a lack of faith. > > Ouch! That's not the way to treat loyal guys. God does that to people all the time ;-) The idea that you were not faithful enough, and that's the reason you're having troubles is all too common. Very defeating to a psychology. >> Programming methodology is at least as complex as politics. :-( > > This why I like low level so much - 0s are 0s and 1s are 1s. The only > real stuff. It's just that it takes so MANY 1's and 0's to do anything useful... ;-) > [...] >> >> At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-) >> > >> > Now the puzzle is, am I an optimist or a pessimist? >> >> Depends on whether the movies are good or bad. Whether they are all >> propaganda, or some of them are educational and uplifting. Hitler's >> Germany had a lot of movies, but some are probably illegal to own in >> Germany now, not sure about that... > > I guess such films are treated as normal nazi propaganda - in most > coutries they are forbidden by constitution, from what I know (as hate > spreading materials). Or, if not quite forbidden (because it is good to > know errors we want to avoid and because there are free speech concerns), > they are mostly forgotten. At least they very rarely (and only in > fragments) appear in the mainstream. Yes. Some of them were good films too. It's too bad that sometimes the baby gets thrown out with the bath water. > Some could have been destroyed during and after the war. Some could have > been collected as proofs for future trials of war criminals. Mostly the propaganda was light, and embedded, like today's Hollywood films. Take Happy Feet, for example... a fun film with just a smattering of propaganda about climate change. (Whether the propaganda is correct or not is secondary to the fact that it is propaganda.) >> Movies are a tool, like computers and hammers, that can be used for >> good or bad ends. > > Right! I tend to forget it. Thanks for reminding this to me. This is a very general concept, not to be forgotten. One way I explain this to people is by explaining that the number one murder weapon in the Old West was not the Colt 45, but the shovel. Apparently, there were a lot of fights over water turns. Oops. > [...] >> > Glaciers are moving back since 18000 years. I >> > understand, temps are going up during this period, too. I think most of >> > Antropocentric GW talk is marketing, selling houses in Spain, or in >> > tundra. GW is not antropocentric, I'm afraid. It is something else, >> > probably. >> >> I think it is probably human caused. The science is fairly definitive >> in that direction. >> >> > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period ] >> > >> > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period ] > > Well, I'm not really convinced. I think humans could have added something > to the process, that started long before industrialisation, long even > before agrarian revolution. > > Science is what it is - it is fluid thing, as new data come in, old > hypotheses are revised. As far as I know, there is no good enough climate > model. And it is quite possible that there are still some factors not > taken into current best models. With no correct model we are unable to > make longterm predictions. While daily meteorological prognosis have > improved, the longest give some insight into the week-long future, AFAIK. Don't confuse weather with climate. We can't predict whether there will be cloud cover in three days (VERY hard problem). But the global average temperature over the next few decades is much easier to model. No model is perfect, which is why there are so many competing models. The very best studies IMHO are those that take the results from 8-10 different models and show you all of the model's predictions on the graph together. The thing is that they all trend in the same basic direction. NOBODY has a model that shows extra CO2 and other greenhouse gases causing global cooling. It just doesn't work that way. Nobody has a model that compensates for ALL the peripheral data. If you believe generally in Moore's Law, then climate is much like that. You can't say who is going to have a processor at 4 Ghz first, or exactly when, but over the long term, you can more or less predict the direction things are going. The climate is more like that. > Of course models don't bother themselves with exact temperature in my > place in a day July 18st, 2110. But still, I see that climate modeling > will improve a lot during next ten years. And then, who knows, maybe I > become convinced, or maybe they will lead to some other conclusions. It is hard to believe in global warming. I myself was a big skeptic until about 4 months ago. I dug into it and came up with little doubt that there is a problem. How big a problem is still a question. How to react to the problem is even more of an open question. > But I confess that I have never tried my hands on anything > climate-related. So I am not even a novice. > > And I have no access to any data, so even if I had my hands stuck deeply > in papers, without data all effort would be useless. I agree. More climate data should be publicly published. My last company was working on this (and other data sources) before it pivoted and I left. :-( > However, I can look around. For example, they build a whole new city in > Dubai, on a current sea level, and don't seem frightened that in hundred > years all this investition will go under water. Maybe they are stupid, or > maybe they do fraud, or maybe something else. Dubai doesn't have much choice, seeing how they are so small. > Guess for some foreseeable future I will remain unconvinced. ;-) You just need more data. >> > Kiosks could be put inside communes/villages (if we are talking 3rd >> > world), perhaps with participation of local schools and churches. So that >> > children can meet there together and maybe learn from each other. >> >> Thanks for the nice chat Tomasz all of the Poles I have talked to have >> been genuine seekers of the truth. It's a great national attribute if >> my sampling is accurate. Then again, there are a LOT of Catholics >> there... :-) >> >> -Kelly > > Glad to hear you had good experiences with Poles (even thou, as in every > group, there can be found examples of many different human behaviours). > Truth is good and it makes us stronger, so seeking it is a worthy goal. As > of Catholics, I am one of them (at least formally). I learned to be > critical about institutions built upon humans, even if they are said to be > rocks ;-) and I like critical thinking ability that I found in many > Americans (must be somehow connected with individualism) - wish we had > more of it in Poland :-). It is very bad to characterize someone based on nationality... but I've had good interactions with many Poles. I think you are going to get more of that in Poland, if from no other source than the Internet. Have a great day! -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 18 20:00:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:00:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Message-ID: Sorry to the video haters... this guy starts off with blood minerals and child labor, and gets to a solution. Light governmental oversight of corporations trying to do the right thing is the only solution that works globally. Transparency and data are the only things that enable ethical behavior on the part of consumers. Use contracts, the only multinational institution that suppliers care about. http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html http://www.fairlabor.com This guy is a total liberal who has fallen into the logical trap that is Libertarianism. -Kelly From rloosemore at susaro.com Mon Jul 18 20:52:50 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:52:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > Sorry to the video haters... this guy starts off with blood minerals > and child labor, and gets to a solution. > > Light governmental oversight of corporations trying to do the right > thing is the only solution that works globally. Transparency and data > are the only things that enable ethical behavior on the part of > consumers. Use contracts, the only multinational institution that > suppliers care about. > > http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html > http://www.fairlabor.com > > This guy is a total liberal who has fallen into the logical trap that > is Libertarianism. > Oh for pity's sake. I am really sick of reading this libertarian crap on a mailing list that is supposed to be about the future. Do me a favor and form a separate extropy-for-future-libertarian-fantasies mailing list, or else make it clear, up front, that this list is NOT designed for a broad cross section of people who are passionate about the future, but will ONLY welcome people who want to get to the future because they think it will bring them some kind of fantasy libertarian paradise. Richard Loosemore From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jul 18 21:26:22 2011 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:26:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I must start this by saying to the mormons on this list I don't dislike you personally, it's just I have been goaded into thinking of you like starving children in Africa or prisoners of conscience - you may be individually admirable but your marketing people have annoyed me. Spike is frequently very careful about alluding to Muslims, not wanting to say anything offensive. In my day to day existence in the UK, I find there's little to worry about from Islam - I've worked alongside many hard-working muslims, no muslim neighbour has hassled me, I don't have to worry about drunk muslims causing trouble in the town centre. Furthermore, in their own happy way, they don't proselytise to me - they mostly try to target those of south asian or african descent. They never try to make a play for my white anglo-saxon protestant soul. But there's an insidious group sending out young boys to try and steal my soul. They send out "elders" who look too young to shave out on to the streets in pairs. They seem to preferentially target white anglo-saxon types, and if you mention you're a christian they excitedly try to get you to read a book of a "bible" that doesn't look like any bible you've ever read. (Is it a sign you're approaching middle age when elders look incredibly young?) These people are the multi-level marketers of religion. They are the charity muggers of religion. They are the supermarket hustlers of religion. "would you like our free catalogue", "can you spare a minute for human rights across the world" , "can you spare two pounds a month for children in africa" , "have you heard of the book of mormon?" - I can't walk through my town without being harassed. At first I felt guilty for telling the student fundraisers that I no longer cared if a child starved, their parents will have another one soon, but I realised if I am to discourage the street marketeers, only being gratuitously offensive works. You can try avoiding their gaze or stepping around them, or polite refusals, but it doesn't work. You now have to walk around english towns like a New Yorker or a Parisian - with total disdain for anyone who gets in your way. There have always been people handing you fliers that would surely all end up in bins, people trying to hustle you to buy, but now I get people trying to emotionally blackmail me for charity and mormons offering eternal life at the low, low price of just one soul plus tax (well, a tithe). Damn you ever-increasing street marketeers and door-to-door salesmen, and I curse the mormon system that forces the young to go out and recruit for a couple of years before they can get a proper job. Tom PS that was a lot of rage vented. The first person to invent "Minority Report" style billboards will need to go into hiding from me. From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Jul 18 22:20:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:20:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> On 7/18/2011 4:26 PM, Tom Nowell wrote: > But there's an insidious group sending out young boys to try and steal my soul. They send out "elders" who look too young to shave out on to the streets in pairs. They seem to preferentially target white anglo-saxon types, and if you mention you're a christian they excitedly try to get you to read a book of a "bible" that doesn't look like any bible you've ever read. (Is it a sign you're approaching middle age when elders look incredibly young?) > > These people are the multi-level marketers of religion. They are the charity muggers of religion. They are the supermarket hustlers of religion. "would you like our free catalogue", "can you spare a minute for human rights across the world" , "can you spare two pounds a month for children in africa" , "have you heard of the book of mormon?" There's also the quite incredible gullibility/stupidity of people who devote their lives to hokum that a child could show was concocted by a scammer (as with $cientology), since the fraudulence of the thing is a matter of fairly recent historical record. Consider this charming episode reported by Christopher Hitchens in GOD IS NOT GREAT: Good on Mrs. Harris, a woman with the elementary commonsense apparently denied the pests who upset Tom Nowell! Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jul 18 22:06:18 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:06:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Light governmental oversight of corporations trying to do the right > thing is the only solution that works globally. Transparency and data > are the only things that enable ethical behavior on the part of > consumers. Use contracts, the only multinational institution that > suppliers care about. > > This guy is a total liberal who has fallen into the logical trap that > is Libertarianism. > > I fear you are projecting your libertarian hopes where none are intended. For those who read ten times faster than video there is a transcript here: Auret van Heerden is a union man, fighting for workers' rights. This works fine in western countries, where organised labour and governments enforce labour regulations on employers. (Not much liked by libertarians, I believe). The problem he is discussing is slave labour in third world countries, where governments and unions do not operate. His proposed solution is to order / persuade western multinationals to enforce labour regulations on their third world suppliers via their supplier contracts. And western governments will do spot checks on suppliers to make sure the multinationals are not using slave labour. (And presumably reprimand the multinationals who misbehave). Although I think this is a good idea, it doesn't sound especially libertarian to me. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 19 00:27:49 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:27:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> Message-ID: <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Sorry to the video haters... this guy starts off with blood minerals and child labor, and gets to a solution. >... > http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html >Oh for pity's sake. >I am really sick of reading this libertarian crap on a mailing list that is supposed to be about the future. >Do me a favor and form a separate extropy-for-future-libertarian-fantasies mailing list... some kind of fantasy libertarian paradise...Richard Loosemore That response was quite unnecessarily harsh. The speaker was not promoting libertarianism. I seldom have the patience for video, but van Heerden held my full and undivided for 17 minutes, an eternity in modern internet time. He gives an excellent example of a big and growing problem which traditional governments are completely unable to address, and suggests an excellent free-market solution, which could save lives. Libertarianism is in Extropy's DNA. One need not be libertarian, only tolerant. spike From rloosemore at susaro.com Tue Jul 19 01:10:06 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:10:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E24D96E.2060003@susaro.com> spike wrote: > That response was quite unnecessarily harsh. The speaker was not promoting > libertarianism. You mistake: my criticism was not directed at the speaker on YouTube, but at the post itself. Richard Loosemore From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Jul 19 05:21:24 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:21:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Coins (was: Inevitability of the Singularity) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311052884.21702.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Mon, 7/18/11, Kelly Anderson wrote: >"The seigniorage on a 1 cent piece is just about break even." I don't know the latest figures but as of 2006 it cost the government 1.75 cents to make each one cent penny coin (even though it is no longer made of copper), and it cost 7 cents to make each 5 cent nickel coin (even though it is no longer made of nickel). The government doesn't know how to make money even when they make money. ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 05:54:03 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:54:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Tom Nowell wrote: > I must start this by saying to the mormons on this list I don't dislike you personally, To be clear, I am a former Mormon, and a staunch atheist. So I would not want to speak for any active Mormon members. > it's > just I have been goaded into thinking of you like starving children in Africa or prisoners > of conscience - you may be individually admirable but your marketing people have annoyed me. Highly understandable. 19-20 year-olds don't have an excess of sense or sensibility, and that's how old most of the missionaries are. > Spike is frequently very careful about alluding to Muslims, not wanting to say anything offensive. That's pretty funny, really. I think everyone should make fun of everyone, relentlessly, until we stop taking each other so seriously. > In my day to day existence in the UK, I find there's little to worry about from Islam - I've worked > alongside many hard-working muslims, no muslim neighbour has hassled me, I don't have to > worry about drunk muslims causing trouble in the town centre. Furthermore, in their own happy > way, they don't proselytise to me - they mostly try to target those of south asian or african > descent. They never try to make a play for my white anglo-saxon protestant soul. Funny that... for proselytizing is an integral part of the Muslim religion. If they aren't going after you on occasion, then they honestly aren't being very good Muslims from what I understand. > But there's an insidious group sending out young boys to try and steal my soul. > They send out "elders" who look too young to shave out on to the streets in pairs. > They seem to preferentially target white anglo-saxon types, and if you mention > you're a christian they excitedly try to get you to read a book of a "bible" that > doesn't look like any bible you've ever read. I can promise you that the Mormon missionaries don't target any particular group. If there are any demographics that enter into things, I would say that poor people listen to what the missionaries have to say a little more carefully than more affluent people. The Book of Mormon isn't purported to be the Bible. Rather, a similar sort of book involving the people living in the Americas from ~600 BC to ~420 AD. It is a very interesting book, and the primary reason that people get interested in Mormonism. It really is astonishing (remember I'm the atheist) that Joseph Smith came up with this book... perhaps it was given to him by aliens... :-) He was an ignorant farm boy... > (Is it a sign you're approaching middle age when elders look incredibly young?) Yes. > These people are the multi-level marketers of religion. Where do you think MLM comes from? Dude, Utah is MLM central. Several of my immediate neighbors are from the top of the Newskin and Newways pyramids. Believe me, the view from the top of the pyramid is pretty nice. >They are the charity muggers of religion. They are the supermarket hustlers of religion. I think most missionaries would consider this a compliment... >"would you like our free catalogue", >"can you spare a minute for human rights across the world" , >"can you spare two pounds a month for children in africa" , >"have you heard of the book of mormon?" - > I can't walk through my town without being harassed. At first I felt guilty > for telling the student fundraisers that I no longer cared if a child starved, > their parents will have another one soon, but I realised if I am to discourage > the street marketeers, only being gratuitously offensive works. You can try > avoiding their gaze ?or stepping around them, or polite refusals, but it > doesn't work. You now have to walk around english towns like a New Yorker > or a Parisian - with total disdain for anyone who gets in your way. I think the trick is to come up with something so totally foreign to them that you stun them into temporary paralysis, giving you time to effect your escape. Like, "No, but I know a lot about Satanism, Would you like to come to next Friday's ritual sacrifice? I promise, we won't sacrifice you." Or, "Yes, I know a lot about Mormonism... What do you know about mitochondrial DNA evidence relating to Native Americans... you're aware that they came from Asia, not Jerusalem, right?" Or, "No, I'd love to hear more, can you come give a presentation to our nudist group next Thursday? We have a 'Thursday raw' get together every other week, and we would love for you to present. You don't have a problem presenting nude, do you?" > There have always been people handing you fliers that would surely all end up > in bins, people trying to hustle you to buy, but now I get people trying to > emotionally blackmail me for charity and mormons offering eternal life at > the low, low price of just one soul plus tax (well, a tithe). Not a cheap religion to belong to... :-) > ?Damn you ever-increasing street marketeers and door-to-door salesmen, > and I curse the mormon system that forces the young to go out and recruit > for a couple of years before they can get a proper job. Actually, for the young men, I think it's a great experience. They learn the hardest part of entrepreneurship... sales, with it's rejection. We also end up with a global knowledge that is really unusual in the USA. The number of languages spoken in Utah is astonishing. I am tri-lingual... that would never have happened to me without that experience. While it's irritating for the public, it is, by and large, a good experience for the missionaries themselves. > PS that was a lot of rage vented. The first person to invent "Minority Report" >style billboards will need to go into hiding from me. Vent on!!! In reality, I just feel sorry for the young guys... they are victims of a terribly pernicious mind virus. It's very hard to shake. Took me 45 years to get the dang bug out of my head. -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Jul 19 06:25:35 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:25:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E25235F.1060301@satx.rr.com> On 7/19/2011 12:54 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > they > are victims of a terribly pernicious mind virus. It's very hard to > shake. Took me 45 years to get the dang bug out of my head. Well, congratulations for escaping--but how is it possible to adhere for so long to a set of claims that are not only self-evidently ridiculous, but are shown in public records to be lies and fakes? For example, the erroneous translations from ancient languages that matched those available for copying at the time but have subsequently been shown to be incorrect and badly misleading? The plagiarism of such texts? The fact (as I cited earlier) of what happened when Smith's early "translations" were stolen, and his inability to replicate the "translation"? Not to mention his prior criminal scams. Were you forbidden to read such information (as the dupes of $cientology are, I understand, and Catholics in the day of the Index)? If so, how come this didn't strike you as rather... revealing and suspicious... by the time you were an adult? Damien Broderick From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 06:49:11 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:49:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/18/2011 4:26 PM, Tom Nowell wrote: > > There's also the quite incredible gullibility/stupidity of people who devote > their lives to hokum that a child could show was concocted by a scammer (as > with $cientology), since the fraudulence of the thing is a matter of fairly > recent historical record. > > Consider this charming episode reported by Christopher Hitchens in GOD IS > NOT GREAT: I LOVE Christopher Hitchens! I really do. But this particular passage is rather loose with some of the facts. > twenty-one-year-old man of being "a disorderly person and an impostor." That > ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted > to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also > to claiming to possess dark or "necromantic" powers. However, within four > years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) > as the discoverer of the "Book of Mormon." I have tried to track down the source of this, and have been unable to find any evidence that Joseph Smith was ever convicted of anything. The records are simply incomplete. No question he was obviously hauled into court dozens of times... The difference in time between the trial 1826 and the first publication of these alleged facts in 1873 stretch credibility to some extent since people had been actively trying to discredit Smith since at least 1830. There is no doubt that Joseph Smith was employed by Josiah Stowell to do some "money digging"... and searching for Spanish treasure and lost mines was a pretty common endeavor in the country there abouts at that time. I am not a Joseph Smith apologetic by any means, but I don't think the anti-Mormons have come up with incontrovertible evidence in this particular case. In other words, I think it is entirely credible that both sides are making up facts to suit their case. The anti-Mormons are just as religious (and suspect) as the Mormons in this stuff. > ?Smith refused to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other > eyes to view them would mean death. Here Hitchens just completely falls off the facts band wagon... Sorry Christopher. Joseph Smith showed the plates to three witnesses, and later to eight other witnesses. No, Smith didn't display them to everyone, but 11 witnesses is not NOBODY. Despite later disagreements with Smith, none of the 11 witnesses of the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was allegedly translated has been shown to recant their testimony. This is a huge problem for the anti-Mormon crowd. > But he encountered a problem that will > be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely glib and fluent as a > debater and story-weaver, as many accounts attest. But he was illiterate, at > least in the sense that while he could read a little, he could not write. A > scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe > was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a > luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of > Isaiah 29, verses 11-12, concerning the repeated injunction to "Read," > Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. > He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on > the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if > to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to > glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead. This part is essentially correct. Not sure about the struck dead part... never heard that before, but he was told not to look for sure. > Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the > fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages > and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably?given his power of > revelation?he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in > the history of religion.) I know of no evidence that Mrs Harris was the person who stole the 116 pages. Christopher weaves his own story here, or repeats a woven story told by someone else. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that someone stole those pages. > After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith > countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, > which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" > interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some > smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar > tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners > behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the > original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they > remain to this day. Again, this part is pretty much correct. > Good on Mrs. Harris, a woman with the elementary commonsense apparently > denied the pests who upset Tom Nowell! I don't know where the Book of Mormon came from. Perhaps Joseph Smith dictated it... but if so, it was quite a feat... Perhaps someone else wrote it and gave it to Smith, or maybe Smith took the book from someone else... There are things that are difficult to explain in the world, and the origins of the Book of Mormon are in that category from my point of view. Having studied aspects of the book for years, and acknowledging that there is a lot in there that is just plain bunk, (no elephants in the new world at the time, Amerindians are not descendents of the Jews, etc. etc.) it holds together in ways that just would not be possible for Joseph Smith to have constructed by himself. One example of this is the chiasmas literary structures found in certain parts of the book. These structures could not have been known to Smith, or probably anyone else in the neighborhood at the time. It's odd. The statistical word distributions pretty much prove multiple authors. So who were they? I suspect time travelers... aliens... something weird and strange... I don't know what... But having read other things known to have been written by Joseph Smith at the time, there just isn't any comparison. He was a young, uneducated kid. I don't think he wrote the book. I do not suspect God had anything to do with it whatsoever, but I can't weave a story that makes any sense either. Strange shit sometimes happens is the best I can do with it. I would love to be able to just explain it away... but it's a hard nut. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 07:02:03 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:02:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <4E25235F.1060301@satx.rr.com> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E25235F.1060301@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/19/2011 12:54 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> they >> are victims of a terribly pernicious mind virus. It's very hard to >> shake. Took me 45 years to get the dang bug out of my head. > > Well, congratulations for escaping--but how is it possible to adhere for so > long to a set of claims that are not only self-evidently ridiculous, but are > shown in public records to be lies and fakes? When you are in the mind set, it is by no means self-evidently ridiculous. There is a sense that there are rabid anti-Mormons out there trying to attack the "true religion"... and indeed, there are some nut jobs out there working for other religions with no other purpose in life than to attack Mormons. Ran into some of these nut jobs in California once. They made Mormons look downright normal. I know of no such public records even now. To what specifically are you referring? > For example, the erroneous > translations from ancient languages that matched those available for copying > at the time but have subsequently been shown to be incorrect and badly > misleading? I assume here, you must be talking about the drawings in the Pearl of Great Price? The apologists indicated that this wasn't the thing that he actually translated, but that those papyri were lost in the Chicago fire. There is something to this story, as there was a Chicago fire, and it did destroy papyri that were once in the hands of Joseph Smith... The explanation of what the burial skull caps (that's what the pictures really are) meant were known by me to be rather silly for many years, but it hardly made a difference. Mormonism is based on "revealed feelings"... and the key to breaking out of the spell (for me) was to wonder long and hard about why God would choose to communicate through such pure emotion. Why feelings? In the end, that didn't make sense to me. Emotions are so easily fooled. It took nearly a year for me to deprogram myself, and I probably still have the vestiges of "facts" that may not be actual facts. > The plagiarism of such texts? The fact (as I cited earlier) of > what happened when Smith's early "translations" were stolen, and his > inability to replicate the "translation"? Not to mention his prior criminal > scams. The evidence for some of this stuff is rather slim. Given the rabid hatred for Mormonism (it is a highly successful competitive meme to Protestant Christianity, after all) it is rather easy to believe that a lot of this is simply manufactured evidence. > Were you forbidden to read such information (as the dupes of $cientology > are, I understand, and Catholics in the day of the Index)? If so, how come > this didn't strike you as rather... revealing and suspicious... by the time > you were an adult? There was a feeling that reading this stuff wasn't worth the time... but I remember no specific prohibition. There were prohibitions against associating with certain groups of anti-Mormons... but that didn't seem so unreasonable. Why would you want to associate with the "enemy" anyway? When both sides are making up "facts" to suit their purposes, who can say that one set of arguments is superior to the other? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 07:09:51 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:09:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coins (was: Inevitability of the Singularity) In-Reply-To: <1311052884.21702.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311052884.21702.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/18 john clark > > On Mon, 7/18/11, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > >"The seigniorage on a 1 cent piece is just about break even." > > I don't know the latest figures but as of 2006 it cost the government 1.75 cents to make each one cent penny coin (even though it is no longer made of copper), and it cost 7 cents to make each 5 cent nickel coin (even though it is no longer made of nickel). The government doesn't know how to make money even when they make money. > Thanks for the numbers John. I have no reason to doubt them. I was unaware that the metallic composition of the 5 cent piece had been changed... do you know when that happened? The cent changed over in mid 1982. The key thing here overall is that there is no seigniorage on dollar bills... which costs us all a lot of money. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 19 13:47:42 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:47:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coins (was: Inevitability of the Singularity) In-Reply-To: References: <1311052884.21702.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002a01cc461a$6f602e10$4e208a30$@att.net> ... 2011/7/18 john clark > > ... The government doesn't know how to make money even when they make money. > My fond hope is that governments will leave the task of making money to those who know how to make money. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 14:07:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:07:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: <005401cc44a4$51afc1e0$f50f45a0$@att.net> References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> <004701cc449b$e1fb3c60$a5f1b520$@att.net> <005401cc44a4$51afc1e0$f50f45a0$@att.net> Message-ID: Hey Spike! Maybe you would like the Spartan Death Race... http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/surviving-spartan-death-race-13973215 This race is diabolical, held in Pittsburg, Vermont... each year. They have no idea how long the race will be, what they will be doing, and the guys running the thing have one goal, to break the participants. This year, it was 72 hours or so, involving picking up really big rocks a 1000 times, carrying candles in the rain for hours, lugging tree stumps, hiking around with logs on your back, then after 18 hours, memorize a bible scripture... This is incredibly tortuous craziness... This is psychopathic masochism! No sleep for three days! -Kelly On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 11:09 AM, spike wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > >>... ?We could invent sports where any reasonably good athlete could become > world class in a summer. ?We have all these channels on TV now and all these > websites. ?Seems to me we could proliferate sports wildly to match...spike > > Challenge: invent a game or athletic activity in which you design the rules > against your own particular strengths. ?If you do it right, you may be able > to be four sigma or even world class. > > My example: the game is to carry on one's person all the food and water and > everything needed for a hike along a paved road. ?The winner of the > competition is the one who can walk the longest distance. > > But wait. ?In order to play to my own personal strengths, we start in the > middle of July at Ridgecrest California at the crack of dawn. ?Reasoning: > Every day is alike in July in the desert: > > http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/93555 > > Not all that many people can walk very far under those conditions. ?It will > likely break 100F (38C) before noon and stay up there until after 1600. ?The > air will be so dry it will feel like swimming in cotton. ?In those > conditions, one can be sweating like a whore in church and not even realize > it, because the humidity is so low it evaporates immediately. ?So most of > the weight one carries will likely be water. ?I can imagine going through 30 > pounds of water in one day. ?So it is unlikely one would bother carrying a > sleeping bag or tent. ?This is a game that is likely to be over the first > day. ?World class athletes would likely go about 50 miles, but few would get > past Trona. > > Since I am designing the competition, I decree no children, these being > defined as anyone under 50. > > With the techniques I already know, my oddball build and surprisingly large > capacity for carrying stuff on my back, I think I could be a four sigma in > that game, which nearly guarantees a first place in a typical oddball > competition where one would be unlikely to attract more than a couple > hundred participants. > > 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 Tue Jul 19 14:42:49 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:42:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <006a01cc43e5$15082990$3f187cb0$@att.net> <004701cc449b$e1fb3c60$a5f1b520$@att.net> <005401cc44a4$51afc1e0$f50f45a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <003401cc4622$21eacc50$65c064f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] organic olympics, was: RE: the myth of the US "liberal media" >Hey Spike! Maybe you would like the Spartan Death Race... >http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/surviving-spartan-death-race-13973215 >This race is diabolical, held in Pittsburg, Vermont... each year. They have no idea how long the race will be... This year, it was 72 hours or so... No sleep for three days! -Kelly The reason I designed the game for specifically in July in the desert is that I didn't want to make it a contest of who can go the longest without sleep. Under those conditions, one can drain through as much water as one can carry on the back in a only a day. It also makes an interesting optimization problem. If you decide to rest in the shade during the day and walk only at night, you lose water as a function of time, while not making any progress. So the game starts at dawn, when the participants decide if they want to walk only in the morning, evening and night, then sit out the heat of the day (probably advisable.) I have seen it hit 100F by 0800 out there. The whole exercise should be sobering and educational. We had a desert search and rescue because of a bad habit of city dwellers wanting to come up there and play in the wilderness. It was common for touristas to go for a hike, then suddenly stop, look around and realize everything appears identical in every direction. Lost! Feet leave no tracks in the gravelly soil. People can wander around and die of exposure within a mile of their car if they don't know how to reckon using the sun, or failing that, wait until dark and navigate on the north star. You don't have much time out there in the summer if you don't have food and water. The desert is a remarkably dangerous place. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 14:45:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:45:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 17 July 2011 17:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > I do not know if you have any actual examples in mind, but regarding > accepted practice in this respect I would contend that anything that > that is compliant with the standards (or not detected by the tests) in > place is "legal" by definition. So what you're saying is that if you sneak notes into a Physics final, and don't get caught, then that's not cheating? I'm sorry, that doesn't meet with my definition of ethical. > In motor racing there are frequent objections of such nature to > measures which losers maintain are against the "spirit" of existing > regulations, but until and unless those are changed, their adopters go > on winning the races. Motor sports is a little different in that the rules authorize you to experiment with your machine to a certain extent and within certain parameters. Part of the point of motor sports is to push the science of motor cars forward... always has been. You can make improvements to your equipment, and next year everyone has the improved equipment. That's the way the sport moves forward. Same with the America's Cup sailing race... Olympic sports sometimes have this, as in bobsled or shooting sports, but generally there isn't all that much equipment involved other than shoes and clothing. What are you going to do to improve a shot put? :-) > Moreover, do you seriously propose that transexuals should not be > allowed to compete? Even though, in fact, I suspect that men becoming > women and competing with women have always had more of an edge than > women becoming men and competing with the latter, as you suggest... You didn't get the point... This poor East German girl (a real, specific girl, named Heidi Krieger) was treated with so many steroids that she essentially became a man. Later, twenty years later, she underwent surgery to complete her transformation to being a man. It was the only way she could survive in a society that saw her as a man because of her facial hair, adam's apple, and so forth. She didn't choose to become a transexual, she was abused by the state sports doctors, without her knowledge, and was turned into a man. She suffered being called "gay" for many years... because she looked like a cross dressing man. While it is a COMPLETELY different topic, I do support transsexuals being able to participate in sporting events, but only in ways that are compatible with the rules... Men becoming women, and then competing in strength sports seems a little bit like cheating to me... >> Transhumanism needs to be done in a careful way, with fully informed >> volunteers, not non-consensual guinea pigs. If we are to transcend >> this mortal body, we don't want it done on the back of Joseph >> Mengele... do we? > > What makes you think that an East-German citizen was less than > enthusiastic for anything that could allow him or her to become an > Olympic medallist, especially in the framework of East-German society? > Given how keen the average western athlete is in spite of a punishing > and prohibitionist, rather than rewarding, system, I find western > propaganda on this point quite dubious indeed... The interviews I saw were with the athletes themselves. They were given no choice except to quit being an athlete. Yes, their lives did benefit from participation in sports (except for the one young male swimmer named Jorg Sievers who died) in a society where there were few other ways "out" of the dreary East German existence. But they were not informed about what they were being given. They were told the injections were "vitamins"... but they were steroids. How funny that they should have to stop taking their vitamins two weeks prior to the competition... Were these naive kids? YES!!! Most of them were teenagers at the time. They didn't know shit from shinola. And they've been paying for it ever since. Here is the story as I saw it on Secrets of the Dead: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episodes/doping-for-gold-2/42/ Sorry, guys, it's a video... Here is the transcript... http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/transcripts/doping-for-gold-program-transcript/95/ This is a shocking show IMHO. Shows what transhumanism in the hands of a state looks like. That's why I am a proponent of freedom and consent as we move forward improving the human animal. I don't want to be a guinea pig for the state in pursuit of propaganda. You can't convince me that what the GDR did to these poor kids wasn't pure evil. -Kelly From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 19 15:02:10 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:02:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists In-Reply-To: References: <4E1CA3C5.5080307@satx.rr.com> <4E1F5663.7060406@satx.rr.com> <1310738299.96483.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311087730.96242.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> There are very few living in used cars. The folks I've seen seem to have mostly kept their homes or been downsized to a flat. (Oh, the horror! Living in a flat! I've never owned a house and don't find living in flats to being relegated to a social netherworld.) ? I'm not saying the middle class, whatever that means, doesn't suffer under statism or state capitalism. But many in that class seem to get a cut and seem to be part of the system. And many government programs -- like the ones I've mentinoed (or did light rail systems?and public higher education cease when the housing market slumped?) -- seem geared to buying or keeping middle class support. The state stays in place because it can offer things like this. (Of course, at a price, but most folks ignore the price, especially when others are paying it.) ? Regards, ? Dan Overthrow all governments! From: BillK To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:19 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] rugged individualists Your comment about the middle class is a few years out of date. The housing slump and unemployment has hit the middle class really hard. Most of those now living in cars used to be middle class. BillK 2011/7/15 Dan wrote: > If you're playing at the level, you not only get dodges, but big fat > subsidies and should you be really big the government will adjust the > macroeconomics (Fed policy) to suit your needs. > > But it's not just the fabulously wealthy who benefit here. The poor often > pay more in taxes to support all sorts of middle class stuff. E.g.,?public > colleges. Really poor people don't go to college or go as often, as a group. > Middle class people do. Sure, they get taxed, but so does the poor slob. So, > the middle class person's?kid goes to a public college with a government > loan?to become the manager of a company where the poor person's kid cleans > the toilet. Yes, the middle class is being destroyed... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 19 15:06:06 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:06:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1311087966.56298.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Any solution with government oversight is not libertarian. (Also, modern corporations are creatures of the state. A true free market would likely have very different institutions.) ? Regards, ? Dan Overthrow all governments now! From: Kelly Anderson To: ExI chat list Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 4:00 PM Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Sorry to the video haters... this guy starts off with blood minerals and child labor, and gets to a solution. Light governmental oversight of corporations trying to do the right thing is the only solution that works globally. Transparency and data are the only things that enable ethical behavior on the part of consumers. Use contracts, the only multinational institution that suppliers care about. http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html http://www.fairlabor.com This guy is a total liberal who has fallen into the logical trap that is Libertarianism. -Kelly _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Jul 19 15:36:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:36:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics Message-ID: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... >...East German girl (a real, specific girl, named Heidi Krieger) was treated with so many steroids that she essentially became a man...She suffered being called "gay" for many years... because she looked like a cross dressing man...-Kelly I have a colleague who was on the national women's swimming team in the 1970s. She relates the story of an international meet in which the women were in the locker room and heard what sounded like a group of men coming down the hall. The American women were naked and scrambled for their towels. The group were the East German women. The East Germans won everything that year. Regarding the distance walk, I thought of a variation which would be shorter, which would be more attractive to the amateur athlete, being as it would carry fewer opportunity costs. Instead of seeing how far one can walk in the desert with only the supplies on one's back, the game is to carry only water and see how far one can walk without drinking at all. The participants can drink as much as they want, but once they cross the starting line, no more. Their water bottle has a seal which triggers their GPS. As soon as they open their bottle, the game is over, the sag wagon picks them up. I am estimating about 15 miles would be about as far as most people go, and it would be finished the same day it started. But there is another interesting twist to this sport. I have read of an African tribe which migrates annually. They carry water in gourds. According the Michener, they make astonishing treks across the arid African grassland with very little water. Analogous to the way it tends to be Kenyans and Ethiopians who win the big marathons, I can imagine one of these tribesmen winning the thirstathon. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 17:14:54 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:14:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 19 July 2011 02:27, spike wrote: > Libertarianism is in Extropy's DNA. ?One need not be libertarian, only > tolerant. Why, for one credited by his personal Italian trolls to be an infiltrator of the "red-brown-green [as in "islamist", not "environmentalist"] plague" in the ranks of transhumanism, I often find radical-libertarianism approaches at least thought-provoking, also in view of the fact that social and political control, especially if enforced at a global level, is nowadays the biggest threat for any chances of posthuman change. -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Jul 19 16:50:52 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:50:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of the future Message-ID: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> How would you link transhumanism to the flavor of Alchemy that ties into science, rather than mysticism? In other words, what chemistry is crucial to human enhancement that propose extension of life and expansion of personhood onto non-biological platforms that was present in the works of protoscience and the Alchemists such as Paracelsus and Magnus? Or do we look at Alchemy as a weird science that has little, if any, significance to the present development of life extension because of its cultish nature and our need to sever that journalist and resulting postmodernist accusation about transhumanism that has so arrogantly bitten our behinds for two decades? Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 17:28:31 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:28:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 19 July 2011 16:45, Kelly Anderson wrote: > So what you're saying is that if you sneak notes into a Physics final, > and don't get caught, then that's not cheating? I'm sorry, that > doesn't meet with my definition of ethical. No, I am saying that if you are doing something that nobody has ever thought (yet) to forbid or to test for you are in a different league from the sportman who takes some cocaine during a marathon and keeps his fingers crossed not to be randomly picked for testing. > Motor sports is a little different in that the rules authorize you to > experiment with your machine to a certain extent and within certain > parameters. Part of the point of motor sports is to push the science > of motor cars forward... always has been. You can make improvements to > your equipment, and next year everyone has the improved equipment. > That's the way the sport moves forward. > Same with the America's Cup sailing race... Yes. So, what's the difference? Improving yourself and/or your equipment has been typical of us fyborgs for a few centuries now... :-) >> Moreover, do you seriously propose that transexuals should not be >> allowed to compete? Even though, in fact, I suspect that men becoming >> women and competing with women have always had more of an edge than >> women becoming men and competing with the latter, as you suggest... > > You didn't get the point... This poor East German girl (a real, > specific girl, named Heidi Krieger) was treated with so many steroids > that she essentially became a man. Later, twenty years later, she > underwent surgery to complete her transformation to being a man. It > was the only way she could survive in a society that saw her as a man > because of her facial hair, adam's apple, and so forth. She didn't > choose to become a transexual, she was abused by the state sports > doctors, without her knowledge, and was turned into a man. All this is based on the assumption that she did not and would not have accepted the unintended consequences, something which most of her rivals probably would happily have, but the evil doctors chose to impose her out of sheer malice. Any factual ground for this? > Men becoming women, and then > competing in strength sports seems a little bit like cheating to me... Speaking of arbitrary restrictions, we might require people to compete not on the basis of their phenotype, but of their chromosomic gender. But the same rationale might be invoked to refuse public recognition of changes of sex in any other context, even though surgery and hormones might well remain legal per se. > They were > given no choice except to quit being an athlete. Same as I am given no choice except quitting being a corporate lawyer if I am not willing to work long hours? Gosh... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 17:31:12 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:31:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics In-Reply-To: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> References: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 19 July 2011 17:36, spike wrote: > I have a colleague who was on the national women's swimming team in the > 1970s. ?She relates the story of an international meet in which the women > were in the locker room and heard what sounded like a group of men coming > down the hall. ?The American women were naked and scrambled for their > towels. ?The group were the East German women. ?The East Germans won > everything that year. Mmhhh, while this sounds as an urban legend couldn't there be as well some confusion between gender traits and racial/linguistic traits? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From nymphomation at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 19:12:48 2011 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:12:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of the future In-Reply-To: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: 2011/7/19 Natasha Vita-More : > How would you link transhumanism to the flavor of Alchemy that ties into > science, rather than mysticism? In other words, what chemistry is crucial to > human enhancement that propose extension of life and expansion of personhood > onto non-biological platforms that?was present in the works of protoscience > and the Alchemists such as Paracelsus and Magnus? > > Or?do we look at Alchemy as a weird science that has little, if any, > significance to the present development of life extension because of its > cultish nature and our need to sever that journalist and resulting > postmodernist?accusation about transhumanism that has so arrogantly bitten > our behinds for two decades? Is this related to recent outbursts by Aaron Franz? That guy seems obsessed by the occult & such like, so constructing logical arguments against him is probably a waste of time. One might find something useful in his self published book, the 1st chapter of which can be downloaded from his site http://theageoftransitions.com/ HTH Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Jul 19 20:33:19 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:33:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of the future In-Reply-To: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: Natasha Vita-More wrote: How would you link transhumanism to the flavor of Alchemy that ties into science, rather than mysticism? In other words, what chemistry is crucial to human enhancement that propose extension of life and expansion of personhood onto non-biological platforms that was present in the works of protoscience and the Alchemists such as Paracelsus and Magnus? Or do we look at Alchemy as a weird science that has little, if any, significance to the present development of life extension because of its cultish nature and our need to sever that journalist and resulting postmodernist accusation about transhumanism that has so arrogantly bitten our behinds for two decades? >>> I am fascinated that chemistry in part sprang from alchemy. I personally think that alchemy (which is today disparaged) and life extension have an obvious connection, because the latter also does not get very much respect! lol But just as alchemy lead to real science and a changed world, so will transhumanism be a light in the tunnel for humanity to know what is really possible, regarding the transformative convergence technologies that are now developing. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 00:27:39 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:27:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> Message-ID: Stefano Vaj wrote: > Mmhhh, while this sounds as an urban legend couldn't there be as well > some confusion between gender traits and racial/linguistic traits? :-) Yes, some women do have fairly deep voices and German is somewhat of a gutteral language, but based on the very recent olympics in China where the Chinese female swimmers were reported in various media as having the same problem, I would say the odds are that the story is not an urban legend. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 00:42:11 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:42:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? Life is not libertarian. I'd like to see all the cells in your body do whatever they want. Life is fractally governmental, and chaotic freedom is a step backwards. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 20 01:20:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:20:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm >. Life is fractally governmental, and chaotic freedom is a step backwards. Libertarianism is not chaotic freedom. The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find ourselves under governments which forbid any kind of life extension technology that actually works. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 00:51:06 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:51:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of the future In-Reply-To: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: 2011/7/19 Natasha Vita-More : > How would you link transhumanism to the flavor of Alchemy that ties into > science, rather than mysticism? In other words, what chemistry is crucial to > human enhancement that propose extension of life and expansion of personhood > onto non-biological platforms that?was present in the works of protoscience > and the Alchemists such as Paracelsus and Magnus? I have a theory about Alchemy that as a science it was an attempt to create useful metaphors for grounding abstract conversations. I imagine that "turning lead into gold" was less about a chemical reaction affecting nuclear forces and more about taking a common base metal and turning it into something valuable - the analogy being the common man's base nature can be treated according to some process that turns him (or her) into a more noble state of being. My understanding of transhumanism is that the goal is the same, though perhaps with a different working model. Maybe it was the promise of the mystical quintessence in the alchemist's/philosopher's stone that kept so many committed to the pursuit. Yeah right, perhaps it was the money. Perhaps the chemistry isn't as important as transmuting the figurative "gold" back into readily attainable metals the average consumer still finds valuable? Life expansion is a good, understandable example. Non-biological selfhood may be somewhat less approachable right now, but it'll make sense after "life expansion" is realized as life extension (in years) and people start looking for increased depth/resolution of life's moment-to-moment that will probably facilitate mind-meld with our collective. From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 01:58:06 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:58:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> On 7/19/2011 8:20 PM, spike wrote: > The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find > ourselves under governments which forbid any kind of life extension > technology that actually works. Hard to say. The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find ourselves under governments which insist upon any kind of healthy-life extension technology that actually works. Already, blatantly unhealthy or dangerous foods etc are either banned or increasingly restricted, because the costs of indulgence are so severe. (It's not *government* per se that mandates crackpot religious prohibitions, rails against evilution, and tries to block stem cell research, etc. Although once the delusional crazies have established their power over government in some particular domain, it can certainly make a bigger mess of your day than any other force user. Well, unless you live near a Mexican drug cartel. "And who gives them their hold over peopel?" Yeah, I know, it's a vicious circle.) Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 20 03:06:52 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:06:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of thefuture In-Reply-To: References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <20D3695CD6F94F23AF88F030E9D2755C@DFC68LF1> HTH wrote >Is this related to recent outbursts by Aaron Franz? No it is not. Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 20 03:16:45 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:16:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of thefuture In-Reply-To: References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <5D002FE24F074CB3B5D318DFBA33ED1A@DFC68LF1> Mike Dougherty wrote: 2011/7/19 Natasha Vita-More : > How would you link transhumanism to the flavor of Alchemy that ties > into science, rather than mysticism? In other words, what chemistry is > crucial to human enhancement that propose extension of life and > expansion of personhood onto non-biological platforms that?was present > in the works of protoscience and the Alchemists such as Paracelsus and Magnus? "I have a theory about Alchemy that as a science it was an attempt to create useful metaphors for grounding abstract conversations. I imagine that "turning lead into gold" was less about a chemical reaction affecting nuclear forces and more about taking a common base metal and turning it into something valuable - the analogy being the common man's base nature can be treated according to some process that turns him (or her) into a more noble state of being. Yes, understood. I don?t know if "noble" is the right term because it makes me think of "dignity" (Fukuyama's argument) and which I think conjures up images of superiority, rather than wholesomeness, well-being, intelligence, creativity, empathy, and integrity (components of wisdom). So, I would say "... into a wiser state of being." "My understanding of transhumanism is that the goal is the same, though perhaps with a different working model. Maybe it was the promise of the mystical quintessence in the alchemist's/philosopher's stone that kept so many committed to the pursuit. Yeah right, perhaps it was the money." Perhaps. :-) "Perhaps the chemistry isn't as important as transmuting the figurative "gold" back into readily attainable metals the average consumer still finds valuable? Life expansion is a good, understandable example." I'm not sure because chemistry is the mechanics of the brain and if the goal is whole brain emulation, then chemistry play a key role. Also, if perceptual experiences are necessary (along with agency) for transferring personhood, then the chemical interactions - the chemistry of life/interaction/emotions/communication would be essential for persons' memories and identity. (I'm sure some AGIist will argue with me, but I won't budge on this because it is not all in the brain (unless we are radical constructivists) and as I see it wisdom is largely based on experience, choice, and iteration. Natasha _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 20 03:19:47 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:19:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of thefuture In-Reply-To: References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: John Grigg wrote: "I am fascinated that chemistry in part sprang from alchemy. I personally think that alchemy (which is today disparaged) and life extension have an obvious connection, because the latter also does not get very much respect! lol But just as alchemy lead to real science and a changed world, so will transhumanism be a light in the tunnel for humanity to know what is really possible, regarding the transformative convergence technologies that are now developing. " Yup. Alchemy, as I understand it, split into two subfields: science and mysticism. But I am more interested in the links between the scientific value of Alchemy to life extension in regards to morphology, perhaps - or transformation. Best, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 20 03:22:48 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:22:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: W ill Stein wrote: " Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? Life is not libertarian. I'd like to see all the cells in your body do whatever they want. Life is fractally governmental, and chaotic freedom is a step backwards. " What the f? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 10:13:40 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:13:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 19 July 2011 00:20, Damien Broderick wrote: > There's also the quite incredible gullibility/stupidity of people who devote > their lives to hokum that a child could show was concocted by a scammer (as > with $cientology), since the fraudulence of the thing is a matter of fairly > recent historical record. The main reason why I consider Scientology an archetype of what could go wrong for a philosophical movement, including (why not?) organised transhumanism, has little to do with the frankly embarassing thinness of their creed, but rather with the dead end they find themselves in. Originally, Dianetics and Scientology may well have been both a practical joke and a way to make a decent living for their founder. But now? You are recruited, your personal life and estate is swallowed by the organisation, you climb the ladder, and find other people whose life and estate to swallow in a sort of social Ponzi scheme where there is no Ponzi actually becoming rich. In fact, the entire structure does not appear to serve any other purpose than its own survival. Compare that to the catholic church, who managed to upset (in this case some would say "corrupt") the worldview, value system and structure of an entire society for ages, and to maintain its influence on all aspects of life for almost two thousand years, even where and when its direct grip on people is eventually loosening. *This* is the way to go, as far as activism is concerned. :-) Not that of recruiting people to raise funds to pay a living for people raising funds to pay a living to people raising funds to pay a living... -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 10:46:48 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:46:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Originally, Dianetics and Scientology may well have been both a > practical joke and a way to make a decent living for their founder. > But now? You are recruited, your personal life and estate is swallowed > by the organisation, you climb the ladder, and find other people whose > life and estate to swallow in a sort of social Ponzi scheme where > there is no Ponzi actually becoming rich. In fact, the entire > structure does not appear to serve any other purpose than its own > survival. > > Compare that to the catholic church, who managed to upset (in this > case some would say "corrupt") the worldview, value system and > structure of an entire society for ages, and to maintain its influence > on all aspects of life for almost two thousand years, even where and > when its direct grip on people is eventually loosening. > > *This* is the way to go, as far as activism is concerned. :-) > > Not that of recruiting people to raise funds to pay a living for > people raising funds to pay a living to people raising funds to pay a > living... > > That is a rather simplistic version of $cientology. Agreed it was designed as a money-making scheme for the leader(s). The current leader, Miscavige, is said to be worth over 50 million USD, plus he controls all the funds, businesses and real estate of the organisation. But the idea was to devise an ever-growing multi-level marketing scheme with incentives to continually expand. Members get 10% to 15% commissions on the expensive courses that they sell to people. So they can get a good living selling courses and incidentally growing the business. So people join and are persuaded verbally and monetarily to carry on working for the business. No wonder it is difficult to break away. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 14:38:16 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:38:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 John Grigg : > Yes, some women do have fairly deep voices and German is somewhat of?a > gutteral language, but based on the very recent olympics in China where the > Chinese female swimmers were reported in various media as having the same > problem, I would say the odds are that the story is not an urban legend. Yes, but in that case they were probably thin men speaking a soprano language who were mistook for guttural women. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 14:56:44 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 07:56:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311173804.33677.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I didn't know the cells weren't doing what they wanted. :) ? Looked at another way, presumably, for the reductionist, we are our cells and whatever we do is doing what they want, no? ? Regards, ? Dan From: Natasha Vita-More To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 11:22 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... W?ill Stein wrote:? ?"?Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? ?Life is not libertarian. ?I'd like to see all the cells in your body do whatever they want. ?Life is fractally governmental, and chaotic freedom is a step backwards.?" ? What the?f??? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 15:00:52 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:00:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311174052.80806.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I think the bigger problem here is seeing freedom as chaotic. With that in mind, the only alternative is between chaos -- presumably, for Will, you cells all sliding off in different directions -- or order -- presumably, everything under control, calm, organized. One might look better at societies rather than organisms. Societies where people are allowed maximal freedom tend to actually function much better than those with minimal freedom. The latter tend to be brittle and folks living in them often see each other as potential predators or prey. One need only think of North Korea. ? Regards, ? Dan From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 9:20 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... >?On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... ? Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? ? ? http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm ? >??Life is fractally governmental, and chaotic freedom is a step backwards. ? Libertarianism is not chaotic freedom.? ? The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find ourselves under governments which forbid any kind of life extension technology that actually works. ? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 20 15:02:47 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:02:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <005401cc46ee$18036c20$480a4460$@att.net> >...On Behalf Of BillK ... >...But the idea was to devise an ever-growing multi-level marketing scheme with incentives to continually expand. Members get 10% to 15% commissions on the expensive courses that they sell to people. So they can get a good living selling courses and incidentally growing the business...So people join and are persuaded verbally and monetarily to carry on working for the business. No wonder it is difficult to break away...BillK Multilevel marketing depends on growth for survival. Eventually all such schemes hit the wall and must collapse, once the number of new members drops below the number of old ones leaving or perishing. Sooner or later they are left with an enormously expensive infrastructure and insufficient funds to support it all. Watch and wait, these next few years should be interesting. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 15:06:14 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:06:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Peopel? :) ? The problem I find with this view is that, aside from the fact that govenrments now ban or severely restrict selling life extension products or even publicising what these products do, it views the problem as merely to put the right people at the helm of the fascist state -- rather than getting rid of the fascist state in the first place. (And the use of "fascist" here is not hyperbolic. Not only is this kind of regulation of the same sort recommended by fascist political economics, actual fascist states did try to ban unhealthy products.) ? And the drug cartels are creatures of the state. Were it not for the drug war and very strict gun control in Mexico, people wouldn't be killing each other in such large numbers over who gets to sell recreational products in this or that area. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 9:58 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... On 7/19/2011 8:20 PM, spike wrote: > The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find > ourselves under governments which forbid any kind of life extension > technology that actually works. Hard to say. The way our medical and pension system is evolving, we may find ourselves under governments which insist upon any kind of healthy-life extension technology that actually works. Already, blatantly unhealthy or dangerous foods etc are either banned or increasingly restricted, because the costs of indulgence are so severe. (It's not *government* per se that mandates crackpot religious prohibitions, rails against evilution, and tries to block stem cell research, etc. Although once the delusional crazies have established their power over government in some particular domain, it can certainly make a bigger mess of your day than any other force user. Well, unless you live near a Mexican drug cartel. "And who gives them their hold over peopel?" Yeah, I know, it's a vicious circle.) Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 15:47:18 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:47:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Sorry I can't be as starry-eyed as some of you. Government needs to be there to do things that couldn't be paid for or organized otherwise. Sorry (again,) but it's true. Countless infrastructural components of our daily lives cannot simply tune into the wondrous libertarian free-market force, because there is no cognizant demand for them. Everything that is a unitary product, people can pay for. Some things, like highways, will never be a dollar at the local supermarket. This is what taxes and tolls are for, because most people living in a country are too unaware of the fact that countless government-provided amenities that they use every day require money to maintain. If you're so concerned about the evils of current-day government (which are very, very scary and apparent)--do something about it! Go make a new government somewhere! Because I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist. Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed to make sure things proceed in the right direction. Do you not have the drive to become it? Because I will, if you don't. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 15:00:55 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:00:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 5:00 AM, BillK wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> Originally, Dianetics and Scientology may well have been both a >> practical joke and a way to make a decent living for their founder. >> But now? You are recruited, your personal life and estate is swallowed >> by the organisation, you climb the ladder, and find other people whose >> life and estate to swallow in a sort of social Ponzi scheme where >> there is no Ponzi actually becoming rich. In fact, the entire >> structure does not appear to serve any other purpose than its own >> survival. snip > That is a rather simplistic version of $cientology. > > Agreed it was designed as a money-making scheme for the leader(s). > The current leader, Miscavige, is said to be worth over 50 million > USD, plus he controls all the funds, businesses and real estate of the > organisation. > > But the idea was to devise an ever-growing multi-level marketing > scheme with incentives to continually expand. Members get 10% to 15% > commissions on the expensive courses that they sell to people. So they > can get a good living selling courses and incidentally growing the > business. > > So people join and are persuaded verbally and monetarily to carry on > working for the business. No wonder it is difficult to break away. It is worth considering where the human psychological vulnerability to cults comes from. For darn good evolutionary reasons we are highly rewarded by attention. Anyone who has lectured and come off the stage higher than a kite knows the feeling. Especially for males, a certain amount of status is required in human social groups for "mating opportunities." Status is more or less the sum over time of attention. Cults promote attention, and few of them provide as much intense focused attention (auditing sessions) as this bunch. How rewarded a person is by this kind of treatment seems to be mainly genetic, not unlike the ability to be hooked on addictive drugs and probably some of the same genes are involved. The rate of nicotine addiction among members of this cult is legendary. I went into this years ago in "sex drugs and cults." Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 20 16:12:42 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:12:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:47 AM To: Dan; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... >.Sorry I can't be as starry-eyed as some of you. Government needs to be there to do things that couldn't be paid for or organized otherwise. Sorry (again,) but it's true. Countless infrastructural components of our daily lives cannot simply tune into the wondrous libertarian free-market force, because there is no cognizant demand for them. Everything that is a unitary product, people can pay for. Some things, like highways, will never be a dollar at the local supermarket. This is what taxes and tolls are for, because most people living in a country are too unaware of the fact that countless government-provided amenities that they use every day require money to maintain. If you're so concerned about the evils of current-day government (which are very, very scary and apparent)--do something about it! Go make a new government somewhere! >.Because I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist. Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed to make sure things proceed in the right direction. Do you not have the drive to become it? Because I will, if you don't. Will, I intentionally left your entire post intact without trimming anything, because your argument fights itself. I wanted it all there. You give the example of roads, then give two ways roads are paid for and maintained, one of which is an excellent example of a free market solution. You comment "This is what taxes and tolls are for." Agreed. Roads can be built on private property and paid for with tolls. Users fees pay for maintenance, excellent example of a free market solution. > .Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed. Sure but how do we keep a controlling force benevolent? I propose market competition. >. make sure things proceed in the right direction. Indeed. What if this benevolent controlling force sends things off in the wrong direction, such as is happening right now? >. Do you not have the drive to become it? Because I will, if you don't. Will, this comment does fail to reassure me that controlling forces will be benevolent. Eventually the benevolent forces become the new pigs. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 20 16:30:34 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:30:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net><002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net><4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com><1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5756B60F5F174E48A799098D6BF92E15@DFC68LF1> Will, when you write things like: "[b]ecause I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist" you come of as ill-informed. First, many of us on this list are not libertarian and many libertarians on this list do not believe in, promote, advocate, or want "paradise." Please be careful abut making sweeping statements. Thank you, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 16:35:47 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:35:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2703E3.6010307@satx.rr.com> On 7/20/2011 10:06 AM, Dan wrote: > Peopel? :) It's the Mayan spelling. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jul 20 16:42:15 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:42:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E2703E3.6010307@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2703E3.6010307@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110720164215.GU16178@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:35:47AM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/20/2011 10:06 AM, Dan wrote: > >> Peopel? :) > > It's the Mayan spelling. Thought it was a misspelling for booger in German. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 16:47:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:47:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 Dan : > And the drug cartels are creatures of the state. Were it not for the drug > war and very strict gun control in Mexico, people wouldn't be killing each > other in such large numbers over who gets to sell recreational products in > this or that area. This is a major point on the libertarian agenda. Get rid of the prohibition against drugs, and legitimize the cartels as legal businesses, tax them, and move on trying to educate people not to use drugs, even though they are now legal. Just as we do with cigarettes and alcohol. It gets rid of the requirement for guns (how many armed guards do you see at your local corn field?) and removes an important profit center from organized crime. I think we could all agree at least that organized crime is bad... and it is not a huge difference between the organized crime in Mexico and Russia, and that in Washington DC... sigh. -Kelly From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 16:35:03 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:35:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I don't know about others who fancy themselves libertarians, but my view of this is not that a libertarian society would be a paradise. Instead, I just think it'd be better along one dimension: that of coercion. It'll likely have many of the same social problems and flaws as statist societies, though a few will be absent or diminished. (You might just as well use this sort of argument against using reason and science over, say,?blind obedience to authority and faith in?traditional beliefs?in society. Reason and science won't usher in a utopia, but they will do much than the alternatives. That they won't result in a perfect society, though, is not the issue; the issue should be whether they will result in a better society.) ? Some of your comments here also strike me as strange. You talk about tolls, but why might not a voluntary road system use them? And, in history, there were private turnpikes. You might want to consult the work of Daniel Klein or Walter Block (though the latter tends to be too polemical for my tastes:) on this. And you seem to conflate libertarianism with free markets. In truth, libertarianism is compatible with free markets, but the core of it is individual liberty -- usually put as the non-initiation of force coupled with property rights. This doesn't necessarily mean every social interaction has to be about money exchanges and calculations. It means, however, that the ideal is that there be no initiation of force in any interaction. Thus people can work together to provide all sorts of benefits to each other or still others. They simply must resist the urge to force others to participate. That's the core of libertarianism -- not money profits or free markets. (Of course, the likely outcome of widespread acceptance of libertarianism would likely be widespread free markets and an end to government.) ? I think the way you're depicted it is either you're a realist who accepts that coercion is needed sometimes (and you seem to think you should be the one using the coercion*) or one is a "starry-eyed" dreamer. I just don't see it that way. In my view, it's unrealistic even utopian to believe government (or coercion in general) is a good basis for social relations. The record of history and any decent understanding of political economy should give anyone supporting either wholesale or piecemeal coercion in society pause here. This is not, in my view, wild-eyed optimisim about some future paradise, but hardnosed realism about history and theory. Just as perpetual motion machines won't work, so the same goes for all manner of coercive policies. ? Regards, ? Dan ? * A candid admission. You should be aware that some have the drive to stop people who want to force themselves on others. From: Will Steinberg To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:47 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Sorry I can't be as starry-eyed as some of you. ?Government needs to be there to do things that couldn't be paid for or organized otherwise. ?Sorry (again,) but it's true. ?Countless infrastructural components of our daily lives cannot simply tune into the wondrous libertarian free-market force, because there is no cognizant demand for them. Everything that is a unitary product, people can pay for. ?Some things, like highways, will never be a dollar at the local supermarket. ?This is what taxes and tolls are for, because most people living in a country are too unaware of the fact that countless government-provided amenities that they use every day require money to maintain. ?If you're so concerned about the evils of current-day government (which are very, very scary and apparent)--do something about it! ?Go make a new government somewhere! ? Because I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist. ?Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed to make sure things proceed in the right direction. ?Do you not have the drive to become it? ?Because I will, if you don't. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 16:55:09 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:55:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Deregulation will let the biggest organized criminals of all--the corporations--go unchecked. I simply believe government is, *by far*, the lesser of these two evils. I will also heartily and readily admit that the current US government (and probably all current country governments) is pretty evil. However, if y'all really care about changing the world, it is my personal opinion that there is only one good way to do it in time. A grand paternalism, if you will. Human unity! What could be better? Individualism is selfish. Don't tear me apart for that one! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Jul 20 16:40:44 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:40:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of the future In-Reply-To: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <4E27050C.2090406@aleph.se> Alchemy produced a quite large number of useful results during the middle ages but really took off and was transformed when it was forced into the open by Boyle and the others - as long as it was secretive, craftmanlike knowledge it did not develop much of a theory despite possibly shared ambitions between different alchemists. The chemists turned it into a science, but did sever it from the original ambitions (some of which were just mistaken like gold transmutation, others which were sensible but too hard, like the elixir of life). I think one can see a similarity to what happened to nanotechnology when it got NNI funding. The core alchemical ideas of transformation and transmutation are still around, it is just that these days we actually are starting to see adequate tools for them. Maybe the desires and visions always come first, produce a messy area of protoscience (if even that), followed by a consolidation period of real science with no place for the visions, and finally - if the field is lucky and the visions not too parochial for an era - technology that allow people to actually pursue the visions. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 17:09:18 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:09:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 19 July 2011 16:45, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> So what you're saying is that if you sneak notes into a Physics final, >> and don't get caught, then that's not cheating? I'm sorry, that >> doesn't meet with my definition of ethical. > > No, I am saying that if you are doing something that nobody has ever > thought (yet) to forbid or to test for you are in a different league > from the sportman who takes some cocaine during a marathon and keeps > his fingers crossed not to be randomly picked for testing. Wouldn't the fact that the East Germans kept their use of drugs secret, even from their athletes, be just a little clue that they knew they were breaking the rules? >From the Secrets of the dead show: >>>>>>>>>>>>> NARRATOR: But then came a setback for the East Germans. 20-year old-shot putter Ilona Slupianek, failed a drug test. The doping program was plunged into crisis. Standard GDR protocol required that doping be curtailed two weeks prior to competition?enough time for the athletes? bodies to eliminate all traces of the drugs. But driven by the need to churn out winners, coaches had been handing out pills until the very last minute. In East Berlin, it was decreed that from then on, athletes would be prescreened before they left for international events. Better they be discovered at home, than on the world stage? Urine samples were sent to a lab near Dresden. If their tests came back positive, athletes would be scratched from the upcoming competition. The athletes were told that the pre-screening would protect them from false accusations by jealous competitors. >>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Failed a drug test" would indicate that they were trying to test for just these drugs AND that using them was against the rules. They just didn't have a test good enough to find the cheaters if they stopped two weeks ahead of time. >> Motor sports is a little different in that the rules authorize you to >> experiment with your machine to a certain extent and within certain >> parameters. Part of the point of motor sports is to push the science >> of motor cars forward... always has been. You can make improvements to >> your equipment, and next year everyone has the improved equipment. >> That's the way the sport moves forward. >> Same with the America's Cup sailing race... > > Yes. So, what's the difference? Improving yourself and/or your > equipment has been typical of us fyborgs for a few centuries now... > :-) If an improvement is within the rules, then great. If you are trying to get away with breaking the rules in a way that can't be detected, I call that cheating. >>> Moreover, do you seriously propose that transexuals should not be >>> allowed to compete? Even though, in fact, I suspect that men becoming >>> women and competing with women have always had more of an edge than >>> women becoming men and competing with the latter, as you suggest... >> >> You didn't get the point... This poor East German girl (a real, >> specific girl, named Heidi Krieger) was treated with so many steroids >> that she essentially became a man. Later, twenty years later, she >> underwent surgery to complete her transformation to being a man. It >> was the only way she could survive in a society that saw her as a man >> because of her facial hair, adam's apple, and so forth. She didn't >> choose to become a transexual, she was abused by the state sports >> doctors, without her knowledge, and was turned into a man. > > All this is based on the assumption that she did not and would not > have accepted the unintended consequences, something which most of her > rivals probably would happily have, but the evil doctors chose to > impose her out of sheer malice. Any factual ground for this? Did you read the transcript of the show? Seemed pretty well researched to me. >> Men becoming women, and then >> competing in strength sports seems a little bit like cheating to me... > > Speaking of arbitrary restrictions, we might require people to compete > not on the basis of their phenotype, but of their chromosomic gender. > But the same rationale might be invoked to refuse public recognition > of changes of sex in any other context, even though surgery and > hormones might well remain legal per se. Red Herring. Each sport can have it's own rules as far as I'm concerned. >> They were >> given no choice except to quit being an athlete. > > Same as I am given no choice except quitting being a corporate lawyer > if I am not willing to work long hours? Gosh... :-) There were other opportunities for these kids, not good ones of course... but if they had known it would kill or maim them, then perhaps some of them would have made a different choice. My point is that because they were living under a form of government that supported and officially encouraged this behavior to its own benefit, that this particular form of government has some pretty significant down sides. That is pretty much the whole point I was making. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 17:15:38 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:15:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 Will Steinberg > Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? > I am certainly not in the position to say what is or is not in Extropy's DNA, but let me rephrase this assumption in a perhaps more palatable form: "In the Extropy mindset an especial, albeit not exclusive, attention has always been devoted to possible solutions that take into account the chance that spontaneous competition amongst, and economical behaviours of, individuals and groups might be more effective in delivering desired results than top-down coercion". This is simply a factual claim, and one that sounds highly plausible to me, on the basis of what I have read sofar and of my direct experiences of the exchanges in this list. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 17:18:44 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:18:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 5:47 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > This is a major point on the libertarian agenda. Get rid of the > prohibition against drugs, and legitimize the cartels as legal > businesses, tax them, and move on trying to educate people not to use > drugs, even though they are now legal. Just as we do with cigarettes > and alcohol. It gets rid of the requirement for guns (how many armed > guards do you see at your local corn field?) and removes an important > profit center from organized crime. > > It is now 10 years since Portugal decriminalised drugs and they are reporting great successes. Quote: "There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law. The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said. Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added. "This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies." Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added. ------------ BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 17:25:43 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:25:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 spike > Will, this comment does fail to reassure me that controlling forces will be > benevolent. > Liberals and libertarians alike in the US seem invariably concerned with the relationship between the State and the citizens. The European approach to "emancipation" is more oriented, indeed across the entire political spectrum, towards being the citizens who control the State rather than the citizens who are controlled by the State. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 17:20:54 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:20:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311182454.28150.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm not sure there's one libertarian agenda -- aside from pushing for the core libertarian principle of non-initiation of force. ? But, in this respect, the strict libertarian view on drug re-legalization is not pragmatic* and it's certainly not about taxing the drug trade. Instead, it's about allowing people to do as they please with their bodies, including injesting chemicals you and others might not approve of. ? Regards, ? Dan ? * Actually, the non-libertarian argument for an end to drug prohibition is that such prohibition doesn't work, makes things worse, and has other side effects. Implied in this view is that drug prohibition would?for be fine and dandy if only it worked. In other words, whatever curtailment of freedom one desires is okay as long as one can achieve it. And one merely runs a cost-benefit analysis. That is not a libertarian view of things. From: Kelly Anderson To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:47 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/20 Dan : > And the drug cartels are creatures of the state. Were it not for the drug > war and very strict gun control in Mexico, people wouldn't be killing each > other in such large numbers over who gets to sell recreational products in > this or that area. This is a major point on the libertarian agenda. Get rid of the prohibition against drugs, and legitimize the cartels as legal businesses, tax them, and move on trying to educate people not to use drugs, even though they are now legal. Just as we do with cigarettes and alcohol. It gets rid of the requirement for guns (how many armed guards do you see at your local corn field?) and removes an important profit center from organized crime. I think we could all agree at least that organized crime is bad... and it is not a huge difference between the organized crime in Mexico and Russia, and that in Washington DC... sigh. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 17:26:41 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:26:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, they would all likely cease to exist. ? Two, corporations are usually the biggest advocates of regulation. In fact, the largest ones typically lobby intensively for all manner of regulations and many major government programs -- in the US, the central bank and the "Obamacare" program -- are things large corporations not only pushed for but usually had a major hand in shaping. ? And the biggest criminal of all, in any region, tends to be the state. It tends to kill and injure more, steal more, and coerce much more than any private criminal or evne private criminal organization can. To be sure, when a private individual or group starts to compete in murder, mayhem, and theft at the level of nation states, that's almost always because the person or group in question has become a state. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Will Steinberg To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:55 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Deregulation will let the biggest organized criminals of all--the corporations--go unchecked. ? I simply believe government is, *by far*, the lesser of these two evils. ?I will also heartily and readily admit that the current US government (and probably all current country governments) is pretty evil. ? However, if y'all really care about changing the world, it is my personal opinion that there is only one good way to do it in time. ?A grand paternalism, if you will. ?Human unity! ?What could be better? ?Individualism is selfish. ?Don't tear me apart for that one! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Wed Jul 20 18:30:46 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:30:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: Stefano: I like you way you put it. Seems accurate to me. --Max 2011/7/20 Stefano Vaj > 2011/7/20 Will Steinberg > >> Why is libertarianism in Extropy's DNA? >> > > I am certainly not in the position to say what is or is not in Extropy's > DNA, but let me rephrase this assumption in a perhaps more palatable form: > > "In the Extropy mindset an especial, albeit not exclusive, attention has > always been devoted to possible solutions that take into account the chance > that spontaneous competition amongst, and economical behaviours of, > individuals and groups might be more effective in delivering desired results > than top-down coercion". > > This is simply a factual claim, and one that sounds highly plausible to me, > on the basis of what I have read sofar and of my direct experiences of the > exchanges in this list. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 18:44:33 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:44:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: Agreeably, I also like the way Stefano puts it! Though I do think a little bit of coercion is well and good, so that we might never have to come to a time where the scientist needs an AK for when the theophilic militiae come knocking down his or her door... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 18:54:42 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:54:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 Will Steinberg wrote: > Agreeably, I also like the way Stefano puts it! ?Though I do think a little > bit of coercion is well and good, so that we might never have to come to a > time where the scientist needs an AK for when the theophilic militiae come > knocking down his or her door... > My problem with spontaneous competition amongst individuals is that I always lose. My problem with spontaneous economical behaviours of individuals is that I don't want mass-market stuff so my unique tastes end up being too expensive. It's not much fun down here at the bottom of the pile. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 19:09:32 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:09:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> On 7/20/2011 1:54 PM, BillK wrote: > My problem with spontaneous economical behaviours of individuals is > that I don't want mass-market stuff so my unique tastes end up being > too expensive. For those whose IQ is above 130, let alone 140, 150 or greater, that's unavoidable. The only answer seems to be using the extra points to leverage your way to safety and purchasing power. You could try to change rather than exploit the tastes and opinions of those who clamor for mass-market products and values, but that course doesn't have a very good track record. (Although Gates, Buffett and a few others are doing okay.) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 19:32:48 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:32:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. Damien Broderick From lubkin at unreasonable.com Wed Jul 20 18:50:28 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:50:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <201107201934.p6KJYJTS025017@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Spike wrote: >Libertarianism is in Extropy's DNA. One need not be libertarian, only >tolerant. From my recollections of the way it was, I think Spike captured it correctly and succinctly. The original list, from which this one derives, was explicitly friendly to anarcho-capitalist libertarianism. The original description made it clear that it was one of several basics that you need not agree with, but arguing over was off-topic. I'd say that virtually everyone who declared their political views was libertarian, in contrast to other transhumanist communities. The sentiment moved when it became this list. You could argue in opposition to libertarianism, but you couldn't be rude in your disagreement. (An imbalance, mind you; it *was* acceptable to be rude about statism as long as you weren't personal.) -- David. From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 19:43:42 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:43:42 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Moooon References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <959EA7B12FDA4B2A8A3EEE3542984E03@cpdhemm> And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. I don't even like to think about it. So depressing. From sparge at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 20:52:51 2011 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:52:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. Not even a space program, really. -Dave From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 21:23:14 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:23:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311196994.45329.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The cnceit is that individuals can control the state in that way. In Europe, there were classical liberals and American-style libertarians who do not share your view. They just happen to be a small and not often heard minority. ? There is also some other complications here too. For example, some Europeans nation states are thought of by their subjects or victims and outsiders as being socialist or far less free market than, say, the US, yet many of them are actually more market-oriented than other nation states and, in some respects, than the US. So, people will point to, say, Sweden and shout, "It works!" not realizing that Sweden, overall, is far more market-oriented than most of the world, despite its vast welfare state. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 1:25 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/20 spike Will, this comment does fail to reassure me that controlling forces will be benevolent. > Liberals and libertarians alike in the US seem invariably concerned with the relationship between the State and the citizens. The European approach to "emancipation" is more oriented, indeed across the entire political spectrum, towards being the citizens who control the State rather than the citizens who are controlled by the State. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 21:47:13 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:47:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311196994.45329.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> <1311196994.45329.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E274CE1.3030500@satx.rr.com> On 7/20/2011 4:23 PM, Dan wrote: > people will point to, say, Sweden and shout, "It works!" not realizing > that Sweden, overall, is far more market-oriented than most of the > world, despite its vast welfare state. This has been called, and theorized as, a "mixed economy" for more than half a century (and applies as well to Australia, fwiw). Damien Broderick From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 22:44:25 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:44:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Get on it, then! Other people aren't going to do your work for you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 20 22:54:57 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:54:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> On 7/20/2011 5:44 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Get on it, then! Other people aren't going to do your work for you. Will, I'm pretty sure I've done a great deal more in the last 50 years toward encouraging humanity's desire to extend our technology beyond this planet than you have in what I assume is your fairly brief life so far. Damien Broderick From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 23:07:49 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:07:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: How much talking have you to anyone outside a small cadre of smartypantses about the benefits of these things? I'm sure if there was a large moon-settler movement that encompassed all classes of people, that those who could put it into place would maybe work a bit harder on it. Why don't the average joes know that there could be countless jobs in space travel or space building? Why don't they have the information that science is their friend, that there still is a frontier, yadda yadda? Perhaps because those smartypantses are doing more navel-gazing and star-gazing than proselytizing; all the while, we see things like, say, yall's graph of the growth of seventh-day adventists. Going to the moon is never going to be just the intellectual elite, it will be everyone, and it will happen when real people are convinced enough that it is a good idea that the corpos and govvies pushing them around decide to actually care. Of course, all of the above is navel-gazing on my part. But if yall sat around for forty-two years waiting for--NASA?!?!?!--to build a moon hotel without any public interest, you are sadly mistaken. Now what we ought to do is get a moon-terrorist attack going on ourselves! It sure got us into the Middle East. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From glivick at sbcglobal.net Wed Jul 20 23:19:29 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:19:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E276281.1060806@sbcglobal.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jul 20 23:01:03 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:01:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Enhancement & Life Extension: Alchemists of thefuture In-Reply-To: <5D002FE24F074CB3B5D318DFBA33ED1A@DFC68LF1> References: <21550389D85E4D6FA15047E5D16E6001@DFC68LF1> <5D002FE24F074CB3B5D318DFBA33ED1A@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Mike Dougherty wrote: > creativity, empathy, and integrity (components of wisdom). ?So, I would say > "... into a wiser state of being." I agree. Though merely wiser is hardly enough. I'm not sure what word has the proper nuance. > I'm not sure because chemistry is the mechanics of the brain and if the goal > is whole brain emulation, then chemistry play a key role. Also, if > perceptual experiences are necessary (along with agency) for transferring > personhood, then the chemical interactions - the chemistry of > life/interaction/emotions/communication would be essential for persons' > memories and identity. (I'm sure some AGIist will argue with me, but I won't > budge on this because it is not all in the brain (unless we are radical > constructivists) and as I see it wisdom is largely based on experience, > choice, and iteration. Absolutely. In my original quote I was talking about the distinction between alchemy and chemistry when they once overlapped and later alchemy was discredited. Sure chemistry came out as a winner for the specific domain whose rules it governs. The more mystical bits of alchemy could have given rise to psychology or sociology or political science. Especially useful would be a science of politics/governance that encompasses psychology and sociology. I imagine the unified field theory equivalent of human motivation and capability would be what Hermann Hesse was describing (or hinting towards) in The Glass Bead Game. How much can the results of experience choice and iteration be shared? Will the collective be greater than the sum of the parts or will each member still have to suffer through ignorance to gain primary/firsthand experience? Can the novelty of the young infuse the collective with ?lan vital or will they become immediately old upon communion with the Methuselah(s) already in the hive? From glivick at sbcglobal.net Wed Jul 20 23:30:36 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:30:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 00:23:22 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:23:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 GLivick : > Humans going to the moon is, and always was, a bad idea scientifically.? It > was a political decision to go there.? It's a political one that has the > space station sitting up in the sky.? Those places are for robots, if we > have to be there at all. I don't mind if we send robots ... it means more is available for the people who can afford the luxurious moon-cheese for their table crackers. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 02:52:19 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:52:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: The only force that will get us to the moon is capitalism. Bill Stone has an actual plan for this... http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space.html Short version... There are tons of ice on the moon. Delivering tons of water to low earth orbit from the moon would be cheaper than getting it up from earth. He thinks this is commercially realizable in 7 years. This is a BOLD and imaginative use for the moon. The talk is inspirational, and the moon stuff starts about two thirds of the way through. -Kelly On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I don't mind if we send robots ... it means more is available for the > people who can afford the luxurious moon-cheese for their table > crackers. From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 02:50:18 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:50:18 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Will Steinberg : > How much talking have you to anyone outside a small cadre of smartypantses > about the benefits of these things? *** NOOB ALERT *** *** NOOB ALERT *** *** NOOB ALERT *** *** NOOB ALERT *** I suggest you google/wikipedia "Damien Broderick" and then come back, looking like less of a dick. He's almost certainly going to be the first name that comes up :-)- Dwayne Incidentally, before that evilratbastard actor dude The Rock started using his real name, putting "Dwayne" into any search engine got me. Great for impressing/annoying people at parties ;p -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 02:52:23 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:52:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Will Steinberg : > Now what we ought to do is get a moon-terrorist attack going on ourselves! > ?It sure got us into the Middle East. You know the conspiranoia ranters foam endlessly about exactly this, right? Prelude to Single World Government, microchips embedded in our eyelashes, barcodes on our ******** etc etc Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 02:46:50 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:46:50 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 21 July 2011 05:32, Damien Broderick wrote: > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. Funny, I just bitched about exactly this, earlier. I was born in 1968 - I grew up on the wild and, it seems, utterly outlandish speculations of Science Fiction Writers. Those bastards built up my hopes, and reality cruelly shattered them. Then backed a car over them. Then screeched off laughing. I honestly expected to have made it into space before now, and yet, here I am, still on this Single Point Of Failure ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H little blue rock. SF Authors! Peddlers of false hopes! BURN THEM ALL. oh yeah, present company excepted ;p How many SF authors are here, anyways? You, Charlie Stross (hey Charlie, I read one of your books, I quite liked it), anyone else? Do you find it frustrating that you can imagine and write about a clear path of development, but real world implementation issues bog everything down? Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 02:47:36 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:47:36 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 21 July 2011 08:54, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/20/2011 5:44 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > >> Get on it, then! ?Other people aren't going to do your work for you. > > Will, I'm pretty sure I've done a great deal more in the last 50 years > toward encouraging humanity's desire to extend our technology beyond this > planet than you have in what I assume is your fairly brief life so far. Thus my rant ;p Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From glivick at sbcglobal.net Thu Jul 21 03:46:11 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (GLivick) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:46:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> Yeah, Damien has won about a million important awards for his SF writing, and is still winning them. He has also written some contemporary science books for the popular press, the most impressive of which might be, not to be confused with our own resident entity of the same name, "The Spike." Here's a link to a list of a couple of his books: http://www.bookfinder.com/author/damien-broderick/ FutureMan ps, not a good idea to get into a serious argument with him over anything technical; the bloke knows about all there is to know. On 7/20/2011 7:50 PM, ddraig wrote: > 2011/7/21 Will Steinberg: >> How much talking have you to anyone outside a small cadre of smartypantses >> about the benefits of these things? > > *** NOOB ALERT *** > *** NOOB ALERT *** > *** NOOB ALERT *** > *** NOOB ALERT *** > > I suggest you google/wikipedia "Damien Broderick" and then come back, > looking like less of a dick. He's almost certainly going to be the > first name that comes up :-)- > > Dwayne > Incidentally, before that evilratbastard actor dude The Rock started > using his real name, putting "Dwayne" into any search engine got me. > Great for impressing/annoying people at parties ;p From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 04:13:26 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:13:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of GLivick Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon >...Yeah, Damien has won about a million important awards for his SF writing, and is still winning them. He has also written some contemporary science books for the popular press, the most impressive of which might be, not to be confused with our own resident entity of the same name, "The Spike." That is definitely a cool one. >...ps, not a good idea to get into a serious argument with him over anything technical; the bloke knows about all there is to know. FutureMan Of course there is that, but further, I request we treat our fellow Extropians with respect. In this comment: >> How much talking have you to anyone outside a small cadre of smartypantses about the benefits of these things? I detected far too much of the dis variety of respect, and I don't like it a damn bit. Nuff said? spike From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 05:11:25 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:11:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: Hahahah...sorry, I wasn't trying to undermine anybody's fame here. I understand that Damien is an accomplished author. I think it was a bit harsh to write *NOOB ALERT* all repeated-like and whatnot, Dwayne. Plus, there are plenty of benefits to being a "noob" ;). But that's a bit harsh, too. I apologize. Let me rephrase my criticism in a more respectful manner (I only wish to jumpstart some intelligent discussion for getting the cogs of progress turning): All that many of you seem to do is preach to the choir. This is good for feeling good, but doesn't get anything done in the vein of pushing a transhumanist agenda. I would be very happy seeing more outreach to the general community. I know I try to talk to folks, though I don't enough by far. It's depressing to see how science is viewed by so many people. I want to change that. Don't you want to change that? Nothing is going to be different until that happens, and until that happens, everyone on Earth won't be as happy as possible, and everybody on Earth will die. I want to change that, too! I love humans! We are the best thing that has happened to this solar system since sliced bread! I just want to help. What can I do to help? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 05:20:22 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:20:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00d301cc4765$e4740720$ad5c1560$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 10:11 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon > Hahahah...sorry, I wasn't trying to undermine anybody's fame here. I understand that Damien is an accomplished author Very well, have you actually read The Spike? > I just want to help. What can I do to help? Read it. That?s a good example of what needs to be done: popular writing. The Spike is a great example of bringing transhumanist notions to the public. Another good example is Ed Regis? Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhumanist Condition. > All that many of you seem to do is preach to the choir. This is good for feeling good, but doesn't get anything done in the vein of pushing a transhumanist agenda Ahem. Will, get those two volumes, read please. The Spike will blow your mind. {8-] In a very pleasant way. It is mind expanding, like this -? {{{{{8^] Then if you want to do something to promote transhumanism, the best way is to write popular works that express the ideas, then sell a jillion copies. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 05:41:35 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:41:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: Attention Will Steinberg! Attention Will Steinberg! Messing with Dr. Damien Broderick will result in his extro-list homies gettin' all up in your face!!! D.B. is our main man, and people diss him at their peril!!! : ) I felt a great deal of frustration and sadness from posters as I read this thread, regarding humanity not having a permanent base on the Moon. But I think that old standby of our species, national rivalry and competition, shall save the day! lol China is intent on putting people on the Moon and also building a permanent base there, and once they really start moving things forward, the U.S. will feel threatened and then finally provide the resources for an American (plus allies) base. An Excerpt from* China's Military Modernization: Building for Regional and Global Reach,* by Richard D. Fisher Jr.: In 2007 China plans to launch its first of several Moon probes as part of the Chang?e program. This will eventually include the use of a robot to gather Moon samples for return to Earth. In 2006 Chinese officials reviewed Russian space technology to control its Moon missions,118 and this could potentially lead to cooperation in manned Moon exploration technology. Although China has not revealed in official form its manned Moon programs, China appears to have many programs to create the vehicles necessary to carry out this mission. One report notes that China may undertake circumlunar Shenzhou missions in the 2015 time frame and then send people to the Moon around 2020 or after.119 In late 2007 one Chinese military journal contained illustrations of expansive Chinese Moon bases, indicating at least some element of Chinese aspiration. 120 Barring negotiations that settle boundaries and insist on demilitarization on the Moon, much as there have been similar agreements regarding Antarctica, it is probable that China will develop the means to claim and defend Moon territory, especially if the Moon becomes an economically viable source of mineral or energy wealth. Furthermore, if intelligence, surveillance, or combat-oriented outposts on the Moon become strategically advantageous, it is likely that the PLA will pursue such advantages for China. The Moon could serve as a base for high-power radar, and in the vacuum of space, large laser weapons could accomplish more damage at greater distances than in the atmosphere of Earth. In early 2008 a popular Chinese military issues Web site suggested that basing lasers on the Moon could help overcome the challenges of atmospheric distortion faced by Earth-bound lasers when attacking satellites.121 That such is not far-fetched is illustrated by a 2005 Chinese academic journal article that explored the feasibility of a laser linkage between the Earth and the Moon for communication purposes.122 * >>> *I hope the Moon is able to stay demilitarized... John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 06:22:21 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:22:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> Message-ID: Stefano Vaj wrote: > Yes, but in that case they were probably thin men speaking a soprano > language who were mistook for guttural women. :-) Hey... Hey.... Hey.... Italian guys are not the only ones who can be macho! lol China has produced some incredible martial artists and warriors over the centuries! And you have to hand it to China, they are on a roll again, and may soon be a major superpower to rival even the United States. But I severely doubt we will be seeing a resurgence of the Roman Empire! ; ) John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 21 06:38:30 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:38:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <20110721063830.GV16178@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 04:30:36PM -0700, GLivick wrote: > Humans going to the moon is, and always was, a bad idea > scientifically. It was a political decision to go there. It's a > political one that has the space station sitting up in the sky. Those > places are for robots, if we have to be there at all. We have to be there pretty soon, orelse we'll run out of stuff. Energy production, computation/storage, mining/fabbing, all of this can't coexist with the terrestrial ecosystem for long. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 21 06:43:13 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:43:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <20110721064313.GY16178@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 08:23:22PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I don't mind if we send robots ... it means more is available for the > people who can afford the luxurious moon-cheese for their table > crackers. Moon cheese is dirt cheap. As is Moon power, Moon cloud, Moon titanium. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 21 07:05:43 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:05:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 08:52:19PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The only force that will get us to the moon is capitalism. Bill Stone > has an actual plan for this... > http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space.html > > Short version... There are tons of ice on the moon. Delivering tons of > water to low earth orbit from the moon would be cheaper than getting You can make fuel directly and deliver just the fuel. There's no more sense for canned monkeys in LEO than canned monkeys on the Moon. Some industrial processes love UHV, but some work best in water. > it up from earth. He thinks this is commercially realizable in 7 > years. This is a BOLD and imaginative use for the moon. The talk is > inspirational, and the moon stuff starts about two thirds of the way > through. Talk is cheap. We've had plenty of it. Give us cheap access to LEO, and we'll give you the Moon. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From giulio at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 07:19:17 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:19:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. > > Damien Broderick I don't have much to add to what has been said in this thread, but I wish to echo the sentiment expressed by Damien who, as it has been noted, has done much more than most of us to keep our beautiful dreams alive. G. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:04:11 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:04:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] organic olymics In-Reply-To: References: <005301cc4629$a49678f0$edc36ad0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 John Grigg > And you have to hand it to China, they are on a roll again, and may soon be > a major superpower to rival even the United States. But I severely doubt we > will be seeing a resurgence of the Roman Empire! ; ) > Why, no doubt about both things. :-) But being slender is no real harm in this respect: http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/19/fat-america-keeps-getting-fatter/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7855494021-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:04:34 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:04:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <959EA7B12FDA4B2A8A3EEE3542984E03@cpdhemm> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <959EA7B12FDA4B2A8A3EEE3542984E03@cpdhemm> Message-ID: Indeed. On 20 July 2011 21:43, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) < cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com> wrote: > > > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. > > > I don't even like to think about it. So depressing. > > > > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:09:55 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:09:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 GLivick > Humans going to the moon is, and always was, a bad idea scientifically. > It was a political decision to go there. > Sure. This is also true for America, by the way. An entirely political decision. There was never any real scientific rationale for Europeans in crossing the ocean and taking the pain of stealing local natives their territory. It is just a consolation that by now we know better, and are ready to follow dinosaurs and other extinct populations on the path of common sense and practicalities. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:14:37 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:14:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: On 21 July 2011 04:52, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The only force that will get us to the moon is capitalism. Why, I am under the impression that, exactly as it had been the case for most explorations, expansions and conquests, the force which brought us there was international competition. Politics, as somebody suggested. Philip K. Dick in fact assumes (in the Man in the High Castle) that had in an even worse version of the Cold War we would have been to Mars more or less in the same period... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:23:43 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:23:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 21 July 2011 14:13, spike wrote: > > Of course there is that, but further, I request we treat our fellow > Extropians with respect. ?In this comment: > >>> How much talking have you to anyone outside a small cadre of > smartypantses about the benefits of these things? > > I detected far too much of the dis variety of respect, and I don't like it a > damn bit. ?Nuff said? Yes, I fully endorse this sentiment. Extremely good point, Mr Spike. :-) Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From ddraig at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 10:26:08 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:26:08 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Will Steinberg : > Hahahah...sorry, I wasn't trying to undermine anybody's fame here. ?I > understand that Damien is an accomplished author. ?I think it was a bit > harsh to write *NOOB ALERT* all repeated-like and whatnot, Dwayne. Oh come on, it's not an alert unless it is noticeable ;p > ?Plus, > there are plenty of benefits to being a "noob" ;). ?But that's a bit harsh, > too. ?I apologize. Oh hey I have nothing wrong with noobs, I love meeting new people. It was more a general "hey you are obviously new here, you might want to do some groundwork before annoying people" but it seems you are not a noob, so, hmm. Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 11:29:24 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:29:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media" In-Reply-To: References: <4E173579.5040401@satx.rr.com> <4E174CDB.1060800@mac.com> <4E176AF4.5090108@susaro.com> <4E1B3070.6020002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 20 July 2011 19:09, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Wouldn't the fact that the East Germans kept their use of drugs > secret, even from their athletes, be just a little clue that they knew > they were breaking the rules? > Mmhhh. What about a clue that they did not want their procedures to be copied and/or forbidden? Are nowadays training - *and* chemical - recipes made public by western coaches? Standard GDR protocol required that doping be curtailed two weeks > prior to competition?enough time for the athletes? bodies to eliminate > all traces of the drugs. But driven by the need to churn out winners, > coaches had been handing out pills until the very last minute. > Looks like some DDR athletes and coaches were infringing local protocols and end up being unlucky. More or less as today? "Failed a drug test" would indicate that they were trying to test for > just these drugs AND that using them was against the rules. They just > didn't have a test good enough to find the cheaters if they stopped > two weeks ahead of time. > Perhaps because of my lawyer mentality, I see in a different fashion. If you ever took a forbidden drug, it certainly does not mean that you are prevented to compete for the rest of your life, even though nobody can strip you of the possible continuing edge you may have obtained through its use (say, higher stamina during training routines, bigger muscular masses, etc.). Hence, what the "law" actually said is that "you must be clean at the time when you are tested, or else". Disqualificationd are for those who try and fail the tests. If an improvement is within the rules, then great. If you are trying > to get away with breaking the rules in a way that can't be detected, I > call that cheating. > If you cheat, you may be lucky, or you may be detected. If a breach cannot be detected by definition, is not a breach unless to the "spirit" of things. In fact, tax or sport regulations are always running after human ingenuity in working within the rules, but to effects which are deemed indesirable for whatever reason. The evolution of car racing formulas is an exemple in point. Most changes take place because the losers get listened when they scream that one or another new (legal) trick is "disloyal" or "dangerous". More or less the same as with human performance improvement measures. There were other opportunities for these kids, not good ones of > course... but if they had known it would kill or maim them, then > perhaps some of them would have made a different choice. > > My point is that because they were living under a form of government > that supported and officially encouraged this behavior to its own > benefit, that this particular form of government has some pretty > significant down sides. That is pretty much the whole point I was > making. > I see, the difference is that in our societies identical behaviours are socially encouraged by similar promises of status, recognition and economic rewards, but at the same time hypocritical prohibition policies adds the thrill of a possible criminal prosecution... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Jul 21 12:58:45 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:58:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 Dan > Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, > corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, they > would all likely cease to exist. > Mmhhh, interesting issue. In fact, companies are the product of a legal system, but legal systems may well exist even without a "State" in the modern, western sense. Same as contracts (in fact, companies *are* contracts). > And the biggest criminal of all, in any region, tends to be the state. > This sounds well rhetorically, but it is actually an oxymoron, because whenever a State exists, "crime" is defined as the breach of (a law which is part of a subset of) its rules. Then, individual officers can breach them, but if the "State" does, it has simply changed the rules actually in force or introduced a new exception thereto. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From TommyMurphy at livingstonintl.com Wed Jul 20 20:17:47 2011 From: TommyMurphy at livingstonintl.com (Murphy, Tommy) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:17:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <959EA7B12FDA4B2A8A3EEE3542984E03@cpdhemm> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <959EA7B12FDA4B2A8A3EEE3542984E03@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <17FF695D4265BD48A3427C48179A5D0801769D537A84@Q9BML930.lii01.livun.com> The Japanese intend to start constructing a robotic city on the Moon in about 4 years, last I read. I find that rather exciting. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 3:44 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. I don't even like to think about it. So depressing. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat ************************************************************************ The information contained in this e-mail message may contain privileged and confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or duplication of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail, delete this message and destroy any copies. Internet e- mail is not guaranteed to be secure or error-free. Messages could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, arrive late or contain viruses. The sender will not be liable for these risks. Ce message électronique pourrait contenir des informations privilégiées et confidentielles. Si vous n'en êtes pas le récipiendaire prévu, nous vous signalons qu'il est strictement interdit d'examiner, de diffuser, de distribuer et de reproduire le présent message. Si vous l'avez recu par erreur, veuillez prévenir l'expéditeur par courriel, puis effacer ce message et en détruire toute copie. Le courrier électronique n'est pas garanti sécuritaire ni exempt d'erreurs. Les messages pourraient être interceptes, corrompus, égares, retardes ou contamines par des virus. L'expéditeur n'est pas responsable de ces risques. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 14:05:55 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:05:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E274CE1.3030500@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <008e01cc46f7$db2d7e80$91887b80$@att.net> <1311196994.45329.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E274CE1.3030500@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311257155.2040.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Um, yeah. I don't any real world economy, aside from very small regions or short durations -- that would characterized as other than a mixed economy. The US is a mixed economy too, don't you agree? Merely saying "mixed economy" resolves little here. ? And the thing I was getting at was that the usual welfare state or mixed economies that are praised for having a huge government overhang in their economies actually have a much smaller one than is usually thought. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 5:47 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... On 7/20/2011 4:23 PM, Dan wrote: > people will point to, say, Sweden and shout, "It works!" not realizing > that Sweden, overall, is far more market-oriented than most of the > world, despite its vast welfare state. This has been called, and theorized as, a "mixed economy" for more than half a century (and applies as well to Australia, fwiw). Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 14:08:18 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:08:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <016501cc47af$a50e04b0$ef2a0e10$@att.net> >...Give us cheap access to LEO, and we'll give you the Moon. -- Eugen* Leitl Indeed. For a startling comparison, check out this 4 minute video, and pay particular attention to that mind-blowing bit that starts around the 3 minute mark. Compare the total amount of science which has come down from the entire International Space Station adventure with the amount of science that has come from the Hubble Space Telescope: http://www.flixxy.com/hubble-ultra-deep-field-3d.htm spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 14:17:52 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:17:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311257872.67880.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> If you're going to define "criminal" with reference only to what the state dictates is criminal, then none of this really matters. Calling, e.g., private individuals or even other non-state groups criminal via this method ends up only telling us the state has labeled them so -- and there's no reason to accept this as more than merely an expression of the preferences of the state or of the ruling class. ? In this discussion here, then, it would have little meaning. Emphatically stating that X is a criminal or Y is a criminal organization -- as one list member did -- would be basically meaningless -- or have as much meaning as saying, "Gay marriage is illegal is Utah!" It certainly wouldn't and, more importantly, shouldn't persuade anyone to accept the state's view. Let me try to drive this home here. If the state or if all states outlawed life extension and any research having to deal with Extropianism or transhumanism, would any of you say, "Well, we're criminals now -- just like Al Capone or Ted Bundy."? ? Moreover, there is a way to define crime and crimimality without reference to the state. This is via some form of law that transcends and is even presumed by state law. I think the natural law approach does this and is a means to judge even the actions of states. If so, then when a state violates natural law, it is behaving criminally and has committed a crime -- even if the state itself mandated and legalized the action. (I won't provide a justification of this position here. I would recommend, though, reading http://freenation.org/a/f13l2.html?by Roderick Long. The topic would likely be too much political and moral philosophy for here -- in other words, probably way off topic or seemingly so for many.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:58 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/20 Dan Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, they would all likely cease to exist. Mmhhh, interesting issue. In fact, companies are the product of a legal system, but legal systems may well exist even without a "State" in the modern, western sense. Same as contracts (in fact, companies *are* contracts). ? And the biggest criminal of all, in any region, tends to be the state. > This sounds well rhetorically, but it is actually an oxymoron, because whenever a State exists, "crime" is defined as the breach of (a law which is part of a subset of) its rules. Then, individual officers can breach them, but if the "State" does, it has simply changed the rules actually in force or introduced a new exception thereto. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 14:32:53 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:32:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311258773.13256.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The problem here is you've surrendered the principle. You believe it's okay to force people (against their will). So, what's wrong with the state or "theophilic militiae" forcing you against yours? Simply that you disagree with what they see as your good! And the state would usually view anyone having a gun -- save for the agents of the state -- as going against her own good and even society's good (and definitely the state's good). So, the scientist in this scenario would likely be disarmed for her own good. ? And this sort of view can only end in basically what we have now at best and something much worse at worst. (Much worse because what we have now is partly due to the impact of libertarian ideas on statism: putting a brake on some of the worst aspects of statism.*) Under this system, whoever controls the state -- and that ain't you at this time -- gets to decide what research gets down and how to push everyone else around (within limits, of course, with the ultimate limit being that some people might decide to overthrow the government**). ? Try to look at the libertarian perspective here. You'd be able to carry on research and the like, provided it coerced no one else. Other than that, there would be very little limits on your freedom to question or to experiment. Overall, too, such a setup would likely be much more productive as no one would be coerced into supporting other people's pet projects -- however fine and noble said others believe those projects to be. (No doubt, under this setup, people would still donate and help each other out -- maybe to a larger degree -- and would still make ridiculous investments?of time and effort. But it would be their time and effort -- not yours and mine. E.g., if someone wants to build a church to worship a giant bird-man in, yes, to me, that's a waste -- though maybe not if it provides good entertainment:) -- but I wouldn't be forced to pay for it or to pray in it.) ? Regards, ? Dan ? * Yes, yes, I'm aware that the statist position is that statism put a brake on the worst aspects of liberty. ? ** Of course, real world states or elites don't usually let things get that far. They usually reform or the old guard falls and a new guard takes over. Yes, on occasion, there are revolutions and overthrows, such as the recent Arab Spring, but "business as usual" for the state, just like for any smaller but stable criminal gang, usually involves not lashing people too hard -- just enough to keep them building the pyramid, but not enough to make them openly defy authority en masse. (And, of course, the sting of the lash is not the worst thing ever -- as one person here has pointed out -- so almost all will put up with it rather than even contemplate an alternative.) ? From: Will Steinberg To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 2:44 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Agreeably, I also like the way Stefano puts it! ?Though I do think a little bit of coercion is well and good, so that we might never have to come to a time where the scientist needs an AK for when the theophilic militiae come knocking down his or her door... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 15:32:54 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:32:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] xi sub b found? Message-ID: <01a701cc47bb$769c8f50$63d5adf0$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:29 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: xi sub b found? >.Rupert Murdoch's lads are reporting that Fermilab has discovered the Xi-b. Is this a great time to be alive or what? {8^D spike There's a good explanation of the Xi-b baryon here: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-fermilab-heavy-relative-neutron.html spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 15:28:38 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:28:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] xi sub b found? Message-ID: <01a201cc47ba$dd83bff0$988b3fd0$@att.net> Rupert Murdoch's lads are reporting that Fermilab has discovered the Xi-b: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/21/physicists-at-fermilab-discover-ne w-subatomic-particle/?test=faces Now Wired is carrying the story: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/21/xi-sub-b If true, congrats to the Tevatron guys. Go Illinois! Is this a great time to be alive or what? {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 16:14:34 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:14:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <1311264874.26382.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A government space program means that all decisions will ultimately be political. ? As for me, I don't know that it's not scientific for humans to go to the Moon. Certainly, this depends on what the science goals are. ? Regards, ? Dan From: GLivick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 7:30 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon Humans going to the moon is, and always was, a bad idea scientifically.? It was a political decision to go there.? It's a political one that has the space station sitting up in the sky.? Those places are for robots, if we have to be there at all. FutureMan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 16:32:08 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:32:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> IIRC, in the Dick novel, it ends with it not being real, correct? But let's remember, in so far as the Germans were heading out into space more rapidly than actually happened, it was a novel -- i.e., a work of fiction. In my estimation, the Cold War was a big set back overall for human progress -- all the wasted resources and the overall fear mindset. (In my view, too, it helped to shift America more in a religious direction to fight those "godless commies.")?I think we're still recovering from that. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 6:14 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon On 21 July 2011 04:52, Kelly Anderson wrote: The only force that will get us to the moon is capitalism. Why, I am under the impression that, exactly as it had been the case for most explorations, expansions and conquests, the force which brought us there was international competition. Politics, as somebody suggested. Philip K. Dick in fact assumes (in the Man in the High Castle) that had in an even worse version of the Cold War we would have been to Mars more or less in the same period... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 17:10:39 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:10:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <1311264874.26382.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <1311264874.26382.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <021101cc47c9$2071cfb0$61556f10$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Dan Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon A government space program means that all decisions will ultimately be political. Dan Ja. Keep in mind that so many technical management and budget decisions are made by politicians, such as Georgia Representative Hank Johnson. I am astonished at how the admiral managed to answer that question without falling to the floor in a fit of derisive laughter. If you are in a hurry, go to 1 minute 20 seconds and view the next 15 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg &feature=player_embedded Can you imagine trying to pitch some technically complicated proposal to this kind of audience? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:03:50 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:03:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E287816.8080209@mac.com> On 07/18/2011 01:52 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Sorry to the video haters... this guy starts off with blood minerals >> and child labor, and gets to a solution. >> >> Light governmental oversight of corporations trying to do the right >> thing is the only solution that works globally. Transparency and data >> are the only things that enable ethical behavior on the part of >> consumers. Use contracts, the only multinational institution that >> suppliers care about. >> >> http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html >> http://www.fairlabor.com >> >> This guy is a total liberal who has fallen into the logical trap that >> is Libertarianism. > > Oh for pity's sake. > > I am really sick of reading this libertarian crap on a mailing list > that is supposed to be about the future. For pity's sake? I think it was a joke. Don't get your panties in a twist. > > Do me a favor and form a separate > extropy-for-future-libertarian-fantasies mailing list, or else make it > clear, up front, that this list is NOT designed for a broad cross > section of people who are passionate about the future, but will ONLY > welcome people who want to get to the future because they think it > will bring them some kind of fantasy libertarian paradise. Why don't you establish a friends of Richard Loosemore list while you are about it? Chill. From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:15:09 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:15:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E287ABD.7010609@mac.com> On 07/20/2011 08:47 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Sorry I can't be as starry-eyed as some of you. Government needs to > be there to do things that couldn't be paid for or organized > otherwise. Sorry (again,) but it's true. You seem awfully sorry. > Countless infrastructural components of our daily lives cannot simply > tune into the wondrous libertarian free-market force, Assertion, not fact. > because there is no cognizant demand for them. Everything that is a > unitary product, people can pay for. Some things, like highways, will > never be a dollar at the local supermarket. Why would you have a supermarket in highways? In fact many many roads and highways were privately funded and paid off. > This is what taxes and tolls are for, because most people living in a > country are too unaware of the fact that countless government-provided > amenities that they use every day require money to maintain. Many of the afore mentioned private roads were paid for by tolls without government involvement. You are claiming implicitly that all these things would not exist without government involvement and reasoning on this unproved claim. Pretty weak. > If you're so concerned about the evils of current-day government > (which are very, very scary and apparent)--do something about it! Go > make a new government somewhere! Are you sure that is still possible? Where exactly? But yes, I intend to be part of such if at all possible. > > Because I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist. > Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed to make > sure things proceed in the right direction. Do you not have the drive > to become it? Because I will, if you don't. Benevolent controlling force? If it is so benevolent why does it need to be forced? What sort of entity is so hyper intelligent it can always make the best decision, better than any local and immediately concerned actors? Can't be an AGI as local AGIs would still have more information and more immediate focused reaction times than more central ones. I think you would have to go to some mystical being to claim this is the best solution without obvious issues (other than mystical claptrap that is). - s From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:19:59 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:19:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E287BDF.9030009@mac.com> On 07/20/2011 09:47 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/7/20 Dan: >> And the drug cartels are creatures of the state. Were it not for the drug >> war and very strict gun control in Mexico, people wouldn't be killing each >> other in such large numbers over who gets to sell recreational products in >> this or that area. > This is a major point on the libertarian agenda. Get rid of the > prohibition against drugs, and legitimize the cartels as legal > businesses, tax them, and move on trying to educate people not to use > drugs, even though they are now legal. True libertarians don't believe in such taxes. But yes, dropping the bogus war on some drugs would drastically lower violent crime and many government excuses to blatantly ignore the Constitution. It would also remove about 60% of the largest prison population (numerically and per-capita) on earth. Particularly with ubiquitous surveillance inevitable technically it is a matter of life and death that we do not criminalize private behavior such as this. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:22:35 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:22:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E287C7B.7070300@mac.com> On 07/20/2011 09:55 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Deregulation will let the biggest organized criminals of all--the > corporations--go unchecked. > > I simply believe government is, *by far*, the lesser of these two > evils. I will also heartily and readily admit that the current US > government (and probably all current country governments) is pretty evil. > > However, if y'all really care about changing the world, it is my > personal opinion that there is only one good way to do it in time. A > grand paternalism, if you will. Human unity! What could be better? > Individualism is selfish. Don't tear me apart for that one! Rational self-interest is the only grounded basis for ethics I know of. You seem to be engaging in most of the tearing here, albeit in a rather ill-informed and poorly argued manner. Perhaps I should thank you for making opinions I strongly disagree with look bad. :) - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:26:56 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:26:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E287D80.9010309@mac.com> On 07/20/2011 10:26 AM, Dan wrote: > Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, > corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, > they would all likely cease to exist. Do not confuse legal definitions with functional ones. Business forms that limit liability (except in criminal cases) to the assets of that business are required for many types of enterprise to occur at all. > Two, corporations are usually the biggest advocates of regulation. This confuses buying of favors from illegitimately powerful government with a business form. When the state has so much involvement in the economy there is little choice but to seek to buy such power. When the state can shut down entire businesses it is too tempting to try to shut down one's competitors using state force. The problem is giving the state that power to start with. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jul 21 19:39:55 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:39:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E28808B.1010200@mac.com> On 07/20/2011 03:54 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/20/2011 5:44 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > >> Get on it, then! Other people aren't going to do your work for you. > > Will, I'm pretty sure I've done a great deal more in the last 50 years > toward encouraging humanity's desire to extend our technology beyond > this planet than you have in what I assume is your fairly brief life > so far. Thus far there is no compelling ROI, even across a decade or two, for exploitation of the moon. At least I have not found a compelling case after looking into it for some time. If you have one then let's hear it. He3? Nope, no fusion to use it and He3 is not in easy to mine local concentrations. Other lunar mineral wealth shipped back to earth? Nope, Clementine and other surveys show that minable concentrations (under earth conditions which don't apply on the moon) are not that obvious and the additional cost to mine on the moon and ship back to earth is way uncompetitive. Tourism? If and only if you get enough infrastructure there to support it. Water to volatiles including rocked fuel? Depends on who you ask but the proven water reserves are not that extensive to say the least. The moon is quite challenging due to the long winter night, temperature flux, and the really nasty lunar dust. At the least exploitation will require dropping small nuclear plants in the short term for adequate power across said lunar night. You also need a lot of highly capable autonomous and/or tele-operated bots capable of dealing with the environmental issues. You can't do all the needed work with astronauts without a lot of infrastructure already in place, if then. Doable, and worth it from a long-term point of view but a huge money sink for quite some time. Governments cannot do it as they are all facing serious economic challenges. - s From spike66 at att.net Thu Jul 21 19:50:14 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:50:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E287ABD.7010609@mac.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E287ABD.7010609@mac.com> Message-ID: <024d01cc47df$68ca0190$3a5e04b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins ...Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... On 07/20/2011 08:47 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: >> Because I can guarantee your libertarian paradise will never exist. >> Now, more then ever, a benevolent controlling force is needed to make >> sure things proceed in the right direction. Do you not have the drive >> to become it? Because I will, if you don't. >...Benevolent controlling force? If it is so benevolent why does it need to be forced? What sort of entity is so hyper intelligent it can always make the best decision, better than any local and immediately concerned actors? Can't be an AGI as local AGIs would still have more information and more immediate focused reaction times than more central ones. I think you would have to go to some mystical being to claim this is the best solution without obvious issues (other than mystical claptrap that is). - s Exactly, Samantha, you hit it right on. Perfectly sound advice: go to some mystical being. The benevolent controlling force is a church, synagogue, temple or mosque. They exert a controlling force (in a loose sense) over the lives of the clients, participation is completely voluntary (in most cases), they offer a paradise even if they fail to actually deliver, they at least seem benevolent, to their own clientele. Will asserts a benevolent controlling force is needed. They exist. In fact, you can even be an atheist and still be part of one. The Buddhists don't require belief in a god or gods, nor even the supernatural. Go, join, with my sincere blessing, and I really mean it. I have visited the Buddhists, listened to their pitch and I do very much say they are an admirable bunch, nice, clean, generous, upstanding, honest and good. If you listen to the actual philosophy and don't take their version of prayer too seriously, I doubt it will hurt you. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 20:11:27 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:11:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E287D80.9010309@mac.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E287D80.9010309@mac.com> Message-ID: <1311279087.51780.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The forms firms would take in a libertarian society is open to speculation. I don't disagree that there might be some limit on liability though my guess is this could not be applied to third parties, but only to actual parties to a given contract. ? Regarding your second point, well, yes, no state, then there's no way to take advantage of state power -- save by creating a state and then using it. But the history of regulation is one of large, well-connected firms lobbying for and even writing regulations. The regulations are usually sold to the public as for the good of society, whilst if one does a "cui bono" analysis, it's quite easy to see this is cover for private gain at public expense. For instance, large motel and hotel chains have lobbied against roadside billboard ads putatively because these ads are ugly and degrade the environment. But anyone with a modicum of sense can see that their smaller competitors usually have this as one of the major means of drawing in customers. So this is almost definitely a way of regulating the smaller guy out of business. ? And regulations need not always be of this type -- hurt your competition whilst helping yourself. Sometimes they hurt the competition whilst hurting oneself, though the pain inflicted is often more severe to the competitor. I believe this is the case in the States with WalMarts support for an increase in the federal legal minimum wage. Yes, this will hurt WalMart, but it will also hurt it's smaller competitors more. In this case, WalMart can pretend to really caring about the plight of the workers (though surely not the ones left unemployed by such policies) all the while harming its competition. ? Likewise, it was the large banks in the US, led by J. P. Morgan, who called for creating the current U.S. central bank and all its onerous powers. ? Such cases can be multiplied and don't appear to be piecemeal. The biggest or one of the biggest lobbiers for economic regulation has always been well connected corporations -- the corporate wing of the ruling class, if you will. (Contrast to the political wing of the same. The two are, of course, not clearly separated.) One might look to the work of Gabriel Kolko for more on the tight relationship between business and regulation, particular big businesses and regulation. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Samantha Atkins To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 3:26 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... On 07/20/2011 10:26 AM, Dan wrote: Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, they would all likely cease to exist.Do not confuse legal definitions with functional ones.? Business forms that limit liability (except in criminal cases) to the assets of that business are required for many types of enterprise to occur at all. ? >Two, corporations are usually the biggest advocates of regulation.This confuses buying of favors from illegitimately powerful government with a business form.? When the state has so much involvement in the economy there is little choice but to seek to buy such power.? When the state can shut down entire businesses it is too tempting to try to shut down one's competitors using state force.? The problem is giving the state that power to start with. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 20:25:36 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:25:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bryan Caplan on having more kids In-Reply-To: <1311279848.43101.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311279848.43101.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311279936.68692.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://reason.tv/video/show/selfish-reasons-to-have-more-k Great to start off with that famous Larkin poem. What do folks here think about this? ? Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From glivick at sbcglobal.net Thu Jul 21 20:26:34 2011 From: glivick at sbcglobal.net (G. Livick) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:26:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Stefano, Hold on just one dern minute here! Sending vehicles to the moon is fun science, even if there isn't much to be gained from it beyond the basic research, and the spin-off technologies. Ignoring that we may have more immediate needs for the money spent on these pursuits, such as finding a cure for idiocy, and addressing the emerging epidemic of low IQ in some nations, I, as a scientist and engineer engaged primarily in the field of fun science, would be the last to suggest we don't send ships up there. The objection is limited to sending humans to do a robot's job. No scientist made the decision to do that. In regards to Spain, et al., sending ships out to explore the oceans, visit new lands, meet exciting new people and then kill them, was driven by motives much superior to science alone; namely spices and gold, and other commodities in short supply, such as Negroes. I agree that we may be posed to follow the dinosaurs into extinction, although not out of a surplus of common sense. If that gets started, we may need to build a few rockets and fly ourselves to the moon to live. -- FutureMan (note; I'm actually Gary Livick, but prefer the Nom de Clavier of FutureMan to retain some anonymity. For what purpose anonymity, I don't know, but I beg your forbearance.) On 7/21/2011 3:09 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/7/21 GLivick > > > Humans going to the moon is, and always was, a bad idea > scientifically. It was a political decision to go there. > > > Sure. This is also true for America, by the way. An entirely political > decision. > > There was never any real scientific rationale for Europeans in > crossing the ocean and taking the pain of stealing local natives their > territory. > > It is just a consolation that by now we know better, and are ready to > follow dinosaurs and other extinct populations on the path of common > sense and practicalities. > > -- > 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 Thu Jul 21 21:36:29 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:36:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Dan > In my estimation, the Cold War was a big set back overall for human > progress -- all the wasted resources and the overall fear mindset. (In my > view, too, it helped to shift America more in a religious direction to fight > those "godless commies.") I think we're still recovering from that. > Mmhhh. Fundamentalism, both of the christian and of the muslim flavour, actually exploded after the end of the Cold War. This does not mean to imply that the same was unconditionally a good thing, but WWI was not either, and yet certainly created an enormous push towards change, technological and not. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 21:25:41 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:25:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <1311283541.71481.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Regarding the using-Luna-as-a-refuge (or a way station to a refuge) scenario, one benefit of going there now would be that it would shake all the kinks out of using it as a refuge and also rap up the capability. You don't want to have to figure all this stuff out in the midst of?an emergency. Also, this will insure that more people could actually avail themselves of it -- rather than a tiny group selected by the superpowerful. Of course, this is all a long shot, but, if you're betting that way, why not do it right?? ? Regards, ? Dan From: G. Livick To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 4:26 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon Stefano, Hold on just one dern minute here!?? Sending vehicles to the moon is fun science, even if there isn't much to be gained from it beyond the basic research, and the spin-off technologies.? Ignoring that we may have more immediate needs for the money spent on these pursuits, such as finding a cure for idiocy, and addressing the emerging epidemic of low IQ in some nations, I, as a scientist and engineer engaged primarily in the field of fun science, would be the last to suggest we don't send ships up there.? The objection is limited to sending humans to do a robot's job.? No scientist made the decision to do that. In regards to Spain, et al., sending ships out to explore the oceans, visit new lands, meet exciting new people and then kill them, was driven by motives much superior to science alone; namely spices and gold, and other commodities in short supply, such as Negroes. I agree that we may be posed to follow the dinosaurs into extinction, although not out of a surplus of common sense.? If that gets started, we may need to build a few rockets and fly ourselves to the moon to live. -- FutureMan (note; I'm actually Gary Livick, but prefer the Nom de Clavier of FutureMan to retain some anonymity.? For what purpose anonymity, I don't know, but I beg your forbearance.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 22:17:39 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:17:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Damien Broderick observed: >And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two >generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. Yes, which strikes me as rather a large hint, don't you think? Meat and Space do not mix well. We can probably colonise the entire solar system with routers for a tiny fraction of the cost of a Luna City. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Jul 21 22:31:12 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:31:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] I just want to help (Was: Moooon) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311287472.57027.YahooMailClassic@web114409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Will Steinberg cried plaintively: >All that many of you seem to do is preach to the choir. This is good for >feeling good, but doesn't get anything done in the vein of pushing a >transhumanist agenda. I would be very happy seeing more outreach to the >general community. I know I try to talk to folks, though I don't enough by >far. It's depressing to see how science is viewed by so many people. I >want to change that. Don't you want to change that? Nothing is going to be >different until that happens, and until that happens, everyone on Earth >won't be as happy as possible, and everybody on Earth will die. I want to >change that, too! I love humans! We are the best thing that has happened >to this solar system since sliced bread! > >I just want to help. What can I do to help? http://zerostate.net/ Ben Zaiboc From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 21 22:43:50 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:43:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E28ABA6.20107@satx.rr.com> On 7/21/2011 5:17 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two >> >generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. > Yes, which strikes me as rather a large hint, don't you think? > > Meat and Space do not mix well. I do suspect that this is right. But I grew up reading Heinlein and Clarke, so I still have these atavistic yearnings. High-grade full immersion VR telefactors will probably make it feel as if one is there. (But then again, no-one ever said Luna City *had* to be built for humans. Could be a palace of robotic AIs... once we get some.) Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 22 09:18:10 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:18:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110722091810.GR16178@leitl.org> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 03:17:39PM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Yes, which strikes me as rather a large hint, don't you think? > > Meat and Space do not mix well. > > We can probably colonise the entire solar system with routers for a tiny fraction of the cost of a Luna City. Indeed; and there are already at least one experimental Cisco in LEO. What's needed is a LPS, and enough hardware for a few 10 MBit/s worth to both lunar poles, where the volatiles and 24/7/365 insolation is. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 13:54:31 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:54:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Jul 21, 2011 1:06 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 08:52:19PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> The only force that will get us to the moon is capitalism. > You can make fuel directly and deliver just the fuel. Fuel is only helpful if you have somewhere to go... perhaps the asteroids for mining? More scientific exploration? But yes, creating fuel on the moon may be another good economical reason to go to the moon. > There's no >more sense for canned monkeys in LEO than canned monkeys on >the Moon. I'm personally perfectly OK with this being done by robots (autonomous or remote controlled). But mankind needs some kind of LEO industrial complex IMHO. I don't think the opportunities have begun to be tapped there. >Some industrial processes love UHV, but some work best in water. Yup, Ultra High Vacuum is good for some things, but probably as important industrially is the microgravity that is ubiquitous in LEO. I would bet that many nanotechnologies would work better in microgravity than here on the ground (though I don't know that for sure, and someone here probably knows a LOT more about it than I)... >> it up from earth. He thinks this is commercially realizable in 7 >> years. This is a BOLD and imaginative use for the moon. The talk is >> inspirational, and the moon stuff starts about two thirds of the way >> through. >Talk is cheap. We've had plenty of it. Yes. I think Bill is doing more than talking about this... I really do. His concept of going to the moon with no way back (at least initially) is really quite intriguing. I'd bet you could save a lot of money by not planning a return trip. It certainly gets you committed explorers... or crazy ones. :-) We need crazy people on the moon. Pizarro and most of his men were illiterate... do you suppose we could find enough crazy illiterate people to go to the moon without a way back? ;-) Hernando Cortez, upon landing in Mexico in 1519, burned his ships so that his men would not desert. >Give us cheap access to LEO, and we'll give you the Moon. Give us a reason to go to the moon, and LEO will come... :-) Or, put another way, going to the moon might make LEO economically more viable. I would imagine that you could construct solar panels in LEO mostly using materials available on the moon, no? While government did a decent job at the first generation of space exploration (just as government assisted Columbus), the next stage of development must be exploitation. Who will be the Pizarro of the moon? At least there are no Inca there to be massacred... :-) And, will he be Chinese, Japanese, American or something else? I don't know, but I'm not betting on the French... ;-) -Kelly From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 22 14:02:52 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:02:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311343372.85683.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Actually, no in both cases. Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism both started much earlier and were rapidly expanding during the Cold War. E.g., the Iranian Revolution was in 1979 -- about a decade before the Soviet Empire started to crumble.?And the US government helped to foster it in Afghanistan during the 1980s to undermine the pro-Soviet regime there. ? Christian fundamentalism in the West seems to have had its biggest boost from seeing the Soviets as godless and seeing godlessness as the key feature. E.g., "In God We Trust" was added to US coins and "under God" was added to the US "Pledge" of Allegiance in the 1950s -- at the start of the Cold War. ? It's not as if 1989 or 1991 rolled around and all these people suddenly decided, "Let's adopt the most whacked out ideas of our religion we can and promulgate them now." They were doing this all along and it was already a widespread phenomenon. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 5:36 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon 2011/7/21 Dan In my estimation, the Cold War was a big set back overall for human progress -- all the wasted resources and the overall fear mindset. (In my view, too, it helped to shift America more in a religious direction to fight those "godless commies.")?I think we're still recovering from that. Mmhhh. Fundamentalism, both of the christian and of the muslim flavour, actually exploded after the end of the Cold War. This does not mean to imply that the same was unconditionally a good thing, but WWI was not either, and yet certainly created an enormous push towards change, technological and not. -- Stefano Vaj? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 14:53:22 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:53:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 20 July 2011 12:46, BillK wrote: > Agreed it was designed as a money-making scheme for the leader(s). > The current leader, Miscavige, is said to be worth over 50 million > USD, plus he controls all the funds, businesses and real estate of the > organisation. > That is, he would remain personally worth 50 mil if he decided to quit tomorrow? At least in Europe I doubt whether a church member exists, and certainly I have never met, who has such an independent social and economic status. But the idea was to devise an ever-growing multi-level marketing > scheme with incentives to continually expand. Members get 10% to 15% > commissions on the expensive courses that they sell to people. So they > can get a good living selling courses and incidentally growing the > business. > OTOH, it is my understanding that unless you are some sort of "testimonial" for the church you have to climb the ladder from the bottom, and the bottom means that you have probably spent your most of your own money before in the courses you end up selling, relinquishing in the process your "real world" career... Some individuals may have so found their niche there, but it hardly looks like an organisational success story, as long as this is not taking the org itself anywhere. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Jul 22 14:45:25 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:45:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <004701cc487d$fe686c70$fb394550$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >...I would bet that many nanotechnologies would work better in microgravity than here on the ground (though I don't know that for sure, and someone here probably knows a LOT more about it than I)... Hmmm, not really. Remember the square/cube law of scaling. As you go downscale, the effects of gravity decrease as the cube of the linear dimension, whereas surface area related effects such as electromagnetic adhesion or VanderWaal's for instance, scale as the square. So ants can walk on walls and ceilings (wish I could do that.) If we continue on down to nanoscale, gravity becomes negligible. >...Yes. I think Bill is doing more than talking about this... I really do. His concept of going to the moon with no way back (at least initially) is really quite intriguing. I'd bet you could save a lot of money by not planning a return trip...-Kelly Once you do the weight models, that conclusion is inescapable. I (and others) realized over twenty years ago that any meaningful mission to the moon involving apes would need to be a one-way trip. Otherwise your mission is short, desperate and scary, and you use up far too much of your payload in fuel to get back. That being said, there is a lot of infrastructure that must be built before the first ape arrives, to make that even distantly possible. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 14:59:06 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:59:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities... In-Reply-To: <005401cc46ee$18036c20$480a4460$@att.net> References: <1311024382.29741.YahooMailClassic@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4E24B198.4030501@satx.rr.com> <005401cc46ee$18036c20$480a4460$@att.net> Message-ID: On 20 July 2011 17:02, spike wrote: > Multilevel marketing depends on growth for survival. Eventually all such > schemes hit the wall and must collapse, once the number of new members > drops > below the number of old ones leaving or perishing. Sooner or later they > are > left with an enormously expensive infrastructure and insufficient funds to > support it all. > Indeed. But first of all, organisation and infrastructures are supposed to have a purpose. Already in the phase where their entire effort is mainly devoted to keep themselves going, they become pretty similar to rockets designs which do not deliver any useful payload to orbit, or corporations who manage to support their costs and pay salaries, but have no prospective of ever paying a dividend to shareholders. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 15:19:12 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:19:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 G. Livick > Hold on just one dern minute here! Sending vehicles to the moon is fun > science, even if there isn't much to be gained from it beyond the basic > research, and the spin-off technologies. Ignoring that we may have more > immediate needs for the money spent on these pursuits, such as finding a > cure for idiocy, and addressing the emerging epidemic of low IQ in some > nations, I, as a scientist and engineer engaged primarily in the field of > fun science, would be the last to suggest we don't send ships up there. The > objection is limited to sending humans to do a robot's job. No scientist > made the decision to do that. > The issue is of course that of creating permanent habitats, not that of collecting samples with gloved, rather than robotic, hands - even though there may be political even in that which may repay the related costs (how much are worth American ICBMs for the dollar not to have plunged yet?). Sure, we can do it in Antarctica or at the bottom of the oceans. But Magellan went for the tour of the world when there was still plenty of uncolonised, unexploited land in continental Europe. At the end of the day, such initiatives made for a five century-long European egemony even though they did not necessarily made sense at the time from a business perspective. And with regard to America, last time I checked negroes were *exported* there, not imported from there. ;-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 15:22:00 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:22:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E28ABA6.20107@satx.rr.com> References: <1311286659.62580.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4E28ABA6.20107@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 22 July 2011 00:43, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 7/21/2011 5:17 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two >>> >generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. >>> Sigh. >>> >> > Yes, which strikes me as rather a large hint, don't you think? >> >> Meat and Space do not mix well. >> > > I do suspect that this is right. But I grew up reading Heinlein and Clarke, > so I still have these atavistic yearnings. High-grade full immersion VR > telefactors will probably make it feel as if one is there. > ... and the options certainly remains of modifying meat every time this is cheaper and more practical than measures aimed at creating, terraforming or protecting new habitats. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 22 15:32:44 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:32:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ddraig wrote in "Re: Moooon": >How many SF authors are here, anyways? You, Charlie Stross (hey >Charlie, I read one of your books, I quite liked it), anyone else? Do >you find it frustrating that you can imagine and write about a clear >path of development, but real world implementation issues bog >everything down? I don't know who's on extropy-chat currently, but I'd list the following as members of the extropian tribe who have sold sf, on the basis of self-description or participation in transhumanist organizations or mailing lists. Greg Bear / Gregory Benford / David Brin Damien Broderick / Cory Doctorow / David Lubkin Charles Platt / Marc Stiegler / Charles Stross Vernor Vinge Who should I hang my head in shame for forgetting? There are other names that come to mind, of people we like, who are clearly familiar with what we're about, but I think would be a stretch to include. (Such as Neal Stephenson.) And no including a long-dead writer, however tempting it might be to claim Olaf Stapleton or Doc Smith. -- David. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 22 15:44:24 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:44:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311341972.1091.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311349464.11741.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Regardless of when the Soviet Union's decline started -- and there's good reason to believe you're right here or even that the decline might have started much earlier still* -- the Cold War was not over back then and was still on well after the Moon Race was over, no? (I would stick fairly close to the conventinoal view of Cold War starting in the late 1940s or at least by 1950 with the Korean War and ending in the 1980s. Of course, I can see reasonable disagreements on this dating, but I would see setting the date for its beginning too much earlier as questionable.) ? Regards, ? Dan ? * Some even argue that the N.E.P. was a tacit admission that the Soviet system couldn't work and the decades following it were just playing out of an inevitable decline ending in the final collapse. I believe Martin Malia held something like this view. See his _The Soviet Tragedy_. From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moooon On 22 July 2011 15:39, Dan wrote: Actually, no in both cases. Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism both started much earlier and were rapidly expanding during the Cold War. E.g., the Iranian Revolution was in 1979 -- about a decade before the Soviet Empire started to crumble.?And the US government helped to foster it in Afghanistan during the 1980s to undermine the pro-Soviet regime there. I think it is essentially and issue of dating. In my view, URSS started its decline already in the Krusciov era, even though it managed to exploit some of its past momentum and to keep up the show of its own "manifest destiny" until sometimes in the early seventies. BTW, the loss itself of the moon race played a symbolic and psychological part in all that. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 15:50:35 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:50:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311257872.67880.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311257872.67880.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Dan > If you're going to define "criminal" with reference only to what the state > dictates is criminal, then none of this really matters. Calling, e.g., > private individuals or even other non-state groups criminal via this method > ends up only telling us the state has labeled them so -- and there's no > reason to accept this as more than merely an expression of the preferences > of the state or of the ruling class. > Yes. States happen to have established a monopoly on legislation, at least in the west, so if a crime is what is prohibited and punished not by morals or aesthetics, but by the law, the positive law is essentially what has been legally enacted in the State concerned. This is an expression of the preference of the ruling class (or, ideally, of the specific Volksgeist and Zeitgeist concerned)? What else is new? Sure, you can try and take over the state concerned and change the law. If the state or if all states outlawed life extension and any research > having to deal with Extropianism or transhumanism, would any of you say, > "Well, we're criminals now -- just like Al Capone or Ted Bundy."? > I live in a country where reproductive human cloning is *already* a crime, and land you a sentence similar to that provided for manslaughter. I devote a significant part of my energies to changing and/or fighting such laws, but if I am operating a cloning clinic, I am technically into professional crime, exactly as a drug cartel lord. I may not care and take my chances, one may have very good reasons to infringe the law in many circumstances after all, but I am under no delusion that victimless crimes have already been abolished in my country. > This is via some form of law that transcends and is even presumed by > state law. I think the natural law approach does this and is a means to > judge even the actions of states. > Yes, this is a judeo-christian tenet: the only law is the divine law, and human legislators are allowed at best to notarise and write down its universal and eternal content. I happen to have written a book on the subject, *Indagine sui diritti dell'uomo. Genealogia di una morale* which is available online at http://www.dirittidelluomo.org. Personally, I am instead on the side of self-determination, diversity and change. And also maintain that those are the best bets for the future of transhumanism. Lest somebody comes up with the natural law forbidding abortion, biotechnologies, etc. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 15:59:26 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:59:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311258773.13256.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <1311258773.13256.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Dan > So, what's wrong with the state or "theophilic militiae" forcing you > against yours? Simply that you disagree with what they see as your good! > This is not such a small feat, and perfectly justifies my fighting your "theophilic militiae". "Wrong", especially for a relativist as I am, implies a reference framework. I fight the trashumanist fight because... I am a transhumanist, and because I and many other non-demented people at the end of peaceful discussions find transhumanist arguments more compelling and more resonating with their tastes and values that those of "theophilic militiae", but it is perfectly clear to me that what I represent is pure evil to eyes of the latter. I need not feel "on the side of the angels" to be what I am. Let us leave all that to the "theophilic militiae" of this world. ;-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 22 18:07:08 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:07:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <004701cc487d$fe686c70$fb394550$@att.net> References: <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <20110721070543.GA16178@leitl.org> <004701cc487d$fe686c70$fb394550$@att.net> Message-ID: <201107221808.p6MI81JE006422@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Spike wrote: >Once you do the weight models, that conclusion is inescapable. I (and >others) realized over twenty years ago that any meaningful mission to the >moon involving apes would need to be a one-way trip. Otherwise your mission >is short, desperate and scary, and you use up far too much of your payload >in fuel to get back. That being said, there is a lot of infrastructure that >must be built before the first ape arrives, to make that even distantly >possible. Manned *missions* to the Moon are (mostly) a waste of time, and manned travel to the Moon and back in a vehicle launched from Earth is goofy. Likewise for Mars. But men to the Moon or Mars and back through an appropriate infrastructure of [ Earth surface <=> Earth orbit <=> remote orbit <=> remote surface ] reusable transport is reasonable. I'd like to see two (at least) parallel systems -- one for rugged cargo, that can be subjected to harsh environments, that can take months or years to get where it's going, and whose loss is more acceptable, and one for payloads that are time-sensitive, fragile, or high value. Much in the way we have parallel systems of planes and ships here. I *would* sign up for a one-way trip to the Moon or Mars, but the one that's most important to me is a one-way to an asteroid, where your return is achieved by propelling the asteroid itself. -- David. From anders at aleph.se Fri Jul 22 18:04:23 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:04:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> On 2011-07-22 17:32, David Lubkin wrote: > I don't know who's on extropy-chat currently, but I'd list the > following as members of the extropian tribe who have sold > sf, on the basis of self-description or participation in > transhumanist organizations or mailing lists. Of course, whether they self-identify as being of the extropian tribe (do we have cool swirly arrow tattoos?) is another matter. I think Charles Stross takes a certain pride in being heretic about or poke fun at various transhumanist ideas and obsessions. I wonder if roleplaying games count? In that case I suspect a few writers for Gurps Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase might be in. > And no including a long-dead writer, however tempting it > might be to claim Olaf Stapleton or Doc Smith. > Stapledon is interesting since he was clearly inspired by Haldane's Daedalus essay, which was also the core point of the UK proto-transhumanism of the 20's and 30's. They were clearly their own "brand" of thinking - not extropian, but maybe Haldanian. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 20:12:08 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:12:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/21 Stefano Vaj : > 2011/7/20 Dan >> And the biggest criminal of all, in any region, tends to be the state. > > This sounds well rhetorically, but it is actually an oxymoron, because > whenever a State exists, "crime" is defined as the breach of (a law which is > part of a subset of) its rules. > > Then, individual officers can breach them, but if the "State" does, it has > simply changed the rules actually in force or introduced a new exception > thereto. You are so used to the state acting in a criminal fashion, that you justify its criminality to justify your position. That is a legal definition, and laws are a product of the state. So almost by definition, to determine whether or not a state is, in and of itself, a criminal one has to go beyond law, and appeal to a moral foundations that law is built upon. Socrates made good arguments that what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. So morality exists independent of law. Other philosophers have called it "natural law". Call it what you will, morality is separate from law. So the question basically boils down to whether the state is moral, or whether the state engages in immoral acts. And the state does not get to define morality. I think it is fairly non-controversial to say that some states, at some times have engaged in outrageous immoral acts. Us libertarians look at the state the same way that everyone looks at other people, and at corporations and other groups. We postulate that if the state does something that if done by an individual or other group would be immoral, then it is an immoral act when done by the state as well. Libertarian thought is a very big tent, so this doesn't mean that all libertarians are against, say, the death penalty in some cases because there are balancing factors. But when the state steals with force a percentage of your income, and that of corporations as well, poses a state imposed fee simply to own land, tells me what I can an cannot do with my own body and so forth, that seems immoral to us, because we use the same yard stick to measure people, corporations AND the state. Other classes of political thought, on the other hand, seem to believe that the state is somehow above morality. Or rather, that it can define it's own morality through legislation. I flatly deny that a state can legislate morality for itself or its citizens. If a state conscripts young people into it's army and engages in an unjust war, and those young people die, then the state is morally responsible for their death. If the war is a just war, a necessary war, and the soldiers are volunteers, then the state's responsibility as an immoral actor is minimized. Why is this important to the future? Because what kind of future we will have as transhumanists may be very much affected by rules laid down by the state. And we have an interest in having those rules be as friendly towards transhumanism as is possible. We don't want to lose our rights as individuals simply because our physical form changes over time. Only states can pass laws that will inhibit our future freedom to reach our individual full potential! Washington! Stay out of my DNA! -Kelly From anders at aleph.se Fri Jul 22 19:59:08 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:59:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] DNA neural network Message-ID: <4E29D68C.6010809@aleph.se> Here is a cute trick: making neural networks out of DNA. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/nature10262.html The nice thing is that they actually get analogue activation, and can even run a 4-neuron Hopfield model. Not directly useful (especially since the network cannot update its weights and learn), but it could be used to plug in pattern recognition or classification into synthetic biology constructs. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 20:58:05 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:58:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <1311349464.11741.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <1311265928.8245.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311341972.1091.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311349464.11741.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/22 Dan > * Some even argue that the N.E.P. was a tacit admission that the Soviet > system couldn't work and the decades following it were just playing out of > an inevitable decline ending in the final collapse. > Possibly. Same as the New Deal for the US, announcing the upcoming default before the end of Obama's administration? Seriously, URSS probably had a fighting chance until around 1970. Then, it actually went on expanding its influence in the world, but this was just the momentum of a slowing-down revolution. Already in the Brezvev era it was more into doing business with the US than competing for world domination any more. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 21:11:42 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:11:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 22 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Call it what you will, morality is separate from law. > "Crime" is a legal, not a moral, concept. In any society, era and legal system, there are behaviours which are widely considered as illegal, yet are not punished as crimes. Conversely, there are crimes which are not considered as especially immoral, unless perhaps because they breach the law. Moreover, morals are equally plural, and variable with time and cultures. > Why is this important to the future? Because what kind of future we > will have as transhumanists may be very much affected by rules laid > down by the state. And we have an interest in having those rules be as > friendly towards transhumanism as is possible. We don't want to lose > our rights as individuals simply because our physical form changes > over time. Only states can pass laws that will inhibit our future > freedom to reach our individual full potential! > This is a crucial point, not to mention the most important for the topic of this list. Now, I contend that defending the freedom of societies to give themselves the rules they like best (as in "self-determination" and in "popular sovereignty" and in "diversity"), rather than the idea that some kind of a "natural" law would exist that, as an avatar of the Will of God under a thin secular veneer, should simply be obeyed by everybody, is much better bet. Both in order to avoid puttin all eggs in one nest, as we say in Italy, *and* because Darwinian competition between different civilisational models, as opposed to globalisation, keeps *all* of them as little neoluddite and primitivist and conservative as possible, for obvious reasons. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 22 21:15:22 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:15:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> On 7/22/2011 3:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Socrates made good arguments that > what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from > an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. Ah, sturdy foundations of outrage such as "Those stinking disgusting ho-mo-sex-uals make me *puke*! Get the pitch and pitchfork, Mabel!" Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 21:15:41 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:15:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 22 July 2011 23:11, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 22 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Call it what you will, morality is separate from law. >> > > "Crime" is a legal, not a moral, concept. In any society, era and legal > system, there are behaviours which are widely considered as illegal, yet are > not punished as crimes. > Oops. Read "considered as immoral". -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 21:39:56 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:39:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. Freeman Dyson explained why in 1979. I talked him (and the publishers) into letting the L5 News print a chapter from _Disturbing the Universe._ You can read it here: http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5news/L5news7908.pdf The bottom line is that transport into space is 10,000 times too expensive for space to be colonized. That's largely due to the small payload fraction, which in turn is a direct consequence of an exhaust velocity which is half the delta V needed to reach earth orbit. Chemical fuels just won't do it. But in recent years other ways have opened up, relatively low cost, high efficiency, solid state laser diodes and low cost microwave generators. It's not entirely clear how to best exploit such beamed energy sources, but they both offer exhaust velocity up in the same range as the 9 km/s needed to get into orbit. It's still too expensive for self funded space colonies, but if this works out, it will only be 2 orders of magnitude too expensive rather than 4. Keith From sjatkins at mac.com Fri Jul 22 22:30:20 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:30:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> References: <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <4E29F9FC.9070002@mac.com> On 07/21/2011 01:26 PM, G. Livick wrote: > Stefano, > > Hold on just one dern minute here! Sending vehicles to the moon is > fun science, even if there isn't much to be gained from it beyond the > basic research, and the spin-off technologies. I wouldn't say that. It is just that some very expensive pump priming is needed before it starts paying off and we are missing some of the elements needed (principally in the robotics area). > Ignoring that we may have more immediate needs for the money spent on > these pursuits, such as finding a cure for idiocy, So, you want to replace the human race. :) > and addressing the emerging epidemic of low IQ in some nations, Huh? Observe the bell curve. Anything below 120 is pretty much not enough to follow most technology beyond pushing buttons today. > I, as a scientist and engineer engaged primarily in the field of fun > science, would be the last to suggest we don't send ships up there. > The objection is limited to sending humans to do a robot's job. No > scientist made the decision to do that. Humans are the most flexible on the spot generally intelligence sensing/manipulation elements we have right now. On the moon you could conceivably tele-operate general robots with high manipulation ability and task-specific bots. But you could not take this approach if you wanted to exploited NEAs in situ (though you could send out robot gravity tugs to drag them to a more convenient location). > > In regards to Spain, et al., sending ships out to explore the oceans, > visit new lands, meet exciting new people and then kill them, was > driven by motives much superior to science alone; namely spices and > gold, and other commodities in short supply, such as Negroes. More importantly almost all infrastructure needed to support human life was guaranteed to exist at the the other end. > > I agree that we may be posed to follow the dinosaurs into extinction, > although not out of a surplus of common sense. If that gets started, > we may need to build a few rockets and fly ourselves to the moon to live. If we wait until then it will be far too late. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 23:03:49 2011 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:03:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: This is the critical issue. It is not a matter of economy or politics (unless understood as general human affairs). It is a question of pushing the limits of human technology, survival capability, imagination, sense of adventure. We could have all stayed in Africa or for that stayed on trees instead of venturing in the Savannah, developing bipedal walking and so on. Going to the moon would be such a evolutionary stressors that would push us to come up with different survival strategies and drive innovation not just in technology but in other human endeavors as art. Giovanni 2011/7/22 Stefano Vaj > 2011/7/21 G. Livick > > Hold on just one dern minute here! Sending vehicles to the moon is fun >> science, even if there isn't much to be gained from it beyond the basic >> research, and the spin-off technologies. Ignoring that we may have more >> immediate needs for the money spent on these pursuits, such as finding a >> cure for idiocy, and addressing the emerging epidemic of low IQ in some >> nations, I, as a scientist and engineer engaged primarily in the field of >> fun science, would be the last to suggest we don't send ships up there. The >> objection is limited to sending humans to do a robot's job. No scientist >> made the decision to do that. >> > > The issue is of course that of creating permanent habitats, not that of > collecting samples with gloved, rather than robotic, hands - even though > there may be political even in that which may repay the related costs (how > much are worth American ICBMs for the dollar not to have plunged yet?). > > Sure, we can do it in Antarctica or at the bottom of the oceans. But > Magellan went for the tour of the world when there was still plenty of > uncolonised, unexploited land in continental Europe. At the end of the day, > such initiatives made for a five century-long European egemony even though > they did not necessarily made sense at the time from a business perspective. > > And with regard to America, last time I checked negroes were *exported* > there, not imported from there. ;-) > > -- > 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 gsantostasi at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 23:26:23 2011 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:26:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: If one does this cost analysis to Columbus or Magellan's missions what would obtain? Were economical missions in the short range? Giovanni On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Damien Broderick > wrote: > > > And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two > > generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. > > Freeman Dyson explained why in 1979. I talked him (and the > publishers) into letting the L5 News print a chapter from _Disturbing > the Universe._ You can read it here: > > http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5news/L5news7908.pdf > > The bottom line is that transport into space is 10,000 times too > expensive for space to be colonized. > > That's largely due to the small payload fraction, which in turn is a > direct consequence of an exhaust velocity which is half the delta V > needed to reach earth orbit. > > Chemical fuels just won't do it. > > But in recent years other ways have opened up, relatively low cost, > high efficiency, solid state laser diodes and low cost microwave > generators. It's not entirely clear how to best exploit such beamed > energy sources, but they both offer exhaust velocity up in the same > range as the 9 km/s needed to get into orbit. > > It's still too expensive for self funded space colonies, but if this > works out, it will only be 2 orders of magnitude too expensive rather > than 4. > > 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 possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Jul 22 23:59:28 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:59:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Keith, I would think the answer is to let technology mature to the point where we can built an effective space elevator, circa 2030 or 2040. And then the price of going into space plunges downward to I believe around $100 a pound! Our competition with China will get us there... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 00:57:39 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:57:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/22 Stefano Vaj : > On 22 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> Call it what you will, morality is separate from law. > > "Crime" is a legal, not a moral, concept. In any society, era and legal > system, there are behaviours which are widely considered as illegal, yet are > not punished as crimes. Conversely, there are crimes which are not > considered as especially immoral, unless perhaps because they breach the > law. OK. Then let's not use the word "crime" to describe governments raping and pillaging their citizens and the citizens of the nation next door. Let's use a different word. How about immoral. Can you accept that a government can be immoral? And that governments often are? Or do you beleive that governments are amoral? > Moreover, morals are equally plural, and variable with time and cultures. To some extent. There are some morals that have transcended time without much change. The prohibition against murder, rape, stealing... these are fairly constant. The suggestion that we should treat others the way we would like to be treated is fairly widespread. There are probably others that fit into this category. Probably the most variable morals are those attached to sexual practices. Those have been all over the map in different cultures. Whether morals applied only to the tribe, to a local community, to a nation or the entire world, that has changed over time, getting wider with the global >> Why is this important to the future? Because what kind of future we >> will have as transhumanists may be very much affected by rules laid >> down by the state. And we have an interest in having those rules be as >> friendly towards transhumanism as is possible. We don't want to lose >> our rights as individuals simply because our physical form changes >> over time. Only states can pass laws that will inhibit our future >> freedom to reach our individual full potential! > > This is a crucial point, not to mention the most important for the topic of > this list. Now, I contend that defending the freedom of societies to give > themselves the rules they like best (as in "self-determination" and in > "popular sovereignty" and in "diversity"), rather than the idea that some > kind of a "natural" law would exist that, as an avatar of the Will of God > under a thin secular veneer, should simply be obeyed by everybody, is much > better bet. Both in order to avoid puttin all eggs in one nest, as we say in > Italy, *and* because Darwinian competition between different civilisational > models, as opposed to globalisation, keeps *all* of them as little > neoluddite and primitivist and conservative as possible, for obvious > reasons. This is what confuses me. You want to preserve these freedoms, and at the same time give wide license to the welfare state to take from your pocket and put into mine. Don't you see that the one form of tyranny leads towards (not inevitably... perhaps) the other form of tyranny? I choose to fight against ALL forms of tyranny, lest those in power get a taste for absolute power... and go for even more. Join me in the fight against ALL kinds of tyranny, not just the kind you find objectionable. First they came after the Jews, and I said "I am not a Jew". Then they came after tho homosexuals, and I said "I am not a homosexual". Then they came after the Catholics, and I said "I am not a Catholic". Then they came after everyone... It's the same concept Stefano! You can't give latitude to tyranny against the rich in support of a welfare state, and assume they'll never get to you. If we eat the rich, the poor will eventually starve. Give freedom a chance. -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 23 01:01:25 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:01:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2A1D65.9060107@mac.com> On 07/22/2011 01:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/7/21 Stefano Vaj: >> 2011/7/20 Dan >>> And the biggest criminal of all, in any region, tends to be the state. >> This sounds well rhetorically, but it is actually an oxymoron, because >> whenever a State exists, "crime" is defined as the breach of (a law which is >> part of a subset of) its rules. >> >> Then, individual officers can breach them, but if the "State" does, it has >> simply changed the rules actually in force or introduced a new exception >> thereto. The above presumes that only the State gets to say what is and is not legitimate behavior and that it can arbitrarily decree what that is and that no one can argue against it meaningfully. In short it presumes that ethics is utterly subjective and arbitrary. > You are so used to the state acting in a criminal fashion, that you > justify its criminality to justify your position. > > That is a legal definition, and laws are a product of the state. So > almost by definition, to determine whether or not a state is, in and > of itself, a criminal one has to go beyond law, and appeal to a moral > foundations that law is built upon. Legitimate laws are a codification of ethical principles. Not whatever state functionaries decide for whatever reason to claim are laws. > Socrates made good arguments that > what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from > an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. So morality exists > independent of law. Other philosophers have called it "natural law". > Call it what you will, morality is separate from law. Yes. Ethics is separate from law. > So the question basically boils down to whether the state is moral, or > whether the state engages in immoral acts. And the state does not get > to define morality. I think it is fairly non-controversial to say that > some states, at some times have engaged in outrageous immoral acts. > Yes. Else there is no basis for condemning, for instance, the Holocaust. If ethics is totally subjective and what is right is whatever the state says is right then no state can do any wrong. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 23 01:06:21 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:06:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> On 07/22/2011 02:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> And here we are on the 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing. Two >> generations later, just about. No Luna City. Not even a Luna Hovel. Sigh. > Freeman Dyson explained why in 1979. I talked him (and the > publishers) into letting the L5 News print a chapter from _Disturbing > the Universe._ You can read it here: > > http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5news/L5news7908.pdf > > The bottom line is that transport into space is 10,000 times too > expensive for space to be colonized. > > That's largely due to the small payload fraction, which in turn is a > direct consequence of an exhaust velocity which is half the delta V > needed to reach earth orbit. > > Chemical fuels just won't do it. > So why not bring up Orion and its relative clean variants for putting large payloads in GEO or on the moon? At the very least space tugs with fission power plants and space platforms with reasonable sized fission plant and fission plants on the moon seem obvious. > But in recent years other ways have opened up, relatively low cost, > high efficiency, solid state laser diodes and low cost microwave > generators. It's not entirely clear how to best exploit such beamed > energy sources, but they both offer exhaust velocity up in the same > range as the 9 km/s needed to get into orbit. > These can't do the trick of lifting from LEO to GEO or into lunar insertion efficiently today. > It's still too expensive for self funded space colonies, but if this > works out, it will only be 2 orders of magnitude too expensive rather > than 4. Go with space nukes and you can conceivably do this today. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Jul 23 01:08:51 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:08:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E2A1F23.4030305@mac.com> On 07/22/2011 04:59 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Keith, I would think the answer is to let technology mature to the > point where we can built an effective space elevator, circa 2030 or > 2040. And then the price of going into space plunges downward to I > believe around $100 a pound! Last I looked we are 2 (or was it 3) orders of magnitude to slow on elevator climber technology and more than 4 orders of magnitude off in cable material strength even in the smallest possible sample size that could be tested. So I very much doubt we will see space elevators any time soon. - samantha From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 23 02:27:31 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:27:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201107230227.p6N2RfZf005764@andromeda.ziaspace.com> John Grigg wrote: >Keith, I would think the answer is to let technology mature to the >point where we can built an effective space elevator, circa 2030 or >2040. And then the price of going into space plunges downward to I >believe around $100 a pound! I would be very dubious about a space elevator on this planet. There are too many loons who'd want to destroy it, and too much uncertainty about what would happen if they tried. -- David. From ddraig at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 04:20:17 2011 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:20:17 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 01:32, David Lubkin wrote: > ddraig wrote in "Re: Moooon": > >> How many SF authors are here, anyways? ? You, Charlie Stross ?(hey >> Charlie, I read one of your books, I quite liked it), anyone else? ?Do >> you find it frustrating that you can imagine and write about a clear >> path of development, but real world implementation issues bog >> everything down? > > I don't know who's on extropy-chat currently, but I'd list the > following as members of the extropian tribe who have sold > sf, on the basis of self-description or participation in > transhumanist organizations or mailing lists. I was actually referring to "people who see the stuff we are writing here today" but that's an interesting list. :-) Dwayne -- ?? ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat ?? ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... ? http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness,? our enemy is dreamless sleep From atymes at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 05:30:00 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:30:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27A103.5060708@sbcglobal.net> <00bd01cc475c$8afd4840$a0f7d8c0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/20 Will Steinberg : > I just want to help. ?What can I do to help? For now, help write credible business plans, that can attract money so people can start exploiting space. I've got one, if you want to contact me offlist, and you're any good at writing business plans. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Jul 23 06:20:07 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:20:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] solar power tower Message-ID: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> More Aussie smartness :) (Unless some big bad wolf comes by, of course, and blows the thing down the moment everyone depends on it.) ........................................................................ Twice the Height of the Empire State - EnviroMission Plans Massive Solar Tower for Arizona LOZ BLAIN - GizMag Click through to look at the pictures and view the videinterview with EnviroMission CEO Roger Davey. An ambitious solar energy project on a massive scale is about to get underway in the Arizona desert. EnviroMission is undergoing land acquisition and site-specific engineering to build its first full-scale solar tower - and when we say full-scale, we mean it! The mammoth 800-plus meter (2625 ft) tall tower will instantly become one of the world's tallest buildings. Its 200-megawatt power generation capacity will reliably feed the grid with enough power for 150,000 US homes, and once it's built, it can be expected to more or less sit there producing clean, renewable power with virtually no maintenance until it's more than 80 years old. In the video after the jump, EnviroMission CEO Roger Davey explains the solar tower technology, the Arizona project and why he couldn't get it built at home in Australia. EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 View all How Solar Towers Work Enviromission's solar tower is a simple idea taken to gigantic proportions. The sun beats down on a large covered greenhouse area at the bottom, warming the air underneath it. Hot air wants to rise, so there's a central point for it to rush towards and escape; the tower in the middle. And there's a bunch of turbines at the base of the tower that generate electricity from that natural updraft. It's hard to envisage that sort of system working effectively until you tweak the temperature variables and scale the whole thing up. Put this tower in a hot desert area, where the daytime surface temperature sits at around 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), and add in the greenhouse effect and you've got a temperature under your collector somewhere around 80-90 degrees (176-194 F). Scale your collector greenhouse out to a several hundred-meter radius around the tower, and you're generating a substantial volume of hot air. Then, raise that tower up so that it's hundreds of meters in the air - because for every hundred metres you go up from the surface, the ambient temperature drops by about 1 degree. The greater the temperature differential, the harder the tower sucks up that hot air at the bottom - and the more energy you can generate through the turbines. The advantages of this kind of power source are clear: -- Because it works on temperature differential, not absolute temperature, it works in any weather; -- Because the heat of the day warms the ground up so much, it continues working at night; -- Because you want large tracts of hot, dry land for best results, you can build it on more or less useless land in the desert; -- It requires virtually no maintenance - apart from a bit of turbine servicing now and then, the tower "just works" once it's going, and lasts as long as its structure stays standing; -- It uses no 'feed stock' - no coal, no uranium, nothing but air and sunlight; -- It emits absolutely no pollution - the only emission is warm air at the top of the tower. In fact, because you're creating a greenhouse underneath, it actually turns out to be remarkably good for growing vegetation under there. The Arizona Project While this is not the first solar tower that has been built (a small-scale test rig in Spain proved the technology more than a decade ago) EnviroMission has chosen to build its first full-scale power plant in the deserts of Arizona, USA. The Arizona tower will be a staggering 800 metres or so tall - just 30 meters shorter than the colossal Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest man-made structure. To put that in context - it will stand more than double the height of the Empire State building in New York City, and it'll be as much as 130 meters in diameter at the top. Truly a gigantic structure. Currently undergoing site-specific engineering and land acquisition, EnviroMission estimates the tower will cost around US$750 million to build. It will generate a peak of 200 megawatts, and run at an efficiency of around 60% - vastly more efficient and reliable than other renewable energy sources. The output has already been pre-sold - the Southern California Public Power Authority recently signed a 30-year power purchase agreement with EnviroMission that will effectively allow the tower to provide enough energy for an estimated 150,000 US homes. Financial modelling projects that the tower will pay off its purchase price in just 11 years - and the engineering team are shooting for a structure that will stand for 80 years or more. Considering that a large city like Los Angeles requires total power in the region of 7,200 megawatts, you'd have to build a few dozen solar towers up to the same size as the Arizona project if you wanted to completely replace the existing, primarily coal-based energy supply for that city's 3.7 million-odd residents. So it's not an instant solution - but then, its short projected payback period and virtually zero operating costs make it a very sound economic proposition that competes favorably against other renewable sources. Under the terms of the pre-purchase agreement, the Arizona tower is due to begin delivering power at the start of 2015. From max at maxmore.com Sat Jul 23 07:45:52 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:45:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] solar power tower In-Reply-To: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> References: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Where is this solar tower sited? I didn't see mention of that. If it's not far from Phoenix/Scottsdale, I'd be curious to visit when (if) it's under construction. I haven't been a big fan of solar, although the technology and economics are gradually becoming more favorable. If there's any place that it's feasible, Arizona is the place. We had around 108 degrees today which -- unlike the freak temps elsewhere in the USA currently -- is quite normal here. Covering part of Alcor's roof with solar cells might be worthwhile. We don't need electricity for patient storage purposes, of course, but it could help with reducing air conditioning bills. We will have to see what the payback period is, at current prices. --Max On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:20 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > More Aussie smartness :) > > (Unless some big bad wolf comes by, of course, and blows the thing down the > moment everyone depends on it.) > ..............................**..............................** > ............ > **renewable/19287/ > > > > Twice the Height of the Empire State - EnviroMission Plans Massive Solar > Tower for Arizona > LOZ BLAIN - GizMag > > Click through to look at the pictures and view the videinterview with > EnviroMission CEO Roger Davey. > > An ambitious solar energy project on a massive scale is about to get > underway in the Arizona desert. EnviroMission is undergoing land acquisition > and site-specific engineering to build its first full-scale solar tower - > and when we say full-scale, we mean it! The mammoth 800-plus meter (2625 ft) > tall tower will instantly become one of the world's tallest buildings. Its > 200-megawatt power generation capacity will reliably feed the grid with > enough power for 150,000 US homes, and once it's built, it can be expected > to more or less sit there producing clean, renewable power with virtually no > maintenance until it's more than 80 years old. In the video after the jump, > EnviroMission CEO Roger Davey explains the solar tower technology, the > Arizona project and why he couldn't get it built at home in Australia. > > EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 > EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 > EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 > EnviroMission's solar tower: coming to Arizona in 2015 > View all > > How Solar Towers Work > > Enviromission's solar tower is a simple idea taken to gigantic proportions. > The sun beats down on a large covered greenhouse area at the bottom, warming > the air underneath it. Hot air wants to rise, so there's a central point for > it to rush towards and escape; the tower in the middle. And there's a bunch > of turbines at the base of the tower that generate electricity from that > natural updraft. > > It's hard to envisage that sort of system working effectively until you > tweak the temperature variables and scale the whole thing up. Put this tower > in a hot desert area, where the daytime surface temperature sits at around > 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), and add in the greenhouse effect and you've got > a temperature under your collector somewhere around 80-90 degrees (176-194 > F). Scale your collector greenhouse out to a several hundred-meter radius > around the tower, and you're generating a substantial volume of hot air. > > Then, raise that tower up so that it's hundreds of meters in the air - > because for every hundred metres you go up from the surface, the ambient > temperature drops by about 1 degree. The greater the temperature > differential, the harder the tower sucks up that hot air at the bottom - and > the more energy you can generate through the turbines. > > The advantages of this kind of power source are clear: > -- Because it works on temperature differential, not absolute temperature, > it works in any weather; > -- Because the heat of the day warms the ground up so much, it continues > working at night; > -- Because you want large tracts of hot, dry land for best results, you can > build it on more or less useless land in the desert; > -- It requires virtually no maintenance - apart from a bit of turbine > servicing now and then, the tower "just works" once it's going, and lasts as > long as its structure stays standing; > -- It uses no 'feed stock' - no coal, no uranium, nothing but air and > sunlight; > -- It emits absolutely no pollution - the only emission is warm air at the > top of the tower. In fact, because you're creating a greenhouse underneath, > it actually turns out to be remarkably good for growing vegetation under > there. > > The Arizona Project > > While this is not the first solar tower that has been built (a small-scale > test rig in Spain proved the technology more than a decade ago) > EnviroMission has chosen to build its first full-scale power plant in the > deserts of Arizona, USA. > > The Arizona tower will be a staggering 800 metres or so tall - just 30 > meters shorter than the colossal Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest > man-made structure. To put that in context - it will stand more than double > the height of the Empire State building in New York City, and it'll be as > much as 130 meters in diameter at the top. Truly a gigantic structure. > > Currently undergoing site-specific engineering and land acquisition, > EnviroMission estimates the tower will cost around US$750 million to build. > It will generate a peak of 200 megawatts, and run at an efficiency of around > 60% - vastly more efficient and reliable than other renewable energy > sources. > > The output has already been pre-sold - the Southern California Public Power > Authority recently signed a 30-year power purchase agreement with > EnviroMission that will effectively allow the tower to provide enough energy > for an estimated 150,000 US homes. Financial modelling projects that the > tower will pay off its purchase price in just 11 years - and the engineering > team are shooting for a structure that will stand for 80 years or more. > > Considering that a large city like Los Angeles requires total power in the > region of 7,200 megawatts, you'd have to build a few dozen solar towers up > to the same size as the Arizona project if you wanted to completely replace > the existing, primarily coal-based energy supply for that city's 3.7 > million-odd residents. So it's not an instant solution - but then, its short > projected payback period and virtually zero operating costs make it a very > sound economic proposition that competes favorably against other renewable > sources. > > Under the terms of the pre-purchase agreement, the Arizona tower is due to > begin delivering power at the start of 2015. > > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 23 08:48:25 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 10:48:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] solar power tower In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110723084825.GH16178@leitl.org> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 12:45:52AM -0700, Max More wrote: > Covering part of Alcor's roof with solar cells might be worthwhile. We don't > need electricity for patient storage purposes, of course, but it could help There is now technology allowing you to compensate a BigFoot boiloff on a small enough energy footprint so that it can be run off a few-kW PV panel. It doesn't rectificate liquid air but uses a vacuum absorber for nitrogen separation (same technology as oxygen generators). The advantage is not the price, but LN delivery independence. Of course Alcor has others, more pressing problems at the moment. > with reducing air conditioning bills. We will have to see what the payback > period is, at current prices. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 12:11:37 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:11:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 02:57, Kelly Anderson wrote: > OK. Then let's not use the word "crime" to describe governments raping > and pillaging their citizens and the citizens of the nation next door. > Yes, we definitely should not. In fact, it does not make much sense, and it is rather unpractical, to consider each and every soldier of any given country as a "criminal". In fact, it took a few thousand years to realise that it was in everybody's interest to recognise some special status of enemy combatants, even though this awareness is today waning in favour of self-righteous rhetorics... > Let's use a different word. How about immoral. Can you accept that a > government can be immoral? And that governments often are? Or do you > beleive that governments are amoral? > Governments who do not comply with my own moral certainly are to be considered as "immoral" from my point of view. Same as saying that one need not like the laws in force, btw. An entirely different matter is that of government officers breaking the rules of their own legal system. They may deserve praise, if they do it in view of purposes I like, or blame, if they do not. > Moreover, morals are equally plural, and variable with time and cultures. To some extent. There are some morals that have transcended time > without much change. The prohibition against murder, rape, stealing... > these are fairly constant. This is a typical argument of the partisans of a concept of a "natural" law. In fact, on closer inspection, what different legal systems do is not to prohibit murder, but to specify when killing could be considered as "murder" and thus forbidden, as to its object, agent, and possible exhonerating circumstances. > This is a crucial point, not to mention the most important for the topic > of > > this list. Now, I contend that defending the freedom of societies to give > > themselves the rules they like best (as in "self-determination" and in > > "popular sovereignty" and in "diversity"), rather than the idea that some > > kind of a "natural" law would exist that, as an avatar of the Will of God > > under a thin secular veneer, should simply be obeyed by everybody, is > much > > better bet. Both in order to avoid puttin all eggs in one nest, as we say > in > > Italy, *and* because Darwinian competition between different > civilisational > > models, as opposed to globalisation, keeps *all* of them as little > > neoluddite and primitivist and conservative as possible, for obvious > > reasons. > > This is what confuses me. You want to preserve these freedoms, and at > the same time give wide license to the welfare state to take from your > pocket and put into mine. Don't you see that the one form of tyranny > leads towards (not inevitably... perhaps) the other form of tyranny? > Let us assume that welfare is tyranny (the yes or no opinion on the subject is not really a religious matter for me), and that tyranny is bad (easier, since nobody defines as "tyranny" a regime he likes, including tyrants). The freedom of any given community to give itself a legal system of its choice, without reference to hypothetical "natural" law who would over-ride both popular will and local traditions, gives place to competition amongst different systems, offer terms of comparison to one's members, and eventually allow people to vote with their feet. Interestingly, old-style US conservatives who in principle would be rabid anti-transhumanists are quite concerned about China's progress in the area of transhumanist technologies. This does not make them "chinese" in their political views, but at the very least their efforts to adopt, and to generalise on a worldwide basis, "natural law" prohibitionist tenets, are accordingly weakened. In turn, it is competition with the US that that is putting in crisis the ayatollahs' dream of a society of illiterate peasants, and commanded Chinese reforms, or . Otherwise, the Gang of Four's neoprimitiviste dream would still be in place. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 12:22:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:22:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 03:06, Samantha Atkins wrote: > So why not bring up Orion and its relative clean variants for putting large > payloads in GEO or on the moon? > Yes, this is my ritual, but not rhetorical ,question in this context. Sure, Orion Project vehicles could damage to an extent the terrestrian ecological system or increase the cancer ration by 0,0...03% per year, albeit much less, I suspect, than many other things we do as a matter of routine. But even if this is true, the overall cost-return balance of Project Orion vehicles might change dramatically if they were adopted not as a final-and-forever solution, but simply as a "bootstrapping" technology. Let us say for instance that they can be used for once to establish a source of abundant, cheap energy (or other resources, even though I suspect that energy is the only one that really matters). Maintenance and development thereof might be subsequently sustained with the very energy it produces, eg, in the form of hydrogen. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 12:24:53 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:24:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: <201107230227.p6N2RfZf005764@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201107230227.p6N2RfZf005764@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 04:27, David Lubkin wrote: > I would be very dubious about a space elevator on this planet. > There are too many loons who'd want to destroy it, and too > much uncertainty about what would happen if they tried. > I especially have doubts that the science of materials may ever deliver a fiber capable of operating it. But this is one more reason why we should be wary of keeping all our eggs on this planets forever. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 12:57:36 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:57:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] solar power tower In-Reply-To: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> References: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 2:20 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > the air underneath it. Hot air wants to rise, so there's a central point for > it to rush towards and escape; the tower in the middle. And there's a bunch > of turbines at the base of the tower that generate electricity from that > natural updraft. If this works then I propose we build a tower over Washington DC. Plenty of hot air there but I doubt the 60% efficiency has enough output to reach payback for what Congress actually costs. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 13:03:18 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:03:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moooon In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <4E275CC1.1090600@satx.rr.com> <4E27651C.3050402@sbcglobal.net> <4E288B7A.5000009@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: 2011/7/23 Giovanni Santostasi > This is the critical issue. It is not a matter of economy or politics > (unless understood as general human affairs). It is a question of pushing > the limits of human technology, survival capability, imagination, sense of > adventure. We could have all stayed in Africa or for that stayed on trees > instead of venturing in the Savannah, developing bipedal walking and so on. Yes. And, btw, history has never been the feat of realists and accountants, and their general idea of what is feasible and not. For that matter, I understand that the US space movement, as marginal and weak it may be in comparison with competing lobbies, essentially include people who have nothing to "gain" (unless in the broadest sense) from it. Actually, it if succeeded, the only practical consequences for most of its members would be higher taxes, less welfare, or both. How can it happen that they still staunchly support a space program? The truth is that the "economic" behaviour of individual and societies alike is not exclusively dictated by expectations of short-term monetary returns. What exactly has an Afghan insurgent to expect in monetary term from putting his own life in jeopardy, or by directly sacrificing it? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 23 13:24:38 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:24:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107231324.p6NDOpJN018351@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Stefano wrote: >This is a typical argument of the partisans of a concept of a >"natural" law. In fact, on closer inspection, what different legal >systems do is not to prohibit murder, but to specify when killing >could be considered as "murder" and thus forbidden, as to its >object, agent, and possible exhonerating circumstances. Or putting a more extropian spin on the question, even the Non-Aggression Principle has broad, debatable presumptions to it. Is initiation of force against a fellow member of a hive species, a clone of oneself, an AI, a human/non-human mix, an upload, an upload of oneself, an acephalic clone of oneself, or by a being who is "as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are above the amoeba" a violation? "Natural law" might be a useful concept for today but it is insufficient for our range of impending realities. The basis for the future lies, I think, in areas like economics and game theory. -- David. From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 23 13:34:20 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:34:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <201107230227.p6N2RfZf005764@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <201107231334.p6NDYdqC025753@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I wrote: >I would be very dubious about a space elevator on this planet. >There are too many loons who'd want to destroy it, and too >much uncertainty about what would happen if they tried. Stefano replied: >I especially have doubts that the science of materials may ever >deliver a fiber capable of operating it. A space elevator is technically feasible on bodies with lower gravity, where the demands on its materials are not as severe, but there's no way to ensure that all the loons stay on this planet. In designing anything, I believe in no single point of failure for any vital system and prefer designs with inherent massive parallelism. -- David. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 15:52:50 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:52:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > > If one does this cost analysis to Columbus or Magellan's missions what would > obtain? > Were economical missions in the short range? "The expedition eked out a small profit, but the crew was not paid full wages.[22]" (From Wikipedia on Magelan's voyage.) John Grigg wrote: > Keith, I would think the answer is to let technology mature to the point > where we can built an effective space elevator, circa 2030 or 2040. ?And > then the price of going into space plunges downward to I believe around $100 > a pound! You can get to that price, which is where power satellites make sense, with externally heated hydrogen. It's not at all clear that the strength of the molecular bond permits space elevators off earth. Another problem is that everything in orbit around earth eventually hit the elevator cable. The moon is a different situation. Denial floss (Spectra) is strong enough for an elevator out through L1. Such an elevator looks like it could lift its own mass in 100 days. > Our competition with China will get us there... It's not clear we are even in the game. Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 07/22/2011 02:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: snip >> Chemical fuels just won't do it. > > So why not bring up Orion and its relative clean variants for putting > large payloads in GEO or on the moon? ?At the very least space tugs with > fission power plants and space platforms with reasonable sized fission > plant and fission plants on the moon seem obvious. Firing off a large number of fusion bombs is not reasonable politically. Fission power plants are heavy. If you have beamed energy you leave all the heavy stuff on the ground. >> But in recent years other ways have opened up, relatively low cost, >> high efficiency, solid state laser diodes and low cost microwave >> generators. ?It's not entirely clear how to best exploit such beamed >> energy sources, but they both offer exhaust velocity up in the same >> range as the 9 km/s needed to get into orbit. > > These can't do the trick of lifting from LEO to GEO or into lunar > insertion efficiently today. Lunar insertion might be a bit dicey, but efficient transport to GEO is the main thing I have been working on recently. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898 See figures 3, 4, 5 and Read the Appendix: Into Orbit?Sideways >> It's still too expensive for self funded space colonies, but if this >> works out, it will only be 2 orders of magnitude too expensive rather >> than 4. > > Go with space nukes and you can conceivably do this today. Please advise how to get around the engineering and political problems. David Lubkin wrote: snip > I would be very dubious about a space elevator on this planet. > There are too many loons who'd want to destroy it, and too > much uncertainty about what would happen if they tried. If you could build them at all, they would not be easy to destroy and there is not much uncertainty about what would happen. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sat Jul 23 15:48:27 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:48:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <019e01cc494f$fd2a8cd0$f77fa670$@att.net> >... There are other names that come to mind, of people we like, who are clearly familiar with what we're about, but I think would be a stretch to include. (Such as Neal Stephenson.) Rudy Rucker and Neal Stephenson have both made comments in their books that make it clear they have at least spent some time reading ExI chat at one time or another, but I don't recall either of them having posted anything. spike From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat Jul 23 16:00:40 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:00:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311436840.10207.YahooMailClassic@web114412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: On 07/22/2011 04:59 PM, John Grigg wrote: >> Keith, I would think the answer is to let technology mature to the >> point where we can built an effective space elevator, circa 2030 or >> 2040. And then the price of going into space plunges downward to I >> believe around $100 a pound! > Last I looked we are 2 (or was it 3) orders of magnitude too slow on > elevator climber technology and more than 4 orders of magnitude off in > cable material strength even in the smallest possible sample size that > could be tested. So I very much doubt we will see space elevators any > time soon. I think that's why John said "circa 2030 or 2040" A decade starting in 2020 is quite a different thing to a decade starting in 2000. Or even 2010. And if a decade starting in 2030 isn't a /radically/ different thing, we're probably all wasting our breath. Ben Zaiboc From atymes at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 17:35:44 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 10:35:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/23 Stefano Vaj : > Let us say for instance that they can be used for once Not happening. If a thing is developed and used once, it will, inevitably, be used again. This is true even of nuclear weapons. Testing aside, they were used twice - and aside from their direct use, their threat (which requires enough development and testing to convince people that they will probably work) has been used over and over and over again. Even if you disagree, enough other people believe this that any development effort for nuclear bomb propulsion will have to proceed as if this is inevitable. Otherwise, the developers will be thrown in jail if they get the materials to build this and start bending metal. (More likely, they'll make plans and noises and provide endless distraction but be completely unable to actually get the nuclear materials.) Put another way: you have to solve this problem in order to get the materials to make the bombs, and you can not convince the gatekeepers that this will be once only. Find another solution. From mlatorra at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 17:53:30 2011 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:53:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> Message-ID: As you say, Anders, we could label Stross as a sort of heretic Extropian who pokes fun at various transhumanist ideas and obsessions. Greg Egan does so to an even greater degree, especially in his novel "Zendegi." I suspect, however, that if either of these fellows were offered the chance to employ actual transhumanist tech themselves, such rejuvenation, life extension, intelligence increase, etc., they would be very likely to take it. Other Exto-transhumanist SF writers of note include Linda Nagata and Iain M. Banks Regards, Mike LaTorra On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2011-07-22 17:32, David Lubkin wrote: > >> I don't know who's on extropy-chat currently, but I'd list the >> following as members of the extropian tribe who have sold >> sf, on the basis of self-description or participation in >> transhumanist organizations or mailing lists. >> > > Of course, whether they self-identify as being of the extropian tribe (do > we have cool swirly arrow tattoos?) is another matter. I think Charles > Stross takes a certain pride in being heretic about or poke fun at various > transhumanist ideas and obsessions. > > I wonder if roleplaying games count? In that case I suspect a few writers > for Gurps Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase might be in. > > > > And no including a long-dead writer, however tempting it > > might be to claim Olaf Stapleton or Doc Smith. > > > > Stapledon is interesting since he was clearly inspired by Haldane's > Daedalus essay, which was also the core point of the UK proto-transhumanism > of the 20's and 30's. They were clearly their own "brand" of thinking - not > extropian, but maybe Haldanian. > > > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford University > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 nymphomation at gmail.com Sat Jul 23 19:09:51 2011 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:09:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> Message-ID: 2011/7/23 Michael LaTorra : > As you say, Anders, we could label Stross as a sort of heretic Extropian who pokes fun at various transhumanist ideas and > obsessions. I think you could say the same of Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series, especially The Stone Canal & Cassini Division. Uploading enthusiasts and their AI offspring, and also greens, are thoroughly demonised in those two. I found it amusing that Stross & MacLeod covered very similar territory, though MacLeod was writing 5 or 10 years earlier. They also seem to have overlapping social circles in Edinburgh, so I wonder if they got together to compare notes..? :o) Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From gsantostasi at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 00:45:14 2011 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 19:45:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Hot coffee. Message-ID: Hot coffee anybody? Anybody saw this documentary? I experienced the court system and I know that is sickening. Corporations want to control everything. Now even the judicial system. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/24/hot-coffee-documentary-skewers-tort-reformers.html Giovanni On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:20 PM, ddraig wrote: > On 23 July 2011 01:32, David Lubkin wrote: > > ddraig wrote in "Re: Moooon": > > > >> How many SF authors are here, anyways? You, Charlie Stross (hey > >> Charlie, I read one of your books, I quite liked it), anyone else? Do > >> you find it frustrating that you can imagine and write about a clear > >> path of development, but real world implementation issues bog > >> everything down? > > > > I don't know who's on extropy-chat currently, but I'd list the > > following as members of the extropian tribe who have sold > > sf, on the basis of self-description or participation in > > transhumanist organizations or mailing lists. > > > I was actually referring to "people who see the stuff we are writing > here today" but that's an interesting list. :-) > > Dwayne > -- > ddraig at pobox.com irc.deoxy.org #chat > ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... > http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg > our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sjv2006 at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 02:59:33 2011 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 19:59:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [New_Cryonet] The Cryonics Institute's 106th patient is Robert Ettinger In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ben_best_ci Date: Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 7:02 PM Subject: [New_Cryonet] The Cryonics Institute's 106th patient is Robert Ettinger To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com ** Robert Ettinger deanimated today at around 4pm Eastern Time. He was under hospice care and had an ice bath sitting by his bedside. His pronouncement and initiation of cooling was very rapid. The perfusion went well and he is now in the cooling box. Much more later. -- Ben Best __._,_.___ Reply to sender| Reply to group| Reply via web post| Start a New Topic Messages in this topic( 1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group [image: Yahoo! Groups] Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest? Unsubscribe ? Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 03:41:07 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:41:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I just want to help (Was: Moooon) In-Reply-To: <1311287472.57027.YahooMailClassic@web114409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1311287472.57027.YahooMailClassic@web114409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Will Steinberg cried plaintively: >>I just want to help. ?What can I do to help? > > http://zerostate.net/ I notice a lot of chiefs, not so many do-ers, and less documentation about what is actually being done. It's also a young project. Projects that start out by assigning who's in charge, instead of what they're doing and getting people to do it, tend not to get much done. Just saying. From max at maxmore.com Sun Jul 24 05:56:28 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 22:56:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved Message-ID: Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of *The Prospect of Immortality* -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. --Max -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 07:13:03 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:13:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A great man has left the party. I hope to meet him at another party soon. 2011/7/24 Max More : > Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of The > Prospect of Immortality -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved > by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. > > My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to > him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. > > --Max > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 > 480/905-1906 ext 113 > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 08:46:25 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:46:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/24 Max More : > Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of The > Prospect of Immortality -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved > by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. > > My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to > him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. This news is very sad, and yet promising to me. I dearly hope he received a timely and expert suspension, which he certainly deserved! I'm very disappointed to hear that you never got to meet him, which considering your stature in transhumanism, really surprises me. Well, I hope you get to meet him many decades hence, should cryonics (and the future) prove a success. I hope the Cryonics Institute can continue to do well, despite not having him around as a rock of knowledge and inspiration. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 09:07:54 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 02:07:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> Message-ID: Nym wrote: I think you could say the same of Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series, especially The Stone Canal & Cassini Division. Uploading enthusiasts and their AI offspring, and also greens, are thoroughly demonised in those two. I found it amusing that Stross & MacLeod covered very similar territory, though MacLeod was writing 5 or 10 years earlier. They also seem to have overlapping social circles in Edinburgh, so I wonder if they got together to compare notes..? >>> But Ken MacLeod has said in interviews that he does not view Extropians in the most favorable light. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 09:39:10 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:39:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In memory of Robert Ettinger http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2011/07/in-memory-of-robert-ettinger.html 2011/7/24 John Grigg : > 2011/7/24 Max More : >> Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of >> The >> Prospect of Immortality -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved >> by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. >> >> My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to >> him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. > > > This news is very?sad, and yet?promising to me.? I dearly?hope he received a > timely and expert suspension, which he certainly deserved! > > I'm very?disappointed to hear that you never got to meet him, which > considering your stature in transhumanism, really surprises me.? Well, I > hope you get to meet him many decades hence,?should?cryonics (and the > future)?prove a success. > > I hope the Cryonics Institute can continue to do well, despite?not having > him?around as a rock of knowledge and inspiration. > > > John > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jul 24 11:22:29 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:22:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 17:52, Keith Henson wrote: > Firing off a large number of fusion bombs is not reasonable politically. > Neither was the switch from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture and animal breeding... :-) And, BTW, Project Orion vehicles were originally conceived also as a way to dispose of strategic nuclear arsenals. What could be more politically corrected? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 15:04:34 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:04:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: On 23 July 2011 19:35, Adrian Tymes wrote: > 2011/7/23 Stefano Vaj : > > Let us say for instance that they can be used for once > > Not happening. > > If a thing is developed and used once, it will, inevitably, be used again. > > This is true even of nuclear weapons. > If this is true, as far as nuclear explosions in the Earth atmosphere are concerned, the cat has been out of the bag for a while now. And when France decided they were not ready to put it back yet, they made their own experiments even though this was considered as "politically impossible". This does not imply by any means that Project Orion vehicles will ever be manufactured. Heck, even though they had been used many more times than once, actually for more than a decade, even supersonic civilian planes do not exist anymore. But the truth is that the Moon might be OK for space elevators, Jupiterians would not even be tempted to go the way of chemical rockets, Earthlings might find itself right on the delusional edge that the latter might be OK to bootstrap ourselves out of our gravitational well and waste too much time and resources playing with them. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 16:14:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 10:14:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/24 Stefano Vaj : > On 23 July 2011 19:35, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> 2011/7/23 Stefano Vaj : > But the truth is that the Moon might be OK for space elevators, Jupiterians > would not even be tempted to go the way of chemical rockets, Earthlings > might find itself right on the delusional edge that the latter might be OK > to bootstrap ourselves out of our gravitational well and waste too much time > and resources playing with them. What technology might Jupiterians be tempted to use? I mean, what technology would even work to escape that gravity well? I hadn't ever thought about the problem before... interesting to think about. -Kelly From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 15:55:19 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin Haskell) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:55:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: Best of luck to you, Robert. I did not know you, but I thank you for your pioneering efforts. All sympathy to your family, as well, and may they be there when you return. From: Giulio Prisco To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved Message-ID: < CAKTCJyc1K87egkjzQrtbMLAK4mZCWai9B4yfRi=AveOTNad7SA at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 A great man has left the party. I hope to meet him at another party soon. 2011/7/24 Max More : > Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of The > Prospect of Immortality -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved > by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. > > My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to > him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. > > --Max > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Jul 24 16:38:05 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:38:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: <001b01cc4a20$10b8d7e0$322a87a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj . >.the Moon might be OK for space elevators...-- Stefano Vaj The challenge with a space elevator on the moon is that Luna's synchronous orbit is so far away because of the slow rotation rate. Earth is in lunar synchronous orbit. So we have materials theoretically capable of doing that, but we need one that is over a quarter of a million miles long. Given the relatively modest escape velocity and very low surface atmospheric density, an electromagnetic rail launcher is a more attractive means of getting out of that gravity well. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sun Jul 24 17:27:29 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:27:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Some interesting pictures posted by Bruce Klein at Longecity from a few years ago of Ettinger: http://www.longecity.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=67&t=4112 Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin Haskell To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2011 9:55 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Robert Ettinger (Kevin Haskell) Best of luck to you, Robert. I did not know you, but I thank you for your pioneering efforts. All sympathy to your family, as well, and may they be there when you return. From: Giulio Prisco To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Robert Ettinger has been cryopreserved Message-ID: < CAKTCJyc1K87egkjzQrtbMLAK4mZCWai9B4yfRi=AveOTNad7SA at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 A great man has left the party. I hope to meet him at another party soon. 2011/7/24 Max More : > Today, July 23, Robert Ettinger -- the father of cryonics and author of The > Prospect of Immortality -- was declared legally dead and was cryopreserved > by the organization he founded, Cryonics Institute. > > My very best wishes to this remarkable man. I regret that I never spoke to > him face to face. I hope to do so sometime in the post-mortal future. > > --Max > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 Sun Jul 24 17:37:37 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:37:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: On 24 July 2011 18:14, Kelly Anderson wrote: > What technology might Jupiterians be tempted to use? I mean, what > technology would even work to escape that gravity well? I hadn't ever > thought about the problem before... interesting to think about. > This has been brought to my mind by the recollection of a very old SF short story, where a civilisation on a hi-grav planet in fact required nuclear propulsion to climb their own gravity well. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Jul 24 17:25:43 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 10:25:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311528343.29361.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Goodby Bob. Perhaps if we are both extraordinarily lucky someday we can resume our decades long Cryonet debate about the nature of identity. I enjoyed them, you were good company. Your old friend ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 18:25:26 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:25:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extropian sf writers In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <4E2727EC.6090903@satx.rr.com> <4E272D60.3040207@satx.rr.com> <201107221532.p6MFWsl6020201@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4E29BBA7.7040805@aleph.se> Message-ID: 2011/7/23 Michael LaTorra > As you say, Anders, we could label Stross as a sort of heretic Extropian > who pokes fun at various transhumanist ideas and obsessions. Greg Egan does > so to an even greater degree, especially in his novel "Zendegi." > The difference, IMHO, is that while Egan has issues at least with the H+ label, its novels and short stories are in fact quite positive about post-human change. Stross? No way. He *speaks* of transhumanist concepts, but so do Fukuyama and Kass for that matter. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Jul 24 21:51:21 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 16:51:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Religion and the E-meter before Hubbard Message-ID: <4E2C93D9.1020408@satx.rr.com> TIME, Monday, Oct. 12, 1936 Best known mechanical device to detect lying is the polygraph, perfected by Professor Leonarde Keeler of Northwestern University. A subject attached to the polygraph who tells an untruth supposedly registers changes in blood pressure, pulse and respiration which are indicated by a needle jiggling on a graph. Tested last week in Manhattan was another such instrument?the psychogalvanometer. The invention of tall, burly Father Walter G. Summers, S.J., Ph.D., head of Fordham University's department of psychology, the psychogalvanometer works not on the heart and lungs but on the minute electrical currents coursing through the body. In Father Summers' Woolworth Building laboratory a newshawk grasped an electrode in each hand as if he were experimenting with a toy shock machine. The electrodes were attached to an apparatus resembling a radio set, inside which were two balanced electrical circuits, with a two stage amplifier on the input side hooked up to a recording milliammeter. Any electrical agitation the newshawk betrayed under emotional stress would jiggle the milliammeter, make a needle correspondingly scratch a chart. Producing five cards, Father Summers asked the newshawk to choose one in his mind, then deny, card by card, that he had selected any of them when they were reshown him. Watching the needle, Father Summers flipped the five cards, heard the newshawk's answers, then declared: "Your card was the three of diamonds." The newshawk was compelled to admit it was. The bigger the lie, says Father Summers, the bigger the jiggle. This year Providence, R. I. police let him use the machine on a woman suspected of theft. When she denied committing the crime herself, the needle moved mildly. When she denied knowing who had committed it, the needle jumped. In court it was established that the woman actually was an accomplice. The psychogalvanometer is more comfortable than the polygraph, whose subject has a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter) strapped with oppressive tightness on his arm. Neither machine will work on madmen. ================================ [Alas, the newshawk failed to note that overuse of the E-meter will *create* madmen!] From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sun Jul 24 22:48:20 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:48:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Religion and the E-meter before Hubbard In-Reply-To: <4E2C93D9.1020408@satx.rr.com> References: <4E2C93D9.1020408@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: It all makes sense now! Excess body thetans induce lying! To the presses! (I'm using the scientific method correctly, right guys????) But truly--this is cool. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 02:53:22 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:53:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/24 Stefano Vaj : > On 23 July 2011 17:52, Keith Henson wrote: >> Firing off a large number of fusion bombs is not reasonable politically. > > Neither was the switch from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture and animal > breeding... :-) Actually, it was. There weren't a lot of people objecting to it. > And, BTW, Project Orion vehicles were originally conceived also as a way to > dispose of strategic nuclear arsenals. What could be more politically > corrected? :-) Disposing of them in closed, sealed spaces such that none of the radioactivity leaks out, and no one gains from their use in such a way as to suggest that it might possibly be worth making more off them. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 05:45:58 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:45:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> Neither was the switch from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture and animal >> breeding... :-) > > Actually, it was. ?There weren't a lot of people objecting to it. Adrian, how do you know this? It occurred prior to the invention of writing. Also, there are oral stories in Egypt of wars between the agricultural settlers and nomads. Some historians believe that the reason civilization rose in Egypt is precisely because it was so defensible against nomads. I imagine that while there were many people objecting to agriculture, however, we no longer have a cultural memory of the losers. Have any of you ever even MET a nomad? :-) -Kelly From atymes at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 06:03:55 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:03:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>> Neither was the switch from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture and animal >>> breeding... :-) >> >> Actually, it was. ?There weren't a lot of people objecting to it. > > Adrian, how do you know this? It occurred prior to the invention of > writing. And prior to there being even ten million (maybe less than one million) people on the entire planet. There weren't a lot of people objecting to it because there weren't a lot of people. It's easier to get political approval in smaller groups... > Also, there are oral stories in Egypt of wars between the > agricultural settlers and nomads. Some historians believe that the > reason civilization rose in Egypt is precisely because it was so > defensible against nomads. ...especially if it cheeses off hated rivals, so long as the political system you live in doesn't include them. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 09:56:09 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:56:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 25 July 2011 04:53, Adrian Tymes wrote: > 2011/7/24 Stefano Vaj : > > Neither was the switch from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture and > animal > > breeding... :-) > > Actually, it was. There weren't a lot of people objecting to it. > Or rather, there is not much trace left of those who objected to it... :-) With a few notable exceptions in very secluded or peculiar areas, hunter-gatherers have been systematically wiped from the scene by neolithic societies, which rapidly destroyed their environment, exterminated them in more direct fashions exactly as it was done with other big predators, and overwhelmed them demographically. This does not imply that people having qualms with environmental consequences of Project Orion vehicles would necessarily go the way of those who objected to the destruction of virgin forests for the purpose of planting cereals or breeding cattle. In fact, the opposite may actually be much more likely, in the current cultural climate. What I suggest is that sometimes those with a vision, who stubbornly refuse to wander, go on "wasting" seeds to grow plants and support the unpleasant pollution of their animals manure and parasites, sometimes manage to achieve perfectly unrealistic civilisational changes. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jul 25 11:38:27 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:38:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger Obit Message-ID: <20110725113827.GA16178@leitl.org> http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/24/robert-c-w-ettinger-first-life-cycle-1918-to-2011/ -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 15:27:38 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:27:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Moo Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 5:00 AM, "spike" wrote: > The challenge with a space elevator on the moon is that Luna's synchronous > orbit is so far away because of the slow rotation rate. ?Earth is in lunar > synchronous orbit. ?So we have materials theoretically capable of doing > that, but we need one that is over a quarter of a million miles long. Lunar elevator as envisioned by Jerome Pearson is a different kind of beast. The counter tension is not from rotation, but from hanging down into the earth's gravity well. L1 is only 55,000 km off the lunar surface. The cable goes through L1 and far down into the earth's gravity. It needs a counterweight, and the shorter the cable, the larger the weight needs to be. I worked one out with a small counterweight and then realized that there was an ideal length if the point of a lunar mine and elevator was to get mass to GEO. 190,000 off the lunar surface happens to be where just releasing something puts it in an Hohmann transfer orbit to GEO. (Plane changes have to be considered.) So an elevator made of Spectra massing 0.1 ton per km would take 19,000 tons of cable and 65,000 tons of counterweight. Built as a loop and powered with 15 MW, it could deliver 1000 tons per day for a mass return on investment of around 100 days. Totally silly at present, but where 500,000 tons per year of power satellite parts was being lifted from earth, you could borrow power sat parts for the counterweight and replace them with lunar rock 65 days after start up. Some of the mass for power satellites, gravity gradient "space anchors," can be made out of unprocessed lunar rock, the solid part of heat sink pseudo fluid can be made out of regolith ground to dust. > Given the relatively modest escape velocity and very low surface atmospheric > density, an electromagnetic rail launcher is a more attractive means of > getting out of that gravity well. That's so 70s. Lunar elevator is a much better solution than electromagnetic launch. You don't have to soft land a kg on the moon, just lower the cable with a 65 ton crawler/miner on the end. A flat version of Keith Lofstrom's launch loop would also work on the moon. Keith From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 13:51:59 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:51:59 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (KeithHenson) References: Message-ID: <4F5B8B64F8734EEC87E4914956EC6EB5@cpdhemm> Adrian, how do you know this? It occurred prior to the invention of writing. Also, there are oral stories in Egypt of wars between the agricultural settlers and nomads. Some historians believe that the reason civilization rose in Egypt is precisely because it was so defensible against nomads. I imagine that while there were many people objecting to agriculture, however, we no longer have a cultural memory of the losers. Have any of you ever even MET a nomad? :-) Well, technically they weren't against agriculture. More likely they were pro-looting the farmers. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Jul 25 15:48:19 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:48:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed -- if Plato's works are any guide. It seems to me he believed there were moral truths that were discoverable by reason and that were not inventions?of the gods (or God), social convention, or the state. (One need not agree with his particular moral claims here or even with his particular methods to agree with this wider point.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 5:15 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... On 7/22/2011 3:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Socrates made good arguments that > what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from > an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. Ah, sturdy foundations of outrage such as "Those stinking disgusting ho-mo-sex-uals make me *puke*! Get the pitch and pitchfork, Mabel!" Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Jul 25 16:20:23 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:20:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Dan wrote: >For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed On the other hand, Socrates did think writing and books were bad ideas, so what did he know? -- David. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Jul 25 16:45:06 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:45:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Even if he held those views, I think it would be wrong to dismiss everything thing he supposedly believed. Don't you agree? ? Regards, ? Dan From: David Lubkin To: ExI chat list Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 12:20 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... -- David. Dan wrote: >For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed On the other hand, Socrates did think writing and books were bad ideas, so what did he know? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 17:02:01 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:02:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I guess the right answer is...he said some good things and some bad things, and it was very long ago as well so that's got to be taken into account. On Jul 25, 2011 12:58 PM, "Dan" wrote: Even if he held those views, I think it would be wrong to dismiss everything thing he supposedly believed. Don't you agree? Regards, Dan *From:* David Lubkin *To:* ExI chat list *Sent:* Monday, July 25, 2011 12:20 PM *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Dan wrote: >For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed On the other hand, Socrates did think writing and books were bad ideas, so what did he know? -- David. _______________________________________________ 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 Mon Jul 25 17:22:09 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:22:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger Washington Post Obit In-Reply-To: <20110725113827.GA16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1311614529.26711.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/from-phyics-teacher-to-founder-of-the-cryonics-movement/2011/07/24/gIQAupuIXI_story.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 17:36:27 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:36:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (KeithHenson) In-Reply-To: <4F5B8B64F8734EEC87E4914956EC6EB5@cpdhemm> References: <4F5B8B64F8734EEC87E4914956EC6EB5@cpdhemm> Message-ID: On 25 July 2011 15:51, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) < cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com> wrote: > Well, technically they weren't against agriculture. More likely they were > pro-looting the farmers. > Sure, this is why permanent cultures and land/cattle property enforcement were politically unfeasible ideas... until they succeeded. In history we have realists and visionaires. Visionaires most often fail. Realists always do, sooner or later. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Jul 25 17:42:39 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:42:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/25 Dan > For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed -- if Plato's > works are any guide. It seems to me he believed there were moral truths that > were discoverable by reason and that were not inventions of the gods (or > God), social convention, or the state. (One need not agree with his > particular moral claims here or even with his particular methods to agree > with this wider point.) > Does not change much, does it? The real issue is whether one believes in self-determination and diversity or in value systems which are allegedly eternal and universal, irrespective of whether they are revealed (albeit obviously not established) by God, by inner outrage or by Reason. Let us say that anti-transhumanists are invariably in the second camp, and they may play one or another of such cards depending on their background or audience, "inner outrage" and "puck factor" being however especially fashionable in recent days. > > *From:* Damien Broderick > *To:* ExI chat list > *Sent:* Friday, July 22, 2011 5:15 PM > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... > > On 7/22/2011 3:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > Socrates made good arguments that > > what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from > > an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. > > Ah, sturdy foundations of outrage such as "Those stinking disgusting > ho-mo-sex-uals make me *puke*! Get the pitch and pitchfork, Mabel!" > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Jul 25 22:17:18 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:17:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Robert Ettinger Washington Post Obit In-Reply-To: <1311614529.26711.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo. com> References: <20110725113827.GA16178@leitl.org> <1311614529.26711.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107252217.p6PMHfVI001937@andromeda.ziaspace.com> john clark wrote: >http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/from-phyics-teacher-to-founder-of-the-cryonics-movement/2011/07/24/gIQAupuIXI_story.html I notice that the piece refers to >a main competitor, California-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation I suspect the obit relied heavily on materials from the Cryonics Institute and no one bothered to verify any of it. (Fact checking is an area that the press has cut back on substantially as they've struggled to remain profitable.) Of course, Alcor's location is above the fold on its home page, so it would have been a moment's work to confirm. To boot, they misspelled "physics" in the URL... -- David. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 02:31:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:31:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/25 Will Steinberg : > I guess the right answer is...he said some good things and some bad things, > and it was very long ago as well so that's got to be taken into account. I will be utterly surprised if anyone remembers anything anyone here has to say in 2500 years, even if they do disagree with some of it. Unless we are still alive... then maybe we have a chance. :-) The number of people quoted daily that lived from 1000 BC to 0 AD can likely be counted on your fingers and toes. Socrates may have been wrong on many things, but the fact that his name is known at all today means that he was a very remarkable fellow. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 02:39:52 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:39:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (KeithHenson) In-Reply-To: <4F5B8B64F8734EEC87E4914956EC6EB5@cpdhemm> References: <4F5B8B64F8734EEC87E4914956EC6EB5@cpdhemm> Message-ID: On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 7:51 AM, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) wrote: > > Adrian, how do you know this? It occurred prior to the invention of > writing. Also, there are oral stories in Egypt of wars between the > agricultural settlers and nomads. Some historians believe that the > reason civilization rose in Egypt is precisely because it was so > defensible against nomads. I imagine that while there were many people > objecting to agriculture, however, we no longer have a cultural memory > of the losers. > Have any of you ever even MET a nomad? :-) > > > Well, technically they weren't against agriculture. More likely they were > pro-looting the farmers. Precisely why I think there would be conflict. This would be one pressure that would give impetus to the rise of armed civilization. Those who could stay at home with their heavy arms would probably pretty quickly outgun the nomads who had to carry all their possessions with them. So over the long run, it wasn't a very fair fight, and no wonder that the farmers won out in most cases. -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Jul 25 04:17:58 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:17:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: <201107231334.p6NDYdqC025753@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201107230227.p6N2RfZf005764@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <201107231334.p6NDYdqC025753@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <9FFFC61F-80DF-4038-8FCD-8AF28AAECF46@mac.com> On Jul 23, 2011, at 6:34 AM, David Lubkin wrote: > I wrote: > >> I would be very dubious about a space elevator on this planet. >> There are too many loons who'd want to destroy it, and too >> much uncertainty about what would happen if they tried. > > Stefano replied: > >> I especially have doubts that the science of materials may ever deliver a fiber capable of operating it. > > A space elevator is technically feasible on bodies with lower > gravity, where the demands on its materials are not as severe, > but there's no way to ensure that all the loons stay on this > planet. Sure. And many other types of rotovators (tether propulsion systems) are usable for subparts of earth based space launch using current technology. We just can't do the perfectly stationary variant yet. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Jul 25 04:12:04 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:12:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> Message-ID: <72B6AC3E-9A9D-4EB2-B363-E1555B360333@mac.com> On Jul 23, 2011, at 10:35 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > 2011/7/23 Stefano Vaj : >> Let us say for instance that they can be used for once > > Not happening. > > If a thing is developed and used once, it will, inevitably, be used again. A nuclear launch cannon gets around many of the Orion problems. http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/sea-based-launch-option-for-nuclear.html - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Jul 25 04:26:56 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:26:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. (Keith Henson) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <335829E6-EAD4-46DA-9F74-E83B05E6DA44@mac.com> On Jul 23, 2011, at 8:52 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> Go with space nukes and you can conceivably do this today. > > Please advise how to get around the engineering and political problems. We and the Russians have already proven nuclear engines in space albeit of regular minor size. Russia has a stated goal to put up 100 - 200 MWe nuclear plants in space. I am sure SpaceX and other launch vehicles are up to the job of getting such plants to GEO or the moon. So I don't think their is much of an engineering barrier for modular nuclear power systems is space. Am I missing something? Why should it be all that political? The Snap program showed how to design these systems to safely destruct at altitude in case of some unexpected de-orbiting event. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Jul 25 04:40:22 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:40:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] solar power tower In-Reply-To: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> References: <4E2A6817.60902@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Jul 22, 2011, at 11:20 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > More Aussie smartness :) > > (Unless some big bad wolf comes by, of course, and blows the thing down the moment everyone depends on it.) > ........................................................................ > I wish them luck but I don't believe this beast will ever pay for itself. It is not cheap to build and maintain that large a structure. I am no structural engineer but I would wonder a bit about the inherent heat stress plus wind shear plus continuous powerful updrafts. Also the night time temperature at base shouldn't be very high with no greenhouse effect. - s From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 06:48:49 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:48:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Kelly Anderson wrote: I will be utterly surprised if anyone remembers anything anyone here has to say in 2500 years, even if they do disagree with some of it. Unless we are still alive... then maybe we have a chance. :-) The number of people quoted daily that lived from 1000 BC to 0 AD can likely be counted on your fingers and toes. Socrates may have been wrong on many things, but the fact that his name is known at all today means that he was a very remarkable fellow. >>> I fully expect posthumans several millennia from now, to consider the Extropy list as their personal scripture! lol Please remember that there will be various denominations, ranging from the enlightened Sandbergians, the aesthetically minded Vita-Moreans, and the hard-nosed Clarkites. John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Jul 26 08:49:03 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:49:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> We do not know what Socrates himself said, we got it all more or less filtered through Plato (the "Socratic problem"). He is mainly important because he seems to have set out to do some systematic and *constructive* sceptical thinking across epistemology and ethics (caricature: the sophists were certainly sceptical, but mostly ended up in relativist mist, and the pre-socratics were not very systematical or sceptical). I think he was mostly an intellectual gadfly, inspiring others and becoming a good symbol for the subsequent schools of philosophers. My own recipe for cultural immortality: find a new important problem, make a stab at solving it. Even if you fail you will be a seminal character. John Grigg wrote: > > I fully expect posthumans several millennia from now, to consider the > Extropy list as their personal scripture! lol Please remember that > there will be various denominations, ranging from the > enlightened Sandbergians, the aesthetically minded Vita-Moreans, and > the hard-nosed Clarkites. Hopefully we can be around to annoy them by holding heretic views. A bit like how Marx apparently annoyed some of his followers near the end of his life by claiming not to be a marxist. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 10:24:56 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:24:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Why no space colonies or lunar bases? was Mooon. In-Reply-To: <72B6AC3E-9A9D-4EB2-B363-E1555B360333@mac.com> References: <4E2A1E8D.7070001@mac.com> <72B6AC3E-9A9D-4EB2-B363-E1555B360333@mac.com> Message-ID: On 25 July 2011 06:12, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > A nuclear launch cannon gets around many of the Orion problems. > http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/sea-based-launch-option-for-nuclear.html > > Wow, this sounds very promising indeed. Not too comfortable for travellers, I guess, but once you have most of the payload in orbit or to the moon very cheaply, you can take the luxury of using chemical rockets or even scramjet-rocket hybrids for fragile items. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 13:24:47 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:24:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Not really. You seem to be narrowly down any objective value system to one that's purely stifling. But core moral precepts in such a system would incluyde, in my reckoning, things like allowing people to determine how they live their lives. One might see these as meta-values or, as Den Utl and Rassmussen put it, metanorms. (I don't completely agree with them at every turn.) For instance, in the social sphere (and since libertarianism kicked this off, I guess this isn't completely tangential), a metanorm would be Kant's view of treating each person (human or posthuman) not as a means but as an end in her or himself. ? Or do you disagree with this? Would you say that this is merely a personal preference and that a moral or political system that made some or all people means to others' ends would be just as good? But doesn't that relativized system seem to be just the sort of system that was used to justify traditional hierarchical moral and political systems? (Granted, traditional defenses of such systems often appealed to reason and nature -- e.g., some people are naturally weak and should be ruled.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 1:42 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/25 Dan For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed -- if Plato's works are any guide. It seems to me he believed there were moral truths that were discoverable by reason and that were not inventions?of the gods (or God), social convention, or the state. (One need not agree with his particular moral claims here or even with his particular methods to agree with this wider point.) Does not change much, does it? The real issue is whether one believes in self-determination and diversity or in value systems which are allegedly eternal and universal, irrespective of whether they are revealed (albeit obviously not established) by God, by inner outrage or by Reason. Let us say that anti-transhumanists are invariably in the second camp, and they may play one or another of such cards depending on their background or audience, "inner outrage" and "puck factor" being however especially fashionable in recent days. ? > >From: Damien Broderick >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 5:15 PM > >Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... > > >On 7/22/2011 3:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Socrates made good arguments that >> what is right and wrong doesn't come from God or the state, but from >> an inner state of outrage at the criminal act. > >Ah, sturdy foundations of outrage such as "Those stinking disgusting ho-mo-sex-uals make me *puke*! Get the pitch and pitchfork, Mabel!" > >Damien Broderick >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > >-- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 13:27:27 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:27:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311686847.11091.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Then you've changed your mind on your eatlier statement? In other words, you wouldn't reject his opinions on everything because you found his opinion on one thing or some things to be not to your liking, no? ? Regards, ? Dan From: Will Steinberg To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 1:02 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... I guess the right answer is...he said some good things and some bad things, and it was very long ago as well so that's got to be taken into account. On Jul 25, 2011 12:58 PM, "Dan" wrote: > > >Even if he held those views, I think it would be wrong to dismiss everything thing he supposedly believed. Don't you agree? >? >Regards, >? >Dan >From: David Lubkin >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 12:20 PM >Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... > >Dan wrote: > >>For the record, I don't believe that's what Socrates believed > >On the other hand, Socrates did think writing and books were bad >ideas, so what did he know? > >-- David. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 14:14:58 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:14:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Natural law theory for the future/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <201107231324.p6NDOpJN018351@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107231324.p6NDOpJN018351@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311689698.97530.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I disagree. Natural law as conceived in its neo-Aristotelean form seems able to deal with the kinds of cases you mention. Admittedly, it might give definite answers to all problems and might have some problems dealing with certain classes of problems, but this is no different than any other philosophy of law. ? To take the case of non-aggression, this?would depend on the nature of the beings in question, but it's hard to see why a being of one kind would have autonomy when dealing with some other autonomous beings, but would lose that autonomy simply because the other beings are somehow more advanced. That seems akin ot saying you have autonomy just so long as you share the same culture, technology, and level of education as me, but should I suddenly acquire more culture by, say, watching more foreign films and visiting more museums, a better tablet than you, and earn another degree, you suddenly lose your autonomy vis-a-vis me. ? I would also suspect, too, that were you to come upon a superior being -- superior along some dimension, such as technology, intelligence, or mastery of dance steps -- you wouldn't suddenly allow that being to treat you as a floor mat. ? Regards, ? Dan From: David Lubkin To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2011 9:24 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... Stefano wrote: > This is a typical argument of the partisans of a concept of a "natural" law. In fact, on closer inspection, what different legal systems do is not to prohibit murder, but to specify when killing could be considered as "murder" and thus forbidden, as to its object, agent, and possible exhonerating circumstances. Or putting a more extropian spin on the question, even the Non-Aggression Principle has broad, debatable presumptions to it. Is initiation of force against a fellow member of a hive species, a clone of oneself, an AI, a human/non-human mix, an upload, an upload of oneself, an acephalic clone of oneself, or by a being who is "as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are above the amoeba"? a violation? "Natural law" might be a useful concept for today but it is insufficient for our range of impending realities. The basis for the future lies, I think, in areas like economics and game theory. -- David. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 14:38:00 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:38:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 26 July 2011 04:31, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The number of people quoted daily that lived from 1000 BC to 0 AD can > likely be counted on your fingers and toes. Socrates may have been > wrong on many things, but the fact that his name is known at all today > means that he was a very remarkable fellow. > Socrates is not directly quoted any more than, say, Santa Claus, given that he did not leave any writings behind. But, yes, he is certainly amongst the most remarkable fellows of history. Some of them are, however, because they are archetipically negative, at least for some of us. "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 14:55:23 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/26 Dan > But core moral precepts in such a system would incluyde, in my reckoning, > things like allowing people to determine how they live their lives. One > might see these as meta-values or, as Den Utl and Rassmussen put it, > metanorms. > Or simply as a paradox. If one accepts peoples' liberty to determine how they live, you implicitely accept that they can, at least factually, pick and choose their value system. To believe that you have a moral right to impose your "core moral precepts", implies denying that they can, or at least that they should. No big deals, monotheists, and their secular offspring, have been doing that for centuries. Only, one cannot have its pie and eat it too. And transhumanism, as any other rising, minority, revolutionary, school of thought, is way better off if a few doubts exist about the existence of eternal, universal moral truths that regularly end up being the parochial "yuck reaction" of the old, pre-revolutionary mainstream in any given society. This puts an end to any meaningful ethical or political or aesthetical discussion? By no mean. Simply, we have humbly to recognise that as long as we accept to limit ourselves to strictly "rational" arguments, the only way to advocate for a given position can only be based either on finding some common ground with your opponents (or, more importantly, with the public, the audience you share) or on showing the ultimate inconsistency of their own position. Now, I suspect that this is not really possible with radical and consequent anti-transhumanists, so we just have to agree to disagree, and wait and see which worldview is going to prevail... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Jul 26 14:55:56 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:55:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Kelly, Are you kidding me? Are you a transhumanist? Have you not heard, many times, of the advice of people like Kurzweil about the perils of thinking linearly, instead of exponentially? I suppose you think beings in 2500 years, with shared matroshka brains, and more, will have at most 10 to 20 or so people in their intimate social family circle, only about 100 to 200 people in their extended social, business, and religious circle, and on the order of 1000 to 2000 people in their historical and general knowledge of all historical people they?ve learned about? How many fingers and toes do you think they will all have? This is just primitive clueless monkey thought. Have you considered how many direct descendents we?ll have after 2500 years, that would not have existed, if it were not for you and I, and this conversation we are now having? Will they not all know every one of the people we ever talked to or interacted with, in more intimate detail, than even you can now manage to remember? I bet all of them will get quite a chuckle, for an eternity, out of you having said this here and now! ;) Every last mortal human that ever existed, from Socrates to you and I, is going to be worshiped as one of the very rare and very few mortal creators, and their entire lives, known intimately. We will all be one of the very few beings that created everything despite having almost nothing and less than 100 years to work with. There will be endless historical simulations where our descendants will be reliving and playing with each and every one of our lives ? including details of your early life that even you have already long since completely forgotten or misremembered. They will be simulating ? what if great great^8 grandma had made this decision to support that person/religion/political party, instead of this person, and on and on in infinitely more detail than we can manage to grasp. Every minor bit any of us contributed to the creation of heaven will be infinitely known, valued, and fully paid back with significant interest. Have you not considered how every little trivial thing you are doing, now, helping to create all that, including this conversation, is earning you an unimaginable deserving reward in heaven? As all of our descendants continue to grow exponentially, filling the entire universe, and approaching an infinite number of social beings, non of whom would have existed, if it were not for everything you did? Kelly Anderson is going to be one of the few mortal creators, to which all of future society owes its entire existence to. You will be worshiped as no less than God, one of the few mortal creator ancestors - every last intimate detail of your entire life worshiped in awe, for an eternity, by all. Brent Allsop On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/7/25 Will Steinberg : >> I guess the right answer is...he said some good things and some bad things, >> and it was very long ago as well so that's got to be taken into account. > > I will be utterly surprised if anyone remembers anything anyone here > has to say in 2500 years, even if they do disagree with some of it. > Unless we are still alive... then maybe we have a chance. :-) ?The > number of people quoted daily that lived from 1000 BC to 0 AD can > likely be counted on your fingers and toes. Socrates may have been > wrong on many things, but the fact that his name is known at all today > means that he was a very remarkable fellow. > > -Kelly > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Jul 26 16:45:45 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:45:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311698745.10236.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Wouldn't?Aristotle have been using Greek -- not Latin? :) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... On 26 July 2011 04:31, Kelly Anderson wrote: The number of people quoted daily that lived from 1000 BC to 0 AD can >likely be counted on your fingers and toes. Socrates may have been >wrong on many things, but the fact that his name is known at all today >means that he was a very remarkable fellow. > Socrates is not directly quoted any more than, say, Santa Claus, given that he did not leave any writings behind. But, yes, he is certainly amongst the most remarkable fellows of history. Some of them are, however, because they are archetipically negative, at least for some of us. "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Tue Jul 26 17:03:28 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:03:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> Message-ID: <201107261703.p6QH3tra027815@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Anders wrote: >My own recipe for cultural immortality: find a new important >problem, make a stab at solving it. Even if you fail you will be a >seminal character. I know several people who have solved important problems, including myself, who are completely unknown for having done so. The solution is used pervasively but the creator is forgotten. Examples: My friend Nat Mishkin invented what Microsoft calls a UUID about 25 years ago, which pervades computing. The histories usually erroneously credit Microsoft or OSF. My grandfather came up with the idea of clocked logic, for the SEAC in 1950. Every computer in the world uses it now, and he's forgotten altogether. This annoys me sometimes, but I'd rather change the world than get credit for it. (To clarify: I can live with no one being credited; I get ticked off when a solution is attributed to someone who had nothing to do with it. Or worse, fought it.) -- David. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 17:45:01 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:45:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Natural law/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311257872.67880.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311702301.70554.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The way you are using "criminal" below is different from the sense than in Will Steinberg's post from last week where he stated: ? "Deregulation will let the biggest organized criminals of all--the corporations--go unchecked." ? Don't you agree? He seemed to me to be using it in a different sense -- specifically, in an extra-legal sense, such as one where one might even judge actual laws to be criminal. ? Also, this was the sense I was using it in response to you. One might make this more clear by stating that one type of criminal is merely legally defined -- or defined by specific laws of a specific legal authority (whether that legal authority is a state or not). The other type would not be so defined, but would be defined by an appeal to deeper principles -- whether you agree with those principles or not. Do you agree that these would be different meanings for the term? (This isn't to say the two must needs be different. My guess is most legal theorists who appeal to something other than just, "Hey, this is just what the rulers define as 'criminal,' so we must completely assent to their decrees, never questioning this ever," would argue that the idea is to bring the two into line with each other -- almost always to alter the law to conform with the deeper principles and not vice versa.*) ? Back to Will's usage. My posts were more in line with responding to that usage. If you're going to merely use "criminal" to mean "breaking current laws, whether these laws are just or not," then sure the man who smokes pot and bothers no one else is as much a criminal as that guy in Oslo who went on a killing spree. But, then, by that usage, there's no reason to share Will's outrage at corporations being the "biggest organized criminals of all." They might be, but this might only mean they've violate arbitrarily set up rules and no more. (There would also be no difference between me waking up today and deciding, arbitrarily, "Will and Stefano are the biggest criminals of all" and similarly expressing my outrage -- save that I'm unlikely to persuade too many others about this... Thankfully so!:) ? I can't read Italian well enough to read your book, but, no, natural law of the sort I'm talking about is not "judeo-christian tenet: the only law is the divine law." (I would not conflate natural law or the natural law tradition with either Abrahamic religions (any more than Newton's physics should be thought of as Christian physics) or with divine law. Actually, natural law theorists of old?were making the distinction specifically because they believed the tenets were natural -- i.e., discoverable by reason and experience and not revealed by faith or scripture.)?It's the tenet, rather, that there are objective laws that human made laws should conform to and these are based on the nature of humans. (And, presumably, this could be extended to any being in question, though my guess is many of the core precepts would be similar across a range of beings -- e.g., the notion of treating persons as ends-in-themselves should act as a side constraint even on posthumans and non-human sentients. In other words, true AI doesn't have the right to going on a killing spree simply because it's killing humans or what have you.) ? Also, natural law in the libertarian sense and even before basically supported "self-determination, diversity and change" because it restrains human-made law from trampling personal autonomy. In fact, natural law has almost always been at odds with state law is because rulers tend to want to use people for their ends -- almost always thought of as being more noble than allowing individuals to determine for themselves what ends they'll choose. ? This comes back, of course, to victimless crimes. The use of natural law or of any sort of critique of existing state laws would proceed, I trust, from appealing to everyone else's deeper views -- in the natural law case, to rights and justice. It wouldn't begin and end with "me no like" or such. If it does, just as a pragmatic matter, it's unlikely to move anyone.** ? Regards, ? Dan ? * Even in conflicts where deeper principles change or seem to change, these are almost always framed in terms of appealing to even deeper principles. Even relativists seem to making just this appeal by appealing to deeper metanorms -- even if they claim to explicitly reject these. ? ** Of course, to disarm one criticism here, be sure to home in on "pragmatic matter" here. I don't mean that because one is more likely to succeed with such appeals as opposed to just shouting "me no like" while pounding one's chest isn't a justification. (Even so, one might ask why would this work? Some would argue because many already tacitly accept natural law concepts, but I wouldn't offer an argument from popularity here.) From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/21 Dan If you're going to define "criminal" with reference only to what the state dictates is criminal, then none of this really matters. Calling, e.g., private individuals or even other non-state groups criminal via this method ends up only telling us the state has labeled them so -- and there's no reason to accept this as more than merely an expression of the preferences of the state or of the ruling class. Yes. States happen to have established a monopoly on legislation, at least in the west, so if a crime is what is prohibited and punished not by morals or aesthetics, but by the law, the positive law is essentially what has been legally enacted in the State concerned. This is an expression of the preference of the ruling class (or, ideally, of the specific Volksgeist and Zeitgeist concerned)? What else is new? Sure, you can try and take over the state concerned and change the law. If the state or if all states outlawed life extension and any research having to deal with Extropianism or transhumanism, would any of you say, "Well, we're criminals now -- just like Al Capone or Ted Bundy."? I live in a country where reproductive human cloning is *already* a crime, and land you a sentence similar to that provided for manslaughter. I devote a significant part of my energies to changing and/or fighting such laws, but if I am operating a cloning clinic, I am technically into professional crime, exactly as a drug cartel lord. I may not care and take my chances, one may have very good reasons to infringe the law in many circumstances after all, but I am under no delusion that victimless crimes have already been abolished in my country. ? This is via some form of law that transcends and is even presumed by state law. I think the natural law approach does this and is a means to judge even the actions of states. Yes, this is a judeo-christian tenet: the only law is the divine law, and human legislators are allowed at best to notarise and write down its universal and eternal content. I happen to have written a book on the subject, Indagine sui diritti dell'uomo. Genealogia di una morale which is available online at http://www.dirittidelluomo.org. Personally, I am instead on the side of self-determination, diversity and change. And also maintain that those are the best bets for the future of transhumanism. Lest somebody comes up with the natural law forbidding abortion, biotechnologies, etc. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 26 17:50:25 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:50:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> Message-ID: <007201cc4bbc$80f5a9a0$82e0fce0$@att.net> ... John Grigg wrote: > > I fully expect posthumans several millennia from now, to consider the > Extropy list as their personal scripture! Oh dear. That comment brings to mind some of my own personal indiscretions I have posted here over the years. I am imagining future posthumans puzzling over my sex lamas post for instance. spike From rloosemore at susaro.com Tue Jul 26 14:58:20 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:58:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2ED60C.9030507@susaro.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > > "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." Correction: "Amicus Plato, amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas." Richard Loosemore From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 17:58:10 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:58:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: <201107261703.p6QH3tra027815@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> <201107261703.p6QH3tra027815@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311703090.95856.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I agree with the parenthetic comment, though I'd point that recognition can often fuel people to do more work -- and some people do actually enjoy if not do things spefically to be recognized. I find nothing wrong with this as such. ? And maybe a tiny amount of public relations would help here with giving credit where it's due and making sure it doesn't go where it's not. ? Of course, if the conventional view of Socrates is close to the truth about him, he was unlikely to have other steal credit from him for being a pest or?a gadfly. Surely, there are people who value that and today Socrates is well remembered for it. (And, to respond to?the earlier post by Anders, ?while our knowledge of Socrates does come through the flters of Plato, Aristotle (or whoever took notes during his lectures), Xenophanes, and Aristophanes, it's likely they weren't too far off base.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: David Lubkin To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 1:03 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... Anders wrote: > My own recipe for cultural immortality: find a new important problem, make a stab at solving it. Even if you fail you will be a seminal character. I know several people who have solved important problems, including myself, who are completely unknown for having done so. The solution is used pervasively but the creator is forgotten. Examples: My friend Nat Mishkin invented what Microsoft calls a UUID about 25 years ago, which pervades computing. The histories usually erroneously credit Microsoft or OSF. My grandfather came up with the idea of clocked logic, for the SEAC in 1950. Every computer in the world uses it now, and he's forgotten altogether. This annoys me sometimes, but I'd rather change the world than get credit for it. (To clarify: I can live with no one being credited; I get ticked off when a solution is attributed to someone who had nothing to do with it. Or worse, fought it.) -- David. _______________________________________________ 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 18:58:22 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:58:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Perhaps, once we have the bandwidth to communicate with all other people at more or less the same time, we'll be able to negotiate the common moral grounds between individual sentient beings. That way, a broader moral basis doesn't need to be established, just that between these two specific individuals. So a relationship can escape the zeitgeist, just as it does now in our most intimate relationships. Thus, I could agree to disagree with being A on point X, but being B and I agree on that point, so we know we have that as common ground. While this is clearly more complex than the modes we work in now, we will hopefully have the bandwidth to be able to keep track of our moral basis with each other entity that we deal with. Morals can change to some extent with different people... A man might have one moral code of conduct for his wife, and another for his girlfriend, for example... ;-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 19:13:41 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:13:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Kelly, > > Are you kidding me? ?Are you a transhumanist? ?Have you not heard, > many times, of the advice of people like Kurzweil about the perils of > thinking linearly, instead of exponentially? ?I suppose you think > beings in 2500 years, with shared matroshka brains, and more, will > have at most 10 to 20 or so people in their intimate social family > circle, only about 100 to 200 people in their extended social, > business, and religious circle, and on the order of 1000 to 2000 > people in their historical and general knowledge of all historical > people they?ve learned about? ?How many fingers and toes do you think > they will all have? ?This is just primitive clueless monkey thought. Hold on there big guy!! :-) I believe that in the future there will be a billion billion conversations simultaneously taking place between all of us on all kinds of topics. We may merge into one superbrain, or maintain some semblance of individuality, I don't know about that... but, most of the interesting stuff said will have been said in the relatively near past. While our conversation here may be recorded, and technically remembered, I don't think it will have much impact. No, this is not monkey brain thinking, this is exponential thinking. And just as now, current events will be of more general interest to most of the conversations than ancient history. So I kind of stick with the idea that what we are saying here and now will not hold the rapt interest of AGIs in 2500 years. > Have you considered how many direct descendents we?ll have after 2500 > years, that would not have existed, if it were not for you and I, and > this conversation we are now having? ?Will they not all know every one > of the people we ever talked to or interacted with, in more intimate > detail, than even you can now manage to remember? ?I bet all of them > will get quite a chuckle, for an eternity, out of you having said this > here and now! ;) Quite possibly. > Every last mortal human that ever existed, from Socrates to you and I, > is going to be worshiped as one of the very rare and very few mortal > creators, and their entire lives, known intimately. But will it be relevant to their daily lives? I wonder. > We will all be > one of the very few beings that created everything despite having > almost nothing and less than 100 years to work with. ?There will be > endless historical simulations where our descendants will be reliving > and playing with each and every one of our lives ? including details > of your early life that even you have already long since completely > forgotten or misremembered. You don't think they'll have better things to think about? What you are presenting is a future where I do the moral equivalent of sitting on the couch all day watching Leave it to Beaver. Nostalgia will only be so interesting for so long, IMHO. > They will be simulating ? what if great > great^8 grandma had made this decision to support that > person/religion/political party, instead of this person, and on and on > in infinitely more detail than we can manage to grasp. How do you know you aren't a participant in such a simulation now? I often wonder myself if I am... > Every minor > bit any of us contributed to the creation of heaven will be infinitely > known, valued, and fully paid back with significant interest. ?Have > you not considered how every little trivial thing you are doing, now, > helping to create all that, including this conversation, is earning > you an unimaginable deserving reward in heaven? Ah, no. > As all of our descendants continue to grow exponentially, filling the > entire universe, and approaching an infinite number of social beings, > non of whom would have existed, if it were not for everything you did? > Kelly Anderson is going to be one of the few mortal creators, to which > all of future society owes its entire existence to. ?You will be > worshiped as no less than God, one of the few mortal creator ancestors > - every last intimate detail of your entire life worshiped in awe, for > an eternity, by all. I feel sorry then for the future members of my religion... ;-) -Kelly From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 19:06:06 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:06:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: <007201cc4bbc$80f5a9a0$82e0fce0$@att.net> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2E7F7F.4040401@aleph.se> <007201cc4bbc$80f5a9a0$82e0fce0$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311707166.2600.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Not to worry! If current religious scriptures are any guide, there will be so many alterations -- so much so that the finished product will bear only a tenuous relation to the original, for good or ill. :) ? Regards, ? Dan From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... ... John Grigg wrote: >? > I fully expect posthumans several millennia from now, to consider the > Extropy list as their personal scripture! Oh dear.? That comment brings to mind some of my own personal indiscretions I have posted here over the years.? I am imagining future posthumans puzzling over my sex lamas post for instance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Jul 26 19:10:08 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:10:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110726151008.348npp8nsw8wok0g@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Kelly Anderson : > > Morals can change to some extent with different people... A man might > have one moral code of conduct for his wife, and another for his > girlfriend, for example... ;-) Humm .... Sexist? Moralist? Perhaps?people might benefit from?thinking they know how we should behave and how others should behave. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 19:28:22 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:28:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311708502.20530.YahooMailClassic@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> David Lubkin wrote: > Anders wrote: > > >My own recipe for cultural immortality: find a new important > >problem, make a stab at solving it. Even if you fail you will be a > >seminal character. > > I know several people who have solved important problems, including > myself, who are completely unknown for having done so. The solution > is used pervasively but the creator is forgotten. Well, if I'm inclined to, I can claim to have invented digital music synthesis. Except I didn't. Someone else, at about the same time, had the same idea, but they actually did something about it, whereas I didn't. Ideas and solutions seem to emerge at the right time, in many places simultaneously. Certain things just become obvious to many people at a certain point in time. I don't think it makes a great deal of sense to give all the credit to one person who happens to have been the one that was able to commercialise or popularise it. We all stand on the shoulders of not giants, but of other people standing on the shoulders of other people, standing on... If Einstein had never been born, would we have General Relativity now? Of course we would. It would be associated with someone else's name, that's all. Ditto the Dyson vacuum cleaner, the Fairlight synthesiser and the lightbulb. Ben Zaiboc From rloosemore at susaro.com Tue Jul 26 19:26:24 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:26:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: <1311698745.10236.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311698745.10236.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2F14E0.5090808@susaro.com> Dan wrote: > Wouldn't Aristotle have been using Greek -- not Latin? :) > "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." > > -- > Stefano Vaj Stefano was quoting Isaac Newton's notebook: "Amicus Plato, amicus Aristotles magis amica Veritas" -- "I am a friend to Plato, I am a friend to Aristotle, but my greatest friend is the truth." Richard Loosemore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 20:00:37 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:00:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design (was Re: Rejecting Socrates) Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > If Einstein had never been born, would we have General Relativity now? ?Of course we would. > It would be associated with someone else's name, that's all. Agreed. What Einstein did was discover a basic scientific law. >Ditto the Dyson vacuum cleaner, the Fairlight synthesiser and the lightbulb. I also agree that if Einstein had never been born we would still have the Dyson vacuum cleaner, the Fairlight synthesiser and the lightbulb. :-) However, if James Dyson had not been born, we would obviously have other very good vacuum cleaners, but probably not exactly the vacuum cleaner that now bears his name. Perhaps, we would not even have one that leveraged the same physics. The difference between design and discovery is immense. The space of possible designs is virtually infinite, whereas discovery of natural laws is bound by what nature actually does. One is very highly constrained, and the other is very unconstrained. Would we have some method of using electricity to produce light? You bet! But design indicates that you can solve problems in an innumerable number of specific ways. It is unlikely that without the inventors we actually had, that we would have screw in incandescent bulbs of exactly the nature we have today. The plug would have been different, the filament might have been made of a different material, the frosting on the glass might have been different... It probably would still be incandescent, but it could have been different in so many meaningful ways, because design is constrained only by the imagination of the designer. The space of possible computer programs, as another example, is so immense that I no longer even worry about people trying to steal my ideas. The space is so infinitely large, that it is highly unlikely anyone else will even care about my idea until it is proven to be commercially viable, by me. Then I have first mover advantages. So, to say that we would know the laws of gravity without Newton, that's pretty easy to say. To say that cars would have the accelerator to the right, and the break to the left, foot operated, and a steering wheel, hand operated, well, that's a lot harder to say for certain. -Kelly From lubkin at unreasonable.com Tue Jul 26 20:58:04 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:58:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: <1311708502.20530.YahooMailClassic@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo .com> References: <1311708502.20530.YahooMailClassic@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107262058.p6QKwUp3022589@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Ben wrote: >Well, if I'm inclined to, I can claim to have invented digital music >synthesis. Except I didn't. Someone else, at about the same time, >had the same idea, but they actually did something about it, whereas I didn't. I'm talking about people who *did*. Nat didn't just have the concept; the computer world uses his exact design and he was seminal in its spread. He just doesn't get the credit. In the case of my grandfather, someone else would have thought of synchronizing a circuit to a clock signal sooner or later. But, again, he didn't just "have the idea." He built the computer, for the National Bureau of Standards; I have its faceplate on my mantle. >Certain things just become obvious to many people at a certain point >in time. I don't think it makes a great deal of sense to give all >the credit to one person who happens to have been the one that was >able to commercialise or popularise it. We all stand on the >shoulders of not giants, but of other people standing on the >shoulders of other people, standing on. I think that's overstating it. In a literal sense, we all rely on a string of predecessors. Someone invented writing, for instance. And it was obvious that someone would discover the structure of DNA or invent a steam engine not long after these things happened. On the other hand. there are people whose insights seem decades or even centuries beyond their times. I can't say what would have happened had they not lived, but it stands to reason the path of history would have been very different. -- David. From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Tue Jul 26 20:50:50 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin Haskell) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:50:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? Who would pay for such an expensive venture? I think we should be focusing on spending our resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working toward the Singularity. Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something productive for the human race. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Jul 26 21:51:42 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:51:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design (was Re: Rejecting Socrates) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <010e01cc4bde$353bb4b0$9fb31e10$@att.net> ... On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> If Einstein had never been born, would we have General Relativity now? ?Of course we would. >> It would be associated with someone else's name, that's all. >Agreed. What Einstein did was discover a basic scientific law... -Kelly General relativity is sometimes offered as a counter example to the concept suggested. Had Einstein never been born, we would surely have had special relativity. Others were working on that at the time or were close to it. But it isn't entirely clear that we would have general relativity. I think we probably would have found it eventually by now, but that one is so free of immediate applications I wouldn't bet on it. There are plenty of mathematical discoveries which would likely have never yet been discovered, were it not for the giants who have gone before, such as the weird and wacky stuff discovered by Srinivasa Ramanujan for instance. It stands to reason there should be one or two like that in the physics world. spike From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 01:08:27 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin Haskell) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:08:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Thanks for the Robert Ettinger links Message-ID: >Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:27:29 -0600 From: "Gina Miller" To: "ExI chat list" Subject: Re: [ExI] Robert Ettinger (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: < D9C0246AD69547FD8938FE5DAFAB1233 at 3DBOXXW4850> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Some interesting pictures posted by Bruce Klein at Longecity from a few years ago of Ettinger: http://www.longecity.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=67&t=4112 Gina "Nanogirl" Miller >www.nanogirl.com Thanks for the links, Gina. :) Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Jul 27 03:55:52 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:55:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Would this be also true for minority transhumanist beliefs? Message-ID: <4E2F8C48.3080209@canonizer.com> Transhumanists, This interesting article "Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas" on physorg.com: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-minority-scientists-ideas.html is kind of interesting. But I would doubt this would be true for transhumanist ideas? In other words, I would love to see an experiment, where they took some of those various networked groups of people. Start with all of them being traditional non transhumanists, most of them being hostile to ideas such as cryonics, and stuff like that. Then introduce new transhumanists into the group, maybe even as many as 20%. Would the trand shown in the graph hold for this minority transhumanist setup, also? Could the tipping point for transhumanism really be 10%? Is that all we need to do, is to get 10% of society to be transhumanists, and then our job would be done, as the rest soon followed? 5 years ago, I would bet we were a very long ways from 10% of society. But today, I bet we are getting close to this? What do you all think? What will the percentage of transhumanists be in say 10 more and 20 more... years? Certainly significant success at this would shorten the time before the singularity? Brent Allsop From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Jul 27 04:53:35 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:53:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E2F99CF.6040306@canonizer.com> Hi Kelly, Good responses! I have a question for you, do you believe we will ever approach perfect justice? And if so, how much do you think the Gods that inherit an immortal heaven, will owe to those who created it for them, taking them billions of years of struggle, for free? Out of everything humanity thinks about, what percentage of time do we spend on history, today, despite how much information we lack, or how hard it is to get what little we can get? I'm sure we spend way more than 1% of all our time on history, but lets just stay conservative. So even if a super AI, approaching infinite abilities, 1% of infinite is still approaching infinite. And would such work, with the ultimate goal of achiving a history of knowing what every last human did and thought, their entire life? And would working on and towards all this perfect justice and perfect history be nothing more than watching leave it to Beaver? I believe we are not in a simulation for the very same reason I hope there is no sentient God of any kind hiding from us. This is because creating such, and then hiding from us creations like that, would be inhumane, immoral and obviously, for so many reasons, unnecessary. For example, we can create abstract simulations, that behave exactly like us, yet for which there is nothing like it to be such beings. Such beings, even though they will act as if they are in pain, as they watch their loved one die, will not really phenomenally feel anything like we do... Sure, it's not a great argument, but still, I certainly HOPE we are not in any kind of terrible simulation, and that there is some way to accomplish whatever such would accomplish, without us having to suffer through all this terrible primitive isolation... You said you feel sorry for the future members of your religion. I don't think it will be quite like that. Emagine through some freak one time miracle, we managed to extract and reproduce a single human being from 50,000 years ago, and all of his life long experiences. Certainly such a being would be very popular today, some would even consider that he would be worshiped, in a way, and given anything he wants, especially compared to the life he lived 50,000 years ago. I think of it being more like that. More of a respect for what he was and did, than seeking any kind of guidance from us, or anything. So, you don't think I should wonder if those future AGIs will all know intimate details, far more than I can remember it myself, of just how successful my last sexual encounter with my wife was, how it felt for both of us, and all the rest of every intimate details about my entire mortal life? Do you have any interest, at all, of knowing all such about all of your ancestors, especially if such only took up less than 1% of everything you can do? Brent Allsop On 7/26/2011 1:13 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Brent Allsop > wrote: >> Kelly, >> >> Are you kidding me? Are you a transhumanist? Have you not heard, >> many times, of the advice of people like Kurzweil about the perils of >> thinking linearly, instead of exponentially? I suppose you think >> beings in 2500 years, with shared matroshka brains, and more, will >> have at most 10 to 20 or so people in their intimate social family >> circle, only about 100 to 200 people in their extended social, >> business, and religious circle, and on the order of 1000 to 2000 >> people in their historical and general knowledge of all historical >> people they?ve learned about? How many fingers and toes do you think >> they will all have? This is just primitive clueless monkey thought. > Hold on there big guy!! :-) I believe that in the future there will > be a billion billion conversations simultaneously taking place between > all of us on all kinds of topics. We may merge into one superbrain, or > maintain some semblance of individuality, I don't know about that... > but, most of the interesting stuff said will have been said in the > relatively near past. While our conversation here may be recorded, and > technically remembered, I don't think it will have much impact. > > No, this is not monkey brain thinking, this is exponential thinking. > And just as now, current events will be of more general interest to > most of the conversations than ancient history. So I kind of stick > with the idea that what we are saying here and now will not hold the > rapt interest of AGIs in 2500 years. > >> Have you considered how many direct descendents we?ll have after 2500 >> years, that would not have existed, if it were not for you and I, and >> this conversation we are now having? Will they not all know every one >> of the people we ever talked to or interacted with, in more intimate >> detail, than even you can now manage to remember? I bet all of them >> will get quite a chuckle, for an eternity, out of you having said this >> here and now! ;) > Quite possibly. > >> Every last mortal human that ever existed, from Socrates to you and I, >> is going to be worshiped as one of the very rare and very few mortal >> creators, and their entire lives, known intimately. > But will it be relevant to their daily lives? I wonder. > >> We will all be >> one of the very few beings that created everything despite having >> almost nothing and less than 100 years to work with. There will be >> endless historical simulations where our descendants will be reliving >> and playing with each and every one of our lives ? including details >> of your early life that even you have already long since completely >> forgotten or misremembered. > You don't think they'll have better things to think about? What you > are presenting is a future where I do the moral equivalent of sitting > on the couch all day watching Leave it to Beaver. Nostalgia will only > be so interesting for so long, IMHO. > >> They will be simulating ? what if great >> great^8 grandma had made this decision to support that >> person/religion/political party, instead of this person, and on and on >> in infinitely more detail than we can manage to grasp. > How do you know you aren't a participant in such a simulation now? I > often wonder myself if I am... > >> Every minor >> bit any of us contributed to the creation of heaven will be infinitely >> known, valued, and fully paid back with significant interest. Have >> you not considered how every little trivial thing you are doing, now, >> helping to create all that, including this conversation, is earning >> you an unimaginable deserving reward in heaven? > Ah, no. > >> As all of our descendants continue to grow exponentially, filling the >> entire universe, and approaching an infinite number of social beings, >> non of whom would have existed, if it were not for everything you did? >> Kelly Anderson is going to be one of the few mortal creators, to which >> all of future society owes its entire existence to. You will be >> worshiped as no less than God, one of the few mortal creator ancestors >> - every last intimate detail of your entire life worshiped in awe, for >> an eternity, by all. > I feel sorry then for the future members of my religion... ;-) > > -Kelly > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jul 27 06:31:50 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110727063150.GE16178@leitl.org> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? Who would pay for Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not so soon as many think. > such an expensive venture? I think we should be focusing on spending our How else are you supposed to get the energy and resources, given http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-07-18/galactic-scale-energy ? > resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working toward the You see many resources spent on transhumanism? > Singularity. Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of > dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something > productive for the human race. MWh feed, clothe and house people. With real information ecology, MHw will directly power people. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 11:00:49 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:00:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 26 July 2011 20:58, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Perhaps, once we have the bandwidth to communicate with all other > people at more or less the same time, we'll be able to negotiate the > common moral grounds between individual sentient beings. > I am merely speaking of rather trivial, everyday discussions which may happen at the pub amongst friends, in a Web forum or in a TV talk show. My - lawyerish? - approach is that unless you have a 100% confidence that the public shared by you and your opponent takes for granted your value system, and not that of your opponent, the real (and only) way "rationally" to put forward ethical, political or aesthetical arguments is to argue ex concessis, ad hominem. That is, either that your positions are the unavoidable consequence of something he admits to be true, or that his own positions are inconsistent with other tenets he also adhere to. This, besides reflecting my personal "relativist" philosophical position, is IMHO also a a sound strategic choice in most circumstances, since you are otherwise at risk of finding yourself in the position of the naivest fundamentalists who do not even comprehend how the general public may not share their views about, say, the Bible, and can only ineffectively vent their frustration at the fact when confronted with an opponent. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 11:24:44 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:24:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Natural law/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311702301.70554.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311257872.67880.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311702301.70554.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/26 Dan > Don't you agree? He seemed to me to be using it in a different sense -- > specifically, in an extra-legal sense, such as one where one might even > judge actual laws to be criminal. > I think there are two aspects here. The first is a linguistic and rhetorical abuse, which is btw rather recent, extending the normal meaning of "crime" from "a breach of criminal law" to any behaviour which may be distasteful or repugnant to the speaker. The second may have to do with the specific legal tradition of Anglo-Saxon countries, where much of criminal law is of a common-law, not statutory, origin, so that one can argue that a behaviour is or should be a "crime" on the basis of the "old and honoured customs of the country", which statutes themselves should not breach unless for exceptional reasons. But, hey, witchcraft has been for a long time a common-law crime. My guess is most legal theorists who appeal to something other than just, > "Hey, this is just what the rulers define as 'criminal,' so we must > completely assent to their decrees, never questioning this ever," > No. Positive law theorists would simply say that the law is... what it is, and you ignore it at your risk. More precisely, that as long as it is in force (factually, not "in the book") it defines what is a lease, what is a subcontractor, what is a taxable income and what is a crime. But they have nothing to say about the opportunity to change it through reform or revolution. On the contrary, if you do not like a law making a criminal of yourself, this makes it even more urgent to change it, does it not? > But, then, by that usage, there's no reason to share Will's outrage at > corporations being the "biggest organized criminals of all." They might be, > but this might only mean they've violate arbitrarily set up rules and no > more. (There would also be no difference between me waking up today and > deciding, arbitrarily, "Will and Stefano are the biggest criminals of all" > and similarly expressing my outrage -- save that I'm unlikely to persuade > too many others about this... Thankfully so!:) > Outrage at corporations may well be justified because i) they breach laws that in fact they would be legally obliged to comply with, and you think compliance with existing law to be everybody's duty, or because ii) they behave in ways that you would like to see forbidden by criminal law, even if they currently are not, or that you merely find distasteful or immoral. It's the tenet, rather, that there are objective laws that human made laws > should conform to and these are based on the nature of humans. > Yes. Aristotles' argument that there are "slaves by convention" and "slaves by nature"... :-) > Also, natural law in the libertarian sense and even before basically > supported "self-determination, diversity and change" because it restrains > human-made law from trampling personal autonomy. > Basically, it restrains human groups from giving themselves the laws of their choice, implicitely denying, inter alia, any kind of truly democratic legislative process and international-law principle of non-interference. But, in more practical and on-topic terms, it paves the way to international conventions aimed at a global repression of any temptation for a posthuman change. Because, hey, if "everybody" agrees that it is "unnatural" to mess your your "natural right to genetic imperfection", we certainly cannot allow Estonia or Thailand to do any differently, can we? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 11:31:30 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:31:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates In-Reply-To: <1311698745.10236.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311698745.10236.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/26 Dan > Wouldn't Aristotle have been using Greek -- not Latin? :) > In fact, it is Francis Bacon, not Aristotle, even though the latter actually says something on those lines in the Ethica Nicomacaea. But Plato himself writes something on those lines, referring to... Socrates, in *Phaedon*, 91b-c: "????? ??????, ?? ???? ????????, ??????? ???????????? ?????????, ??? ?? ???????? ???? ??????, ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ?????? ??????, ??????????????, ?? ?? ??, ????? ???? ???????????, ???????????? ???? ?? ??? ??? ????????? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ???? ??????????, ????? ??????? ?? ??????? ??????????? ?????????." -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Jul 27 12:32:41 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:32:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Would this be also true for minority transhumanist beliefs? In-Reply-To: <4E2F8C48.3080209@canonizer.com> References: <4E2F8C48.3080209@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4E300569.5070304@aleph.se> On 2011-07-27 05:55, Brent Allsop wrote: > This interesting article "Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping > point for the spread of ideas" on physorg.com: > > http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-minority-scientists-ideas.html Original paper here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3931 The finding isn't that new, in opinion dynamics research it is well known that a small group of people who do not change opinion inside a population where people change opinion based on encountering each other tends to win. > is kind of interesting. But I would doubt this would be true for > transhumanist ideas? Note that the finding says nothing about the content of the opinion, just that it is held. So the real question to ask is: are there enough committed transhumanists who will proselytize no matter what? And the more serious second-order question, do we want our views to spread because our beliefs are zealously held or because we think they are truth-tracking? > Could the tipping point for transhumanism > really be 10%? Is that all we need to do, is to get 10% of society to be > transhumanists, and then our job would be done, as the rest soon > followed? 5 years ago, I would bet we were a very long ways from 10% of > society. But today, I bet we are getting close to this? As a sociological rule of thumb, at the point when 10% agree with a view, that view becomes hard to disregard for the rest of society. A smaller group is just another minority among others, but when you reach around 10% you become politically relevant. If the issue is about civil rights, this is where they will start to seriously move forward. But notice that most sweeping changes in opinion have started far smaller than 10%. Abolitionism started among small groups of religious and humanist people, gradually growing through zealous preaching over about a generation until there was a fairly sharp transition at least in the United Kingdom. Gay rights required quite a bit of intellectual and social groundwork, and then got a sharp start at Stonewall when an almost ready-made group with shared opinions suddenly became visible and reached critical mass. There is a lot of interplay here with media visibility, having support from the right memetic key players (my obligatory wave of Hayek's "The intellectuals and socialism") and how early small opinion former groups spread. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 27 13:49:36 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:49:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Your view seems to be that if there are any moral truths, these must needs be something someone can beat into someone else. Am I correct? In which case, if one presumes such a view, it should not be surprising that one finds the possibility that a moral truth might be something like allowing people to determine their own lives. ? Since you seem to agree with self-determination, then wouldn't this impose a side constraint on everyone? I mean, in particular, if you hold that all should be free to self-determine, then this imposes limits on what other may do -- if one is to remain consistent. The limits would be that everyone else can't interfere in someone's self-determination. And that person couldn't, likewise, interfere in anyone else's self-determination. Wouldn't this lead to libertarianism? In other words, you do as you please with you and the same applies to all others. ? If not, what do you mean? In my view, either you accept this is a universal principle or you don't. If you don't, there are a few possibilities. One is no one is allowed self-determination. Another is that one or some persons has this right, but no one else does. The one or some can self-determine, but everyone else can be pushed around. ? Regarding how you see morality or political philosophy, I don't think the choice is between transhumanism and a 'parochial "yuck reaction."' (I actually believe many different views on this are compatible with transhumanism, but this means little. This is like saying many different views of morality are compatible with atheism. This doesn't tell us whether all these views are equivalent or just as acceptable.) ? Finally, when have I offered anything by rational arguments for my position here? My attempt above and previous was to show that the alternatives are contradictory or at least make questionable assumptions (here,?questionable assumptions about moral*). ? Regards, ? Dan ? * It seems to me much of your view here is based on the fear of any sort of objective or universal morality ending up as something akin to traditional strict religious moralities, such as those of the zealots in the Abrahimic faiths. To me, this is akin to the fear that finding objective phsyical laws will end up in the same thing. It's almost like accepting William S. Burroughs' line about one accepting either "everything is true, nothing is permitted" or "nothing is true, everything is permitted" -- and, naturally, being on the side of freedom, one must choose against truth. In my view, truth and freedom go together and I wouldn't surrender morality or objectivity to the zealots. ? From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 10:55 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/26 Dan But core moral precepts in such a system would incluyde, in my reckoning, things like allowing people to determine how they live their lives. One might see these as meta-values or, as Den Utl and Rassmussen put it, metanorms. Or simply as a paradox. If one accepts peoples' liberty to determine how they live, you implicitely accept that they can, at least factually, pick and choose their value system. To believe that you have a moral right to impose your "core moral precepts", implies denying that they can, or at least that they should. No big deals, monotheists, and their secular offspring, have been doing that for centuries. Only, one cannot have its pie and eat it too. And transhumanism, as any other rising, minority, revolutionary, school of thought, is way better off if a few doubts exist about the existence of eternal, universal moral truths that regularly end up being the parochial "yuck reaction" of the old, pre-revolutionary mainstream in any given society. This puts an end to any meaningful ethical or political or aesthetical discussion? By no mean. Simply, we have humbly to recognise that as long as we accept to limit ourselves to strictly "rational" arguments, the only way to advocate for a given position can only be based either on finding some common ground with your opponents (or, more importantly, with the public, the audience you share) or on showing the ultimate inconsistency of their own position. Now, I suspect that this is not really possible with radical and consequent anti-transhumanists, so we just have to agree to disagree, and wait and see which worldview is going to prevail... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Wed Jul 27 14:58:16 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:58:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107271458.p6REwkib011335@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Dan wrote: >Since you seem to agree with self-determination, then wouldn't this >impose a side constraint on everyone? I mean, in particular, if you >hold that all should be free to self-determine, then this imposes >limits on what other may do -- if one is to remain consistent. The >limits would be that everyone else can't interfere in someone's >self-determination. And that person couldn't, likewise, interfere in >anyone else's self-determination. Wouldn't this lead to >libertarianism? In other words, you do as you please with you and >the same applies to all others. > >If not, what do you mean? In my view, either you accept this is a >universal principle or you don't. If you don't, there are a few >possibilities. One is no one is allowed self-determination. Another >is that one or some persons has this right, but no one else does. >The one or some can self-determine, but everyone else can be pushed around. Now we're back to my point. We all, except maybe the Dalai Lama and friends, *are* comfortable with pushing around persons that we consider sufficiently inferior to ourselves -- cattle, termites, bacteria, rattlesnakes, computer software, etc. -- because we don't include them in the protected class of "person." The closer we are to that being in capabilities, the more willing we are to concede that it is a person, and has rights. We didn't mind abusing heathen or infidels, then slaves, Jews, Chinese, women, homosexuals, imbeciles, dwarfs, atheists, etc. We now care about dolphins and dogs, but constrain their self-determination. We'd be upset if Koko were tortured or killed, but no one has given her civil rights even though humans of the same IQ have them. We are creating or transforming ourselves into all manner of new beings, and there will not be uniform agreement on which of them should be considered persons. And I would not expect one for whom we were as termites to treat us better than we treat termites, despite Eliezer's best efforts. I think that unless there's a deus ex machina to establish the definitions and enforce a moral framework, the bottom line will be utilitarian. Why is it better for A to reciprocate with B where there's an extreme imbalance in capabilities between the two? If termites could negotiate with us, they could argue the benefits they provide in breaking down dead biologics. We agree we won't harm them as long as they stay out of our wooden homes and book collections, and mark them in a way they can detect. I'd rather look for utilitarian reasons why it would be better for an AI not to convert me to computronium, or to convert me in situ (I don't mind also being part of his brain if I don't know I am), than to try to persuade it to follow a philosophical precept of a non-aggression or self-determination principle. -- David. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 16:51:15 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:51:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <4E2ED60C.9030507@susaro.com> References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2ED60C.9030507@susaro.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/26 Richard Loosemore > Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> >> "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." >> > Correction: > > "Amicus Plato, amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas." > Oh, well, there are so many versions of it... :-) As already mentioned the one I made use of is usually credited to Francis Bacon. But practically everybody who ever made use of the formula claims to have been quoting, more or less accurately, somebody else, so... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Jul 27 17:26:40 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:26:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <010e01cc4bde$353bb4b0$9fb31e10$@att.net> Message-ID: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Tue, 7/26/11, spike wrote: "General relativity is sometimes offered as a counter example to the concept suggested.? Had Einstein never been born, we would surely have had special relativity.? Others were working on that at the time or were close to it. But it isn't entirely clear that we would have general relativity.? I think we probably would have found it eventually by now, but that one is so free of immediate applications I wouldn't bet on it."? And Einstein discovered the fundamental physical principle behind the LASER in 1917, but nobody actually made a working LASER until 1960. However even in 1917 the technology was good enough to do so, all the parts existed and they just needed to be put together in the right way and it wouldn't have cost more than a few hundred dollars. And if Aristotle had been just a tad smarter he could have come up with the Theory of Evolution more than 2 thousand years before Darwin, he had everything he needed to do so but genius. ? John K Clark? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rloosemore at susaro.com Wed Jul 27 17:32:30 2011 From: rloosemore at susaro.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:32:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rejecting Socrates/was Re: Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107251620.p6PGKjq0015385@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311612306.85874.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E2ED60C.9030507@susaro.com> Message-ID: <4E304BAE.8060908@susaro.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/7/26 Richard Loosemore > > > Stefano Vaj wrote: > > > "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas..." > > Correction: > > "Amicus Plato, amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas." > > > Oh, well, there are so many versions of it... :-) > > As already mentioned the one I made use of is usually credited to > Francis Bacon. But practically everybody who ever made use of the > formula claims to have been quoting, more or less accurately, somebody > else, so... :-) Ah, I stand corrected, Stefano, you are quite right. :-) I knew only of the fact that Newton wrote it as a slogan to declare his independence, but when I went checking just now it appears that this slogan, in various forms, was used throughout the middle ages and may actually have originated with Aristotle himself (speaking only of Plato). Richard Loosemore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Jul 27 17:48:20 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:48:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/27 Dan > Since you seem to agree with self-determination, then wouldn't this impose > a side constraint on everyone? > This is the alleged "paradox" of relativism, but at least for ethical relativism I do not really see the problem. I am not saying that "self-determination" is itself an absolute, universal moral truth. I simply *take side* for it (needless to say, for mine and for that of those who think like me in the first place), as a political and not as a "rational" stance. Universalists and relativists are both equally able to fight for their ideas or collective interests, for better and worse. The only difference is that relativists do not need to feel on the side of some kind of "objective" angels to do that, and that they need not think to have a moral duty to impose their views (be it just those related to "core moral tenets") on others. > Regarding how you see morality or political philosophy, I don't think the > choice is between transhumanism and a 'parochial "yuck reaction."' (I > actually believe many different views on this are compatible with > transhumanism, but this means little. This is like saying many different > views of morality are compatible with atheism. This doesn't tell us whether > all these views are equivalent or just as acceptable.) > What I am saying here is that if the "yuck reaction" is recognised as a purely relative and contingent factor, there is no real reason why those who do not share it (say, some hypothetically technophile inhabitants of the Tonga islands) should not be left to their own devices, in spite of their moral views being that of a vanishingly small minority in global terms. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 27 17:53:20 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:53:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> On 7/27/2011 12:26 PM, john clark wrote: > And if Aristotle had been just a tad smarter he could have come up with > the Theory of Evolution more than 2 thousand years before Darwin, he had > everything he needed to do so but genius. Slick funny line, John, but really very badly wrong. What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) by a monotheistic paradigm that encouraged scientists to assume as their reductionist default that the multiple worlds of empirical experience at many levels were basically *unified* and *lawful*. And what he didn't even know he needed to struggle against was an aristocratic certainty that close observation was worthless, experiment the domain of slaves and artisans, etc. We know this not only by reading the history of science and how it developed, but because of the "amazing" coincidence that both Darwin and Wallace came up with the same discovery at the same time--two instantaneous bursts of astonishing genius beyond the capacity, in your version, of the greatest minds from 2200 years earlier. "It's (also) the Zeitgeist, Stupid." Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 27 18:01:42 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:01:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] greatgrandson of Elron's great rap Message-ID: <4E305286.5090207@satx.rr.com> Jamie DeWolf -The God or The Man http://tinyurl.com/3d7dw32 , Sun Jul 17, 2011 From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 27 19:09:10 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:09:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick >...What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) by a monotheistic paradigm... Ja there is that, but the astonishing brilliance of Darwin is in how skilled an observer of nature was he. I am floored by all he saw. Do read any part of Origin of Species, or if busy just the astounding chapter 8 the ant chapter, my favorite in my favorite book: http://www.online-literature.com/darwin/originofspecies/9/ and if you want to see how a brilliant mind thinks, check out chapter 7: http://www.online-literature.com/darwin/originofspecies/8/ or if you are still more busy, browse the last few paragraphs of that chapter, do it, do it, DAVAI DAVAI DAVIA! Darwin is god. >... because of the "amazing" coincidence that both Darwin and Wallace came up with the same discovery at the same time--two instantaneous bursts of astonishing genius beyond the capacity...Damien Broderick NO! I do not wish to take anything from the brilliant insights of Wallace, who contributed some concepts independently, but Darwin anticipated Wallace by a generation. He was pressured into publishing by the imminent publication of Wallace's findings, but Darwin was there first, and I would argue, best. Wallace is good, Darwin is better. Better writer too. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 27 19:44:29 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:44:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311795869.90290.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm not a scholar of Aristotle, but I don't recall him rejecting experiment in his work. I also don't think any thinker at his time was consciously putting forth the experimental method. Didn't that really have to wait until the Late Middle Ages? ? And whilst I don't want to defend Aristotle (or any thinker) too much, I'm guessing that were he shown some experiments or observations?proving his ideas wrong in some of these areas, he probably would've changed his mind. (I get this from reading his works and noticing that he basically tried to incorporate rather than dismiss data. Of course, I've not read all his works and few of them closely, so this is just my impression from reading them in English translation.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 1:53 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. On 7/27/2011 12:26 PM, john clark wrote: > And if Aristotle had been just a tad smarter he could have come up with > the Theory of Evolution more than 2 thousand years before Darwin, he had > everything he needed to do so but genius. Slick funny line, John, but really very badly wrong. What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) by a monotheistic paradigm that encouraged scientists to assume as their reductionist default that the multiple worlds of empirical experience at many levels were basically *unified* and *lawful*. And what he didn't even know he needed to struggle against was an aristocratic certainty that close observation was worthless, experiment the domain of slaves and artisans, etc.? We know this not only by reading the history of science and how it developed, but because of the "amazing" coincidence that both Darwin and Wallace came up with the same discovery at the same time--two instantaneous bursts of astonishing genius beyond the capacity, in your version, of the greatest minds from 2200 years earlier. "It's (also) the Zeitgeist, Stupid." Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 27 19:58:55 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:58:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting spike : > Darwin is god. And what about Mendel? Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then where do you place Darwin? Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 27 21:19:21 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:19:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <1311801561.61945.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I see no need for God or gods. One can admire Darwin and others without bowing one's head or bending one's knee. ? Regards, ? Dan From: "natasha at natasha.cc" To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 3:58 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. Quoting spike : > Darwin is god. And what about Mendel? Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then where do you place Darwin? Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Jul 27 21:21:28 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:21:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of natasha at natasha.cc >. Quoting spike : >>. Darwin is god. >.And what about Mendel? I am a big fan of Mendel too. {8-] >.Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then where do you place Darwin. Natasha It would take me a while to list all the reasons why I think so highly of Darwin, but I will just touch on a couple points. We have science popularizers who are not professional scientists themselves, but who are dedicated enough to learn and understand the state of the art in some science, then explain it to the rest of us. Good examples would be Ed Regis, James Gleick, our own Damien Broderick. There are top shelf scientists who cannot write their way out of a wet paper sack, such as, Murray Gell Mann for instance and plenty of others. But in this short life, we are given a few soaring talents who are both top scientists and excellent writers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, for instance, but Darwin was the best of the best. Consider the lyrical beauty of the last paragraph in Origin of Species: It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. Whoooooo! Now THAT is writing! Now watch how the master reels it in: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. The poetic beauty! That passage soars with eagles! That man really had it all: expressive writing skills, observational talent, patience, persistence, self-discipline, generosity with credit, attentiveness to minute detail, brilliant intuition, creativity, courage, love of truth, every good thing I can imagine a science writer having, he had all that and much more of it than anyone else. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jul 27 21:24:30 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:24:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1311801870.64378.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> There are many paths to the top of the mountain. Also, one might like to have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever (e.g., someone doses me with caffeine again:). It might be good idea to have some people and assets off world. ? By the way, I think the costs you're estimating are high even for a government space program. But if one works at this via non-governmental programs -- i.e., voluntarilty, costs might be much lower (and development might proceed along many fronts, e.g., building up capabilities piecemeal as opposed to one monster project that sucks in gobs of resources and people). ? Regards, ? Dan From: Kevin Haskell To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 4:50 PM Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon?? Who would pay for such an expensive venture?? I think we should be focusing on spending our resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working toward the Singularity.? Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something productive for the human race. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 27 20:57:55 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:57:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <1311795869.90290.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <1311795869.90290.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E307BD3.7060106@satx.rr.com> On 7/27/2011 2:44 PM, Dan wrote: > I'm not a scholar of Aristotle, but I don't recall him rejecting > experiment in his work. He didn't have to *reject* it because it wasn't part of the Zeitgeist. The canonical Omg! wtf? example of error easily corrected by a moment's looking was his confident assertion that women have fewer teeth than men. > I also don't think any thinker at his time was > consciously putting forth the experimental method. Didn't that really > have to wait until the Late Middle Ages? That's exactly the point I was making. > And whilst I don't want to defend Aristotle (or any thinker) too much, > I'm guessing that were he shown some experiments or observations proving > his ideas wrong in some of these areas, he probably would've changed his > mind. It depends how paradigm-offending/unthinkable the topic was. I have no doubt that in 100 years (or 2000 or whatever) routine scientists will accept evidence for some psi phenomena, but they sure as hell don't today even when it *is* shown to them. "Don't go there, look away, look away, some people will shout BULLSHIT and laugh at you and stop you getting funding in any other project that interests you." Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 27 22:10:21 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:10:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110727181021.nz08ptswco8g8wk0@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting spike : > >natasha at natasha.cc >>> Quoting spike spike66 at att.net[1]: >>> . Darwin is god. >> .And what about Mendel? > I am a big fan of Mendel too.? {8-] >> .Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then > where do you place Darwin.? > It would take me a while to list all the reasons why I think so highly of > Darwin, but I will just touch on a couple points.? We have science > popularizers who are not professional scientists themselves, but who are > dedicated enough to learn and understand the state of the art in some > science, then explain it to the rest of us.? Good examples would be Ed > Regis, Not a good example. Regis does not always?peform objective research and may have, at least once or twice, sensationalized evidence and/or reported inaccurately. >James Gleick, our own Damien Broderick.? There are top shelf > scientists who cannot write their way out of a wet paper sack, such as, > Murray Gell Mann for instance and plenty of others.? But in this short life, > we are given a few soaring talents who are both top scientists and excellent > writers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, for instance, but Darwin was the best of > the best. Definitely Sagan. (And of course Broderick! :-)) I still prefer Aristotle, regardless of the teeth comment that also the comment that women's brains weigh less than men so they are not as brainy as men, and regardless of the fact that he was a different type of researcher/investigator than science. And speaking of science, let's not make scientists gods for goodness sakes.? That is a throw back to human-centric, male dominated science, which may be?the real?meaningful thing that postmodernism spoke out against. Links: ------ [1] mailto:spike66 at att.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Jul 28 03:45:51 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 23:45:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <201107280346.p6S3kRa2016421@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Spike wrote: >But in this short life, we are given a few soaring talents who are >both top scientists and excellent writers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, >for instance, but Darwin was the best of the best. Sagan was an okay scientist. He was far from top tier. Asimov was not a scientist at all, by any reasonable metric. He got his PhD and taught for a few years at BU. He did no research as a biochemist. "I was hired to teach ... as a researcher, I can do a creditable job, but I am merely adequate -- no more." [In Joy Still Felt, p 111] If you want a soaring talent who is both a top scientist and an excellent writer, my best candidates are probably Lynn Margulis (who, btw, was Sagan's ex) and Linus Pauling, although there are other names, like E. O. Wilson, that lurk in my hindbrain. -- David. From moulton at moulton.com Thu Jul 28 03:29:40 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:29:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kurzweil event Wednesday Aug 3 Message-ID: <4E30D7A4.8000700@moulton.com> Title: Transcendent Man A Conversation about the Future Location: Lincoln Center, NYC And will be broadcast to various theaters. More info at: http://www.fathomevents.com/originals/event/transcendentman.aspx Fred From giulio at gmail.com Thu Jul 28 06:39:19 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:39:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Suzanne Gildert on Hack the Multiverse!, OpenQwaq, August 14 2011, 10am PST In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: UPDATE ? NEW DATE: Sunday, August 14, 2011, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm continental EU) On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Suzanne Gildert on Hack the Multiverse!, OpenQwaq, July 31 2011, 10am PST > http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/suzanne-gildert-on-hack-the-multiverse-openqwaq-july-312011-10am-pst/ > > Talk title: Hack the Multiverse! > > Presented by: Dr. Suzanne Gildert > Quantum Computer Programmer (D-Wave Systems Inc.) > > William Gibson famously said: ?The future is already here ? it?s just > not very evenly distributed.? The same is true of quantum computing. > This mysterious subject is often relegated to ivory tower discussions > and shrouded in a language of complex mathematics. Yet there are many > people out there who feel an itch to start hacking with quantum > computers ? a desire to program the very fabric of reality ? no matter > how early the adoption may seem. > > This talk will be a call to arms ? I?ll excite you about quantum > physics ? our deepest understanding of the Universe. I?ll explain why > quantum computing is not as mysterious as everyone thinks. And I?ll > show you how to become a quantum computer programmer in less than 10 > minutes? Join me for an hour of both deep learning and fun, as I > proudly stand up for those who are turning an abstract science into a > powerful computational resource, and deliver the message that quantum > computing is not spooky, it?s just misunderstood. > > About the speaker: Dr. Suzanne Gildert is currently working at D-Wave > Systems, Inc. Suzanne obtained her PhD and MSci degree from The > University of Birmingham UK, focusing on the areas of experimental > quantum device physics and superconductivity. > > OpenQwaq is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online > meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D > environment (v-learning). There are a limited number of seats > available, please contact us if you wish to attend. Join our mailing > list, our Facebook group, or our Linkedin group. > From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Jul 28 14:19:27 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:19:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <201107280346.p6S3kRa2016421@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com><002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net><20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc><005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> <201107280346.p6S3kRa2016421@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: David Lubkin wrote: "Sagan was an okay scientist. He was far from top tier." True, but one has to admit _Science as a Candle in the Dark_ is a mighty fine title for a book. "If you want a soaring talent who is both a top scientist and an excellent writer, my best candidates are probably Lynn Margulis (who, btw, was Sagan's ex) and Linus Pauling, although there are other names, like E. O. Wilson, that lurk in my hindbrain." Margulis yes! I adore her. It does not matter who she is married to or was married to. She stands on her own. I am related to Pauling, but the gene pool did not go in my direction. E.O. Wilson's _Consilience_ is mighty fine as well. But none of them compare to the insights of da Vinci (who was not a scientist, per se) AND, this is where the issue of discovery and design meet. Natasha From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jul 28 14:42:21 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:42:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Kevin Haskell wrote: > Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon?? I presume this refers to the technological singularity, but the operative words you use are "hope to" and soon. "Hope" and "soon" are vague. If we run out of cheap energy before major technical advances, the carrying capacity of the earth on sustainable energy is 1-2 billion people. What happens to the rest of them? snip > Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something productive for the human race. There are two ways to mine the moon without having a base there at all. Do it with robots/teleoperated devices or a mining crawler in the end of a lunar elevator. It is possible to imagine ways to spend trillions of dollars to set up moon base, but that's why it is extremely unlikely it will be done. On the other hand, a beamed energy propulsion project to reduce the cost of getting to GEO down to $100/kg is a reasonable way to solve the energy problem. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898 Keith From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jul 28 16:41:56 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:41:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com><002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net><20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc><005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> <201107280346.p6S3kRa2016421@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311871316.23788.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The sad thing about da Vinci is that much of his work had to await rediscovery centuries later. (Of course, he's not alone in suffering from this.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Natasha Vita-More To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 10:19 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. David Lubkin wrote: "Sagan was an okay scientist. He was far from top tier." True, but one has to admit _Science as a Candle in the Dark_ is a mighty fine title for a book. "If you want a soaring talent who is both a top scientist and an excellent writer, my best candidates are probably Lynn Margulis (who, btw, was Sagan's ex) and Linus Pauling, although there are other names, like E. O. Wilson, that lurk in my hindbrain." Margulis yes! I adore her.? It does not matter who she is married to or was married to. She stands on her own. I am related to Pauling, but the gene pool did not go in my direction.? E.O. Wilson's _Consilience_ is mighty fine as well. But none of them compare to the insights of da Vinci (who was not a scientist, per se) AND, this is where the issue of discovery and design meet.? Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Jul 28 19:07:22 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:07:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <002c01cc4c90$ab23e640$016bb2c0$@att.net> <20110727155855.cev462fveow404og@webmail.natasha.cc> <005d01cc4ca3$265581e0$730085a0$@att.net> <201107280346.p6S3kRa2016421@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <201107281907.p6SJ7uUf029197@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Natasha wrote: >Margulis yes! I adore her. It does not matter who she is married to or was >married to. She stands on her own. I brought up the fact that she had been married to Sagan as a point in *his* favor, not hers. And as a bit of trivia. What I adore about her, along with Pauling, Galileo, Van Gogh, and a few others, is that they had maverick ideas, persisted in the face of fierce opposition, were ultimately proven right, and reshaped their fields. One of her Lynn's sisters is Joan Glashow, wife of Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, who are both close friends of my mother. This led to my meeting Lynn at the Glashows, having dinner with her at AAAS, etc. She will be reviewing a children's book I'm writing on the Gaia Hypothesis. Lynn's other sister -- whose name escapes me -- is married to physicist-cum-mathematician Daniel Kleitman, who was a technical advisor on Good Will Hunting. (And Kleitman's doctoral advisors were Nobel Laureates Schwinger and Glauber. Glauber used to date my mother.) Next time I see one of the sisters I really want to hear about how they were raised. SF writer Nick Sagan is from Carl's second marriage -- after Lynn, before Ann Druyan. Since my mother briefly dated Carl, I quipped when I met Nick that had history gone a little differently, we could have been stepbrothers. Science is a very small community, especially if you were Jewish in the Fifties. -- David. From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Jul 28 21:49:15 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:49:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Wed, 7/27/11, Damien Broderick wrote: "What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) by a monotheistic paradigm that encouraged scientists to assume as their reductionist default that the multiple worlds of empirical experience at many levels were basically *unified* and *lawful*." But Pythagoras lived almost 2 hundred years before Aristotle and he thought the laws of the universe were unified and lawful, he thought numbers ruled the world and were behind everything. It's true that the ancient Greeks weren't big on observations and didn't make a lot of them, but Aristotle wouldn't have needed a lot to derive the theory of Evolution, just the observation that offspring were similar to but not identical to their parents. With the correct application of logic from that starting point he could have done it.? And speaking of what might have been, Archimedes came very close to inventing Calculus and beating Newton to the punch by 1900 years. There is no way Newton could have found General Relativity because that needs a mathematical tool box that was not complete until the mid 19'th century; BUT Newton could have found Special Relativity because that only needed Algebra, we could have had it and known that E=mc^2 in 1705 instead of 1905. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Jul 28 22:16:48 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:16:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <4E307BD3.7060106@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311891408.60147.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Wed, 7/27/11, Damien Broderick wrote: "I have no doubt that in 100 years (or 2000 or whatever) routine scientists will accept evidence for some psi phenomena" Wanna bet? Oh I'm sorry, we've been through this before, no of course you don't want to bet. "but they sure as hell don't today even when it *is* shown to them." To give you an idea of the quality of the "Peer reviewed journals" where this crap is "shown to them" (them?) get a load of this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20447-journal-rejects-studies-contradicting-precognition.html ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Jul 28 23:16:10 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:16:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311891408.60147.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311891408.60147.YahooMailClassic@web82907.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E31EDBA.6060004@satx.rr.com> On 7/28/2011 5:16 PM, john clark wrote: > To give you an idea of the quality of the "Peer reviewed journals" where > this crap is "shown to them" (them?) get a load of this: > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20447-journal-rejects-studies-contradicting-precognition.html What's your point? I'm certainly hoping to see all the details of all these attempted replications. Parapsychology journals, curiously enough (unlike the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a mainstream journal) *do* as a matter of established principle publish papers reporting null results. Wiseman, btw, is notorious for his trickery, evasiveness and BULLSHIT, and I gather that his own "replication" of Bem had serious but typical shortcomings, rather as if someone tried to repeat an experiment that used laser beams (or as you would put it, LASER Beams) by using flashlights instead. Damien Broderick From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 00:24:08 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin G Haskell) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:24:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed Message-ID: On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: (Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? Who would pay for) >Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not so soon as many think. Evolving is hard work, but it is happening faster and faster already, and the heavy resources should be invested in something that is realistic at this point. The greatest resource is the human mind, soon to be the Transhuman mind, and if the Transhumans find a need to go the moon, then they will do so much more quickly and efficiently. > (such an expensive venture? I think we should be focusing on spending >our) >How else are you supposed to get the energy and resources, given >http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-07-18/galactic-scale-energy >? There are so many things with the article in this link that I can't even begin dissecting it. While not just extrapolate the numbers that humans will use in the next million years? How about throwing out any assumption of technological advances, or that population is expected to become stable in less then 50 years to between 9 and 10 billion people? These numbers provided in the article are absurd. > (resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working toward the) >You see many resources spent on transhumanism? Increasingly, yes, and I wish to see that trend continue at an every quickening pace. I more Capitalistic system would do wonders. > (Singularity. Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of > dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something > productive for the human race.) >MWh feed, clothe and house people. With real information ecology, >MHw will directly power people. MWh is? I think I get the gist, and have to say, the only way we hope to feed, clothe, and house people, is through continued freeing of state-run nations to market-based ones, as we have been seeing happen world-wide. Good intentions aren't enough, nor realistic. Well-reasoned self-interested is the most empathetic people can be by providing the wealth needed to produce the goods and services need for all people. Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 01:35:51 2011 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin G Haskell) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:35:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) Message-ID: Dan wrote: >There are many paths to the top of the mountain. Also, one might like to >have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what >folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror >scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever (e.g., >someone doses me with caffeine again:). It might be good idea to have >some people and assets off world. >? >By the way, I think the costs you're estimating are high even for a >government space program. But if one works at this via non-governmental >programs -- i.e., voluntarilty, costs might be much lower (and development >might proceed along many fronts, e.g., building up capabilities piecemeal >as opposed to one monster project that sucks in gobs of resources and >people). >? >Regards, >? If things go horrible on Earth, it will be a quick and easy stop off at the moon by the new AGI species to finish the job and end the rest of us. Prices won't just include getting a few people there, but creating enough secure buildings to create a decent sized community, complete with human, animal, and plant life. So we are likely looking at least a trillion dollars, and it would really only make sense if we needed to locate the same materials somewhere up there that are mostly located in China as "rare-earth" materials. Then they would have to be able to have mining equipment up their somehow, and then get it back to Earth on a regular basis. Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 29 04:03:01 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:03:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <4E31EDBA.6060004@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Thu, 7/28/11, Damien Broderick wrote: "as if someone tried to repeat an experiment that used laser beams (or as you would put it, LASER Beams)" LASER is an acronym, it stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Usually its customary to capitalize acronyms and it seemed particularly important to do so in this case because the stimulated emission of radiation is the very fundamental physical principle discover by Einstein in 1917 that I was talking about. And if you ever change your mind about betting on the possibility of Psi existing please let me know, I can always use the money. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 29 04:51:51 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:51:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> On 7/28/2011 11:03 PM, john clark wrote: > LASER is an acronym So are radar and scuba and snafu and a lot of other now-common words. No caps needed at all, unless you're SHOUTING. Damien Broderick From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 29 05:22:04 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:22:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Fri, 7/29/11, Damien Broderick wrote: "> LASER is an acronym" "So are radar and scuba and snafu and a lot of other now-common words. No caps needed at all, unless you're SHOUTING." What about ESP RIP, or NASA or NATO or GOP or PBS or AA or AAA or ATM or USA ? ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 05:18:25 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:18:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> References: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: John, just curious--what all would you consider to be considered "psi"? It seems there's not a catchall--I thought to have it mean "an action taken by the human brain that is currently unexplainable by known physics," but a lot of things that seem very non-psi would fall into that category. A perhaps tighter definition would be "an action taken by the human brain that violates known physics," but I wouldn't quite put it there, either. The problem is, what psi really does symbolize is a large group of fairly unrelated phenomena. Most seem to be considered conscious, mental abilities. I'm sure we can both agree that the mind can do some very wild stuff, and that there are a LOT of things out there that we all could certainly believe the mind was capable of much as we might believe a powerful computer was. What definition, exactly, do you reject? It seems like your argument is for the most part "Magic ain't real," but I doubt any of us don't think that. What do you think the human brain has, without question, zero capability for? This should clear a lot up. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Jul 29 06:21:17 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:21:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E32515D.1060906@aleph.se> On 2011-07-28 23:49, john clark wrote: > On *Wed, 7/27/11, Damien Broderick //* wrote: > > "What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and > theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) > by a monotheistic paradigm that encouraged scientists to assume as > their reductionist default that the multiple worlds of empirical > experience at many levels were basically *unified* and *lawful*." > > But Pythagoras lived almost 2 hundred years before Aristotle and he > thought the laws of the universe were unified and lawful, he thought > numbers ruled the world and were behind everything. In about the same way your garden variety new ager does, not like a theoretical physicist does. Remember, this was long before mathematical science had been invented. That was invented around 1623 by Gallileo. Before that science (insofar there was any experimental method at all) tended to be qualitative. And, as this thread has discussed, experimental science as a method was only developed during the middle ages (Alhazen perhaps started, it got translated/enlarged by Roger Bacon) and early modernity (Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620). It was refined a lot more subsequently - but it took centuries. We tend to overestimate how hard it is to come up with an entirely new way of seeking knowledge. These methods are technologies of their own, and just like steam engines and transistors require plenty of people using and improving them before they become really potent. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 29 06:57:49 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:57:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <4E32515D.1060906@aleph.se> References: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E32515D.1060906@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4E3259ED.60102@satx.rr.com> On 7/29/2011 1:21 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > We tend to overestimate how hard it is to come up with an entirely new > way of seeking knowledge. These methods are technologies of their own, > and just like steam engines and transistors require plenty of people > using and improving them before they become really potent. Indeed, although you meant to type "underestimate"... Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jul 29 08:56:41 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:56:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 08:24:08PM -0400, Kevin G Haskell wrote: > On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > > (Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? Who would pay > for) > > >Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not > so soon as many think. > > Evolving is hard work, but it is happening faster and faster already, and People are exactly the same as 50 kiloyears ago. > the heavy resources should be invested in something that is realistic at The US troop tent air conditioning budget is bigger than NASA. The wars are at 4 terabucks already and counting. There is heavy resource spending allright, and it's all poppycock. > this point. The greatest resource is the human mind, soon to be the > Transhuman mind, and if the Transhumans find a need to go the moon, then > they will do so much more quickly and efficiently. You've fallen prey to the Singularity cult. Our 'friends from the future' are out worst enemies, because the make us sit there in langurous apathy. Don't ask what the future can do for you, ask what you can do for the future. Orelse there won't be any future for you. > > (such an expensive venture? I think we should be focusing on spending > >our) > > >How else are you supposed to get the energy and resources, given > >http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-07-18/galactic-scale-energy > >? > > There are so many things with the article in this link that I can't even > begin dissecting it. While not just extrapolate the numbers that humans You're not supposed to dissect it but to look at the numbers and realize we're running out of time. > will use in the next million years? How about throwing out any assumption Don't worry your pretty little head about the next megayear, rather think about the next century. > of technological advances, or that population is expected to become stable You haven't read the article. Technology can't create something from nothing. > in less then 50 years to between 9 and 10 billion people? These numbers > provided in the article are absurd. The numbers aren't absurd (up to where they start exceeding the speed of light). It's just a Kardashev roadmap. > > (resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working toward > the) > > >You see many resources spent on transhumanism? > > Increasingly, yes, and I wish to see that trend continue at an every Garcon, I'd like to have whatever he's having. It's heady stuff. > quickening pace. I more Capitalistic system would do wonders. Capitalistic system. Yes, I'm sure it's all what it takes. > > (Singularity. Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of > > dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something > > productive for the human race.) > > >MWh feed, clothe and house people. With real information ecology, > >MHw will directly power people. > > MWh is? I think I get the gist, and have to say, the only way we hope to > feed, clothe, and house people, is through continued freeing of state-run > nations to market-based ones, as we have been seeing happen world-wide. Good > intentions aren't enough, nor realistic. Well-reasoned self-interested is > the most empathetic people can be by providing the wealth needed to produce > the goods and services need for all people. Less dogma, more traction. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 09:06:48 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:06:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: Eugen Leitl wrote: You've fallen prey to the Singularity cult. Our 'friends from the future' are out worst enemies, because the make us sit there in langurous apathy. Don't ask what the future can do for you, ask what you can do for the future. Or else there won't be any future for you. >>> Eugen, I am so glad you're here to talk sense to the dreamers like Kevin and myself. I personally think there will be a Singularity, but that it will probably happen at least several decades later than Ray Kurzweil predicts. John : ) On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 1:56 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 08:24:08PM -0400, Kevin G Haskell wrote: > > On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > >On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > > > > (Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? Who would pay > > for) > > > > >Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not > > so soon as many think. > > > > Evolving is hard work, but it is happening faster and faster already, and > > People are exactly the same as 50 kiloyears ago. > > > the heavy resources should be invested in something that is realistic at > > The US troop tent air conditioning budget is bigger than NASA. > The wars are at 4 terabucks already and counting. > > There is heavy resource spending allright, and it's all poppycock. > > > this point. The greatest resource is the human mind, soon to be the > > Transhuman mind, and if the Transhumans find a need to go the moon, then > > they will do so much more quickly and efficiently. > > You've fallen prey to the Singularity cult. Our 'friends from the future' > are out worst enemies, because the make us sit there in langurous apathy. > > Don't ask what the future can do for you, ask what you can do for the > future. Orelse there won't be any future for you. > > > > (such an expensive venture? I think we should be focusing on spending > > >our) > > > > >How else are you supposed to get the energy and resources, given > > >http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-07-18/galactic-scale-energy< > http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-07-18/galactic-scale-energy> > > >? > > > > There are so many things with the article in this link that I can't even > > begin dissecting it. While not just extrapolate the numbers that humans > > You're not supposed to dissect it but to look at the numbers and realize > we're running out of time. > > > will use in the next million years? How about throwing out any > assumption > > Don't worry your pretty little head about the next megayear, rather think > about the next century. > > > of technological advances, or that population is expected to become > stable > > You haven't read the article. Technology can't create something from > nothing. > > > in less then 50 years to between 9 and 10 billion people? These numbers > > provided in the article are absurd. > > The numbers aren't absurd (up to where they start exceeding the speed of > light). > It's just a Kardashev roadmap. > > > > (resources on bettering humanity through Transhumanism and working > toward > > the) > > > > >You see many resources spent on transhumanism? > > > > Increasingly, yes, and I wish to see that trend continue at an every > > Garcon, I'd like to have whatever he's having. It's heady stuff. > > > quickening pace. I more Capitalistic system would do wonders. > > Capitalistic system. Yes, I'm sure it's all what it takes. > > > > (Singularity. Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions > of > > > dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something > > > productive for the human race.) > > > > >MWh feed, clothe and house people. With real information ecology, > > >MHw will directly power people. > > > > MWh is? I think I get the gist, and have to say, the only way we hope to > > feed, clothe, and house people, is through continued freeing of state-run > > nations to market-based ones, as we have been seeing happen world-wide. > Good > > intentions aren't enough, nor realistic. Well-reasoned self-interested > is > > the most empathetic people can be by providing the wealth needed to > produce > > the goods and services need for all people. > > Less dogma, more traction. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 13:28:14 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:28:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that just haven't been uncovered as of yet. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Eugen Leitl To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 4:56 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 08:24:08PM -0400, Kevin G Haskell wrote: > On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > > (Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon?? Who would pay > for) > > >Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not > so soon as many think. > > Evolving is hard work, but it is happening faster and faster already, and People are exactly the same as 50 kiloyears ago. [snip] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 13:49:19 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:49:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <4E307BD3.7060106@satx.rr.com> References: <1311787600.52976.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E305090.60102@satx.rr.com> <1311795869.90290.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E307BD3.7060106@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1311947359.47114.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Well, you seemed to be saying that slaves and artisans were consciously running experiments that Aristotle and others were ignoring from disdain. That would seem to mean, to me, that the experimental method was around long before the Middle Ages and that Aristotle and friends were just ignoring it because they were shackled to their aristocratic worldview. ? Also, Aristotle, unlike the folks who supposedly wouldn't have looked in the telescope, wasn't a Christian and seemed to have been open to all sorts of other evidence -- even if, in hindsight, we might feel his rejections of certain ideas was ridiculous. This is what I get from reading him. I actually see him as more a synthetic thinker in many respects -- willing to look at the views of others on a topic in a way that many other types of thinkers wouldn't. ? And as for Russell's comment, I'm not an Aristotle apologist, but I don't know that this is all that telling. Lots of people overlook things they shouldn't have. Recall the time I set up that 1.7 Gt device on Mount Asa and forgot the detonator!?Aristotle did this too. But he also did make observations, such as the ones he made with chicken embryos. (Of coruse, the sad part was later thinkers, for the most part, didn't do much follow-up work to see where he got it wrong -- until, if memory serves, the 1700s.) ? Regards, ? Dan From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 4:57 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. On 7/27/2011 2:44 PM, Dan wrote: > I'm not a scholar of Aristotle, but I don't recall him rejecting > experiment in his work. He didn't have to *reject* it because it wasn't part of the Zeitgeist. The canonical Omg! wtf? example of error easily corrected by a moment's looking was his confident assertion that women have fewer teeth than men. > I also don't think any thinker at his time was > consciously putting forth the experimental method. Didn't that really > have to wait until the Late Middle Ages? That's exactly the point I was making. > And whilst I don't want to defend Aristotle (or any thinker) too much, > I'm guessing that were he shown some experiments or observations proving > his ideas wrong in some of these areas, he probably would've changed his > mind. It depends how paradigm-offending/unthinkable the topic was. I have no doubt that in 100 years (or 2000 or whatever) routine scientists will accept evidence for some psi phenomena, but they sure as hell don't today even when it *is* shown to them. "Don't go there, look away, look away, some people will shout BULLSHIT and laugh at you and stop you getting funding in any other project that interests you." Damien Broderick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 29 14:38:07 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:38:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: References: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <201107291438.p6TEcjTI029689@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Will wrote: >John, just curious--what all would you consider to be considered >"psi"? It seems there's not a catchall--I thought to have it mean >"an action taken by the human brain that is currently unexplainable >by known physics," but a lot of things that seem very non-psi would >fall into that category. A perhaps tighter definition would be "an >action taken by the human brain that violates known physics," but I >wouldn't quite put it there, either. > >The problem is, what psi really does symbolize is a large group of >fairly unrelated phenomena. Most seem to be considered conscious, >mental abilities. I'm sure we can both agree that the mind can do >some very wild stuff, and that there are a LOT of things out there >that we all could certainly believe the mind was capable of much as >we might believe a powerful computer was. > >What definition, exactly, do you reject? It seems like your >argument is for the most part "Magic ain't real," but I doubt any of >us don't think that. What do you think the human brain has, without >question, zero capability for? This should clear a lot up. This is an interesting question. The answer might be parallel to AI -- a set S of capabilities is considered to be AI at time t0. When, at time t1, a capability (solving equations, playing chess...) is achieved, people declare that that's not AI, and remove it from S. Or to statements of the form "Only humans ___" as a way of declaring that we are either superior to or inferior to other species. Only humans invent new words. Only humans rape. As soon as an example is found in another species, a new basis for declaring us superior or inferior is switched to. At first, I thought a definition of psi would require that the ability existed without technological assist, but I think that's too limiting. Take telepathy. I see three ways you might be able to read another persons thoughts: (a) classic telepathy -- through mutation or biological alteration, a human acquires the ability (b) technological equivalent -- A and B both have computer-brain interfaces with read/write capabilities. A's thoughts are converted to a data stream, which is transmitted to B. B's processor converts A's thoughts into an audio feed. Or overlays B's visual image of A with closed captions. Or, more ambitiously, writes A's thoughts into B's short- or long-term memories. (c) augmented nature -- humans now, or through *biological* alteration, have an ability that could read human thought but isn't powerful enough. Technological means amplify our senses, making an inherent ability potent enough to be usable. (a) is clearly psi. (b) is clearly not psi. (c) is debatable; I'd opt for considering it psi, but there's logic in excluding it as well. -- David. From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 14:16:37 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:16:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think the five-letters boundary is quite obvious. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 29 14:52:20 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:52:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo. com> References: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107291453.p6TErSQb001968@andromeda.ziaspace.com> John Clark wrote: >On Fri, 7/29/11, Damien Broderick wrote: > >"> LASER is an acronym" > >"So are radar and scuba and snafu and a lot of other now-common >words. No caps needed at all, unless you're SHOUTING." > >What about ESP RIP, or NASA or NATO or GOP or PBS or AA or AAA or ATM or USA ? Are you asking or are you trolling? That some acronyms haven't lost their caps doesn't refute that others have. Each word is unto itself. One factor is whether the acronym is pronounceable. Another is longevity. Another is whether the acronym is used as the basis for adjectives and verbs. (Merriam-Webster has laser as a verb from 1978.) Which way to write a given acronym depends on the style guide and dictionary is considered authoritative for the context. The Associated Press Stylebook says go by whichever is the main entry for the dictionary used, but specifically says that scuba is "a lowercased acronym." My deskside dictionary, a 1975 edition, only lists scuba in lowercase. Likewise for snafu and laser. -- David. From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 29 15:04:53 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:04:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107291505.p6TF5V5O004573@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Dan wrote: >Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening >amongst human in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case >that there was some amount of evolution from fifty thousand years >ago. In particular, it seems that the ability to digest milk in >adulthood arose and spread to most of the species. Also, blondness >seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years ago. Granted, >these are minor changes, but there are probably others that just >haven't been uncovered as of yet. More significantly, I am an Ashkenazic Jew of statistically abnormal intelligence. My tribe is much smarter now than it was 5000 years ago, let alone 50,000. There are competing hypotheses as to why, but the reality remains. But I take Eugen's core point -- that the changes aren't dramatic. And I agree with his thesis: We can't sit and wait for the nano-fairy to sprinkle us with transhuman goodness. We must, in particular, achieve self-sufficient off-Earth enclaves as soon as possible. -- David. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 15:23:03 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:23:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin Haskell) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/26 Kevin Haskell : > Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon? "Evolution" is usually a consequence of adaptation to new environments. Some of them may be terrestrial, or even purely metaphorical, but what is wrong in taking the concept of growth (also) very literally and spatially? > Wasting money on moon bases would only divert trillions of > dollars from money that should be otherwise be directed at something > productive for the human race. There is no such thing as the "human race". There are individuals, generations, communities, and clades. I want my clade to endure the passage of time and to expand in the universe as much as possible. -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 29 15:23:10 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:23:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311952990.47972.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ?On Fri, 7/29/11, Will Steinberg wrote: "John, just curious--what all would you consider to be considered "psi"?" Ask Damien don't ask me, I never use the term if I can avoid it. Originally it was called "spiritualism" but that name fell into disrepute so it was changed to "ESP", but then that also fell into disrepute so it was changed again this time into "psi". No doubt there will soon be another name change.? "It seems there's not a catchall--I thought to have it mean "an action taken by the human brain that is currently unexplainable by known physics,"" And conjuring up new fundamental laws of Physics is a very heavy responsibility, you don't do it every time some fourth rate scientist working on a shoestring budget using a very simple experiment claims to have discover definitive proof of it. I said it before I'll say it again, if these simple easy experiments were valid, today this thing call "psi" would not be controversial because its existence would have been proven to everyone's satisfaction way back in the time of Newton if not earlier, and today high school kids would be repeating these classic experiments in their science fair projects.? "What definition, exactly, do you reject?" I never reject definitions, I just reject junk science. Some people around here claim it isn't junk science but about a decade ago I challenged them to put their money where their mouth was and make a real bet on the matter with real money, but I never received a taker. Not one. And that's a real pity because not 10 minutes ago I got a call telling me I need to spend $7000 to get my hurricane shutters up to official government specifications and if I don't the city will start fining me $500 a day.??? ?"What do you think the human brain has, without question, zero capability for?" Well it certainly isn't wishful thinking, I'd like to have ESP and join the X-Men too. And it certainly isn't self delusion, we seem to have an infinite capacity for that. I wish psi was real, I wish cold fusion was real too, but unfortunately wishing does not make it so. ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 15:42:06 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:42:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/29 Kevin G Haskell : > If things go horrible on Earth, it will be a quick and easy stop off at the > moon by the new AGI species to finish the job and end the rest of us. Besides the fact that I do not buy for a second the millennial, golem-like fantasies about the "Big, Bad AGIs" chasing down humans out of sheer malice (if anything I would be more concerned about hypothetical "friendly" entities such as Williamson's Humanoids), the issue would not be that of being "unreachable", but rather of taking away the pressure both for "us" and for our hypothetically "competing" children of the mind arising from the increasing scarceness of finite resources, by uncorking the bottle. -- Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Jul 29 15:42:48 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:42:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <201107291438.p6TEcjTI029689@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1311912181.90403.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> <201107291438.p6TEcjTI029689@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4E32D4F8.3070609@satx.rr.com> On 7/29/2011 9:38 AM, David Lubkin wrote: > Take telepathy. I see three ways you might be able to read another > persons thoughts: > > (a) classic telepathy -- through mutation or biological alteration, > a human acquires the ability > > (b) technological equivalent -- A and B both have computer-brain > interfaces with read/write capabilities. A's thoughts are converted > to a data stream, which is transmitted to B. B's processor converts > A's thoughts into an audio feed. Or overlays B's visual image of > A with closed captions. Or, more ambitiously, writes A's thoughts > into B's short- or long-term memories. > > (c) augmented nature -- humans now, or through *biological* > alteration, have an ability that could read human thought but isn't > powerful enough. Technological means amplify our senses, > making an inherent ability potent enough to be usable. One interesting aspect of this kind of question is the variety of "normal" ways people experience their inner life. As I've probably mentioned before, I am somewhat unusual in having almost zero mental pictorial imagery. It turns out a surprisingly large number of humans share this deficit, but hardly anyone ever talks about it. For years I assumed words like "mental picture" or "image" were metaphors of a slightly mysterious kind. I knew what a picture or image was: what you saw in the light via your eyes. You could also get something much fainter and more abstract by pressing hard on your closed eyelids, or letting a very bright light shine on closed eyelids. I eventually learned that these were ways of stimulating the rods and cones of the eye. Then I found that for most people, a mental image was... a goddam picture, fainter perhaps than seeing something with the eyes but capable of rotation, change of color, etc. Several friends who are fiction writers tell me they just sit down and transcribe the "scenes" they watch and hear in a kind of imaginary movie. This would sound psychotic to me if it wasn't so commonplace. But I know that some people *do* have psychotic experiences in which they "hear" voices speaking to them clearly, or see odd things that aren't really there. I've experienced optical illusions, and rarely "heard" voices utter a word or two as I went to sleep (hypnagogic hallucination), so I can imagine how that might be. These events are obvious repurposing existing neurological processes. I suppose telepathy could exist that does something similar. Science fiction psi ranges from what amounts to acoustic hallucinations that mimic conversation with a person who isn't there, to brief flashes of indistinct images, to wholesale emulated experiences like dreams (as in the TV show MEDIUM). What the lab evidence suggests to me is that real "telepathy" is not experienced as a communication channel akin to hearing and speaking but rather as a *feeling* (as the name implies): a sudden unbidden thought or mental image, a burst of excitement or foreboding, etc--just the kind of thing one might get from a subliminal affect using the senses. Excellent trained remote viewers like Joe McMoneagle tend to be very visual and their output (when tasked to identify some distant or future target) is a series of sketches, often capturing partial "glimpses" of the target, with a few jotted words that seem not to be "heard" but rather are annotations to the pictures. The state of mind conducive to psi in this mode seems to be something like free-floating dissociative imagining that is nevertheless disciplined enough to allow direction (without front loading or feedback) and reporting of the experience as it happens. Far from easy. Nothing at all like Alfred Bester's THE DEMOLISHED MAN, say, even though Alfie imagined a world of "espers" who wove mental images and pun rather than linear streams of words. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 15:47:12 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:47:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/7/29 Kevin G Haskell : > if the Transhumans find a need to go the moon, then > they will do so much more quickly and efficiently. As far as evolution and growth and progress are concerned I have the impression we are already living off our ancestors' legacy, as the proverbial dwarves on the shoulders of giants. Compounding that with the idea that we can leave everything else to our *post*human successors seems hardly a *trans*humanist POV. A transhumanist civilisation would mean exactly making the effort to overcome our *present* limitations. -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Jul 29 15:47:46 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:47:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <201107291453.p6TErSQb001968@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311954466.49791.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Fri, 7/29/11, David Lubkin wrote: "That some acronyms haven't lost their caps doesn't refute that others have." If one is writing about a discovery made by Einstein, namely the stimulated emission of radiation, it seems entirely appropriate to remind people that LASER is indeed an acronym so they can reflect on what the "SER" in it stands for. And if Merriam-Webster doesn't like it then Merriam-Webster can lump it. ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 16:53:39 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:53:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311954466.49791.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <201107291453.p6TErSQb001968@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1311954466.49791.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: But John, do you capitalize all the letters in 'Abraxas'? That one is an acronym too. ;) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 17:07:16 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:07:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/29 Dan : > Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human > in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some > amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems > that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the > species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years > ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that > just haven't been uncovered as of yet. Yes for the general picture, but I would object to a few details. - Ability to digest comfortably lactose in adulthood seem only concern some 90%+ of Europoids and 50% of some populations of East Africa (because of entirely different mutations!) so it is far from generalised in our species. - Fair pigmentation (blond or red hair, blue or gray eyes) is a recessive feature which but for albinism exists only in the Europoid race for our species (it would appear that Neanderthals were red-headed), and should come out from the genetic drift which affected the small groups of Sapiens which survived the last Great Ice Age, sometime around 10-12000 bC - It seems on the other hand that some mutation arisen in 6000 bC has spread in our species, against from Europe, which may offer cognitive improvement dividends. See, inter alia, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade . -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 16:55:49 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:55:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <201107291505.p6TF5V5O004573@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107291505.p6TF5V5O004573@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1311958549.78943.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Oh, mine was a minor quibble here. I don't see, as I've said, rapid evolution in humans now. ? Of course, that doesn't rule it out -- even absent nano-fairies. As in the Ashkenazy example you cite, a small group might be forced into the evolutionary pressure cooker and that could make a big difference. But I'd still be careful about too many broad claims here. And it's likely that any changes will be noticed afterward -- not whilst they're in process. ? Regards, ? Dan From: David Lubkin To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] People are the same? Dan wrote: > Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that just haven't been uncovered as of yet. More significantly, I am an Ashkenazic Jew of statistically abnormal intelligence. My tribe is much smarter now than it was 5000 years ago, let alone 50,000. There are competing hypotheses as to why, but the reality remains. But I take Eugen's core point -- that the changes aren't dramatic. And I agree with his thesis: We can't sit and wait for the nano-fairy to sprinkle us with transhuman goodness. We must, in particular, achieve self-sufficient off-Earth enclaves as soon as possible. -- David. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 17:12:38 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:12:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1311959558.90309.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I actually got my milk example from Wade's book, which I read a few years ago. I think he goes a little too far in some of his claims, but it's good popular-level look at the state of the art from a few years ago. ? And, yes, there are two different genes for milk digestion in adults, but it's a relatively recent innovation and there's nothing weighing against there being some evolution just because it's not at the species level, but only at the subspecies level. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 1:07 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed 2011/7/29 Dan : > Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human > in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some > amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems > that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the > species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years > ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that > just haven't been uncovered as of yet. Yes for the general picture, but I would object to a few details. - Ability to digest comfortably lactose in adulthood seem only concern some 90%+ of Europoids and 50% of some populations of East Africa (because of entirely different mutations!) so it is far from generalised in our species. - Fair pigmentation (blond or red hair, blue or gray eyes) is a recessive feature which but for albinism exists only in the Europoid race for our species (it would appear that Neanderthals were red-headed), and should come out from the genetic drift which affected the small groups of Sapiens which survived the last Great Ice Age, sometime around 10-12000 bC - It seems on the other hand that some mutation arisen in 6000 bC has spread in our species, against from Europe, which may offer cognitive improvement dividends. See, inter alia, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 16:55:42 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:55:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Sigh In-Reply-To: <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4E323C67.60500@satx.rr.com> <1311916924.39081.YahooMailClassic@web82905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/29 john clark > What about ESP RIP, or NASA or NATO or GOP or PBS or AA or AAA or ATM or USA ? At least when NATO is concerned, I would contend that many people around the world are quite justified in shouting... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 17:26:38 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (kellycoinguy at gmail.com) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:26:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4e32ed56.038d8e0a.425b.62d3@mx.google.com> Richard Dawkins is pretty talented in both fields... Kelly -- Sent from my Palm Pre On Jul 28, 2011 7:20 AM, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote: David Lubkin wrote: "Sagan was an okay scientist. He was far from top tier." True, but one has to admit _Science as a Candle in the Dark_ is a mighty fine title for a book. "If you want a soaring talent who is both a top scientist and an excellent writer, my best candidates are probably Lynn Margulis (who, btw, was Sagan's ex) and Linus Pauling, although there are other names, like E. O. Wilson, that lurk in my hindbrain." Margulis yes! I adore her. It does not matter who she is married to or was married to. She stands on her own. I am related to Pauling, but the gene pool did not go in my direction. E.O. Wilson's _Consilience_ is mighty fine as well. But none of them compare to the insights of da Vinci (who was not a scientist, per se) AND, this is where the issue of discovery and design meet. Natasha _______________________________________________ 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 17:39:27 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (kellycoinguy at gmail.com) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:39:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed In-Reply-To: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> I don't have access to my computer today... But I recall one of the TED speakers saying there had been 5000 genetic changes in the common human genome since agriculture... It may not amount to very much... I don't know. Kelly -- Sent from my Palm Pre On Jul 29, 2011 6:43 AM, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote: Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that just haven't been uncovered as of yet.   Regards,   Dan From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 4:56 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] No Moon Bases Needed On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 08:24:08PM -0400, Kevin G Haskell wrote: > On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:31:50 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 04:50:50PM -0400, Kevin Haskell wrote: > > (Why would we need moon bases if we hope to evolve, soon?  Who would pay > for) > > >Evolving is hard work, and takes a lot of resources. Might be not > so soon as many think. > > Evolving is hard work, but it is happening faster and faster already, and People are exactly the same as 50 kiloyears ago.   [snip] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 19:18:52 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:18:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> References: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1311967132.93416.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It depends on what the background rate of change is and what kind of impact these changes have. E.g., imagine a SNP change that has zero impact because it's for a structural protein for something that's rarely produced and it codes for part of the structure that is tolerate of having many different sequences of amino acids. In that case, wild changes in it wouldn't have much impact on the phenotype and it's likely drift would be the norm... (Or this is my lay understanding.:) ? That said, if such a change were "common" -- if few or no humans ten thousands years ago had it and now all or almost all humans have it -- I'd be suspicious that there's something else going on here. ? Regards, ? Dan From: "kellycoinguy at gmail.com" To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 1:39 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed I don't have access to my computer today... But I recall one of the TED speakers saying there had been 5000 genetic changes in the common human genome since agriculture... It may not amount to very much... I don't know. Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 19:13:21 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:13:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> References: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1311966801.75486.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It depends on what the background rate of change is and what kind of impact these changes have. E.g., imagine a SNP change that has zero impact because it's for a structural protein for something that's rarely produced and it codes for part of the structure that is tolerate of having many different sequences of amino acids. In that case, wild changes in it wouldn't have much impact on the phenotype and it's likely drift would be the norm... (Or this is my lay understanding.:) ? That said, if such a change were "common" -- if few or no humans ten thousands years ago had it and now all or almost all humans have it -- I'd be suspicious that there's something else going on here. ? Regards, ? Dan From: "kellycoinguy at gmail.com" To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 1:39 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] People are the same?/was Re: No Moon Bases Needed I don't have access to my computer today... But I recall one of the TED speakers saying there had been 5000 genetic changes in the common human genome since agriculture... It may not amount to very much... I don't know. Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From agrimes at speakeasy.net Fri Jul 29 03:20:32 2011 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:20:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design. In-Reply-To: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311889755.85174.YahooMailClassic@web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E322700.6060102@speakeasy.net> john clark wrote: > On *Wed, 7/27/11, Damien Broderick //* wrote: > > "What Aristotle didn't have was 300 years of closely observed and > theorized empirical science behind him, itself informed (horrors!) > by a monotheistic paradigm that encouraged scientists to assume as > their reductionist default that the multiple worlds of empirical > experience at many levels were basically *unified* and *lawful*." > > But Pythagoras lived almost 2 hundred years before Aristotle and he > thought the laws of the universe were unified and lawful, he thought > numbers ruled the world and were behind everything. It's true that the > ancient Greeks weren't big on observations and didn't make a lot of > them, but Aristotle wouldn't have needed a lot to derive the theory of > Evolution, just the observation that offspring were similar to but not > identical to their parents. With the correct application of logic from > that starting point he could have done it. It should be pointed out that Plato and Socrates was aware of the possibility of selective breeding and proposed a selective breeding program to produce a population of thirty highly intelligent philosopher-kings and queens. -- E T F N H E D E D Powers are not rights. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 20:05:47 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:05:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1311969947.19486.YahooMailNeo@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I think there are a range of scenarios possible from the worst case where some tech or other disaster?happens and, yes, lunar bases and the like won't do much good, but there are others where they would. You wouldn't, I trust, argue one shouldn't have lifeboats simple because there are shipping disasters where lifeboats won't matter, such as, say, an asteroid hitting the ship. :) ? My view on lunar or space settlement is to proceed slowly anyhow and build capabilities slowly. Yes, this just means spreading the costs over a longer term, but it also means no or very few big Manhattan or Apollo projects that gobble up lots of resources. And this can, I believe, work. It's kind of like colonizing the Pacific islands via small steps on small craft with tiny communities versus a huge national or international?effort to build ocean liners and vast cities. No doubt, had the latter been the road to doing this, the Pacific islands would likely have been uninhabited until the 18th or 19th century and then only by teams of bureaucrats and soldiers in a few "secure" facilities. ? Regards, ? Dan From: Kevin G Haskell To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 9:35 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) Dan wrote: >There are many paths to the top of the mountain. Also, one might like to >have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what >folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror >scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever (e.g., >someone doses me with caffeine again:). It might be good idea to have >some people and assets off world. >? >By the way, I think the costs you're estimating are high even for a >government space program. But if one works at this via non-governmental >programs -- i.e., voluntarilty, costs might be much lower (and development >might proceed along many fronts, e.g., building up capabilities piecemeal >as opposed to one monster project that sucks in gobs of resources and >people). >? >Regards, >? If things go horrible on Earth, it will be a quick and easy stop off at the moon by the new AGI species to finish the job and end the rest of us. Prices won't just include getting a few people there, but creating enough secure buildings to create a decent sized community, complete with human, animal, and plant life.? So we are likely looking at least a trillion dollars, and it would really only make sense if we needed to locate the same materials somewhere up there that are mostly located in China as "rare-earth" materials.? Then they would have to be able to have mining equipment up their somehow, and then get it back to Earth on a regular basis. Kevin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jul 29 20:48:48 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:48:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <1311967132.93416.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4e32f056.2727440a.7f64.ffffc895@mx.google.com> <1311967132.93416.YahooMailNeo@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/29 Dan wrote: > It depends on what the background rate of change is and what kind of impact > these changes have. E.g., imagine a SNP change that has zero impact because > it's for a structural protein for something that's rarely produced and it > codes for part of the structure that is tolerate of having many different > sequences of amino acids. In that case, wild changes in it wouldn't have > much impact on the phenotype and it's likely drift would be the norm... (Or > this is my lay understanding.:) > > I think Eugen was exaggerating a bit when he said that humans were the same as 50,000 years ago. Both groups have two arms, two legs and one brain and outwardly look similar, but there have been many changes in the genome. It is the effect of a huge increase in the human population since 50,000 years ago. The larger the population, the more mutations occur and encounter selection pressures. Quote: the researchers found evidence of recent selection on approximately 1,800 genes, or 7 percent of all human genes. The biggest new pathway for selection relates to disease resistance, Hawks says. As people starting living in much larger groups and settling in one place roughly 10,000 years ago, epidemic diseases such as malaria, smallpox and cholera began to dramatically shift mortality patterns in people. Malaria is one of the clearest examples, Hawks says, given that there are now more than two dozen identified genetic adaptations that relate to malaria resistance, including an entirely new blood type known as the Duffy blood type. Population growth is making all of this change occur much faster, Hawks says, giving a nod to Charles Darwin. When Darwin wrote in "Origin of the Species" about challenges in animal breeding, he always emphasized that herd size "is of the highest importance for success" because large populations have more genetic variation, Hawks says. The parallel to humans is obvious: The human population has grown from a few million people 10,000 years ago to about 200 million people at A.D. 0, to 600 million people in the year 1700, to more than 6.5 billion today. Prior to these times, the population was so small for so long that positive selection occurred at a glacial pace, Hawks says. ------------------ BillK From bbenzai at yahoo.com Fri Jul 29 22:45:06 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:45:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1311979506.97084.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> David Lubkin wrote: > We can't sit and wait for the nano-fairy > to sprinkle us with transhuman goodness. We must, in particular, > achieve self-sufficient off-Earth enclaves as soon as possible. Do you think it would be easier/cheaper/quicker to create such off-earth enclaves in the form of habitats capable of supporting biological humans independently and indefinitely, or in the form of substrates capable of supporting uploaded minds, plus the technology to upload minds to them? (I'm thinking of objects roughly the size of cigarette packets, solar-powered, produced in the millions, scattered all over the solar system). Given the fragility, short lifespan, and sheer unsuitability of biological lifeforms for space, I know which option I'd rather pursue. Not to mention that in the volume, mass and energy requirements of a single biological human, you could sustain millions (at least) of uploads, for a /lot/ longer. Ben Zaiboc From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jul 29 23:35:29 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:35:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <1311979506.97084.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo .com> References: <1311979506.97084.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107292336.p6TNaVn8024135@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I wrote: > We can't sit and wait for the nano-fairy > to sprinkle us with transhuman goodness. We must, in particular, > achieve self-sufficient off-Earth enclaves as soon as possible Ben Zaiboc wrote: >Do you think it would be easier/cheaper/quicker to create such >off-earth enclaves in the form of habitats capable of supporting >biological humans independently and indefinitely, or in the form of >substrates capable of supporting uploaded minds, plus the technology >to upload minds to them? (I'm thinking of objects roughly the size >of cigarette packets, solar-powered, produced in the millions, >scattered all over the solar system). > >Given the fragility, short lifespan, and sheer unsuitability of >biological lifeforms for space, I know which option I'd rather >pursue. Not to mention that in the volume, mass and energy >requirements of a single biological human, you could sustain >millions (at least) of uploads, for a /lot/ longer. You're assuming options not in evidence. We don't know that it is possible to upload minds, even theoretically. And we don't know how to create the kind of substrate you're talking about. We are far closer from a technological point of view to creating off-Earth habitations. At the end of The West Wing, CJ Craig is offered ten billion dollars for one important project of her choose. She chooses roads in Africa. Ten billion dollars would not take us to what you describe. I think that, wisely spent, it would take us space-based industrialization and settlement. I want the technology pursued that could achieve what you describe but I think it's foolhardy to delay moving to space a day longer than we have to. There are too many sentience-killing possibilities, including mistakes along the nano path. -- David. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Jul 30 01:14:32 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:14:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? Message-ID: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> I'm doing a philosophical piece on the Singularity, and I'm deeply embarrassed not to be able to think instantly of any good sf stories that explicitly portray exponential AIs: self-augmenting/self-rewriting/selfbootstrapping-to-the-Singularity... Vinge's MAROONED assumes it, but we see only tangential glimpses, Stiegler's "Gentle Seduction" spreads it out over years, centuries, billions of years, as does Asimov's "Last Question." Stross's ACCELERANDO also implies it, but it's not what I'd call the Spike, with each self-transcending state occurring in roughly half the time of the previous jump. Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC is sort of there, but it isn't AI, and it uses magic QT. What is my aging brain missing? (I know I'm going to kick myself.) Damien Broderick From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 30 02:09:19 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:09:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <201107300209.p6U29ckR000375@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien wrote: >I'm doing a philosophical piece on the Singularity, and I'm deeply >embarrassed not to be able to think instantly of any good sf stories >that explicitly portray exponential AIs: >self-augmenting/self-rewriting/selfbootstrapping-to-the-Singularity... >Vinge's MAROONED assumes it, but we see only tangential glimpses, >Stiegler's "Gentle Seduction" spreads it out over years, centuries, >billions of years, as does Asimov's "Last Question." Stross's >ACCELERANDO also implies it, but it's not what I'd call the Spike, >with each self-transcending state occurring in roughly half the time >of the previous jump. Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC is sort of there, but >it isn't AI, and it uses magic QT. > >What is my aging brain missing? (I know I'm going to kick myself.) Not all the way to the Singularity, but Stross's current WWW series, The Adolescence of P-1, Jane in the Ender's books, John Barnes' Century Next Door series all bootstrap to superhuman competence. I'm a little brain-fogged myself at the moment, so I'll stop there; how thorough an answer are you looking for? Ask Barbara to record you kicking yourself, so we can all see it. -- David. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Jul 30 02:41:17 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:41:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <201107300209.p6U29ckR000375@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> <201107300209.p6U29ckR000375@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4E336F4D.2070205@satx.rr.com> On 7/29/2011 9:09 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > Not all the way to the Singularity, but Stross's current WWW series, That's either Rob Sawyer's WWW or something I haven't seen, and if the former it's kinda Spikish but more like the emergence of a mind that can do a lot of human-scale stuff simultaneously, as I read it. Well, it does cure cancer and like that, by Nexializing all the extant archived data, while cleaning out spam, and I guess that fits. > The Adolescence of P-1, Never read it. Maybe Astro Teller's equivalent book EXEGESIS does that too. >Jane in the Ender's books, I think I shuddered horribly and purged that from my mind. "And then the superluminal phone network woke up" sort of thing, no? > John Barnes' > Century Next Door series That could be it. I included Barnes's IA singularity in MOTHER OF STORMS. > I'm a little brain-fogged myself at the moment, so I'll stop there; how > thorough an answer are you looking for? Good start, thanks. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Jul 30 03:08:40 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:08:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: You seemed to be making an appeal to self-determination in opposition to natrual law theories. I'm stating here, for the record, natural law theories, for the most part, have been used to ground self-determination, especially individual self-detemrination. (Group self-determination leads to some serious problems, no? It basically can to the kind of nationalism or other collectivist views that merely seem like pretexts for oppressing minorities and individuals. Relativist notions like race, class, or national logics. I'm not stating you're doing this -- just pointing out how this can be abused.) If you're only using self-detemrination _instrumentally_ -- for a particular limited goal and only in so far as it achieves that goal -- then why bring it up in this context? It's sort of like saying one is honest but only when it serves one's other ends, such as making money or winning favor, but that one will cast honesty aside when it conflicts with these. Now, if you're going to say all that matters is the transhumanist goal, fine. But doesn't that then become your standard and a sort of objective means of judging actions? If not, why not? (Here, it just seems to me not that you've embraced a sort of consistent ethical relativism -- if that's even possible -- but that you've merely adopted transhumanism as your standard and believe this resolves all issues and confutes or transcends all other views.) Regarding the "yuck reaction," I think you're taking what might be called an expressivist view of morality here. I find this view problematic (no surprises there, I'm sure), but wonder if you see the problems with it. Since no one is shy of tossing around book references here, I wonder how you would answer some of the criticisms of this view in Mark Schroeder's _Noncognitivism in Ethics_. Regards, Dan From: Stefano Vaj To: Dan ; ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 1:48 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... 2011/7/27 Dan Since you seem to agree with self-determination, then wouldn't this impose a side constraint on everyone? This is the alleged "paradox" of relativism, but at least for ethical relativism I do not really see the problem. I am not saying that "self-determination" is itself an absolute, universal moral truth. I simply *take side* for it (needless to say, for mine and for that of those who think like me in the first place), as a political and not as a "rational" stance. Universalists and relativists are both equally able to fight for their ideas or collective interests, for better and worse. The only difference is that relativists do not need to feel on the side of some kind of "objective" angels to do that, and that they need not think to have a moral duty to impose their views (be it just those related to "core moral tenets") on others. Regarding how you see morality or political philosophy, I don't think the choice is between transhumanism and a 'parochial "yuck reaction."' (I actually believe many different views on this are compatible with transhumanism, but this means little. This is like saying many different views of morality are compatible with atheism. This doesn't tell us whether all these views are equivalent or just as acceptable.) What I am saying here is that if the "yuck reaction" is recognised as a purely relative and contingent factor, there is no real reason why those who do not share it (say, some hypothetically technophile inhabitants of the Tonga islands) should not be left to their own devices, in spite of their moral views being that of a vanishingly small minority in global terms. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Jul 30 03:14:32 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:14:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <135C8E35-1323-4E09-A4DE-67A3E7355DD7@yahoo.com> Macrolife by Zebrowski? Or was that more uploading and being subsumed into a larger mind? I forget... Regards, Dan On Jul 29, 2011, at 21:14, Damien Broderick wrote: > I'm doing a philosophical piece on the Singularity, and I'm deeply embarrassed not to be able to think instantly of any good sf stories that explicitly portray exponential AIs: self-augmenting/self-rewriting/selfbootstrapping-to-the-Singularity... Vinge's MAROONED assumes it, but we see only tangential glimpses, Stiegler's "Gentle Seduction" spreads it out over years, centuries, billions of years, as does Asimov's "Last Question." Stross's ACCELERANDO also implies it, but it's not what I'd call the Spike, with each self-transcending state occurring in roughly half the time of the previous jump. Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC is sort of there, but it isn't AI, and it uses magic QT. > > What is my aging brain missing? (I know I'm going to kick myself.) > > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Jul 30 03:34:27 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:34:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <135C8E35-1323-4E09-A4DE-67A3E7355DD7@yahoo.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> <135C8E35-1323-4E09-A4DE-67A3E7355DD7@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4E337BC3.4040700@satx.rr.com> On 7/29/2011 10:14 PM, Dan Ust wrote: > Macrolife by Zebrowski? Or was that more uploading and being subsumed into a larger mind? I forget... The latter, I think, and much, much later. From alito at organicrobot.com Sat Jul 30 03:53:57 2011 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:53:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E338055.8080708@organicrobot.com> On 07/30/11 11:14, Damien Broderick wrote: > I'm doing a philosophical piece on the Singularity, and I'm deeply > embarrassed not to be able to think instantly of any good sf stories > that explicitly portray exponential AIs: > self-augmenting/self-rewriting/selfbootstrapping-to-the-Singularity... > Vinge's MAROONED assumes it, but we see only tangential glimpses, > Stiegler's "Gentle Seduction" spreads it out over years, centuries, > billions of years, as does Asimov's "Last Question." Stross's > ACCELERANDO also implies it, but it's not what I'd call the Spike, with > each self-transcending state occurring in roughly half the time of the > previous jump. Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC is sort of there, but it isn't > AI, and it uses magic QT. > > What is my aging brain missing? (I know I'm going to kick myself.) I just read Crystal nights by Egan, which is about an evolved society of AIs ending in a physical singularity, but I'm not sure if it's what you are after since it's a short story, the singularity comes too early, and the goodness bit is highly subjective (I enjoyed it). From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Jul 30 04:46:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:46:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] self-accelerating AI sf? In-Reply-To: <4E338055.8080708@organicrobot.com> References: <4E335AF8.1080303@satx.rr.com> <4E338055.8080708@organicrobot.com> Message-ID: <4E338C90.4090000@satx.rr.com> On 7/29/2011 10:53 PM, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > I just read Crystal nights by Egan, which is about an evolved society of > AIs ending in a physical singularity Thanks. Hadn't read, to my amazement. It's here: http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 30 09:58:01 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:58:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110730095801.GR16178@leitl.org> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 05:42:06PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/7/29 Kevin G Haskell : > > If things go horrible on Earth, it will be a quick and easy stop off at the > > moon by the new AGI species to finish the job and end the rest of us. > > Besides the fact that I do not buy for a second the millennial, > golem-like fantasies about the "Big, Bad AGIs" chasing down humans out > of sheer malice (if anything I would be more concerned about Sufficiently advanced indifference is indistinguishable from malice. > hypothetical "friendly" entities such as Williamson's Humanoids), the > issue would not be that of being "unreachable", but rather of taking > away the pressure both for "us" and for our hypothetically "competing" > children of the mind arising from the increasing scarceness of finite > resources, by uncorking the bottle. Clearly the growth potential at the bottom of a gravity well (contaminated with volatiles to boot) is limited, so as biosphere suffers from HANPP humanity will suffer from MANPP (machine appropriation of net primary productivity) but by uncorking the bottle (assuming, no meddling tentacles reaching down here) you merely postpone the eventuallly inevitable by a few decades. Even minor projects (like massive activity on the Moon) will pretty much do away with the night and dim the day. And probably the Earth won't take kindly to more than 1% of solar constant variation. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 30 11:49:16 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:49:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <201107291505.p6TF5V5O004573@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <20110729085641.GG16178@leitl.org> <1311946094.85724.YahooMailNeo@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107291505.p6TF5V5O004573@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 29 July 2011 17:04, David Lubkin wrote: > More significantly, I am an Ashkenazic Jew of statistically abnormal > intelligence. I take it you are not implying to be an exception in your tribe, and on the contrary that you share the feature of an abnormally *high* average IQ... :-) As to the reasons, they must be as usual directional selection and genetic drift - the latter being allowed by some degree of endogamy. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jul 30 14:18:53 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:18:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] People are the same? In-Reply-To: <201107292336.p6TNaVn8024135@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1311979506.97084.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <201107292336.p6TNaVn8024135@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20110730141853.GC16178@leitl.org> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 07:35:29PM -0400, David Lubkin wrote: > You're assuming options not in evidence. We don't know that it is > possible to upload minds, even theoretically. And we don't know > how to create the kind of substrate you're talking about. While we might be not uploading minds yet, we have plenty of need for communication, processing and storage. Electronics is a very dirty industry, and it takes a fair fraction of our total energy to run, so why not move the cloud where it belongs: into the sky. Average ping would be less than 60 ms, and you have zero issues with energy and cooling. > We are far closer from a technological point of view to creating > off-Earth habitations. We're even closer to create teleoperated and automated fabrication capacities. If you have these, habitats for meat people are cheap. > At the end of The West Wing, CJ Craig is offered ten billion dollars > for one important project of her choose. She chooses roads in > Africa. Ten billion dollars would not take us to what you describe. > I think that, wisely spent, it would take us space-based industrialization > and settlement. It depends on how you stage it. Ten 2011 gigabucks might do it for Luna, if spent right. ISS over lifetime is estimated to be between 35 and 160 GUSD (ESA: 100 GEUR). Iraq/Afghanistan is 4 TUSD total, so far. Fed spent some 16 TUSD in secret bailouts in less than 3 years. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. > I want the technology pursued that could achieve what you describe > but I think it's foolhardy to delay moving to space a day longer than > we have to. There are too many sentience-killing possibilities, > including mistakes along the nano path. If I had to choose dumping 10 gigabucks into space or machine-phase, and given ability to micromanage spending I'd put it hands down on machine-phase. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 30 15:23:01 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:23:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again... In-Reply-To: References: <4E249D22.20004@susaro.com> <002c01cc45aa$b0ecaf40$12c60dc0$@att.net> <002001cc467b$2984c2f0$7c8e48d0$@att.net> <4E26362E.4060207@satx.rr.com> <1311174374.60658.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311179703.91282.YahooMailNeo@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311182801.26769.YahooMailNeo@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4E29E86A.3090709@satx.rr.com> <1311608899.27975.YahooMailNeo@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311686687.39133.YahooMailNeo@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1311774576.16586.YahooMailNeo@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/7/30 Dan > You seemed to be making an appeal to self-determination in opposition to > natrual law theories. I'm stating here, for the record, natural law > theories, for the most part, have been used to ground self-determination, > especially individual self-detemrination. > Mmhhh. Old debate. Partisans of natural law (Moise, Aristotles, Saint Thomas, Robespierre) always maintained that an individual is "free" inasmuch as he is subject to a law which is dictated by God, Nature, Reason, etc. rathen than by other men (even though in fact it is necessarily proclaimed and interpreted by other men according to their ends). Conversely, "free" in a traditional European sense used mostly to mean "not subject to any external law", such as the law dictated a foreign power or of a separate caste (including one of self-appointed natural law priests), but only to that established by the culture, customs and political choices of the community concerned. One can raise for rhetorical purposes plenty of usually deprecated historical examples to advance either stance, but I maintain that the sheer plurality of models, laws, customs and constitutional systems (some of which we shall inevitably consider as repugnant from our point of view) gives transhumanism a better fighting chance. First, because not all eggs are in the same bag, and some systems are likely to be more favourable or tolerant to it than others, even impredictably so. Second, because Darwinian mechanisms amongst them are bound to keep *all* of them "more honest", effective and "livable" than they would otherwise be, since blatantly crazy social system are of course more likely to end up being swept off by imitation of other solutions, external conquest, internal revolution, people voting with their feet, reform, economic competition, etc., a consequence which is by no means guaranteed for global governance solutions or semi-universal creeds. > Now, if you're going to say all that matters is the transhumanist goal, > fine. But doesn't that then become your standard and a sort of objective > means of judging actions? If not, why not? (Here, it just seems to me not > that you've embraced a sort of consistent ethical relativism -- if that's > even possible -- but that you've merely adopted transhumanism as your > standard and believe this resolves all issues and confutes or transcends all > other views.) > There are of course other possible political agendas besides favouring and promoting posthuman change, not to mention the fact that such change itself may (and IMHO should) happen in several different direction. And I have of course mine. My argument here is simply that starting from what I consider a likely common ground for most participants to this list, one's favour for "natural law" philosophies or for global governance mechanisms or for the globalisation with all means of economic or ethical systems, something that at first sight might appear neutral with regard to extropian views, may in fact represents at the very least a bad strategic bet. It is not casual in fact that "natural law" arguments and international, worldwide regulations in allegedly dutiful compliance thereto, are the obsession of most anti-transhumanists. They know only too well that unless repression can be maintained at a global level, an unraveling effect risks to take place forcing neoluddite or even "precautionary" systems to align, simply in order to survive. Now, once you accept that a natural law exists, and that every community and political entity must be subject to the same set of rules, you might still in theory succeed in arguing that "natural law" provides for free access to technologies, freedom of research, freedom of change, etc. But if you lose this battle, as it appears not so unlikely, you end up losing everything. If you, on the other hand, defend the freedom of each community, and of your own in the first place, to live as it likes, you also defend your probability of finding yourself at least in a position to look somewhere for a group of similarly-minded people... Since no one is shy of tossing around book references here, I wonder how > you would answer some of the criticisms of this view in Mark Schroeder's > _Noncognitivism in Ethics_. > Let us just say that "noncognitivism in ethics" is a not really a renounceable position for me... :) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 30 16:00:17 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:00:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed (Kevin) (Dan) In-Reply-To: <20110730095801.GR16178@leitl.org> References: <20110730095801.GR16178@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 30 July 2011 11:58, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Sufficiently advanced indifference is indistinguishable from malice. > ... > Clearly the growth potential at the bottom of a gravity well > (contaminated with volatiles to boot) is limited, so as biosphere > suffers from HANPP humanity will suffer from MANPP (machine > appropriation of net primary productivity) Why, fyborgs do not really need to distinguish their organic from their inorganic parts, do they? :-) > but by uncorking > the bottle (assuming, no meddling tentacles reaching down > here) you merely postpone the eventuallly inevitable by a few > decades. > Yes, at the end the thermical death of the universe would put an end to all that. In the meantime, what have we ever been doing sofar if not to postpone to eventually inevitable exhaustion of resources? I simply propose to go on this way. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Jul 30 16:28:16 2011 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 09:28:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Dan wrote: ?"one might like to have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever " Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to Mars, they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or so to get half a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars for a couple of months, and then spend another hundred trillion dollars to reverse that herculean task and bring them all back to Earth. The result would be similar to what happened with the Apollo moon program and we'd have the world's most expensive reality show. People would love the first episode but just like with Apollo they'd feel like they were watching a repeat and be bored stiff at the second and all future landings unless something went very badly wrong as in Apollo 13. We'll know its time to send people to Mars when we're prepared to do so with a one way ticket; and that won't happen until the technology allows us to establish a permanent and completely self? contained colony. We're not there yet. Kevin G Haskell wrote "it would really only make sense if we needed to locate the same materials somewhere up there that are mostly located in China as "rare-earth" materials. " There is no reason to think that the Moon or Mars contains more rare-earths than the Earth, and the rare-earths are not really rare, most are more common than Copper or Lead and even the rarest is more common than Silver. The trouble is that all 17 rare-earths are in the same ore and the chemical properties of all 17 are very similar so its very difficult and expensive to separate them out; and the oar often has radioactive Thorium and Uranium in it which can make for an environmental mess it you're not careful. Also, although Gold is much rarer than any rare-earth in the Earth's crust, there are places where Gold is much more concentrated than average, rare-earth oar is not as well concentrated.? ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat Jul 30 17:54:33 2011 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:54:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed In-Reply-To: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo. com> References: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <201107301754.p6UHspSx022439@andromeda.ziaspace.com> John Clark wrote: >Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to >Mars, they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or >so to get half a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars >for a couple of months, and then spend another hundred trillion >dollars to reverse that herculean task and bring them all back to Earth. Is there anyone *here* advocating that? Even in historically NASA-boosting space advocacy groups, I think only a small percentage want a traditional boondoggle. The nearest I've ever heard here to what you describe is Mars Direct. We here and over there talk about Mars, the Moon, or the asteroids as components of a bootstrapped, incremental, profitable migration of industry and man off-world. (I believe with $10G one could fetch a nickel-iron asteroid to a stable near-Earth orbit and convert it to factory and community. (The price originally cited for the fetch was around $150M, circa 1976.)) -- David. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Jul 30 18:26:30 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 20:26:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed In-Reply-To: <201107301754.p6UHspSx022439@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107301754.p6UHspSx022439@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 30 July 2011 19:54, David Lubkin wrote: > John Clark wrote: > > Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to Mars, >> they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or so to get half >> a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars for a couple of months, >> and then spend another hundred trillion dollars to reverse that herculean >> task and bring them all back to Earth. >> > > Is there anyone *here* advocating that? > Yes, there is. :-) Apollo happened for a reason. Same the expeditions to geographic poles and to Mt. Everest. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat Jul 30 21:13:19 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:13:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Thanks for the Robert Ettinger links In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: My pleasure. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin Haskell To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 7:08 PM Subject: [ExI] Thanks for the Robert Ettinger links >Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:27:29 -0600 From: "Gina Miller" To: "ExI chat list" Subject: Re: [ExI] Robert Ettinger (Kevin Haskell) Message-ID: < D9C0246AD69547FD8938FE5DAFAB1233 at 3DBOXXW4850> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Some interesting pictures posted by Bruce Klein at Longecity from a few years ago of Ettinger: http://www.longecity.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=67&t=4112 Gina "Nanogirl" Miller >www.nanogirl.com Thanks for the links, Gina. :) Kevin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Sun Jul 31 19:33:09 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:33:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed In-Reply-To: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8F5FBFFB-4520-4EBC-A5B6-0C68517D645F@yahoo.com> Certainly, considered as a potential safe haven and even for long-term space settlement, one need not accept the Manhattan Project approach in general or any of these specific proposals. In fact, the approach I advocate is piecemeal and more along the lines of growing capabilities in a decentralized fashion as opposed to the highly publicized approaches like Mars Direct. (Needless to say, my approach does not rely on starting with self-sufficient settlements at all. To me, trying for them first is the best way to delay settlement... Like waiting until one has a perfected theory of mind before even making an attempt at cognitive science.) Regards, Dan On Jul 30, 2011, at 12:28, john clark wrote: > Dan wrote: > > "one might like to have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever " > Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to Mars, they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or so to get half a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars for a couple of months, and then spend another hundred trillion dollars to reverse that herculean task and bring them all back to Earth. The result would be similar to what happened with the Apollo moon program and we'd have the world's most expensive reality show. People would love the first episode but just like with Apollo they'd feel like they were watching a repeat and be bored stiff at the second and all future landings unless something went very badly wrong as in Apollo 13. We'll know its time to send people to Mars when we're prepared to do so with a one way ticket; and that won't happen until the technology allows us to establish a permanent and completely self contained colony. We're not there yet. > > Kevin G Haskell wrote > "it would really only make sense if we needed to locate the same materials somewhere up there that are mostly located in China as "rare-earth" materials. " > There is no reason to think that the Moon or Mars contains more rare-earths than the Earth, and the rare-earths are not really rare, most are more common than Copper or Lead and even the rarest is more common than Silver. The trouble is that all 17 rare-earths are in the same ore and the chemical properties of all 17 are very similar so its very difficult and expensive to separate them out; and the oar often has radioactive Thorium and Uranium in it which can make for an environmental mess it you're not careful. Also, although Gold is much rarer than any rare-earth in the Earth's crust, there are places where Gold is much more concentrated than average, rare-earth oar is not as well concentrated. > > 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 sjatkins at mac.com Sun Jul 31 22:02:10 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:02:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How can you simulate trillions of worlds in the mass/energy of a small moon? In-Reply-To: <201107301754.p6UHspSx022439@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <201107301754.p6UHspSx022439@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <64224F27-9805-425C-B152-82460E9F9538@mac.com> I know I have seen the general argument for this ability somewhere long ago on this list. But I am having difficulty finding the details or recreating them myself. If someone here has a handle on that information or can recreate it in decent detail and will pass it along I would be very grateful. What level would you need to simulate down to? It seems wasteful in real sims to simulate anything that can't be observed or have any appreciable effect on what is observed. But if that is the practice in general then some things that work in the base universe (depend on deep quantum effects such as some computational circuits) might not work so well in a sim. So what is the full argument that gets around such seeming conundrums? thanks. (I fully expect to smack myself in the head for forgetting the key points and drawing a blank later) - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sun Jul 31 22:14:27 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:14:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed In-Reply-To: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1312043296.82009.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Jul 30, 2011, at 9:28 AM, john clark wrote: > Dan wrote: > > "one might like to have a safe haven in case whatever comes next is not anything like what folks here are planning or hoping for. For instance, imagine one of the horror scenarios plays out -- nanotech gone wild or Skynet or whatever " > Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to Mars, they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or so to get half a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars for a couple of months, and then spend another hundred trillion dollars to reverse that herculean task and bring them all back to Earth. The result would be similar to what happened with the Apollo moon program and we'd have the world's most expensive reality show. People would love the first episode but just like with Apollo they'd feel like they were watching a repeat and be bored stiff at the second and all future landings unless something went very badly wrong as in Apollo 13. We'll know its time to send people to Mars when we're prepared to do so with a one way ticket; and that won't happen until the technology allows us to establish a permanent and completely self contained colony. We're not there yet. > > > > Kevin G Haskell wrote > "it would really only make sense if we needed to locate the same materials somewhere up there that are mostly located in China as "rare-earth" materials. " > There is no reason to think that the Moon or Mars contains more rare-earths than the Earth, and the rare-earths are not really rare, most are more common than Copper or Lead and even the rarest is more common than Silver. The trouble is that all 17 rare-earths are in the same ore and the chemical properties of all 17 are very similar so its very difficult and expensive to separate them out; and the oar often has radioactive Thorium and Uranium in it which can make for an environmental mess it you're not careful. Also, although Gold is much rarer than any rare-earth in the Earth's crust, there are places where Gold is much more concentrated than average, rare-earth oar is not as well concentrated. > > John K Clark > _______________________________________________ The above is over the mark of even the most pork laden ways to go to Mars but I understand you exaggerate to make the point. It is not at all the plan of folks like Zubrin who wish to set up a continuing and growing presence there. His models are much much more modest and AFAIK doable in a bit healthier economic climates than this one. In particular the plan includes cracking enough rocket fuel out of Martian resources to fuel a return trip to earth. I agree of course that we need to build space infrastructure out in GEO to support more real missions on a more sustainable basis. To do that you need in situ resources without hauling them up gravity well and better autonomous and tele-operated robotics. To get the resources you need no spend quite some years with gravity tugs moving NEA asteroids into some closer at hand heap or you need to wait until you have the autonomous bots to mine them in place. Some of this can be replaced by moon resources. To get that you need a a small nuclear plant or two on the moon and enough robotics to mine and built out infrastructure there to get what can be mined on the moon to GEO. However, the moon is missing a lot apparently or at least in as minable concentrations as many asteroids possess. Of course those asteroids periodically impact the moon but it is a bit of a job finding and mining them there. Some of these asteroids to have higher concentrations of some materials than any minable known surface deposits on earth. Some of our best earth deposits of some metals (for instance nickel) are in fact old meteor impact sites. Some of the rest are from fumaroles. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: