[ExI] Memorial for Lee Corbin Sunday Oct 16

[Forrest Bennett]

Yes, he was a master level chess player, though I forget his exact rating.

He owned hundreds of classical records, tapes, and CDs. As well as hundreds
of movies. To give a few random examples, he really liked The Matrix,
Babylon 5, Leonardo Dicaprio, and La Femme Nikita.

He was also a "quantified self" experimenter, and conducted careful double
blind (when possible) experiments on himself.

I certainly agree with your point that he had no interest in things like
fashion, cooking, sports, etc.





On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 3:16 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Forrest Bennett
> *Sent:* Sunday, October 09, 2016 2:20 PM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Memorial for Lee Corbin Sunday Oct 16
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> Spike,
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> I respectfully disagree that Lee was lost outside the topics of futurism,
> mathematics, and computers. I also know that you meant no harm by your
> comment, but were just representing Lee as you knew him.
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> Lee was extremely knowledgable about history, physics, cosmology,
> philosophy, economics, chess (of course), evolutionary psychology, as well
> as certain areas of chemistry, biological evolution, and science fiction.
> He was also into classical music, go, geography, and movies. I may have
> left out some subject areas, but you get the idea.
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> Lee's curiosity and knowledge were quite wide ranging.
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> Forrest
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> Ja thanks for pointing that out Forrest.  Lee loved science and math, all
> aspects of it.  Now that you mention it, I recall his mentioning interest
> in classical music.  That he had interest in movies is a big surprise to me
> however.  I don’t recall his ever mentioning it, and just as well: I know
> nothing of movies.  The last time I attended one was Enders Game with the
> cryonics crowd, and I don’t even know before that, probably still in the 20
> th century.
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> Regarding chess: he and I intentionally eschewed it when together, for we
> both knew that chess can be all-consuming, to the expense of everything
> else.  I fear that had we played even one game, we would have been
> instantly addicted like a couple of hopeless crack addicts, and all other
> topics would have been swamped.  He was fascinated by the rise in the skill
> level of computer chess, and was as astonished as I was that computers
> could play as well as they did by about the mid 90s.  The first time I met
> Lee was at an exclusive invitation-only chess club in Palo Alto where you
> couldn’t even get in the door unless you were at least at expert level.  I
> believe Lee was a master.
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> I should have said it thus: when Lee and I were together, we didn’t waste
> time on matters outside our area of mutual knowledge: mathematical
> research, algorithms, nanotech, futurism and so forth.  I can assure you we
> spent no time on the latest clothing styles or fashion, which would be
> obvious to the casual observer.  We were geeks before it was cool.  For
> that matter, it still isn’t.  {8^D  But we like it that way.
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> Lee was a deep thinker and a very focused guy.  He didn’t let society’s
> craziness distract him much.
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> spike
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> On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 9:04 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
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> *>…* *On Behalf Of *Anders
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Memorial for Lee Corbin Sunday Oct 16
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> Tragic. Hopefully reversible, but still tragic.
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> I remember him being a fixture when I first came onto this list. And a
> quite essential node in the networks when I made sociograms of our
> conversations.  Anders
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> Lee was Dr. Matrix.  For those who followed the annual Dr. Joshua Irving
> Matrix columns in Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Recreations column in
> Scientific American, Lee could have been the model for Dr. Matrix.  If one
> wanted to talk about futurism, mathematics or computers, he was the man to
> see.  Very far outside those topics, he was lost.
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> I went back over my notes from about ten years ago and reviewed our
> discussions.  He taught me Python, I taught him spreadsheet scripting
> language.  We were both doing mathematical explorations and both benefitted
> enormously from the other’s expertise.  I don’t know if I was the better
> teacher or he was the better student, but my progress in Python was slower
> than his progress in VBA.
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> Lee is gone but never forgotten.
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> spike
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