From bmd54321 at gmail.com Thu Feb 1 01:25:54 2018 From: bmd54321 at gmail.com (Brian M. Delaney) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2018 20:25:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aging is now included into the WHO work program. Thanks! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: El 2018-01-31 a las 10:01, Ilia Stambler escribi?: > Dear friends, > > Following the previous extensive correspondence and the recent WHO > Executive Board Meeting that was completed on January 27, I felt it was > necessary to provide an update on the campaign that many longevity > activists were conducting for the inclusion of aging health into the WHO > work program. > > *Briefly: Congratulations, the longevity activists have won!* > > http://www.who.int/about/what-we-do/gpw-thirteen-consultation/en/ > > http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB142/B142_3-en.pdf?ua=1 Ilia, This is fantastic news. Thanks for your efforts, which obviously helped make this happen. Brian -- Brian M. Delaney Project Coordinator, Society for the Rescue of Our Elders http://www.RescueElders.org/ President, CR Society International http://www.CRSociety.org From tara at taramayastales.com Thu Feb 1 01:39:42 2018 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:39:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Aging is now included into the WHO work program. Thanks! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <03C641B0-FD71-4392-B888-39B6DAA17400@taramayastales.com> Wow! Good news. > On Jan 31, 2018, at 5:25 PM, Brian M. Delaney wrote: > > > El 2018-01-31 a las 10:01, Ilia Stambler escribi?: >> Dear friends, >> Following the previous extensive correspondence and the recent WHO Executive Board Meeting that was completed on January 27, I felt it was necessary to provide an update on the campaign that many longevity activists were conducting for the inclusion of aging health into the WHO work program. >> *Briefly: Congratulations, the longevity activists have won!* >> http://www.who.int/about/what-we-do/gpw-thirteen-consultation/en/ >> http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB142/B142_3-en.pdf?ua=1 > > > > Ilia, > > This is fantastic news. Thanks for your efforts, which obviously helped make this happen. > > Brian > > -- > Brian M. Delaney > Project Coordinator, Society for the Rescue of Our Elders > http://www.RescueElders.org/ > President, CR Society International > http://www.CRSociety.org > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Feb 1 20:58:04 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2018 12:58:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <4fb901d3997d$faab7a20$f0026e60$@sovacs.com> Message-ID: <1244E933-89AF-4667-A32B-DC00D2FAB328@gmail.com> On Jan 30, 2018, at 2:45 PM, John Clark wrote: > >> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 10:54 PM, Christian Saucier wrote: > > ? >> ?> ?The solution to world peace and nuclear annihilation will not come from wall street and nation states. We need alternatives. > > ?Wall Street? I knew you didn't like nation states but I didn't know you don't like capitalism either. ?What do you like? If by capitalism you mean free markets, then being pro-free markets almost certainly means being anti-Wall Street. And libertarians should, in my opinion, be pro-free markets not pro-business. What Wall Street tends to favor is government favors not free markets. >> ?> ?Nation states as we know them today will not survive the move to peer-to-peer electronic money, exchanges, > Christian?, I joined this list a quarter century ago long before bitcoin, and from day one I heard about the Crypto ?revolution that was about to happen. And even before that way back in 1988 Timothy C May wrote his "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto?" ?and I was very impressed by it's opening line: > > "A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy." > > We were all sure it was just about to happen any day now, b?ut? here we are in 2018 and nation states are stronger than ever. Like it or not nation states? aren't going? away anytime soon, we're just going to have to deal with it. ? I happen to also agree that crypto-currency is unlikely to deal real damage to states. If it were, I imagine governments like the US and UK would simply use the ?terrorists are being funded through it? excuse to persecute people involved. Yeah, they wouldn?t catch everyone, but it would likely stifle the movement. Also, currency failures don?t always bring down governments. Zimbabwe?s rulers certainly had little trouble staying in power while they wrecked the currency. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Feb 3 17:19:24 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2018 12:19:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 4 15:18:29 2018 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 07:18:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] multiplication from division Message-ID: <000801d39dcb$6af465c0$40dd3140$@att.net> The US government appears to be at war with itself, as demonstrated in the FISA memo released Friday. It occurred to me how tragic it is that we are failing to make a ton of money off of it. We could have political-based advertising. Take a product that is pretty much the same thing, some kind of vegetable or toilet paper for instance, then have the brand name be the political party that the buyer favors. In a sense we are already doing this: if you show up at Starbucks with a MAGA hat, good chance you will be asked to honor their safe-space policy. If you wear that same hat in McDonalds however, you are welcomed. Since American politics are so deeply divided and polarized, it is a tragedy indeed if we fail to multiply profits from the division. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 4 19:54:01 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 11:54:01 -0800 Subject: [ExI] multiplication from division In-Reply-To: <000801d39dcb$6af465c0$40dd3140$@att.net> References: <000801d39dcb$6af465c0$40dd3140$@att.net> Message-ID: Political futures markets are a thing. However, those who yell and scream loudest tend not to have money - or at least, not money they could be enticed to put on such markets, even for the positions they present themselves as 100% sure of, with ample reasons they can give that have nothing to do with, "I don't really believe this will work." On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 7:18 AM, spike wrote: > > > The US government appears to be at war with itself, as demonstrated in the > FISA memo released Friday. It occurred to me how tragic it is that we are > failing to make a ton of money off of it. > > > > We could have political-based advertising. Take a product that is pretty > much the same thing, some kind of vegetable or toilet paper for instance, > then have the brand name be the political party that the buyer favors. > > > > In a sense we are already doing this: if you show up at Starbucks with a > MAGA hat, good chance you will be asked to honor their safe-space policy. > If you wear that same hat in McDonalds however, you are welcomed. > > > > Since American politics are so deeply divided and polarized, it is a tragedy > indeed if we fail to multiply profits from the division. > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 5 04:09:52 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 20:09:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Except there's another couple interpretations: * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not quite that scenario.) * The filter ahead of us has stopped others but it won't stop us. With literally no data, any filter could be supposed - including one which we are the first to cross. It's kind of Pascal's Wager. On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 9:19 AM, John Clark wrote: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM > > > John K Clark > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Feb 5 04:26:11 2018 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2018 20:26:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Except there's another couple interpretations: > > * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make > certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of > alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not > quite that scenario.) I find that by far the least likely. The universe is so vast. Hundreds of billions of planets in this galaxy alone. I would find it easier to believe we are in a simulation arranged for us to be alone. I do however think that it is very unusual for an evolved technological species to survive and thrive across the its period of accelerating technologies. I think the challenge of transcending evolved psychology and species limitations, much less letting go of being intellectual kind of the hill produces such turmoil that it rips many species apart. > > * The filter ahead of us has stopped others but it won't stop us. > With literally no data, any filter could be supposed - including one > which we are the first to cross. It's kind of Pascal's Wager. I think the challenges we obviously face now and in the next few decades are a good enough Great Filter. From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 5 04:40:45 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 20:40:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 8:26 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I think the challenges we obviously face now and in the next few decades are a good enough Great Filter. Not disagreeing. Just saying, the Fermi Paradox doesn't even qualify as an omen, let alone evidence, that it's impossible to survive. From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 5 06:21:57 2018 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 22:21:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FW: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: <004401d39e49$58d79140$0a86b3c0$@rainier66.com> References: <003f01d39e49$0e24a480$2a6ded80$@rainier66.com> <004401d39e49$58d79140$0a86b3c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <030501d39e49$a085a270$e190e750$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins Subject: Re: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> Except there's another couple interpretations: > >> * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make >> certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind >> of alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not >> quite that scenario.) >...I find that by far the least likely. The universe is so vast. >Hundreds of billions of planets in this galaxy alone. I would find it easier to believe we are in a simulation arranged for us to be alone... We are in a simulation? What you mean WE, Kimosabe? The line of reasoning you suggest just doesn't stop at the 7 billion humans on the planet. It works just as well if we bring the number of sims down to just those who somehow interacted with your life. But then it slides right on past there to a Truman Show scenario, where this whole thing really is about an experiment on you. The rest of us are all just avatars, and we are studying what goes on in the mind of you. Kidding, bygones! We are really all out here. Maybe. How would you know if we are not? If you were the only one, that would be as weird as quantum mechanics and Fermi's Paradox. Samantha, good to see you post again. You really aughta show up more than once every year or two. Of course that comment is all part of the experiment on you. {8^D spike From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Feb 8 02:16:09 2018 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 21:16:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] multiplication from division In-Reply-To: <000801d39dcb$6af465c0$40dd3140$@att.net> References: <000801d39dcb$6af465c0$40dd3140$@att.net> Message-ID: On Feb 4, 2018 7:31 AM, "spike" wrote: [not what I was expecting] I was disappointed this subject line wasn't about a new way to do math. ...something along the lines of how computers implement subtraction via addition of a compliment and a bit carry. Oh well - they can't all be new mersenne primes :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Mon Feb 5 19:06:42 2018 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 11:06:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> An analogy from history could be the interesting fact that human civilizations around the globe discovered agriculture near-simulteneously (especially in relation to the age of the species over-all) and so expanded out from several points at once. Although this still resulted in some civilizations that were more advanced more quickly (mostly those that collided with each first, and so were able to start stacking innovations faster), the difference was not that huge. There could be several other life civilizations all arising to the space faring level about the same time. The question is which will collide fastest and gain the early adopter advantage? Another reason that we should seek out collision with aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading technology and learning as fast as we can. Tara > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Except there's another couple interpretations: > > * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make > certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of > alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not > quite that scenario.) From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 8 13:31:22 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 07:31:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: tara wrote - Another reason that we should seek out collision with aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading technology and learning as fast as we can. Yeah - given our warlike nature, collision is far more likely than collusion bill w On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 1:06 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > An analogy from history could be the interesting fact that human > civilizations around the globe discovered agriculture near-simulteneously > (especially in relation to the age of the species over-all) and so expanded > out from several points at once. Although this still resulted in some > civilizations that were more advanced more quickly (mostly those that > collided with each first, and so were able to start stacking innovations > faster), the difference was not that huge. > > There could be several other life civilizations all arising to the space > faring level about the same time. The question is which will collide > fastest and gain the early adopter advantage? Another reason that we should > seek out collision with aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading > technology and learning as fast as we can. > > Tara > > > > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > > Except there's another couple interpretations: > > > > * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make > > certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of > > alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not > > quite that scenario.) > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 8 15:09:41 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 07:09:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <009901d3a0ee$d9560430$8c020c90$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tara Maya Sent: Monday, February 5, 2018 11:07 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter >...An analogy from history could be the interesting fact that human civilizations around the globe discovered agriculture near-simulteneously (especially in relation to the age of the species over-all) and so expanded out from several points at once. Although this still resulted in some civilizations that were more advanced more quickly (mostly those that collided with each first, and so were able to start stacking innovations faster), the difference was not that huge. >...There could be several other life civilizations all arising to the space faring level about the same time. The question is which will collide fastest and gain the early adopter advantage? Another reason that we should seek out collision with aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading technology and learning as fast as we can. >...Tara Ja, but there is another factor with human expansion: when two of the civilizations you described encounter each other, they fight. When two civilizations fight persistently, they develop technological advances from developing superior weapons. Then using the technology developments from superior weapons, they develop other technologies which advance the civilization, and eventually allow modification of the species and its educational tools. Technology wins, humanity wins. When two spacefaring species encounter each other, it isn't clear that any of those warrior technology arguments still hold. spike From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Feb 8 23:28:48 2018 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 18:28:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike I have to say, originally JKC was waaaaayyy worse with the political stuff, but now I would say you two have become equally bad. Not a character judgment, just a personal opinion. Still love ya Spike-o. On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 4:27 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *On Behalf Of *John Clark > *Subject:* [ExI] The Doomsday Clock > > > > >? Oh well, at least we don't have to face the horrors of Hillary's Email > server? ? John K Clark? > > > > Amazing! We were so puzzled over the BleachBit to clean up that server, > with the reason given that it contained yoga routines. Today we find out? > that yoga is more politically damaging than appearing to destroy subpoenaed > evidence! There may have been actual literal yoga on there. > > > > Check it out: > > > > https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41333/ > > > > Who knew? That one took me by surprise when I thought I had seen it all. > > > > {8^D > > > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 00:11:39 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 18:11:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> Message-ID: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41333/ This and its like are the silliest stuff I have ever seen come from far left professors. I suppose I am guilty of it: I have bought CDs of music performed by black people. I have bought CDs of music written by black people. I have danced to music of black people. I have ripped and torn away their achievements and made them my own. And they loved it. How do you get on Youtube, get your posts of Facebook go viral? Say, do something really way out, the more controversial the better. Moderate, reasoned opinions bolstered by real evidence are passe'. And why I am wasting my time refuting the silliness? It will pass like last night's salad and we can flush it down the commode of Time and Change with the rest of the cultural stink we are now seeing. bill w On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 3:27 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *On Behalf Of *John Clark > *Subject:* [ExI] The Doomsday Clock > > > > >? Oh well, at least we don't have to face the horrors of Hillary's Email > server? ? John K Clark? > > > > Amazing! We were so puzzled over the BleachBit to clean up that server, > with the reason given that it contained yoga routines. Today we find out? > that yoga is more politically damaging than appearing to destroy subpoenaed > evidence! There may have been actual literal yoga on there. > > > > Check it out: > > > > https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41333/ > > > > Who knew? That one took me by surprise when I thought I had seen it all. > > > > {8^D > > > > 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 atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 00:28:51 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 16:28:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] In smaller space news Message-ID: It's no SpaceX, but I figure this should amuse our list admin, at least. http://bitcoinlatina.org/blog/bitcoinlatina-foundation-and-cubecab-to-launch-300-satellite-network-to-support-bcl-blockchain/ If you want details, ask and I'll provide what I can. Much of it's still confidential, but anything specifically mentioned in the press release is now mentioned in a public press release agreed to by both parties. I am told this is the largest, by satellite count, constellation for which a launch contract has been signed. I am not certain if that is so, but I suspect someone on this list may have the data to confirm or deny that claim. From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 00:32:42 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 16:32:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> Message-ID: <006101d3a13d$7fce9b80$7f6bd280$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 3:29 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock >?Spike I have to say, originally JKC was waaaaayyy worse with the political stuff, but now I would say you two have become equally bad. >?Not a character judgment, just a personal opinion. Still love ya Spike-o. Noted (thanks Will) but really where I was going with that post was the notion of cultural appropriation, not politics. We can own intellectual property (patents) and we can own land. We can own land collectively. Where does the new notion of cultural appropriation fit? How broadly shall it be used? Is that analogous to a collectively-owned intellectual property patent? Is the notion of cultural appropriation really new? Or did it kinda start with rap? We know that musicians sometimes cover songs written by others. Weird Al Yankovich changes the words to make a new song with the same tune. But you can also keep the style and the words then change the tune (plenty of examples of that.) Old time crooner Pat Boone did an experimental album where he took acid rock, kept both the words and the tune but translated it into his style. Perhaps you will recall No More Mr. Nice Guy by Alice Cooper. That one was kinda comedic, as one tries to picture the acidic Alice Cooper opening doors for little old ladies, going to church and such, describing himself as having been a sweet, sweet thing. OK, now imagine Pat Boone, who really is easy to imagine doing those things. His version of the song keeps the words but replaces it with his style. That too is comedic, as we struggle to picture Boone ?feeling mean? and Reverend Smith punching him in the nose, etc. Oddly enough, Boone?s version works. It is melodic, easy to listen to, an improvement over Cooper?s original Now, consider Rap. Never mind the propriety of it all. Try to imagine Pat Boone doing a JayZ cover. The mind boggles. This all goes back to the notion of cultural appropriation. If such a thing is to be embraced, does it really make it inappropriate for Americans and Europeans to practice yoga, assuming they cut the spiritual aspect and do the stretches? How valid is the notion of cultural appropriation? spike On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: [ExI] The Doomsday Clock >? Oh well, at least we don't have to face the horrors of Hillary's Email server? ? John K Clark? Amazing! We were so puzzled over the BleachBit to clean up that server, with the reason given that it contained yoga routines. Today we find out? that yoga is more politically damaging than appearing to destroy subpoenaed evidence! There may have been actual literal yoga on there. Check it out: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41333/ Who knew? That one took me by surprise when I thought I had seen it all. {8^D 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 spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 00:43:49 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 16:43:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> Message-ID: <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 4:12 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41333/ >?This and its like are the silliest stuff I have ever seen come from far left professors. I suppose I am guilty of it: I have bought CDs of music performed by black people. I have bought CDs of music written by black people. I have danced to music of black people. I have ripped and torn away their achievements and made them my own. And they loved it?BillW Wait, what? You said you have ripped and torn at their achievements and made them your own, and you also said you bought their CDs. You didn?t steal their CDs, ja? So the sentence should have been: I have bought into their achievements and made them my own CDs. What are you guilty of? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 04:19:43 2018 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 23:19:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Obviously culture mixing is good. People take the idea of appropriation too far, but it clearly does happen, when it's a mockery or a "look how interesting/weird/different [insert culture] is!" What I don't get is like...those people are the trolls of the group. The trolls get more press while the majority of people with real claims are ignored. Why engage with said trolls' discourse? Sorry, but I don't get it. Of course yoga is good. Of course covering music is good. There might be covers that are a poor choice, but then...just don't do them. If doing the cover would stray too close to insult/mockery, it's bad. Just seems simple to me. Mix cultures without being insulting. And fuck the trolls! :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Thu Feb 8 16:46:01 2018 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 08:46:01 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: <009901d3a0ee$d9560430$8c020c90$@rainier66.com> References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> <009901d3a0ee$d9560430$8c020c90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <7D5782E5-BE32-4273-B97C-C7BD75290A0B@taramayastales.com> Do you think humans could learn alien technology, the way we can learn new technologies from other human civilizations? > On Feb 8, 2018, at 7:09 AM, spike at rainier66.com wrote: > > Ja, but there is another factor with human expansion: when two of the > civilizations you described encounter each other, they fight. When two > civilizations fight persistently, they develop technological advances from > developing superior weapons. Then using the technology developments from > superior weapons, they develop other technologies which advance the > civilization, and eventually allow modification of the species and its > educational tools. Technology wins, humanity wins. > > When two spacefaring species encounter each other, it isn't clear that any > of those warrior technology arguments still hold. Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 05:00:47 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 21:00:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 8:20 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock Obviously culture mixing is good. People take the idea of appropriation too far, but it clearly does happen, when it's a mockery or a "look how interesting/weird/different [insert culture] is!" What I don't get is like...those people are the trolls of the group. The trolls get more press while the majority of people with real claims are ignored. Why engage with said trolls' discourse? Sorry, but I don't get it. Of course yoga is good. Of course covering music is good. There might be covers that are a poor choice, but then...just don't do them. If doing the cover would stray too close to insult/mockery, it's bad. Just seems simple to me. Mix cultures without being insulting. And fuck the trolls! :) OK sure. Your response is well-reasoned. Let?s think about it, shall we? The notion of patents covering pretty much anything you want to cover is recent. In 1967 for instance Doug Englebart applied for a patent on the computer mouse. He was told that it was just a trackball turned upside down with software that reversed everything, and software isn?t patentable, so no patent for you. So he created a variation on a theme which wasn?t as good: it had two wheels. This was different from an upside down trackball, so he got his patent. However? he never did collect any royalties on it, because Jobs and Wozniak recognized that the track ball was patented, the two-wheel mouse was patented but the inverted trackball (single ball mouse) wasn?t patented, so they were royalty free, so? they used those, and they are with us to this day. That was in the 80s. Then things went to such a crazy extreme that you can patent anything you want, but good luck in ever making it stick. So you can own knowledge. To some extent you can own styles. You can copyright music. Where does that leave us when it comes to culture? The question I am asking goes to the propriety of making claims to ownership of a culture. How do we define a culture? If a professor scorns ?white people? from doing yoga, is that legitimate? Or is it only legitimate if they do yoga with some kind of nod to Hinduism? Now it will sound like I am going off on a tangent, but it is related. In the 1970s, a science called ethnobotany really took off. It recognized that rain forests were being mowed down as fast as they could plant cows on them, but that was causing extinction of so many native plants that have medicinal value. So? a discipline arose which was to go find indigenous cultures, find out what they were using for medicine, then take some of it back to the lab to see if it could be synthesized. A Harvard guy named Wade Davis went to Haiti to study zombies. He learned the witchdoctors were extracting toxins from a certain native poisonous frog. This stuff was absorbed through the skin and caused deathlike symptoms. It worked like this: a local criminal could do pretty much whatever he wanted: they have very little on the way of a police force in most of Haiti. Family comes to the witchdoctor, who cooks up frogs, extracts poison, puts it on the floor of local thug, he appears to die, they bury him, witchdoctor comes back, digs him up, gives him the antidote which does bring him back to life to some extent (with plenty of permanent neurological damage), tells the thug: I killed you, and I brought you back. Now you are a zombie. But I can kill you again. You must stay right here in this cemetery and live off the land. That is pretty much the legal system in the Haitian outback. The witchdoctors knew how to get the toxin. But they were apparently convinced they needed to say the magic words. Without the spells, the toxin alone wouldn?t work (according to them.) Dr. Davis thought otherwise, and eventually did get the recipe for this toxin, and now it is in the western medical toolkit. OK then. What Davis did is kinda like cultural appropriation. We can take any kind of ethnic food, figure out what is in it, improve it with modern technology, any kind of fashion, create it with superior materials with modern technology. Take any kind of music, improve on it (as the Beatles did with Hindu traditional music (note melody in Norwegian Wood) and make it ours. There is no legal means of protecting cultures from appropriation. So now I ask: in what sense can it be said that it makes sense to scorn the notion of cultural appropriation? And if we do, why is it Americans don?t seem to have much heartburn when we see other cultures appropriating stuff we invented? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 15:28:47 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 09:28:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: So now I ask: in what sense can it be said that it makes sense to scorn the notion of cultural appropriation? And if we do, why is it Americans don?t seem to have much heartburn when we see other cultures appropriating stuff we invented? spike -- Look at American Indians: the actual people have disappeared into vodka bottles. Americans took their culture and made shows, like Buffalo Bill's, movies and lots more, while leaving the people behind. What's wrong with that? Nothing. The Indians could have made those movies, did get money from Buffalo Bill, are now selling authentic blankets, and so on. The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing skills. Do the Irish care when non-Irish celebrate St Pat's day? Nah. They welcome the participation. In fact, others' joining in validates their culture, not appropriates it. No, Spike - it makes no sense at all. bill w On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 11:00 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Will Steinberg > *Sent:* Thursday, February 8, 2018 8:20 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock > > > > Obviously culture mixing is good. > > > > People take the idea of appropriation too far, but it clearly does happen, > when it's a mockery or a "look how interesting/weird/different [insert > culture] is!" > > > > What I don't get is like...those people are the trolls of the group. The > trolls get more press while the majority of people with real claims are > ignored. Why engage with said trolls' discourse? > > > > Sorry, but I don't get it. Of course yoga is good. Of course covering > music is good. There might be covers that are a poor choice, but > then...just don't do them. If doing the cover would stray too close to > insult/mockery, it's bad. > > > > Just seems simple to me. Mix cultures without being insulting. And fuck > the trolls! :) > > > > > > > > > > OK sure. Your response is well-reasoned. Let?s think about it, shall > we? The notion of patents covering pretty much anything you want to cover > is recent. In 1967 for instance Doug Englebart applied for a patent on the > computer mouse. He was told that it was just a trackball turned upside > down with software that reversed everything, and software isn?t patentable, > so no patent for you. So he created a variation on a theme which wasn?t as > good: it had two wheels. This was different from an upside down trackball, > so he got his patent. However? he never did collect any royalties on it, > because Jobs and Wozniak recognized that the track ball was patented, the > two-wheel mouse was patented but the inverted trackball (single ball mouse) > wasn?t patented, so they were royalty free, so? they used those, and they > are with us to this day. > > > > That was in the 80s. Then things went to such a crazy extreme that you > can patent anything you want, but good luck in ever making it stick. > > > > So you can own knowledge. To some extent you can own styles. You can > copyright music. Where does that leave us when it comes to culture? The > question I am asking goes to the propriety of making claims to ownership of > a culture. How do we define a culture? If a professor scorns ?white > people? from doing yoga, is that legitimate? Or is it only legitimate if > they do yoga with some kind of nod to Hinduism? > > > > Now it will sound like I am going off on a tangent, but it is related. > > > > In the 1970s, a science called ethnobotany really took off. It recognized > that rain forests were being mowed down as fast as they could plant cows on > them, but that was causing extinction of so many native plants that have > medicinal value. So? a discipline arose which was to go find indigenous > cultures, find out what they were using for medicine, then take some of it > back to the lab to see if it could be synthesized. A Harvard guy named > Wade Davis went to Haiti to study zombies. He learned the witchdoctors > were extracting toxins from a certain native poisonous frog. This stuff > was absorbed through the skin and caused deathlike symptoms. It worked > like this: a local criminal could do pretty much whatever he wanted: they > have very little on the way of a police force in most of Haiti. Family > comes to the witchdoctor, who cooks up frogs, extracts poison, puts it on > the floor of local thug, he appears to die, they bury him, witchdoctor > comes back, digs him up, gives him the antidote which does bring him back > to life to some extent (with plenty of permanent neurological damage), > tells the thug: I killed you, and I brought you back. Now you are a > zombie. But I can kill you again. You must stay right here in this > cemetery and live off the land. That is pretty much the legal system in > the Haitian outback. > > > > The witchdoctors knew how to get the toxin. But they were apparently > convinced they needed to say the magic words. Without the spells, the > toxin alone wouldn?t work (according to them.) Dr. Davis thought > otherwise, and eventually did get the recipe for this toxin, and now it is > in the western medical toolkit. > > > > OK then. What Davis did is kinda like cultural appropriation. We can > take any kind of ethnic food, figure out what is in it, improve it with > modern technology, any kind of fashion, create it with superior materials > with modern technology. Take any kind of music, improve on it (as the > Beatles did with Hindu traditional music (note melody in Norwegian Wood) > and make it ours. There is no legal means of protecting cultures from > appropriation. > > > > So now I ask: in what sense can it be said that it makes sense to scorn > the notion of cultural appropriation? And if we do, why is it Americans > don?t seem to have much heartburn when we see other cultures appropriating > stuff we invented? > > > > 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 sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 15:42:31 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 10:42:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's > culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a > Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on > federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing > skills. > Wow. Blame the victim much? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 15:44:15 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 07:44:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock >>?So now I ask: in what sense can it be said that it makes sense to scorn the notion of cultural appropriation? And if we do, why is it Americans don?t seem to have much heartburn when we see other cultures appropriating stuff we invented? spike -- >?Do the Irish care when non-Irish celebrate St Pat's day? Nah. They welcome the participation. In fact, others' joining in validates their culture, not appropriates it. No, Spike - it makes no sense at all. bill w Well there is that, but Irish might be a special case. If you ever do one of those 70 dollar DNA tests, it is very difficult to find a person who isn?t part Irish. If they are recent (last century) immigrants from Africa or Asia, they won?t have any probably, but anyone with European ancestry seems to turn up with that in there. I didn?t even know until I took the test. I would bet you have Irish BillW. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 16:06:18 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 11:06:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:44 AM, wrote: > > > Well there is that, but Irish might be a special case. If you ever do one > of those 70 dollar DNA tests, it is very difficult to find a person who > isn?t part Irish. If they are recent (last century) immigrants from Africa > or Asia, they won?t have any probably, but anyone with European ancestry > seems to turn up with that in there. I didn?t even know until I took the > test. I would bet you have Irish BillW. > Before you put too much faith in DNA ancestry testing: https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637 -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 16:17:12 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 08:17:12 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <71137C29-B62A-4F43-A37E-F5997F8360D0@gmail.com> > On Feb 9, 2018, at 7:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing skills. Indigenous Americans (American Indians or Native Americans) often did appropriate Western European culture. For instance, aside from technology and Christianity, they adopted using US legal standards by trying their cases in US courts. However, this didn?t work out so well, especially if when defending their legal rights they clashed with the US citizens of European descent who wanted Indigenous American lands. Then they simply lost out of their claims were ignored. Ever heard of the Trail of Tears? Part of that had to do with finding gold in Georgia. Despite fighting state and federal removal laws in the courts, the Indigenous Americans still got removed. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 16:33:21 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 08:33:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! In-Reply-To: <006101d3a13d$7fce9b80$7f6bd280$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <006101d3a13d$7fce9b80$7f6bd280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <35D607B6-F90F-4B3C-8FDC-65DAE6BD20D3@gmail.com> On Feb 8, 2018, at 4:32 PM, wrote: > How valid is the notion of cultural appropriation? In my view, intellectual property in general has serious problems. Cultural appropriation overall is, to me, idiotic. Cultures aren?t owned in the first place and they?re certainly not passed along through gene lines or families. Trying to implement the idea through legal sanctions has serious implications for stifling cultural innovation and harassing individuals. (A case can be made for boycotting folks who are, say, being bigots, but that?s another matter and really not a legal sanction but personal exercise of choice of who to associate and trade with.) Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 17:04:04 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 11:04:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Wow. Blame the victim much? -Dave I am hardly without sympathies for all the people Europeans slaughtered and decimated with small pox, though it was just like what always happens with two cultures with far different technology clash. What was done in the British Empire, the European conquest of the Americans, and so on, was sinful. But that just goes to show what humans are really like: if they can kill off what they deem as enemies (an enemy is someone who is not US), they will. Also, they will take their women, children, and turn them into slaves, plus ripping off whatever they want. Odysseus was a hero, right? Raper and killer of women. Plunderer. Hero!!?? It's not so much blame the victim to me, it's just that they did not have the right stuff to compete with Europeans. And still don't. You can argue heredity/environment endlessly, but what American Indians have accomplished, before and after we came, is very little. Other groups with mindbending poverty, illness, oppression, and so on in their backgrounds, have blended in - assimilated. Not so American Indians. Look at the California Vietnamese. Doughnut czars now. On the positive side, the Indians now have all the opportunities of modern society, health care, food stamps, TV, firewater, which they would maybe never have had had they been left alone for another thousand years. Dave? Do you think we owe them endlessly? Reparations forever? Hmmm. Maybe we ought to toss them out of the reservations (breaking yet another treaty, ho hum), and force them to adapt to modern life. ------ I would bet you have Irish BillW. spike Almost certainly true. I would say that I would be proud to have Irish genes, but it would be a lie. I cannot be proud of something I did not accomplish. If I have, it doesn't make me any closer emotionally to the Irish. I have no African genes, but my first wife did and so do our children. Hohum. Who cares? bill w On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 9:44 AM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock > > > > >>?So now I ask: in what sense can it be said that it makes sense to > scorn the notion of cultural appropriation? And if we do, why is it > Americans don?t seem to have much heartburn when we see other cultures > appropriating stuff we invented? > > > > spike > > -- > > > > >?Do the Irish care when non-Irish celebrate St Pat's day? Nah. They > welcome the participation. In fact, others' joining in validates their > culture, not appropriates it. > > > > No, Spike - it makes no sense at all. > > > > bill w > > > > > > > > Well there is that, but Irish might be a special case. If you ever do one > of those 70 dollar DNA tests, it is very difficult to find a person who > isn?t part Irish. If they are recent (last century) immigrants from Africa > or Asia, they won?t have any probably, but anyone with European ancestry > seems to turn up with that in there. I didn?t even know until I took the > test. I would bet you have Irish BillW. > > > > 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 sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 17:55:00 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 12:55:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 12:04 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I am hardly without sympathies for all the people Europeans slaughtered > and decimated with small pox, though it was just like what always happens > with two cultures with far different technology clash. > You said: The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's culture and just blended in to it. I don't think anything short of evacuation would have appeased the Europeans. The problem wasn't that the natives refused European culture (which they had every right to do), it's that the natives stood in the way of greedy and insensitive Europeans. > It's not so much blame the victim to me, it's just that they did not have > the right stuff to compete with Europeans. > Maybe it shouldn't always be about competition. Maybe we should elevate ourselves to the level respecting others' rights and cultures. > And still don't. You can argue heredity/environment endlessly, but what > American Indians have accomplished, before and after we came, is very > little. > Yeah, this 60000-structure city built 1500 years ago had nothing on ancient Europeans: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5365015/New-images-reveal-Mayan-megalopolis-stunning-detail.html > Other groups with mindbending poverty, illness, oppression, and so on in > their backgrounds, have blended in - assimilated. Not so American > Indians. Look at the California Vietnamese. Doughnut czars now. > Maybe they don't want to blend in. They shouldn't have to. And they shouldn't have to measure up to your standards of worthiness. > On the positive side, the Indians now have all the opportunities of modern > society, health care, food stamps, TV, firewater, which they would maybe > never have had had they been left alone for another thousand years. > Oh, yeah, that's a huge positive. I'm sure they're thrilled and thankful for having met us. :rolleyes: Dave? Do you think we owe them endlessly? Reparations forever? > No, we can't undo the damage that's been done. But we can stop inflicting more and we can leave them the fuck alone. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 18:55:02 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 10:55:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c001d3a1d7$7ea046b0$7be0d410$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 8:06 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:44 AM, > wrote: Well there is that, but Irish might be a special case. If you ever do one of those 70 dollar DNA tests, it is very difficult to find a person who isn?t part Irish. If they are recent (last century) immigrants from Africa or Asia, they won?t have any probably, but anyone with European ancestry seems to turn up with that in there. I didn?t even know until I took the test. I would bet you have Irish BillW. >?Before you put too much faith in DNA ancestry testing: https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637 >?-Dave Ja, we know these 70 dollar DNA kits are not terribly accurate, but they did a terrific job on mine. I was able to find DNA-linked cousins in both Sweden, Germany and Ireland, and trace right back to the place they came from in two of those three cases. I would give them a score of not perfect but good, a solid B+. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 19:36:02 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 14:36:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <00c001d3a1d7$7ea046b0$7be0d410$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> <00c001d3a1d7$7ea046b0$7be0d410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 1:55 PM, wrote: > > > Ja, we know these 70 dollar DNA kits are not terribly accurate, but they > did a terrific job on mine. I was able to find DNA-linked cousins in both > Sweden, Germany and Ireland, and trace right back to the place they came > from in two of those three cases. I would give them a score of not perfect > but good, a solid B+. > Did you read the article? It's not about the tests being inaccurate, it's about the inherent limitations of the process of determining geographic origin from a set of SNPs. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 20:21:52 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 12:21:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: n Feb 9, 2018 9:57 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 12:04 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Dave? Do you think we owe them endlessly? Reparations forever? > No, we can't undo the damage that's been done. But we can stop inflicting more and we can leave them the fuck alone. What exactly would this entail? One person's "we've done it this way longer than I've been alive" can be another's "violating our sacred ways", whether or not said ways have slim to no documentation of actually being ancient. Likewise, and as an extension, one person's "not inflicting more damage" can be another's "reparations forever". Both of them involve one party being aware of and caring about another for a potentially infinite period of time ("forever" and "it will never be okay to resume inflicting damage"). The distinction is whether the one party must give more or different care and attention to this specific other party than to any other ordinary fellow member of the first party's civilization. They are part of our society. It can no longer be otherwise. To leave them alone would be to expel them and forbid all further contact, an impossible task (and even if it were possible, morally dubious at best). To not inflict further damage requires defining what constitutes further damage. Most clarifications I have seen of this, quickly reduce to endless repstations - whatever the victims, or more often their self-appointed guardians, demand each day. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 20:32:15 2018 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 15:32:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I think we might have incompatible views because in my opinion if you think Norwegian Wood is an improvement on traditional Indian music then you have a screw loose, lol ;) I mean the Beatles are pretty good for a boy band.... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 20:39:46 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 15:39:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 3:21 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Feb 9, 2018 9:57 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: > > > No, we can't undo the damage that's been done. But we can stop inflicting > more and we can leave them the fuck alone. > > > What exactly would this entail? > "Stop inflicting damage" would entail not forcing native Americans to relocate, not stealing their land, etc. "Leaving them alone" would entail leaving them alone. Stop meddling in their affairs. Stop telling them how to live. One person's "we've done it this way longer than I've been alive" can be > another's "violating our sacred ways", whether or not said ways have slim > to no documentation of actually being ancient. > What business is it of ours whether some practice is ancient or not? > Likewise, and as an extension, one person's "not inflicting more damage" > can be another's "reparations forever". > I'm sorry, I don't see how those can be confused. But, as I said, I oppose reparations. > Both of them involve one party being aware of and caring about another > for a potentially infinite period of time ("forever" and "it will never be > okay to resume inflicting damage"). > Leaving people alone should be the default. It shouldn't be a burden to remember not to violate someone's rights. "Oh, crap, I forgot I'm not supposed to steal my neighbor's stuff and rape his wife!." > The distinction is whether the one party must give more or different > care and attention to this specific other party than to any other ordinary > fellow member of the first party's civilization. > I'm not talking about giving native, or African Americans, or ... different care. I'm talking about respecting other people's rights. They are part of our society. > Are they? What are reservations, then? > It can no longer be otherwise. To leave them alone would be to expel > them and forbid all further contact, an impossible task (and even if it > were possible, morally dubious at best). > > To not inflict further damage requires defining what constitutes further > damage. Most clarifications I have seen of this, quickly reduce to endless > repstations - whatever the victims, or more often their self-appointed > guardians, demand each day. > No reparations. No guardians. Just mind your own business. It's not that hard and not that complicated. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 21:25:05 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 13:25:05 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> <00c001d3a1d7$7ea046b0$7be0d410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <012801d3a1ec$77376830$65a63890$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 11:36 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 1:55 PM, > wrote: Ja, we know these 70 dollar DNA kits are not terribly accurate, but they did a terrific job on mine. I was able to find DNA-linked cousins in both Sweden, Germany and Ireland, and trace right back to the place they came from in two of those three cases. I would give them a score of not perfect but good, a solid B+. >?Did you read the article? It's not about the tests being inaccurate, it's about the inherent limitations of the process of determining geographic origin from a set of SNPs. -Dave Ja, that is what I was referring to as well. It gives geographic estimates based on matches who are from those areas. Regarding accuracy, it is accurate in finding people who share segments of DNA; I have no complaint there. They found some geographic stuff in mine I find questionable, or at least I hope they are wrong: it traced to France (oh mercy, not France.) spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 21:38:16 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 13:38:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013a01d3a1ee$4c1b6af0$e45240d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 12:32 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock I think we might have incompatible views because in my opinion if you think Norwegian Wood is an improvement on traditional Indian music then you have a screw loose, lol ;) I mean the Beatles are pretty good for a boy band.... Note the innovative melodies John Lennon wrote after he became guru-ized and they visited India. Compare early bubble-gummy easy-breezy boy-band tunes from before that 1968 Inida trip to the chaotic innovative stuff after that 1968 tour. It was clear to me the lads spent their time listening to Indian music and asking themselves how it can be westernized (since the traditional Hindu music doesn?t use the same scale we do (so the result needed lots of minor key stuff (cool!))) The weird and marvelous result was the creative chaos of the Beatles? White Album. I consider that album some of Lennon?s most brilliant work. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 9 21:43:19 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 13:43:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013f01d3a1ef$00b0f890$0212e9b0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill >? "Stop inflicting damage" would entail not forcing native Americans to relocate, not stealing their land, etc. ? -Dave Ja. The native Americans generally had the notion of collective land ownership, but the arriving Europeans did not. There was even a basic difference in the concept. The native American might say something like ?People do not own land. The land owns the people.? To which the newly arriving Europeans might answer: ?Whaaaaaaaa????? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 21:56:47 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 13:56:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 3:21 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> On Feb 9, 2018 9:57 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: >>> No, we can't undo the damage that's been done. But we can stop inflicting >?> more and we can leave them the fuck alone. >> >> >> What exactly would this entail? > > "Stop inflicting damage" would entail not forcing native Americans to > relocate, not stealing their land, etc. "Leaving them alone" would entail > leaving them alone. Stop meddling in their affairs. Stop telling them how > to live. Define "meddling in their affairs" and "telling them how to live". For instance, must they obey our laws when they are in our cities? Yes, it really does drill down into such details. >> One person's "we've done it this way longer than I've been alive" can be >> another's "violating our sacred ways", whether or not said ways have slim to >> no documentation of actually being ancient. > > What business is it of ours whether some practice is ancient or not? "Because it's ancient" is often used as a justification: if it was pre-existing, then the redress requested is to revert to that state. >> Both of them involve one party being aware of and caring about another >> for a potentially infinite period of time ("forever" and "it will never be >> okay to resume inflicting damage"). > > Leaving people alone should be the default. It shouldn't be a burden to > remember not to violate someone's rights. "Oh, crap, I forgot I'm not > supposed to steal my neighbor's stuff and rape his wife!." We are not today stealing from Native Americans, nor raping them, to a much larger degree* than we are stealing from and raping anyone else who we today call our citizens. What treatment would you have us give them, that even needs bringing up as something we do not already extend to everyone? * Language chosen to deter "but all taxation is theft" derails. We're talking about relative treatment, not treatment of Native Americans in isolation. >> The distinction is whether the one party must give more or different >> care and attention to this specific other party than to any other ordinary >> fellow member of the first party's civilization. > > I'm not talking about giving native, or African Americans, or ... different > care. I'm talking about respecting other people's rights. And we are. An argument could be made for dismantling reservations and otherwise undoing all laws that today give Native Americans special or preferential treatment, but that would seem to be the opposite of what you are calling for. If that is what you are calling for, then you should explicitly call for that. Many people will read "leave them alone" as "exile them all to the reservations and forbid them from returning, so we no longer interact with them". From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 9 22:16:39 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 16:16:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Maybe they don't want to blend in. They shouldn't have to. And they shouldn't have to measure up to your standards of worthiness. Dave I am a liberal and support welfare to the needy. The Indians are needy because they have a depressed culture full of alcoholism, drug addiction, crime,and a high suicide rate. Would you leave these people alone to suffer? I would try to help, but the status quo is not working. If they are going to be members of this society, they need to contribute to it. I think that's a standard everyone, liberal or conservative, will support. Otherwise how can they respect themselves? Maybe they don't, and that's their basic problem. I agree with no reparations: black, Indians, anyone. This reminds me of original sin, the idea that Adam and Eve sunk all the rest of us by their disobedience. Humbug. I am not responsible for what my ancestors did, and the offspring of the victims are not harmed by what was done to their ancestors. Many black leaders have bemoaned the welfare system as destroying the black culture, taking away incentives to marry the woman they impregnated, get and hold jobs, etc. Maybe the same could be said of the Indians. Help people get on their feet, and THEN leave them alone. bill w On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 11:55 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 12:04 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> I am hardly without sympathies for all the people Europeans slaughtered >> and decimated with small pox, though it was just like what always happens >> with two cultures with far different technology clash. >> > > You said: > > The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's > culture and just blended in to it. > > I don't think anything short of evacuation would have appeased the > Europeans. The problem wasn't that the natives refused European culture > (which they had every right to do), it's that the natives stood in the way > of greedy and insensitive Europeans. > > >> It's not so much blame the victim to me, it's just that they did not have >> the right stuff to compete with Europeans. >> > > Maybe it shouldn't always be about competition. Maybe we should elevate > ourselves to the level respecting others' rights and cultures. > > >> And still don't. You can argue heredity/environment endlessly, but what >> American Indians have accomplished, before and after we came, is very >> little. >> > > Yeah, this 60000-structure city built 1500 years ago had nothing on > ancient Europeans: > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5365015/ > New-images-reveal-Mayan-megalopolis-stunning-detail.html > > >> Other groups with mindbending poverty, illness, oppression, and so on in >> their backgrounds, have blended in - assimilated. Not so American >> Indians. Look at the California Vietnamese. Doughnut czars now. >> > > Maybe they don't want to blend in. They shouldn't have to. And they > shouldn't have to measure up to your standards of worthiness. > > >> On the positive side, the Indians now have all the opportunities of >> modern society, health care, food stamps, TV, firewater, which they would >> maybe never have had had they been left alone for another thousand years. >> > > Oh, yeah, that's a huge positive. I'm sure they're thrilled and thankful > for having met us. :rolleyes: > > Dave? Do you think we owe them endlessly? Reparations forever? >> > > No, we can't undo the damage that's been done. But we can stop inflicting > more and we can leave them the fuck alone. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 03:40:25 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 19:40:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 9:01 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> >> Except there's another couple interpretations: >> >> * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make >> certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of >> alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not >> quite that scenario.) > > I find that by far the least likely. I agree, except > The universe is so vast. Hundreds of billions of planets in this galaxy alone. We don't really know how hard it is for life to emerge and get to the technological stage. > I do however think that it is very unusual for an evolved technological species to survive and thrive across the its period of accelerating technologies. I think the challenge of transcending evolved psychology and species limitations, much less letting go of being intellectual kind of the hill produces such turmoil that it rips many species apart. The filter says nothing about what happens to such hypothetical species except the ones in our light cone (if any) don't impress themselves in an obvious way on what we observe. It could be there are many surviving species, but the process of change they all undergo to survive don't lead them to make an obvious visible splash. The outlines of such changes were discussed in the early days of this very list. Charles Stross gathered up most of them and stirred them into Accelerando. >> * The filter ahead of us has stopped others but it won't stop us. >> With literally no data, any filter could be supposed - including one >> which we are the first to cross. It's kind of Pascal's Wager. > > I think the challenges we obviously face now and in the next few decades are a good enough Great Filter. It might be worth thinking about ways to step sideways out of the universe we inhabit. That's one alternative that would account for the silence and not imply extinction. Keith From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 05:14:44 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 21:14:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 7:40 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > It might be worth thinking about ways to step sideways out of the > universe we inhabit. That's one alternative that would account for > the silence and not imply extinction. I recall a number of science fiction stories where hyperspace was found to be inhabitable, so some people - by accident or design - just moved there. It seems unlikely, since first we would have to find a way into hyperspace (and find out that it is that way), but it is not impossible either. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 06:38:19 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 01:38:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] former exi poster is smiling In-Reply-To: References: <002301d399e1$6051a0d0$20f4e270$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 12:32 PM, John Clark wrote: > amoral imbecile > ### Yeah, these amoral imbeciles just never learn. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 07:11:51 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 02:11:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <4fb901d3997d$faab7a20$f0026e60$@sovacs.com> References: <4fb901d3997d$faab7a20$f0026e60$@sovacs.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 10:54 PM, Christian Saucier wrote: > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *John Clark > *Sent:* Monday, January 29, 2018 10:22 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] The Doomsday Clock > > > > > > Deciding not to choose because neither candidate is good enough for you > is silly because evil is not a all or nothing quality (?) > > > > > > > What is silly to me is the promotion of the usual partisan politics with a > the hope of a different result. If only we voted harder and coronated a > different puppet in DC, the world would be safer! I wonder if you believe > Barack Obama deserved his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? > > > > When you vote and participate in government rituals, you are giving > support to the organizations that have created the evil that threatens our > world today. > ### Out of principle I do not vote but I would not say government created much evil - I'd rather claim that government is a conduit channeling the evil within the hearts of both the ordinary people and the elites, mixed with a humongous helping of stupidity. This is why I doubt that cryptocurrencies and similar technologies will banish evil. For this to happen a more profound change will be needed - an open and modifiable goal system will have to instilled in all participants in a society to extirpate the source of corruption at its root. As a former president said, a "fundamental transformation" will occur. Clean slate minds, implemented on secure hardware, bereft of the dark impulses, never cheaters at the prisoner's dilemma played with others of the same bent, examining and willing to be examined at the core of each other's motivation, will build the unassailable social construct, a society of transcendent moral purity, that will wipe the floor with us, the unclean ones. For in reality, moral purity is strength, and truth is power, but neither implies universal beneficence. This article describes a spontaneous invention of the shibboleth in simulated minds playing the prisoner's dilemma: http://nautil.us/issue/52/the-hive/is-tribalism-a-natural-malfunction The authors' interpretation is an exercise in silly leftoid moral preening but the substance of the article is beautiful. These tiny constructs, hardly deserving to be called minds, hold a powerful lesson to us. Humans will soon become truly perfectible, when uploading opens root access to our souls. Some will choose the path of purity. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 07:22:11 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 02:22:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's >> culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a >> Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on >> federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing >> skills. >> > > Wow. Blame the victim much? > > ### Savages killed civilized people whenever they could spare time from killing each other. They lost. Good riddance. And then came Rousseau with his silly fantasies. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 07:30:44 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 02:30:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: Read this: http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats.html 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large enough. Rafal On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > ?### Research indicates that Democratic voters are on average dumber than > Republican voters, the difference is a couple IQ points if I remember > correctly. > > Rafal ? > > In other words, well within sampling error. Duh > > bill w > > On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 7:31 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 9:31 PM, spike wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> A question occurred to me while I was vacationing: suppose we theorize >>> that a political party is smarter (or dumber) than another. >>> >> >> ### Research indicates that Democratic voters are on average dumber than >> Republican voters, the difference is a couple IQ points if I remember >> correctly. >> >> Rafal >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Schuyler Biotech PLLC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 07:39:55 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 23:39:55 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >>> On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >>> The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing skills. >> >> Wow. Blame the victim much? >> > ### Savages killed civilized people whenever they could spare time from killing each other. They lost. Good riddance. > > And then came Rousseau with his silly fantasies. The Sand Creek massacre was carried out against a peaceful tribe. The various removals ? the Trail of Tears being the most famous one ? were ethnic cleansing not of people committing savage acts but of people in inconvenient areas (areas listed after by would be farmers and would be gold miners). These are not examples of dealing with military or criminal threats. Imagine if your neighbors wanted your property and decided that sending you off sans all you owned say what you could carry to live in some barren region. Or imagine your neighbors decided that you simply were ? as in the Sand Creek massacre ? too much like people they didn?t like or were afraid of, so it?d be better if the troops rode in and wipe you and your loved ones. In effect, you?re arguing for that above. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 07:54:13 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 23:54:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: <4657A73E-B54C-41F1-9083-D6880D6520C9@gmail.com> On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:30 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > Read this: > > http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats.html > > 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large enough. Not sure how it would affect the results, but aren?t Democrats the larger party? If so, so all things being equal simply by being large a random sample of them might differ from a random sample of the smaller party. To be sure, this difference might be small and it?s a maybe anyhow. I?m also not sure how big an impact 2.7 points would make. Other than on IQ scores themselves, would 2.7 more or less on average have much of a discernible impact on overall life choices? (I saw data somewhere on accountants, IIRC, where one group had a lower IQ by about five points but had a stronger work ethic. I forget if this led to higher overall income. Have to track down that data.) Finally, did you look at the other results? Liberal Whites seem to score higher than conservative Whites. And liberals who are Democrats score higher than other Democrats and than Republicans overall. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 13:55:29 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 07:55:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: <4657A73E-B54C-41F1-9083-D6880D6520C9@gmail.com> References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> <4657A73E-B54C-41F1-9083-D6880D6520C9@gmail.com> Message-ID: 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large enough. Rafal There can be huge differences between what is statistically difference, and what is meaningful in the everyday world. 3 IQ points is meaningless in prediction. bill w On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:54 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:30 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: > > Read this: > > http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq- > conservative-democrats.html > > 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large > enough. > > > Not sure how it would affect the results, but aren?t Democrats the larger > party? If so, so all things being equal simply by being large a random > sample of them might differ from a random sample of the smaller party. To > be sure, this difference might be small and it?s a maybe anyhow. > > I?m also not sure how big an impact 2.7 points would make. Other than on > IQ scores themselves, would 2.7 more or less on average have much of a > discernible impact on overall life choices? (I saw data somewhere on > accountants, IIRC, where one group had a lower IQ by about five points but > had a stronger work ethic. I forget if this led to higher overall income. > Have to track down that data.) > > Finally, did you look at the other results? Liberal Whites seem to score > higher than conservative Whites. And liberals who are Democrats score > higher than other Democrats and than Republicans overall. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 15:49:59 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 10:49:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > > > > "Stop inflicting damage" would entail not forcing native Americans to > > relocate, not stealing their land, etc. "Leaving them alone" would entail > > leaving them alone. Stop meddling in their affairs. Stop telling them > how > > to live. > > Define "meddling in their affairs" and "telling them how to live". > For instance, must they obey our laws when they are in our cities? > I'm not suggesting giving them something like diplomatic immunity so they can freely break our laws. I think it's reasonable to allow them to run their reservations according to their laws. > What business is it of ours whether some practice is ancient or not? > > "Because it's ancient" is often used as a justification: if it was > pre-existing, then the redress requested is to revert to that state. > Once again: no reparations. > Leaving people alone should be the default. It shouldn't be a burden to > > remember not to violate someone's rights. "Oh, crap, I forgot I'm not > > supposed to steal my neighbor's stuff and rape his wife!." > > We are not today stealing from Native Americans, nor raping them, to a > much larger degree* than we are stealing from and raping anyone else > who we today call our citizens. What treatment would you have us give > them, that even needs bringing up as something we do not already > extend to everyone? > Nothing in particular. I'm just not assuming that we'd never do that again. > I'm not talking about giving native, or African Americans, or ... > different > > care. I'm talking about respecting other people's rights. > > And we are. An argument could be made for dismantling reservations > and otherwise undoing all laws that today give Native Americans > special or preferential treatment, but that would seem to be the > opposite of what you are calling for. > I don't see any justification for undoing deals made in the past that "gave" a few spots of generally worthless land to the original inhabitants of the country. Seems like we got the better end of the bargain. If that is what you are calling for, then you should explicitly call > for that. Many people will read "leave them alone" as "exile them all > to the reservations and forbid them from returning, so we no longer > interact with them". No, I'd think we should exile them to reservations. Those who want to assimilate should be allowed to. Look, I'm just one person with what I think are pretty standard libertarian views of things. I'm not some grand poobah of native American relations. I don't have a detailed treatise on what we should or shouldn't do. I just know that we European Americans and our US government committed grievous acts against the natives and we should ensure that that never happens again. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 16:01:25 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:01:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 5:16 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I am a liberal and support welfare to the needy. The Indians are needy > because they have a depressed culture full of alcoholism, drug addiction, > crime,and a high suicide rate. Would you leave these people alone to > suffer? I would try to help, but the status quo is not working. > Why do they have a depressed culture? Maybe it was because their recent ancestors were driven from their land, decimated by diseases to which they had no resistance, and forced to give up their language and culture. If they are going to be members of this society, they need to contribute to > it. I think that's a standard everyone, liberal or conservative, will > support. Otherwise how can they respect themselves? Maybe they don't, and > that's their basic problem. > Ah, the wise white man thinks he understands the problem and has a fix. Hallelujah! I agree with no reparations: black, Indians, anyone. This reminds me of > original sin, the idea that Adam and Eve sunk all the rest of us by their > disobedience. Humbug. I am not responsible for what my ancestors did, and > the offspring of the victims are not harmed by what was done to their > ancestors. > I agree that we aren't responsible for what our ancestors did but I absolutely disagree that that natives today were not harmed by that. They've lost most of their culture and are forced to live on land that can't really support life. Help people get on their feet, and THEN leave them alone. > I say that it's OK to help them is they ask for help. It's not OK to presume to know what they and force it on them. That's the "leave them alone" part. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 16:58:23 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 08:58:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] It's the genes was it's the yoga! Message-ID: Sigh. Understand that what I am talking about here is a temporary problem. There may be time for gene editing to hit before the AIs kick humans out of the control loop but probably not. It's taken years for the landmark work of Gregory Clark to sink in, but there really is a difference between peoples due to non-random selection in a (relatively) stable agrarian environment. I don't know how much of Europe this selection affected, but it was a large swath beyond the UK, where Clark did the research. As a result of that selection, Western European people (on average) *are* different. Our personalities were shaped by intense selection between the middle ages and about 1800. The ones with strong economic drive are our ancestors, the ones who lacked the complex of traits involved did not successfully reproduce. (Their kids starved or disease got them in the periodic famines.) We are also resistant to alcohol due to 5000+ years of selection. Not all of us, the selection has not run to completion, but the native state of humans without that selection is around 95% alcoholics (if they can get it). Our ancestors, or rather the ones in the former population who are *not* our ancestors paid the price of our alcohol resistance by dying or failing to reproduce. This is not politically correct of course, but the difference between us and chimpanzees is due to genes. Past selection has strong effects today. If the current situation was to last 20 generations, I expect a strong resistance to opioids to evolve. From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 17:29:31 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:29:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Ah, the wise white man thinks he understands the problem and has a fix. Hallelujah! dave This is not an intelligent person's way of having a discussion. Don't get sarky with me and I will return the favor. bill w dave They've lost most of their culture and are forced to live on land that can't really support life. --- I don't think it is true that they cannot leave the reservation. Where did you get that idea? Perhaps they can't leave the reservation and still get government handouts. And just who is failing to let them regain their culture? OK, so they can't go roaming around killing bison and white settlers. What else are we restricting them from? And I don't see where anyone is forcing 'fixes' on them, but I really don't know. And I also don't know what good, if anything, has come from leaving them alone. They need to get off their asses, off alcohol, off drugs, and get a life of their choosing. I have no idea how to facilitate this or whether we just should leave them alone. Some people just won't be helped - they'd rather sit and be miserable. If I am wrong, show me. To get a bit technical, the murders of Indians, the forced shoving them around, putting them in places they did not want to be, and all that, perhaps created a cultural 'external locus of control' situation. (If you had an inner one, you'd be sure that you could solve your own problems. Outer = others have to do it for you). Surely the Indians recognized the far superior nature of the European culture and also their powerlessness to resist it. (Another technical term here is 'learned helplessness') bill w On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 10:01 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 5:16 PM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> >> I am a liberal and support welfare to the needy. The Indians are needy >> because they have a depressed culture full of alcoholism, drug addiction, >> crime,and a high suicide rate. Would you leave these people alone to >> suffer? I would try to help, but the status quo is not working. >> > > Why do they have a depressed culture? Maybe it was because their recent > ancestors were driven from their land, decimated by diseases to which they > had no resistance, and forced to give up their language and culture. > > If they are going to be members of this society, they need to contribute >> to it. I think that's a standard everyone, liberal or conservative, will >> support. Otherwise how can they respect themselves? Maybe they don't, and >> that's their basic problem. >> > > Ah, the wise white man thinks he understands the problem and has a fix. > Hallelujah! > > I agree with no reparations: black, Indians, anyone. This reminds me of >> original sin, the idea that Adam and Eve sunk all the rest of us by their >> disobedience. Humbug. I am not responsible for what my ancestors did, and >> the offspring of the victims are not harmed by what was done to their >> ancestors. >> > > I agree that we aren't responsible for what our ancestors did but I > absolutely disagree that that natives today were not harmed by that. > They've lost most of their culture and are forced to live on land that > can't really support life. > > Help people get on their feet, and THEN leave them alone. >> > > I say that it's OK to help them is they ask for help. It's not OK to > presume to know what they and force it on them. That's the "leave them > alone" part. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 17:32:59 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:32:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] It's the genes was it's the yoga! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: keith wrote - We are also resistant to alcohol due to 5000+ years of selection. Not all of us, the selection has not run to completion, but the native state of humans without that selection is around 95% alcoholics (if they can get it). Our ancestors, or rather the ones in the former population who are *not* our ancestors paid the price of our alcohol resistance by dying or failing to reproduce. -------- A new idea to me. Will you please supply some references to this? Thanks!! bill w On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 10:58 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > Sigh. > > Understand that what I am talking about here is a temporary problem. > There may be time for gene editing to hit before the AIs kick humans > out of the control loop but probably not. > > It's taken years for the landmark work of Gregory Clark to sink in, > but there really is a difference between peoples due to non-random > selection in a (relatively) stable agrarian environment. I don't know > how much of Europe this selection affected, but it was a large swath > beyond the UK, where Clark did the research. > > As a result of that selection, Western European people (on average) > *are* different. Our personalities were shaped by intense selection > between the middle ages and about 1800. The ones with strong economic > drive are our ancestors, the ones who lacked the complex of traits > involved did not successfully reproduce. (Their kids starved or > disease got them in the periodic famines.) > > We are also resistant to alcohol due to 5000+ years of selection. Not > all of us, the selection has not run to completion, but the native > state of humans without that selection is around 95% alcoholics (if > they can get it). Our ancestors, or rather the ones in the former > population who are *not* our ancestors paid the price of our alcohol > resistance by dying or failing to reproduce. This is not politically > correct of course, but the difference between us and chimpanzees is > due to genes. > > Past selection has strong effects today. If the current situation was > to last 20 generations, I expect a strong resistance to opioids to > evolve. > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 18:01:00 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 13:01:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:30 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: ? ? ?> ? > Read this: > > http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq-conser > vative-democrats.html > > 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large > enough. > If I Google ( liberal conservative IQ ) the first 4 hits bring up studies that say liberals are smarter, but to tell the truth I don't think those studies or the one you mentioned about how being conservative correlates with IQ are worth much because the word "conservative" no longer means anything. At one time "conservative" meant smaller government, but no longer. At one time being conservative meant wanting smaller government and balancing the budget, but that is no longer even close to being true. Just 2 years ago conservatives where people who were pro law enforcement and thought the FBI were the good guys and the Russians the bad guys, but now they think the exact opposite. When I was young and giant reptiles ruled the earth conservatives were for family values, but now they vote a pussy grabber into the presidency and they?re OK with him trying to get a child molester into the senate. And a few years ago conservatives were for state rights and didn't want a lot of government regulation, but now conservatives want the federal government interfere with state laws that gives cancer patients the right to decide for themselves if they want to smoke marijuana to relieve their agony. Today if the word "conservative" means anything at all it simply means Trump supporter, and one thing remains unambiguously clear, the group of voters that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump with the largest margin were white men with little education; without them he wouldn?t be the most powerful man in the world today. It's also true that the more industrial robots there are in a congressional district the more likely it went for Trump, a fact that does not bode well for the future ?.? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/trump-robots-electoral-college.html They conclude: "*one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent*. " Unhappy desperate people tend to do stupid things, like vote for Donald Trump. The number of robots is certain to increase in the coming years, so are future presidents likely to be even crazier than Donald Trump? I think the answer is yes unless measures are taken to help people get through the jarring destabilization cause by the transition to a robot economy. One of the first declared candidates for the 2020 presidential election is Silicon Valley executive Andrew Yang , and his primary issue is surviving the robot apocalypse https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/technology/his-2020-campaign-message-the-robots-are-coming.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness ? Yang thinks the USA needs to ?take radical steps or Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal collapse is certain. ?He says:? "*All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society, in just a few years we?re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college. That one innovation, will be enough to create riots in the street. And we?re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.*? Yang thinks there should be monthly payments of $1,000 for every American from age 18 to 64. I know a idea like that rubs the libertarians among us the wrong way and until very recently I would have laughed at such a thing too, but AI is advancing faster than I expected so my views can't remain fixed. Yang says: ?*I?m a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue*.? ? ? John K Clark ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 18:32:00 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 13:32:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:39 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > The Sand Creek massacre was carried out against a peaceful tribe. The > various removals ? the Trail of Tears being the most famous one ? were > ethnic cleansing I don't care. I don't care not because I'm an insensitive brute but because the last person involved in those murders died of old age over a century ago. And the Trail of Tears is even older, all of Andrew Jackson?s great grandchildren were probably dead before the start of the first world war. If I want to get angry there are plenty of far more recent examples of genocide to fixate on, and unlike Sand Creek the murderers in those cases are still alive. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Feb 10 18:50:29 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 10:50:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] It's the genes was it's the yoga! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <014901d3a2a0$06056400$12102c00$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Keith Henson >...We are also resistant to alcohol due to 5000+ years of selection. Not all of us, the selection has not run to completion, but the native state of humans without that selection is around 95% alcoholics (if they can get it). Our ancestors, or rather the ones in the former population who are *not* our ancestors paid the price of our alcohol resistance by dying or failing to reproduce. This is not politically correct of course, but the difference between us and chimpanzees is due to genes. ...Keith Hey cool, are chimps are prone to alcoholism? How would we determine it, without actually harming the beasts? Horses and cats have something kinda analogous methinks: you can get a catnip toy and notice even among a litter of several sibling cats, there seems to be some which take an occasional sniff, some who don't mess with it at all and one guy who just can't leave the stuff alone. Horses can get into the loco-weed. Most will avoid that area of the pasture henceforth if they figure out that's where it came from. But once in a while you get a horse which somehow figures out where the loco-weed is growing and intentionally goes back to it at every opportunity. Eventually that horse becomes completely useless. My grandfather had to shoot his favorite mare because she found loco weed, then would always go looking for it. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 18:37:09 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 10:37:09 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 7:49 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> If that is what you are calling for, then you should explicitly call >> for that. Many people will read "leave them alone" as "exile them all >> to the reservations and forbid them from returning, so we no longer >> interact with them". > > No, I'd think we should exile them to reservations. Those who want to > assimilate should be allowed to. That's most of them, given that assimilation leads to a better standard of living on average. And most of them have assimilated. "Leave them alone" would entail forcibly unassimilating them, That is apparently not what you meant to convey. Any change you argue for, starts from the current status quo, regardless of what you mean to say. Please stay aware of that in the future. From spike at rainier66.com Sat Feb 10 19:12:10 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:12:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: <016201d3a2a3$0db0b5d0$29122170$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 10:01 AM To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Forbidden Words On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:30 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: ? ??> ?>?Read this: http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats.html 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large enough. >?If I Google ( liberal conservative IQ ) the first 4 hits bring up studies that say liberals are smarter, but to tell the truth I don't think those studies or the one you mentioned about how being conservative correlates with IQ are worth much because the word "conservative" no longer means anything. ?John K Clark That?s part of the problem but I see something even bigger: there is no clear way to establish a means of averaging the population. How do you get a representative cross section of people of a particular political persuasion to take an IQ test? How do you describe the results? Average the scores? What if some sneaky researcher got the audience of some daytime game show to take a test? What if you did a test at a Boy Scout meeting? You can make that test come out any way you want. So this goes back to a question I had earlier: if we wanted to do these kinds of studies, do we have anything already in place which we can kinda think of as a proxy for collective IQ? I came up with one idea: statewide SAT scores. We also know how a particular state votes (as a group.) So? looks to me like we can (kinda sorta) correlate those, if we can somehow figure out how to compensate for spending per student and for the fact that some states require all the students to take the SAT, some only have the college-bound crowd take it, and some states have all but the known-learning-impaired students take it. spike ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 19:29:11 2018 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 14:29:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: I thought it was the Russians. Now it's the robots? If all these robots are coming, perhaps we SHOULD take a look at continued imports of low wage, uneducated, illegal workers into the US... Also, who's pocket is that universal income going to come out of? I would assume those of us who are still forced to work because robots haven't taken our jobs yet. Considering ALL taxation is a form of armed, forcible expropriation, I'm not in favor of looking for ways to increase it. On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:01 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:30 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ? > > ? > > >> "*one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to > population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 > percent*. " > > Unhappy desperate people tend to do stupid things, like vote for Donald > Trump. The number of robots is certain to increase in the coming years, so > are future presidents likely to be even crazier than Donald Trump? I > think the answer is yes unless measures are taken to help people get > through the jarring destabilization cause by the transition to a robot > economy. One of the first declared candidates for the 2020 presidential > election is Silicon Valley executive Andrew Yang , and his primary issue is > surviving the robot apocalypse > https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/technology/his-2020-campa > ign-message-the-robots-are-coming.html?rref=collection%2F > sectioncollection%2Fbusiness? > > Yang thinks the USA needs to > ?take > radical steps or Great Depression-level unemployment and a total > societal collapse is certain. > ?He says:? > > "*All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society, in just a > few years we?re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are > 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one > year of college. That one innovation, will be enough to create riots in the > street. And we?re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center > workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.*? > > Yang thinks there should be monthly payments of $1,000 for every American > from age 18 to 64. I know a idea like that rubs the libertarians among us > the wrong way and until very recently I would have laughed at such a thing > too, but AI is advancing faster than I expected so my views can't remain > fixed. Yang says: > > ?*I?m a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is > necessary for capitalism to continue*.? > > > ? ? > 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 spike at rainier66.com Sat Feb 10 20:07:06 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:07:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: <01e901d3a2aa$ba6f6940$2f4e3bc0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio >?Also, who's pocket is that universal income going to come out of? Donors! Cool, I?m in: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/2/1/16959714/stockton-universal-income-economy-families In a sense, we kinda sorta already have a form of universal income, depending on how you look at it. In the Silicon Valley, the prices of any living structure has gone from crazy to absurd and now that the Apple Mothership has landed and Elon Musk has moved into the neighborhood, rents have risen steeply from there. We know we can never afford to house homeless people here. No way. We get that. But we can feed and clothe people here. Our local scouts do food collections and coat drives for the poor, and do let me assure you, that is a rewarding task: we get tooooooonnnns of stuff every time we do it. So we haul it all to the local food bank, where the biggest job is sorting out and discarding the expired food and stacking the rest of it in a shipping container. Anyone who needs food (and some other items) can come to the food bank and have whatever they need. Except a roof over their heads. We can?t do that. We can?t even wave at one from there. The whole thing got me to thinking: we as a society can produce pleeeenty of food for everyone and even support all of it pretty easily with donations; likewise with clothing. But at least some areas? we are nowhere near able to house the needy. A mutual assured income doesn?t get them 5% of the way to a rent payment even in the best-case realistically-imaginable situation. We are seeing homeless communities pop up here and there, people living in motorhomes and such, but these are being actively discouraged. Suggestions? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Feb 10 20:23:40 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:23:40 -0800 Subject: [ExI] desperation and passion Message-ID: <020e01d3a2ad$0a6aa700$1f3ff500$@rainier66.com> I am watching in terrified amusement as the US government wages war with itself. It occurred to me that some of the oddities which have been recently revealed might be a result of betting on political outcomes. Recall about 18 yrs ago when we were trying to get play-money Ideas Futures going (Robin Hanson did most of the heavy-lifting.) The first thing we noticed is that the most popular betting memes were political: election outcomes. Now we have real-money betting. Now political memes are even more popular. It appears those memes result in more cash changing hands than everything else combined, but perhaps that shouldn?t surprise us: in the play-money version, we already knew we were tech-geek heavy. In those days most of ExI were tech people. OK. Play-money Ideas Futures encouraged people to bet on a meme, then try to make it happen. Insider trading was not only not forbidden, it was encouraged. One of the originals coined the term ?noichahed.? But then it occurred to me that we could have government people in positions where they could bet on the outcomes of elections, then work to make their bets pay. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 20:40:25 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 14:40:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: <016201d3a2a3$0db0b5d0$29122170$@rainier66.com> References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> <016201d3a2a3$0db0b5d0$29122170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: ?If I Google ( liberal conservative IQ ) the first 4 hits bring up studies that say liberals are smarter, but to tell the truth I don't think those studies or the one you mentioned about how being conservative correlates with IQ are worth much because the word "conservative" no longer means anything. ?John K Clark First, why do we care about the average IQs? Looking to put some group down? Tiny group differences mean next to nothing when we go to judge individuals. If you want a truly confusing ride of ideas, try Wikipedia: look up conservative and liberal. The changes that have occurred in the last 200 years are enlightening but confusing. Even today these terms mean different things here and in Europe and Britain. Ask a conservative what kind of ideas started this country and see if he can say the word 'liberal'. Here in Mississippi, small government Repubs are alive and well and destroying our state. Each legislative session more and more services are being cut, roads and bridges get nothing even though we have the worst roads in the civilized world. Jackson has potholes that were here when I went to school in 1964 - more of a third world city. Don't come here. We lose graduates of all types to adjoining states but they look for ways to keep them without actually raising their pay!!! bill w On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:12 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *John Clark > *Sent:* Saturday, February 10, 2018 10:01 AM > *To:* rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Forbidden Words > > > > On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:30 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > ? > > > > ??> ?>?Read this: > > > > http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq- > conservative-democrats.html > > > > 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large > enough. > > > > >?If I Google ( liberal conservative IQ ) the first 4 hits bring up > studies that say liberals are smarter, but to tell the truth I don't think > those studies or the one you mentioned about how being > conservative correlates with IQ are worth much because the word > "conservative" no longer means anything. ?John K Clark > > > > > > > > That?s part of the problem but I see something even bigger: there is no > clear way to establish a means of averaging the population. How do you get > a representative cross section of people of a particular political > persuasion to take an IQ test? How do you describe the results? Average > the scores? What if some sneaky researcher got the audience of some > daytime game show to take a test? What if you did a test at a Boy Scout > meeting? You can make that test come out any way you want. > > > > So this goes back to a question I had earlier: if we wanted to do these > kinds of studies, do we have anything already in place which we can kinda > think of as a proxy for collective IQ? I came up with one idea: statewide > SAT scores. We also know how a particular state votes (as a group.) So? > looks to me like we can (kinda sorta) correlate those, if we can somehow > figure out how to compensate for spending per student and for the fact that > some states require all the students to take the SAT, some only have the > college-bound crowd take it, and some states have all but the > known-learning-impaired students take it. > > > > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 10 20:54:45 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:54:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] It's the genes was it's the yoga! Message-ID: William Flynn Wallace wrote snip > A new idea to me. Will you please supply some references to this? Thanks!! Try genetic alcohol tolerance in Google. This comes up in the first page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_tolerance "The tolerance to alcohol is not equally distributed throughout the world's population, and genetics of alcohol dehydrogenase indicate resistance has arisen independently in different cultures.[2] In North America, Native Americans have the highest probability of developing alcoholism compared to Europeans and Asians.[3][4][5][6]" https://www.quora.com/What-is-considered-having-a-high-tolerance-to-alcohol "Alcohol tolerance is almost entirely determined by your genes." There are lots of articles on the topic, even http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170222-our-ancestors-were-drinking-alcohol-before-they-were-human Keith From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 01:10:02 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 17:10:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: <01e901d3a2aa$ba6f6940$2f4e3bc0$@rainier66.com> References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> <01e901d3a2aa$ba6f6940$2f4e3bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 12:07 PM, wrote: > In the Silicon Valley, the prices of any living structure has gone from > crazy to absurd and now that the Apple Mothership has landed and Elon Musk > has moved into the neighborhood, rents have risen steeply from there. We > know we can never afford to house homeless people here. No way. We get > that. But we can feed and clothe people here. We can build shelters. Somewhere zoned for dense, multi-story residential. Two problems: 1) the people who don't want to shelter, due to A) past trauma or B) mental problems 2) the people who make problems for their neighbors (turning more homeless into problem 1) For 2 - well, the whole problem you're trying to solve is that they're homeless, so just kicking them out isn't a problem. Maybe institutionalize? For 1, you have to help them deal with their problem. The solution to 1.B used to be to institutionalize, and perhaps may be again. 1.A is more common, and for that you have to keep the shelters actually safe and secure - don't just lip service it. That requires monitoring and human intervention, such that if you're going to have a truly large homeless shelter, you may want to just build a police station into or next to it (or build the shelter next to a pre-existing police station). Either way, though, you have to get these people off the streets - which may mean making vagrancy a misdemeanor with the "sentence" of being placed in shelter, though that may cause people to see the shelter as a jail they should escape from. You would also want to place this close to a public transit center, though a large enough one can argue to have a new public transit center built in or adjacent. > We are seeing homeless communities pop up here and there, people living in > motorhomes and such, but these are being actively discouraged. A variant of the above I've seen suggested, is to construct a parking garage specifically for RVs. Such things are expected to be multi-story and so could run into less NIMBY objections, may be able to slip past zoning regulations against residential areas, but would still have the security and public transit issues. It would also have less ways for people to be bad neighbors (if they permanently mess up their living space, their RV can be hauled off and the concrete hosed down before a new RV comes in), though it would not be a solution for people who can not even afford a RV. From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 01:12:19 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 20:12:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:29 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: ?> ? > I thought it was the Russians. Now it's the robots? > It's off subject be the answer is it's both, Russian bots on Facebook and Twitter fueled the Clinton ? rumor machine and helped put Vladimir Putin's lapdog in the White House. > > ?> ? > Also, who's pocket is that universal income going to come out of? > The money will come from the pocket of whatever is generating wealth, if you are generating lots of it then congratulations but don't expect that happy state of affairs is going to continue indefinitely because robots are increasing their share of wealth that is created ? ever day ? And ? right now nearly all of ? that vast increase of money ? is going to the top 1% of the top 1%, thus just the ? 8 ? richest ? people have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 BILLION people. I am now going to make a prediction that I am very very confident will turn out to be true, one way of another that trend will NOT continue and some ways of reversing it will be more unpleasant than others. > ?>? > I would assume those of us who are still forced to work because robots > haven't taken our jobs yet. > ? Yes. And ? Dy lan, I don't know what you do for a living but whatever it is its only a matter of time before a robot can do it better than you can, and it probably will not a great amount of time. Certainly its happening a lot faster than I expected and so the economic ideas I had just 5 years ago are rapidly approaching obsolescence. . > > ?> ? > Considering ALL taxation is a form of armed, forcible expropriation, I'm > not in favor of looking for ways to increase it. > ?Yeah yeah I know, that was my line too until very recently but times change (boy do they ever!) and although I still have a emotional affection for it today its clear as a bell that old mantra ?just can't hold water anymore. ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From js_exi at gnolls.org Sat Feb 10 21:31:33 2018 From: js_exi at gnolls.org (J. Stanton) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 13:31:33 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5A7F64B5.6040505@gnolls.org> I have found that sentences like this are reliable indicators that the person who wrote them isn't nearly as smart as they think they are. I also find that such people reliably project their own failings onto those they attack. This was true decades ago, when the Moral Majority and PMRC projected their own failings onto the rest of America - and it's true today, as SJWs eagerly take up the mantle of shrill, humorless, self-aggrandizing censorship to become the new American Taliban. JS http://www.gnolls.org On 2/10/18 1:01 PM, John Clark wrote: > Unhappy desperate people tend to do stupid things, like vote for Donald > Trump. From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 02:29:19 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 21:29:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Microsoft's Quantum Computer Message-ID: There is a rumor Microsoft is just weeks away from making a major announcement about quantum computers. https://www.cbronline.com/news/microsoft-set-5-year-quantum-computing If true this could be huge because Microsoft is working on a topological quantum computer that operates by manipulating exotic Majorana fermions ? and ?produces far fewer errors than conventional quantum computers, if any quantum computer could be called conventional. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 03:15:39 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 22:15:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > And most of them have assimilated. "Leave them alone" would entail > forcibly unassimilating them, > What we have here is a failure to communicate. To me, if you're leaving someone alone, the last you want to do is force them to do something. Any change you argue for, starts from the current status quo, > regardless of what you mean to say. Please stay aware of that in the > future. Please don't patronize me. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 03:49:24 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 19:49:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 7:15 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> And most of them have assimilated. "Leave them alone" would entail >> forcibly unassimilating them, > > What we have here is a failure to communicate. To me, if you're leaving > someone alone, the last you want to do is force them to do something. Again, you call for an action - which means more "leaving them alone" than is presently being done. The only way to do that is to remove them. >> Any change you argue for, starts from the current status quo, >> regardless of what you mean to say. Please stay aware of that in the >> future. > > Please don't patronize me. Please think through what you call for, and how it will sound to others in the context in which you speak. From sparge at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 03:58:10 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 22:58:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <003901d3a1bc$d7f222d0$87d66870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 12:29 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > This is not an intelligent person's way of having a discussion. Don't get > sarky with me and I will return the favor. bill w > Sorry, Bill. I can't help it. dave They've lost most of their culture and are forced to live on land > that can't really support life. > --- > I don't think it is true that they cannot leave the reservation. Where > did you get that idea? > I didn't mean to imply they can't leave their reservations. Of course they can. Legally. The problem is they can't afford to relocate the reservation to better land. > And just who is failing to let them regain their culture? > Large pieces are irretrievably lost, Bill. Like their language, religion, and way of life. OK, so they can't go roaming around killing bison and white settlers. > They roamed and killed bison, yes. They only killed white "settlers" when whites invaded and occupied their territory and killed way more of them. > What else are we restricting them from? > I don't know either, but I'm certain that we don't give them anything without strings attached. And I don't see where anyone is forcing 'fixes' on them, but I really don't > know. And I also don't know what good, if anything, has come from leaving > them alone. They need to get off their asses, off alcohol, off drugs, and > get a life of their choosing. I have no idea how to facilitate this or > whether we just should leave them alone. Some people just won't be helped > - they'd rather sit and be miserable. If I am wrong, show me. > You presume to know why they're miserable and how they can fix it. You're evaluating them by your own yardstick, not theirs. To get a bit technical, the murders of Indians, the forced shoving them > around, putting them in places they did not want to be, and all that, > perhaps created a cultural 'external locus of control' situation. (If you > had an inner one, you'd be sure that you could solve your own problems. > Outer = others have to do it for you). Surely the Indians recognized the > far superior nature of the European culture and also their powerlessness to > resist it. (Another technical term here is 'learned helplessness') > I'm sure they didn't recognize the "far superior nature of the European culture". *I* don't think European culture is superior. They were savages, too. They just had better weapons and communicable diseases. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Feb 11 04:26:53 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 20:26:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] desperation and passion In-Reply-To: <020e01d3a2ad$0a6aa700$1f3ff500$@rainier66.com> References: <020e01d3a2ad$0a6aa700$1f3ff500$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00a101d3a2f0$8c22fbb0$a468f310$@rainier66.com> I am watching in terrified amusement as the US government wages war with itself. It occurred to me that some of the oddities which have been recently revealed might be a result of betting on political outcomes. Recall about 18 yrs ago when we were trying to get play-money Ideas Futures going (Robin Hanson did most of the heavy-lifting.) The first thing we noticed is that the most popular betting memes were political: election outcomes. Now we have real-money betting. Now political memes are even more popular. It appears those memes result in more cash changing hands than everything else combined, but perhaps that shouldn?t surprise us: in the play-money version, we already knew we were tech-geek heavy. In those days most of ExI were tech people. OK. Play-money Ideas Futures encouraged people to bet on a meme, then try to make it happen. Insider trading was not only not forbidden, it was encouraged. One of the originals coined the term ?noichahed.? But then it occurred to me that we could have government people in positions where they could bet on the outcomes of elections, then work to make their bets pay. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 04:53:57 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 23:53:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Forbidden Words In-Reply-To: References: <002201d37683$3d679bf0$b836d3d0$@att.net> <004f01d3768d$c8f5e1e0$5ae1a5a0$@att.net> <01f501d37746$0e9d6b10$2bd84130$@att.net> <000001d377b2$eae0c740$c0a255c0$@att.net> <011d01d3843a$e7bd5170$b737f450$@att.net> <4657A73E-B54C-41F1-9083-D6880D6520C9@gmail.com> Message-ID: Didn't the discussion start out with On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 8:55 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > 2.7 IQ points is not within sampling error, as long as our sample is large > enough. > > Rafal > > There can be huge differences between what is statistically difference, > and what is meaningful in the everyday world. 3 IQ points is meaningless > in prediction. > > ### Well, I find it satisfying to be able to trigger some people with this tidbit of information, and that's a good enough reason to use it. 3 IQ points does correlate with about 2,000 per capita income difference between different US states: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/67ad/691a925532dc7c3d3fcd521b404d16681ba5.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 04:54:44 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 23:54:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:39 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > >> On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace < >> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's >>> culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a >>> Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on >>> federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing >>> skills. >>> >> >> Wow. Blame the victim much? >> >> ### Savages killed civilized people whenever they could spare time from > killing each other. They lost. Good riddance. > > And then came Rousseau with his silly fantasies. > > > The Sand Creek massacre was carried out against a peaceful tribe. > ### It's easy to compile anecdotal horror stories about civilized people, which is not surprising, since they are still human and therefore imperfect. But what matters are regularities, the usual occurrences, and it is the savages who are prone to violence, especially chaotic, endemic, persistent and surpassingly cruel. So, yes, I'am arguing in favor of our Western civilization, warts, trails of tears and all. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Feb 11 16:05:22 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 10:05:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> Message-ID: Large pieces are irretrievably lost, Bill. Like their language, religion, and way of life. dave You really cannot blame white people for a loss of language and religion, can you? No. Not unless you are referring to their use of peyote in ceremonies - illegal - they probably do it anyway. And who stopped them from using their language? These just don't ring true. If they lost them, they did it to themselves. Yes, they lost their way of life, but adaptable people adapt. If they have the intelligence to adapt to new circumstances, it is not evident yet. You just can't keep intelligent people down for long -they will find a way. Have you been to the Western USA? Except for the far West, arable land is rare for everyone. But why don't they get off the reservation, get good jobs, good education, and buy better land? I think they would be better off without a reservation. Sorry, Bill. I can't help it. Dave C'mon Dave. You are an intelligent adult. bill w On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 10:54 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:39 AM, Dan TheBookMan > wrote: > >> On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >> wrote: >> >> On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >> >>> On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace < >>> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> The Indians should have, from the beginning, appropriated American's >>>> culture and just blended in to it. But they knew only one way of life, a >>>> Stone Age one, and so did not adapt then and still haven't, existing on >>>> federal handouts and casinos. Put another way, they didn't have marketing >>>> skills. >>>> >>> >>> Wow. Blame the victim much? >>> >>> ### Savages killed civilized people whenever they could spare time from >> killing each other. They lost. Good riddance. >> >> And then came Rousseau with his silly fantasies. >> >> >> The Sand Creek massacre was carried out against a peaceful tribe. >> > > ### It's easy to compile anecdotal horror stories about civilized people, > which is not surprising, since they are still human and therefore > imperfect. But what matters are regularities, the usual occurrences, and it > is the savages who are prone to violence, especially chaotic, endemic, > persistent and surpassingly cruel. > > So, yes, I'am arguing in favor of our Western civilization, warts, trails > of tears and all. > > Rafa? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 avant at sollegro.com Sun Feb 11 21:52:04 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 13:52:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells Message-ID: John Clark wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 7:30 PM, Stuart LaForge > wrote: >> the fact that there is such a thing as CMB rest frame that our galaxy >> can be moving with respect to violates the Cosmological Principle and >> invalidates it. > There is no violation, the Cosmological Principle says that on large > enough scales the universe is uniform, and if you look at a cube about 200 > million light years on a side it is, and the laws of physics are the same > in any reference frame. Movement can only be defined in reference to > something else and the CMB rest frame is just the frame that is moving > with the average velocity of all the matter in the universe. But John by your own logic, all the matter in universe cannot possibly have a non-zero average velocity unless there was something *else* out there for the all the matter in our universe to be moving toward or away from. Or did you mean scalar speed rather than vector velocity? Assuming that you meant velocity rather than speed, Friedmann has no answer for what that something might be. Freidmann says that galaxies are like raisins in a loaf of raisin bread rising in the oven. The raisins don't move through the dough, but as the dough expands, the raisins are pushed apart by the expanding dough. The problem is that our "raisin" is clearly moving through the dough. The big CMB hot spot, the Shapely super-cluster, and Dark Flow are all in the same octant of the sky in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. What could be out there pulling the Laniakea super-cluster and even the Great Attractor toward itself if not another causal cell? https://www.universetoday.com/113150/what-is-the-great-attractor/ > If movement > is allowed to exist in the universe then obviously not everything in it is > going to be moving at the exact same velocity, so the fact that the Earth > is moving at a velocity slightly different from the average is not at all > surprising. Of course not. What is surprising is that the observable universe has a non-zero average velocity for the earth's velocity to differ from. > It should also be remembered that in all the colorful pictures of the CMB > the contrast has been cranked way way up, in actuality the difference > between the hot spots and the cold spots is only about one part in a > hundred thousand. I am not talking about the minor cold spots and hot spots, I am talking about the big one. At its maximum, the difference is more like one part in 10,000 to 20,000. >> Couple that with the fact that the cosmic microwave background is >> spatially the largest dipole we have ever measured, > I'm not sure what you mean by that but it would be astounding if we > didn't see a dipole in the CMB because if there were none that would mean > if you plotted the velocity of everything in the universe the Earth would > be in the exact center of that movement plot, and I would consider that a > pretty wild coincidence. But that so-called coincidence is exactly what the Robertson-Walker predicts. If your loaf of raisin bread expanding in the oven is large enough and each raisin can only see a couple of inches in any direction, then the average raisin would observe itself at rest in the middle of an expanding loaf of raisin bread. That analogy is right out of the cosmology textbook and it is *not* what we observe. > They are just using induction and induction is even more important than > deduction in science and in life. And besides, what is the alternative, > there are a infinite number of ways things could be "out there" so how do > you even start to think about it? The obvious way is to assume things > out there are pretty much like things in hear and then see where that > leads. That's fine for a starting point but when you start encountering contradictions based upon that assumption, you need to revisit those infinite alternate explanations and try to find a way constraining them. Or better yet, try to get infinity to cancel itself out like renormalization does in QFT. > Induction is a very useful rule of thumb, but it doesn't always work. > Induction just says that in our universe things usually continue. If > things always continued then induction would always work and things > wouldn't be very interesting, all the atoms in the universe would be > arranged in a unchanging perfect crystal lattice that is infinite in all > directions. A world where things never continue and induction never worked > would also be dull, it would be nothing but white noise. Our universe with > all its complexity and richness is between these two extremes, here > induction is a great rule of thumb because it USUALLY works. No doubt induction is a useful tool. But when infinity is involved, induction breaks down. Bertrand Russell did a great job explaining this using the analogy of a train here: "Mathematical induction affords, more than anything else, the essential characteristic by which the finite is distinguished from the infinite. The principle of mathematical induction might be stated popularly in some such form as "what can be inferred from next to next can be inferred from first to last." This is true when the number of intermediate steps between first and last is finite, not otherwise. Anyone who has ever watched a goods train beginning to move will have noticed how the impulse is communicated with a jerk from each truck to the next, until as last even the hindmost truck is in motion. When the train is very long, it is a very long time before the last truck moves. If the train were infinitely long, there would be an infinite succession of jerks, and the time would never come when the whole train would be in motion." -B. Russell >> You yourself quoted Einstein to me once: "Every thing should be made as >> simple as possible, but no simpler." The Robert-Walker metric is too >> simple. > > Everybody knows the universe isn't perfectly homogeneous and isotropic , > but you can get some pretty good approximations by assuming that it is > on the scale of a few hundred million light years, and doing so greatly > simplifies the equations of General relativity although they're still > horrendously complex. Yes, I concur. The Cosmological Principle is a good approximation on the scale of 10^8 to 10^10 light years. But it breaks down past the Hubble radius just like Newtonian physics breaks down near the speed of light. That's the scale at which causal cells become a more useful approximation. >> if you are in a spaceship being uniformly accelerated, then as you >> draw closer to the speed of a light, a big flat event horizon will >> appear behind you and start following you around. And the closer you >> get to the speed of light, the closer the event horizon will get to >> your ship. If this event horizon contacts your ship, then Bell's >> Spaceship paradox >> ensues and your spaceship breaks apart. > Bell's Spaceship Paradox is not really a paradox. If I tacked a delicate > string inside the cockpit of my accelerating spaceship from the front wall > to the back wall the string would NOT break because the atoms and > electromagnetic fields inside the string would shrink by Lorentz > contraction at the same rate as the atoms in the cockpit 's side > walls. However if I tied a string from the front of my spaceship to the > back of another spaceship 10 feet ahead of mine and we both accelerated > at the same rate the string would break because the atoms in the string > would shrink just as they did before but now there is nothing else > between the two spaceships to counterbalance that effect, there is only > empty space . Actually you, I, Lee Corbin, and a whole bunch other list members, who I miss terribly, discussed the Bell Paradox at length back in August 2008 in the thread entitled "QT and SR". At first I didn't believe it, but then upon analysis, I derived an equation that gives you the speed at which a string of any given material would break based upon its tensile strength. http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-August/045168.html I concluded that as your speed approaches the speed of light, the tension in the string approaches infinity. That means that you could substitute tungsten-steel bulkheads for the string and there would still be a speed at which they would break. What I didn't realize at the time, however, was that there was an event horizon called the Rindler horizon involved that coincides with the plane of infinite tension. In your example, the only reason the string wouldn't break is because your engine would break and prevent further acceleration before the Rindler horizon reached your cockpit. Also, I too don't think it is a paradox, which is why I entitled my post "the Bell Effect". In any case, spacecraft which can accelerate to near light speeds would need to take the Bell Effect into consideration in their design. Meaning that fuel considerations aside, flat disc shaped spacecraft would be able to reach speeds closer to c than the long cylindrical rocket-like shapes. Lol. Maybe the Bell Effect is why the "flying saucer" shape is so popular with space-faring ETs. *Removes tongue from cheek* Stuart LaForge From sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 03:03:04 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 22:03:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 11:05 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > You really cannot blame white people for a loss of language and religion, > can you? > Of course. You think they gave that up on their own? > Have you been to the Western USA? Except for the far West, arable land is > rare for everyone. > Guess what? Before we arrived they weren't settled in these uninhabitable lands. They settled elsewhere or were nomadic. The Cherokee were in the eastern US. I know our public schools don't do a good job of covering our treatment of natives, for obvious reasons, but I really thought most adults were aware of this. Start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_assimilation_of_Native_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Indian_Policy -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Feb 12 03:23:42 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 19:23:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> Message-ID: <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill >?On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 11:05 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: >>?You really cannot blame white people for a loss of language and religion, can you? >?Of course. You think they gave that up on their own?...-Dave What happens to old languages when we need all the words and grammatical constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have words for cars, cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we have now. How do these original languages manage? Hey that would be a kick: have a couple of code-talkers discussing quantum computing devices in Navajo. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 07:47:23 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 23:47:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 7:23 PM, wrote: > What happens to old languages when we need all the words and grammatical > constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have words for cars, > cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we have now. How > do these original languages manage? > > Hey that would be a kick: have a couple of code-talkers discussing quantum > computing devices in Navajo. That was, in fact, part of the original code-talkers' trick. What are the Navajo words for tank, battalion, and sniper? Even if the Germans had someone who knew Navajo (they didn't), said person would have had to keep up with the new invented words that the code-talkers had distributed among themselves. From sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 11:16:49 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 06:16:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 10:23 PM, wrote: > > > What happens to old languages when we need all the words and grammatical > constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have words for cars, > cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we have now. How > do these original languages manage? > Right, that's why we had to abandon English when we got all of that new tech. :-) Obviously, we came up with new words. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eh at edwardhaigh.com Thu Feb 8 13:56:56 2018 From: eh at edwardhaigh.com (Edward Haigh) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 13:56:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: When civilisations meet they're rarely peaceful encounters. If we ever collide with an alien race capable of interstellar space travel, my money won't be on trading technologies and textbooks but a rather swift end for us. - Edd On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 1:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > tara wrote - Another reason that we should seek out collision with > aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading technology and learning > as fast as we can. > > Yeah - given our warlike nature, collision is far more likely than > collusion > > bill w > > On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 1:06 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > >> An analogy from history could be the interesting fact that human >> civilizations around the globe discovered agriculture near-simulteneously >> (especially in relation to the age of the species over-all) and so expanded >> out from several points at once. Although this still resulted in some >> civilizations that were more advanced more quickly (mostly those that >> collided with each first, and so were able to start stacking innovations >> faster), the difference was not that huge. >> >> There could be several other life civilizations all arising to the space >> faring level about the same time. The question is which will collide >> fastest and gain the early adopter advantage? Another reason that we should >> seek out collision with aliens, even if it is difficult, to start trading >> technology and learning as fast as we can. >> >> Tara >> >> >> > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> > >> > Except there's another couple interpretations: >> > >> > * We are indeed the first, however mathematically likely if you make >> > certain assumptions that are not necessarily warranted. (They kind of >> > alluded to this in the "filter is behind us" bit, but this is not >> > quite that scenario.) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 spike at rainier66.com Mon Feb 12 14:48:23 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 06:48:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003601d3a410$890f0010$9b2d0030$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2018 11:47 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 7:23 PM, wrote: > What happens to old languages when we need all the words and > grammatical constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t > have words for cars, cell phones, computers, all the cryptic > technology stuff we have now. How do these original languages manage? > > Hey that would be a kick: have a couple of code-talkers discussing > quantum computing devices in Navajo. That was, in fact, part of the original code-talkers' trick. What are the Navajo words for tank, battalion, and sniper? Even if the Germans had someone who knew Navajo (they didn't), said person would have had to keep up with the new invented words that the code-talkers had distributed among themselves. _______________________________________________ Ja, it is an interesting question. Every language in the world has words for water, food, shit, soil, copulate, all the stuff that every group of humans needed to talk about. Suddenly we have jillions of new things that didn't exist before and need talking about more than ever. Consider the modern office. You don't much need any of the short list of words every language has had since forever, but you need ways to describe new machines and business concepts. So... there is no reason why every language shouldn't go ahead and adopt the universal term for it, like we do in mathematics (you can talk to any math geek from anywhere, so long as you are discussing some modern math concept and nothing else (and why would you want to talk about anything else if you find a rare and interesting fellow math geek? (... even if she is hot.))) I am imagining little Tibetan children who can discuss hard discs and video cards and Mario Carts and high speed RAM and such as that but nothing else. >... What are the Navajo words for tank... When my son was five, I realized that WW2 style conflict has never been part of his world. I showed him a picture of a Sherman tank, just to see if he knew what it was called. He gazed at the picture, thought for a minute and said "war truck." >... said person would have had to keep up with the new invented words... This phenomenon is passively leading to convergence of language, where the stuff we care about is already pretty much converging. Perhaps then technology is what will lead humanity to a truly universal human language, which is a good thing (...especially if they are hot.) spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 14:51:12 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:51:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > > You really cannot blame white people for a loss of language and religion, > can you? bill w > Dave - Of course. You think they gave that up on their own? --- I regard that as extremely improbable. How do you stop people from using a language? Old languages have been dying worldwide for a very long time. And how do you stop a religion? I doubt the reservations were stocked with feds who stopped religious ceremonies. Of course, you say? How about some evidence, not a 'blame it all on the white man' kind of attitude? bill w On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 5:16 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 10:23 PM, wrote: > >> >> >> What happens to old languages when we need all the words and grammatical >> constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have words for cars, >> cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we have now. How >> do these original languages manage? >> > > Right, that's why we had to abandon English when we got all of that new > tech. :-) Obviously, we came up with new words. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Mon Feb 12 15:05:10 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 07:05:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005001d3a412$e0de2da0$a29a88e0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 10:23 PM, > wrote: >>?What happens to old languages when we need all the words and grammatical constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have words for cars, cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we have now. How do these original languages manage? >?Right, that's why we had to abandon English when we got all of that new tech. :-) Obviously, we came up with new words. -Dave Oh is that what caused us to abandon English? I thought it was rap. A local teen hangout where I go for excellent authentic Mexican burritos once a week (takeout) plays rap. I assume it is in English or some dialect loosely based on English, but I can seldom understand a bit of it. I understand some individual words, but the concepts are not part of my word (I assume rap has concepts.) I listened to the rhythmic speech rapper JayZ uttered at a political campaign event, had very little idea what he was going on about. It wasn?t much like Karen Carpenter and John Denver. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 15:24:42 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 09:24:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <005001d3a412$e0de2da0$a29a88e0$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> <005001d3a412$e0de2da0$a29a88e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I listened to the rhythmic speech rapper JayZ uttered at a political campaign event, had very little idea what he was going on about. It wasn?t much like Karen Carpenter and John Denver. spike Or Billy Joel. There is some classical music I know that would sound just as good if the notes were somewhat different. The key to those pieces is the rhythm - that's what makes it interesting. (Prokofieff, if you are interested) If you don't have anything to say, say it with a smile and a rhythm. If there were a universal language (that is to say, planetary - universal is a bit presumptuous, isn't it?), it would not last long. Regional variations would occur, new words would be coined, accents making spelling difficult, and lots more. It's only constant communication that make American and British English similar. It does not take long. Read Canterbury Tales in the original lately? As for the Indians, with whom was it more important to communicate with, your fellow tribesmen, or the white guys who had all these neat things you wanted, like jobs. The young Indians saw where the future lay and thought their Indian language was old hat, and abandoned it, like tlingit. bill w On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:05 AM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Dave Sill > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock > > > > On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 10:23 PM, wrote: > > > > >>?What happens to old languages when we need all the words and > grammatical constructs to describe new technology? Navajo doesn?t have > words for cars, cell phones, computers, all the cryptic technology stuff we > have now. How do these original languages manage? > > > > >?Right, that's why we had to abandon English when we got all of that new > tech. :-) Obviously, we came up with new words. > > > > -Dave > > > > > > > > Oh is that what caused us to abandon English? I thought it was rap. A > local teen hangout where I go for excellent authentic Mexican burritos once > a week (takeout) plays rap. I assume it is in English or some dialect > loosely based on English, but I can seldom understand a bit of it. I > understand some individual words, but the concepts are not part of my word > (I assume rap has concepts.) > > > > I listened to the rhythmic speech rapper JayZ uttered at a political > campaign event, had very little idea what he was going on about. It wasn?t > much like Karen Carpenter and John Denver. > > > > 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 sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 15:39:35 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:39:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:51 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Of course, you say? How about some evidence, not a 'blame it all on the >> white man' kind of attitude? >> > Sure, ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States *In the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the policy of Indian Reductions resulted in the forced conversions to Catholicism of the indigenous people in northern Nueva Espa?a. They had long-established spiritual and religious traditions and theological beliefs. What developed during the colonial years and since has been a syncretic Catholicism that absorbed and reflected indigenous beliefs; the religion changed in New Spain.* * ...* * After the Indian wars in the late 19th century, the United States established Native American boarding schools, initially run primarily by or affiliated with Christian missionaries.[100] At this time American society thought that Native American children needed to be acculturated to the general society. The boarding school experience often proved traumatic to Native American children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity and denied the right to practice their native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Native American identities[101] and adopt European-American culture.* http://blogs.baylor.edu/nativeamericantreatment/ *Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools. Even religious groups felt the need to assimilate and convert these young Native Americans, and they publicized the need for money to pay them in journals that were circulated. These schools took in Native American children and attempted to erase every trace of their former Native American life. They received an American education and were also given American clothes. While at the schools, the Native Americans were required to perform manual labor to contribute to the upkeep of the school, but were not allowed to be compensated for their work.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_civil_rights *Over the last five centuries, "Christianity has made enormous inroads into Native society."[9] Many religious Native Americans today voluntarily practice Christianity, both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, or a combination of Christianity and Native religion.[9] There was both voluntary and forced conversion; however, not all tribes embraced Christianity, nor did all members of tribes.* * "Euro-American contact and interactions contributed much to Indian marginality and the disruption and destruction of traditional customs and even the aboriginal use of psychoactive substances. This process was noted in the 1976 Final Report to the American Indian Policy Review Commission, Task Force Eleven: Alcohol and Drug Abuse.[10]* * ...* * The Native American religion was initially suppressed by the colonists who came from Europe with their own particular goals. These included "God, gold, and glory?[13] and this conflicted with the Native American way of life. From the time of Columbus?s ?discovery? of America, Native American religion has routinely been suppressed by English, Spanish, and other European colonists.[14]* * ...* * During the Progressive Era from the 1890s to the 1920s, a "quasi-theocracy" reigned in what federal policymakers called "Indian Country"; they worked hand-in-hand with churches to impose Christianity upon Native Americans "as part of the government?s civilizing project?.[17] Keeping in the vein of the colonialists before them, Progressive-Era policymakers found no need to separate religious endeavors concerning Native Americans from Native political policy.[18] The government provided various religious groups with funds to accomplish Native American conversion. It was during this time that the government ?discouraged or imposed bans on many forms of traditional religious practices, including the Sun Dance, use of peyote in ceremonial settings and observance of potlatch rituals.?[17] The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), or the "Indian Office", as it was then called, played a role in the Christianization of Native Americans. Their boarding schools, often staffed by missionaries, removed Native children from the tribe and away from the influence of their cultures.[17]* That's just a few minutes work. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 15:46:47 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:46:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Edward Haigh wrote: > When civilisations meet they're rarely peaceful encounters. > > If we ever collide with an alien race capable of interstellar space > travel, my money won't be on trading technologies and textbooks but a > rather swift end for us. > If they're anything like us, yes. We'd be the native Americans in their way. It's imaginable, though, that such technologically advanced beings would also be more morally advanced. Perhaps following something like Star Trek's Prime Directive. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 16:42:47 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:42:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <003601d3a410$890f0010$9b2d0030$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> <003601d3a410$890f0010$9b2d0030$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Feb 12, 2018 6:52 AM, wrote: You don't much need any of the short list of words every language has had since forever, but you need ways to describe new machines and business concepts. So... there is no reason why every language shouldn't go ahead and adopt the universal term for it, like we do in mathematics But that is not what happened. Even native Navajo speakers who were not trained code talkers could not understand what was being discussed. Granted, some of it may have eventually been possible to figure out. "Submarine" got translated to "iron fish", for instance, and if you keep hearing "the iron fish attacked another people boat, killing 100 hunters" in a military context the deduction is eventually possible, but other terms were indecipherable. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 17:35:56 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 11:35:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: That's just a few minutes work dave Well, Dave, I do believe you have made a convert. Quite a bit of evidence there, eh? It does, however, make me wonder just how effective it is. In Britain I think that they went through a period where everyone had to be Catholic, and then (or vice versa), could not be Catholic - some of this went on in Europe too. And why would anyone not take up their old religions and language when the heat to conform lessened? But it also reminds me of the evil done by the Muslims, forcefully converting people to Islam. And the Jews in southern Iberia, etc. At a much lower level of evil, the changing of 'foreign' names for immigrants at Ellis Island - say from Wallechinsky to Wallace. Ah - we are not better nor worse than anyone else, are we? What history we study in school has little relationship to the whole picture. bill w On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:39 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:51 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Of course, you say? How about some evidence, not a 'blame it all on the >>> white man' kind of attitude? >>> >> > Sure, ok. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Native_ > Americans_in_the_United_States > > *In the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the policy of Indian > Reductions resulted in the forced conversions to Catholicism of the > indigenous people in northern Nueva Espa?a. They had long-established > spiritual and religious traditions and theological beliefs. What developed > during the colonial years and since has been a syncretic Catholicism that > absorbed and reflected indigenous beliefs; the religion changed in New > Spain.* > > * ...* > > * After the Indian wars in the late 19th century, the United States > established Native American boarding schools, initially run primarily by or > affiliated with Christian missionaries.[100] At this time American society > thought that Native American children needed to be acculturated to the > general society. The boarding school experience often proved traumatic to > Native American children, who were forbidden to speak their native > languages, taught Christianity and denied the right to practice their > native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Native > American identities[101] and adopt European-American culture.* > > http://blogs.baylor.edu/nativeamericantreatment/ > > *Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American > uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed > to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools. Even > religious groups felt the need to assimilate and convert these young Native > Americans, and they publicized the need for money to pay them in journals > that were circulated. These schools took in Native American children and > attempted to erase every trace of their former Native American life. They > received an American education and were also given American clothes. While > at the schools, the Native Americans were required to perform manual labor > to contribute to the upkeep of the school, but were not allowed to be > compensated for their work.* > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_civil_rights > > *Over the last five centuries, "Christianity has made enormous > inroads into Native society."[9] Many religious Native Americans today > voluntarily practice Christianity, both Protestantism and Roman > Catholicism, or a combination of Christianity and Native religion.[9] There > was both voluntary and forced conversion; however, not all tribes embraced > Christianity, nor did all members of tribes.* > > * "Euro-American contact and interactions contributed much to Indian > marginality and the disruption and destruction of traditional customs and > even the aboriginal use of psychoactive substances. This process was noted > in the 1976 Final Report to the American Indian Policy Review Commission, > Task Force Eleven: Alcohol and Drug Abuse.[10]* > > * ...* > > * The Native American religion was initially suppressed by the > colonists who came from Europe with their own particular goals. These > included "God, gold, and glory?[13] and this conflicted with the Native > American way of life. From the time of Columbus?s ?discovery? of America, > Native American religion has routinely been suppressed by English, Spanish, > and other European colonists.[14]* > > * ...* > > * During the Progressive Era from the 1890s to the 1920s, a > "quasi-theocracy" reigned in what federal policymakers called "Indian > Country"; they worked hand-in-hand with churches to impose Christianity > upon Native Americans "as part of the government?s civilizing project?.[17] > Keeping in the vein of the colonialists before them, Progressive-Era > policymakers found no need to separate religious endeavors concerning > Native Americans from Native political policy.[18] The government provided > various religious groups with funds to accomplish Native American > conversion. It was during this time that the government ?discouraged or > imposed bans on many forms of traditional religious practices, including > the Sun Dance, use of peyote in ceremonial settings and observance of > potlatch rituals.?[17] The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), or the "Indian > Office", as it was then called, played a role in the Christianization of > Native Americans. Their boarding schools, often staffed by missionaries, > removed Native children from the tribe and away from the influence of their > cultures.[17]* > > That's just a few minutes work. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 18:11:55 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 13:11:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 12:35 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Well, Dave, I do believe you have made a convert. Quite a bit of evidence > there, eh? > Cool. I've been debating things on the 'net too long to have any expectation of conversion. Usually my goal is swaying undecided lurkers. :-) It does, however, make me wonder just how effective it is. In Britain I > think that they went through a period where everyone had to be Catholic, > and then (or vice versa), could not be Catholic - some of this went on in > Europe too. And why would anyone not take up their old religions and > language when the heat to conform lessened? > Sure, but that's easier when you've got a rich written history and maybe some elders who remember the old ways. In the case of the Native Americans, the combination of disease, war, relocation, and assimilation made that nearly impossible. And even if they could resurrect their language and religion, there was no way they could return to their old ways of life due to not being on suitable land, loss of bison herds, property ownership and fences preventing nomadic living. But it also reminds me of the evil done by the Muslims, forcefully > converting people to Islam. And the Jews in southern Iberia, etc. > > At a much lower level of evil, the changing of 'foreign' names for > immigrants at Ellis Island - say from Wallechinsky to Wallace. > > Ah - we are not better nor worse than anyone else, are we? > > What history we study in school has little relationship to the whole > picture. > That's all true. The question is how can we change ourselves so that stops and doesn't happen again? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 18:18:09 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:18:09 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock Message-ID: Dave Sill wrote snip > I'm sure they didn't recognize the "far superior nature of the European > culture". *I* don't think European culture is superior. They were savages, > too. They just had better weapons and communicable diseases. I would not underestimate culture, which included the technology to build weapons and the farming technology that let the Europeans live at much higher density than the natives. The Europeans had something even more important in overrunning the natives, twenty generations (or more) of ruthless genetic selection in a (relatively) stable agricultural environment. You can see how that level of selection changes the personalities of red foxes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox A fair fraction of the population is wired up to be overachievers since that's what their ancestors who had surviving children did. Some of the Native Americans were evolving in the same direction of being adapted to agriculture, particularly the mound builders of the Mississipi valley. But disease got most of them. BTW, when farming moved out of the middle east and into Europe, the same thing happened to the local hunter-gatherers, some of whom are our ancestors. From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 18:35:31 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 12:35:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > > Well, Dave, I do believe you have made a convert. Quite a bit of evidence > there, eh? bill w > Cool. I've been debating things on the 'net too long to have any expectation of conversion. Usually my goal is swaying undecided lurkers. :-) dave Well, when I am wrong, in this case merely very ignorant, I try to get on the right side of the evidence. And since a relatively new philosophy of mine says that I should thank those who correct me, thanks! billw The question is how can we change ourselves so that stops and doesn't happen again? dave Now we are in my area. I have found it very, very hard to change a person. Their emotions are supporting their behavior and those are difficult to deal with. Now you want to change human nature. I think you will have to wait on genetic engineering for that. I am a total cynic about getting people to do good, avoid bad, however those are defined. Maybe we have made some tiny baby steps towards solutions to human nature: the United Nations, the sanctions. Start with countries: don't deal with them if they practice genocide and other horrible things. Hit them where they hurt: economics/ money. OK, so the worst examples may have to be dealt with by the military - preferably the UN military. Although I am not religious, I truly wish that religion could solve some of these problems, but studies show that nonreligious people are just as moral as those who are religious. bill w On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 12:35 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> Well, Dave, I do believe you have made a convert. Quite a bit of >> evidence there, eh? >> > > Cool. I've been debating things on the 'net too long to have any > expectation of conversion. Usually my goal is swaying undecided lurkers. :-) > > It does, however, make me wonder just how effective it is. In Britain I >> think that they went through a period where everyone had to be Catholic, >> and then (or vice versa), could not be Catholic - some of this went on in >> Europe too. And why would anyone not take up their old religions and >> language when the heat to conform lessened? >> > > Sure, but that's easier when you've got a rich written history and maybe > some elders who remember the old ways. In the case of the Native Americans, > the combination of disease, war, relocation, and assimilation made that > nearly impossible. And even if they could resurrect their language and > religion, there was no way they could return to their old ways of life due > to not being on suitable land, loss of bison herds, property ownership and > fences preventing nomadic living. > > But it also reminds me of the evil done by the Muslims, forcefully >> converting people to Islam. And the Jews in southern Iberia, etc. >> >> At a much lower level of evil, the changing of 'foreign' names for >> immigrants at Ellis Island - say from Wallechinsky to Wallace. >> >> Ah - we are not better nor worse than anyone else, are we? >> >> What history we study in school has little relationship to the whole >> picture. >> > > That's all true. The question is how can we change ourselves so that stops > and doesn't happen again? > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 19:11:03 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 14:11:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 1:35 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: Well, when I am wrong, in this case merely very ignorant, I try to get on > the right side of the evidence. And since a relatively new philosophy of > mine says that I should thank those who correct me, thanks! > Glad to help and you're quite welcome. I've been on the wrong side enough times that I've learned stay open-minded. Now we are in my area. I have found it very, very hard to change a > person. Their emotions are supporting their behavior and those are > difficult to deal with. Now you want to change human nature. I think you > will have to wait on genetic engineering for that. I am a total cynic > about getting people to do good, avoid bad, however those are defined. > I don't know if it's even theoretically possible, but it seems like a problem worth pondering. Although I am not religious, I truly wish that religion could solve some of > these problems, but studies show that nonreligious people are just as moral > as those who are religious. > Yeah, and a lot of truly horrible things have been justified by religion, and still are. I don't think we'll make progress on improving human behavior until we soundly reject irrational belief systems. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 19:39:44 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 11:39:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Feb 12, 2018 7:42 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: *Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools* There are days when I wonder if this sort of thing might be needed in the American South today. Take over their schools, force their children to attend, and banish all that "evolution is just a theory", "science is this complex thing others impose on you, not something for you to take to heart", and "blindly trust authority, because critical thinking is hard and treasonous" rubbish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 12 21:54:55 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 15:54:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I don't think we'll make progress on improving human behavior until we soundly reject irrational belief systems. -Dave Religion's lists of sins and good deeds is fairly sane and rational. Some of what Jesus said I believe in. Ditto some other religious people - Buddha, Confucius, probably Mohammed. It's not all gods and miracles and heavens and hells. I could easily be convinced that many who are religious reject the metaphysics parts and treat church like a social club where you can learn society's rules. For irrationality - teach critical thinking, starting in kindergarten. "He hit you so that makes him a bad person?" and discuss. Religion is not the only area where irrational thinking is displayed, as recently showed by Nobel prize winners in economics. Kahneman and Tversky. And for dealing with the irrational, where should we go but Freud? bill w On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 1:39 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Feb 12, 2018 7:42 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: > > *Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American > uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed > to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools* > > > There are days when I wonder if this sort of thing might be needed in the > American South today. Take over their schools, force their children to > attend, and banish all that "evolution is just a theory", "science is this > complex thing others impose on you, not something for you to take to > heart", and "blindly trust authority, because critical thinking is hard and > treasonous" rubbish. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Mon Feb 12 23:03:45 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 15:03:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009e01d3a455$bcc970d0$365c5270$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace >?I could easily be convinced that many who are religious reject the metaphysics parts and treat church like a social club where you can learn society's rules?.bill w Church is an EXCELLENT place to cruise for chicks. There just ain?t no better place to do that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 01:02:42 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:02:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <009e01d3a455$bcc970d0$365c5270$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> <009e01d3a455$bcc970d0$365c5270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > > >?I could easily be convinced that many who are religious reject the > metaphysics parts and treat church like a social club where you can learn > society's rules?.bill w > > > > > > Church is an EXCELLENT place to cruise for chicks. There just ain?t no > better place to do that. > > > > spike > > > > ?At your stage of life, you are looking at the mothers, right? > > ?bill w? > ? > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Tue Feb 13 02:22:58 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 18:22:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> <009e01d3a455$bcc970d0$365c5270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002501d3a471$91780ce0$b46826a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock >?I could easily be convinced that many who are religious reject the metaphysics parts and treat church like a social club where you can learn society's rules?.bill w Church is an EXCELLENT place to cruise for chicks. There just ain?t no better place to do that. spike ?At your stage of life, you are looking at the mothers, right? ?bill w? Well no, I am not on the market myself. So I gaze admiringly at a respectful distance, at the grandmothers. But only in a strictly lustful way. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 03:01:38 2018 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:01:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter In-Reply-To: References: <591E545D-6C84-47E6-99B1-E878C02FCDFE@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Feb 12, 2018 10:57 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Edward Haigh wrote: > When civilisations meet they're rarely peaceful encounters. > > If we ever collide with an alien race capable of interstellar space > travel, my money won't be on trading technologies and textbooks but a > rather swift end for us. > If they're anything like us, yes. We'd be the native Americans in their way. It's imaginable, though, that such technologically advanced beings would also be more morally advanced. Perhaps following something like Star Trek's Prime Directive. Or perhaps it's more like the reptiles at a zoo trying to interact with the human visitors - even if we think one of them wanted out, what could we do? Not only are there social constructs (laws) preventing us from interfering with the animals, I'm confident I am ill-prepared to care for any zoo animals I might kidnap...er, liberate. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 06:04:04 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 01:04:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 2:39 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Feb 12, 2018 7:42 AM, "Dave Sill" wrote: > > *Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American > uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed > to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools* > > > There are days when I wonder if this sort of thing might be needed in the > American South today. Take over their schools, force their children to > attend, and banish all that "evolution is just a theory", "science is this > complex thing others impose on you, not something for you to take to > heart", and "blindly trust authority, because critical thinking is hard and > treasonous" rubbish. > ### This is hateful rubbish. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 09:49:56 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 01:49:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 10:04 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### This is hateful rubbish. Which is why I don't do anything with it. Tempting as it is, there's got to be a more effective solution. From spike at rainier66.com Tue Feb 13 15:14:35 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 07:14:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005101d3a4dd$5ca6cf80$15f46e80$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Sent: Monday, February 12, 2018 10:04 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 2:39 PM, Adrian Tymes > wrote: On Feb 12, 2018 7:42 AM, "Dave Sill" > wrote: Not only did the U.S. government seek to squelch Native American uprisings, it also sought to stop those cultural traits from being passed to younger generations by assimilating them in boarding schools There are days when I wonder if this sort of thing might be needed in the American South today. Take over their schools, force their children to attend, and banish all that "evolution is just a theory", "science is this complex thing others impose on you, not something for you to take to heart", and "blindly trust authority, because critical thinking is hard and treasonous" rubbish. ### This is hateful rubbish. Rafal I took it as Swift-ian Modest Proposal-ish satire. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Feb 13 18:08:50 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 10:08:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] drone violates asimov's first law Message-ID: <000201d3a4f5$b3db8fd0$1b92af70$@rainier66.com> Headlines are saying a US drone took out a Syrian tank in self-defense. There were humans who perished inside the tank. Is this the first known incident of a robot violating Asimov's first law? Or does that count, since it wasn't autonomous? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 19:14:45 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 11:14:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] drone violates asimov's first law In-Reply-To: <000201d3a4f5$b3db8fd0$1b92af70$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d3a4f5$b3db8fd0$1b92af70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Torpedoes that were more autonomous (after launch, which can be equated to pointing a hound at a target and yelling "GET IT!") have been claiming human lives all the way back to WWII. On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 10:08 AM, wrote: > > > Headlines are saying a US drone took out a Syrian tank in self-defense. > There were humans who perished inside the tank. Is this the first known > incident of a robot violating Asimov?s first law? Or does that count, since > it wasn?t autonomous? > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From atymes at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 19:17:23 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 11:17:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] it's the yoga! was: RE: The Doomsday Clock In-Reply-To: <005101d3a4dd$5ca6cf80$15f46e80$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d39947$f90ad200$eb207600$@att.net> <007501d3a13f$0d866740$289335c0$@rainier66.com> <002901d3a162$f3795b40$da6c11c0$@rainier66.com> <75C56542-0F79-4187-ACB8-823DEFE8B4E2@gmail.com> <02a801d3a3b0$e32af050$a980d0f0$@rainier66.com> <005101d3a4dd$5ca6cf80$15f46e80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 7:14 AM, wrote: > I took it as Swift-ian Modest Proposal-ish satire. Wasn't meant as satire. Was meant as an example of something that seems appealing at first, but we know it'd be problematic - but a baseline against which better solutions can be proposed. From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 19:46:57 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 13:46:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] drone violates asimov's first law In-Reply-To: <000201d3a4f5$b3db8fd0$1b92af70$@rainier66.com> References: <000201d3a4f5$b3db8fd0$1b92af70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > > > > > Headlines are saying a US drone took out a Syrian tank in self-defense. > There were humans who perished inside the tank. Is this the first known > incident of a robot violating Asimov?s first law? Or does that count, > since it wasn?t autonomous? > > > > spike > > ?Is there an autonomous robot/AI/drone? Are self-driving cars > autonomous? This is a serious question. I am not sure what 'autonomous' > means in this day of tech marvels. > ?It can't count as a failure of Asimov's Laws of Robotics, since, presumably, those were not installed in the drone.? bill w > ? > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 19:57:02 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 13:57:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] book Message-ID: Just out: Stephen Pinker's "Enlightenment Now", an 'attempt to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of the 21st century'. As I consider myself a Classic Liberal I am practically drooling in anticipation of reading this. There will be a lot of politics, terror groups, Trump, etc. and I hope a lot of good psychology. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Feb 13 20:24:24 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 12:24:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] book In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On Feb 13, 2018, at 11:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Just out: Stephen Pinker's "Enlightenment Now", an 'attempt to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of the 21st century'. > > As I consider myself a Classic Liberal I am practically drooling in anticipation of reading this. > > There will be a lot of politics, terror groups, Trump, etc. and I hope a lot of good psychology. I?m looking forward to reading it this year. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Feb 13 22:58:34 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 14:58:34 -0800 Subject: [ExI] robot skiing competition Message-ID: <008301d3a51e$2dba1c90$892e55b0$@rainier66.com> Cool! http://reason.com/blog/2018/02/13/robots-are-skiing-now-will-they-take-win?u tm_medium=email We gotta build another one of these and race em. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From iamgoddard at yahoo.com Wed Feb 14 04:18:14 2018 From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:18:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] UFOs again or AAVs for the first time Message-ID: <2DCE48AE-B450-4E15-9035-9E7A365E1D3B@yahoo.com> Hello All, It?s been a few years since I posted to the list. Hope you are all doing well! :) Noticing there?s been discussion of the NY Times UFO, or AAV, report I thought I?d share the conclusion of my research on the ?Gimbal video? featured atop the Times? report. Here I present a case that the UFO is simply the hot exhaust of a jet: https://youtu.be/oO5dP3sF2sw The alleged anomalous traits of the screen target, particularly its peculiar rotation, are also seen in footage of the hot-exhaust of a jet taken by an infrared camera in the very same ATFLIR tracking system. The only claim the footage has to being anomalous is its alleged dissimilarity to behaviors possibly seen in any human-made aircraft. But I show that to be false. The ATFLIR tracking system used on F-18 jets has a gimbal camera with complex mechanisms that rotate and de-rotate the imagery so that the output on the pilot?s screen is oriented to the pilot irrespective of how wildly the gimbal camera may be rotating as it tracks a target. I show two examples of ATFLIR cameras on F-18 jets causing rotations on IR glare, or lens flare, which rotates even as the surrounding scene does not rotate. It?s as if glare marks itself on a rotating lens within in the optics, a lens that would otherwise leave no visible trace of its rotation. Keep in mind that footage is not related to the Nimitz UFO case, which two pilots have described in many TV interviews. The pilots in the jet that took the Gimbal video have made no public statements. ~Ian -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 15 17:21:45 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 09:21:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] fire alarms Message-ID: <000201d3a681$74a4b660$5dee2320$@rainier66.com> You have heard my rants on fire alarms: those were required by code in homes long after new construction makes most house fires very rare. Just the code to require drywall everywhere caused homes to become so flame-resistant that traditional fire trucks are now mostly very expensive ambulances that are deployed to little old ladies having trouble breathing. In the old days, a lotta people smoked tobacco. This is now rare and house fires are now seldom seen. The batteries run low in those smoke detectors, and when they do, they chirp, which means homeowners get up on a chair to try to take them down, and sometimes they hurt themselves or worse, so now in some cases, the smoke detectors introduce more risk than they retire. It occurred to me that public buildings have also become quite fire resistant. But the old style of one fire alarm causing evacuation of a couple thousand students everywhere across campus still exists. Since a fire cannot really spread all that far, we might now argue that the old-style universal fire alarm evacuating the compound is an example of a safety feature which introduces more risk than it retires, because a school shooter can set off an alarm anywhere, get everybody out where he can bang away at them. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Feb 15 17:38:20 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 12:38:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 4:52 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > *But John by your own logic, all the matter in universe cannot possibly > have a non-zero average velocity* You need a reference point to set to zero, it could be anything but average velocity would be convenient , its the reference frame that shows zero dipole moment in the Cosmic Microwave Background. *> unless there was something *else* out there for the all the matter in > our universe to be moving toward or away from. * I don?t see how that follows. Suppose there were only 3 objects in the universe X,Y and Z, Y has 98% of the mass and X and Z have 1%, X is moving relative to Y due east at speed v and Z is moving due west relative to Y at speed v. In that situation observers at both X and Z would conclude that there were moving relative to most of the mass in its universe (or most of the mass of the universe was moving relative to them, take your pick) while a observer at Y would conclude that he was not moving relative to most of the mass in the universe. In a similar way when we observe CMB dipole anisotropy we can conclude that the Solar System is moving at a speed of 368 km/sec relative to most of the mass in the universe in the direction of galactic longitude 263.85 degrees and latitude 48.25 degrees. So we're not moving the exact same way as most of the matter in the universe, oh well, if movement is allowed at all then everything can't be moving in the same direction at the same speed because it would make no sense to say the entire universe just moved 3 feet to the left. *> Freidmann says that galaxies are like raisins in a loaf of raisin bread > rising in the oven. The raisins don't move through the dough, but as the > dough expands, the raisins are pushed apart by the expanding dough. The > problem is that our "raisin" is clearly moving through the dough.* If you were living on one of those raisins and measured the speed of the dough relative to the raisin a short distance from it you'd get a speed that was almost zero, and the shorter the measured distance the closer to zero it would be. The movement you're talking about is incidental and has nothing to do with the general expansion of the universe. And its small, only 368 km/sec . *> The big CMB hot spot, the Shapely super-cluster, and Dark Flow are all > in the same octant of the sky in the direction of the constellation > Centaurus. What could be out there pulling the Laniakea super-cluster and > even the Great Attractor toward itself if not another causal cell?* Nobody thinks that the entire universe consists of a sphere with a 13.8 billion light year radius with the earth at the center, which is what we actually observe, so if earth is not the center of the universe then there must be stuff we can't see. So if we observe large scale movement 10 billion light years away its probably because something more distant than 13.8 billion light years that we can never see is attracting it gravitationally. *> What is surprising is that the observable universe has a non-zero > average velocity for the earth's velocity to differ from.* You set the universe's average velocity at zero and compare things to that because, as I said before, it would make no sense to say the entire universe just moved 3 feet to the left. *> I am not talking about the minor cold spots and hot spots, I am talking > a bout the big one. At its maximum, the difference is more like one part > in 10,000 to 20,000.* A statistical analysis of the biggest CMB cold spot shows it's probably just caused by random variation produced by quantum uncertainty before inflation started when the universe was about 10^-43 seconds old; the evidence to support the theory its more than just random noise only has a 2.2 sigma; that's pretty lousy, you need 5 sigma to claim to have made a discovery. https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.07894 *> Or better yet, try to get infinity to cancel itself out like > renormalization does in QFT.* That would be nice but the discovery of Dark Energy made the canceling out trick like Feynman used in Quantum Chromodynamics much harder. Quantum Field Theory predicts something like Dark Energy will exist but it predicts a value that is 10^120 times larger than what we observe, its been called the worst prediction in the history of science. If the value of Dark Energy were precisely zero you could hope that some very smart person could find a way for 10^120 to cancel out, but now they must find a way to cancel everything out EXCEPT for one part in 10^120. And that would be about 10^120 times harder to figure out how to do. *> No doubt induction is a useful tool. But when infinity is involved, > induction breaks down.* Induction always breaks down if you extend it far enough, but it usually works most of the time. ? ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 15 21:07:00 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:07:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine Message-ID: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 22027 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sjv2006 at gmail.com Thu Feb 15 21:12:59 2018 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:12:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: So have I. I didn't think they would be liquefied, though. s On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:07 PM, wrote: > > > I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. > > > > > > > > > > {8^D > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 22027 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 15 21:35:20 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:35:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Van Sickle Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2018 1:13 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine So have I. I didn't think they would be liquefied, though. s Well, you know Steve, I had always kind of vaguely imagined the person would appear nekkid in there. That?s why I used to hang out near the luggage machine hoping some attractive granny would hop on the belt. The result was a bit less sexy than I had supposed? {8^D I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among us? Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have babies, if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t recall seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have vague memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this melting woman will be OK. spike On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:07 PM, > wrote: I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. {8^D spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 8028 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 15 21:56:12 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 15:56:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 3:35 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Stephen Van Sickle > *Sent:* Thursday, February 15, 2018 1:13 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine > > > > So have I. I didn't think they would be liquefied, though. > > > > s > > > > > > Well, you know Steve, I had always kind of vaguely imagined the person > would appear nekkid in there. That?s why I used to hang out near the > luggage machine hoping some attractive granny would hop on the belt. > > > > The result was a bit less sexy than I had supposed? > > > > {8^D > > > > I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among us? > Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have babies, > if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t recall > seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have vague > memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store > (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this melting > woman will be OK. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:07 PM, wrote: > > > > I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. > > > > > > > > > > {8^D > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 8028 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 15 21:57:40 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 15:57:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. spike Yeah, we had one around 1953. Buster Brown shoes and a dog named for a big cat. bill w On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 3:35 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Stephen Van Sickle > *Sent:* Thursday, February 15, 2018 1:13 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine > > > > So have I. I didn't think they would be liquefied, though. > > > > s > > > > > > Well, you know Steve, I had always kind of vaguely imagined the person > would appear nekkid in there. That?s why I used to hang out near the > luggage machine hoping some attractive granny would hop on the belt. > > > > The result was a bit less sexy than I had supposed? > > > > {8^D > > > > I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among us? > Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have babies, > if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t recall > seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have vague > memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store > (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this melting > woman will be OK. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:07 PM, wrote: > > > > I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. > > > > > > > > > > {8^D > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 8028 bytes Desc: not available URL: From henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com Fri Feb 16 00:11:08 2018 From: henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com (Henrik Ohrstrom) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 00:11:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The melting effect is caused by movement since the xray camera is a slit scan camera. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slit-scan_photography /Henrik ( venturing forth from long time lurkhood) Den tors 15 feb. 2018 22:10 skrev: > > > I have always wondered what would happen if some yahoo did this. > > > > > > > > > > {8^D > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 22027 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Feb 16 18:39:42 2018 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 13:39:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:35 PM, wrote: > > > > > I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among us? > Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have babies, > if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t recall > seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have vague > memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store > (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this melting > woman will be OK. > > > ### No danger there, unless she stayed under the scanner for a few hours, or maybe days. Digital X ray scanners have generally quite low dosages. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 16 19:15:54 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 13:15:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: # No danger there, unless she stayed under the scanner for a few hours, or maybe days. Digital X ray scanners have generally quite low dosages. Rafal to put it in perspective, one cat scan is the equivalent of 1000 chest xrays. bill w On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:35 PM, wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among >> us? Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have >> babies, if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t >> recall seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have >> vague memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe >> store (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this >> melting woman will be OK. >> >> >> > ### No danger there, unless she stayed under the scanner for a few hours, > or maybe days. Digital X ray scanners have generally quite low dosages. > > Rafal > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 16 19:42:56 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 11:42:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001e01d3a75e$5849c3b0$08dd4b10$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Friday, February 16, 2018 11:16 AM To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine # No danger there, unless she stayed under the scanner for a few hours, or maybe days. Digital X ray scanners have generally quite low dosages. Rafal to put it in perspective, one cat scan is the equivalent of 1000 chest xrays. bill w Ja? Cool that?s a relief. I still want a machine that we could set up to make someone look like they are nekkid, but not this thing. The whole melting head, bones and beating heart business, eh, I don?t want to look that closely at anyone. I thought of a fun gag we could play however. Get some people in cahoots, open minded sorts, set up an ordinary video camera, have them take off everything and walk in front of it. Record. Then get those same people to pretend to be passengers at the airport. Line them up in such a way that they can see the video (for timing purposes.) Then you get unsuspecting airport passersby, and: HEY check this! A new invention for security! They we play the tape, have the first pre-recorded person walk into a booth dressed as any airline passenger, she shows up on the video nekkid, you say NEXT, she steps out fully clothed, next guy goes in, repeat, etc. ?heeeeeeheheheheheheeeee oh that would be a terrific candid camera gag? Those poor saps who fall for it, they might never get on another plane. {8^D On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:35 PM, > wrote: I would like to know what will happen to her now. Is Dr. Rafal among us? Would that dose be enough to nuke her innards? Can she still have babies, if she waits a few cycles? How the heck does that work? I don?t recall seeing a warning on those machines in the airport, but I do have vague memories as a very young child there was an x-ray machine at the shoe store (not kidding, they had one.) We survived that. So perhaps this melting woman will be OK. ### No danger there, unless she stayed under the scanner for a few hours, or maybe days. Digital X ray scanners have generally quite low dosages. Rafal _______________________________________________ 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 sparge at gmail.com Fri Feb 16 20:00:42 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 15:00:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: <001e01d3a75e$5849c3b0$08dd4b10$@rainier66.com> References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> <001e01d3a75e$5849c3b0$08dd4b10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 2:42 PM, wrote: > > > Ja? Cool that?s a relief. I still want a machine that we could set up to > make someone look like they are nekkid, but not this thing. > That's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.tXAle51mXSmrMofNRTzYwQHaHa%26pid%3D15.1&f=1 -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 16 20:57:13 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 12:57:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] woman gets on luggage belt, goes thru x-ray machine In-Reply-To: References: <001c01d3a6a0$ec716930$c5543b90$@rainier66.com> <003401d3a6a4$e19ebb80$a4dc3280$@rainier66.com> <001e01d3a75e$5849c3b0$08dd4b10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 12:00 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 2:42 PM, wrote: >> Ja? Cool that?s a relief. I still want a machine that we could set up to >> make someone look like they are nekkid, but not this thing. > > That's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray > > https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.tXAle51mXSmrMofNRTzYwQHaHa%26pid%3D15.1&f=1 Or someone could remake Sony's NightShot: https://www.wired.com/1998/08/see-you-see-me/ . These days, put it in a phone's camera instead of a camcorder. Or maybe put it on a Google Glass. It would be an obviously modified set (since such filters are not default equipment), but still a lot less obvious that you're seeing more than unenhanced vision. Though, the mere potential might cause more of a backlash against augmented eyewear. Then again - say some cop did that at some event, where weapons aren't allowed to the non-cops even by concealed carry, and used it to see someone smuggling a weapon in, who the cop then proceeded to arrest on that basis. Would the courts say "reasonable expectation of privacy", or would the courts allow such augmented public surveillance to generate "reasonable cause"? Or might the cop in question find an easy way to parallel construct reasonable cause? Let us specifically assume this was all made from commercially available kit, which any member of the public could buy and use; does that change the legal definition of reasonable public expectations as the courts often use to decide such matters? If not, how public would this need to get before the courts find that how you show up on IR has become part of reasonable public expectations? Going further, what if some police department started using that mode for bodycams, so as to refuse to generally release bodycam video so as not to show nude-ish images of members of the public? (Though that would likely be shot down in short order: a simple solution is just to use non-IR cameras for bodycams, and to not integrate "special vision" with "public recording of actions" into the same hardware regardless of any alleged cost savings.) From avant at sollegro.com Sat Feb 17 15:42:33 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:42:33 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells Message-ID: <0f043a7fe184e1711270017f715b51ff.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 4:52 PM, Stuart LaForge > wrote: >> *But John by your own logic, all the matter in universe cannot possibly >> have a non-zero average velocity* > > > You need a reference point to set to zero, it could be anything but > average velocity would be convenient , its the reference frame that shows > zero dipole moment in the Cosmic Microwave Background. The average velocity of everything you can see being set to zero is less convenient and less sensible than setting your own velocity to zero. Being at the center of our own coordinate system is the privilege that Einstein's relativity gave us. > > *> unless there was something *else* out there for the all the matter in > >> our universe to be moving toward or away from. * > > > I don?t see how that follows. Suppose there were only 3 objects in the > universe X,Y and Z, Y has 98% of the mass and X and Z have 1%, X is > moving relative to Y due east at speed v and Z is moving due west > relative to Y at speed v. In that situation observers at both X and Z > would conclude that there were moving relative to most of the mass in its > universe (or most of the mass of the universe was moving relative to them, > take your pick) while a observer at Y would conclude that he was not > moving relative to most of the mass in the universe. In a similar way when > we observe CMB dipole anisotropy we can conclude that the Solar System is > moving at a speed of 368 km/sec relative to most of the mass in the > universe in the direction of galactic longitude 263.85 degrees and > latitude 48.25 degrees. So we're not moving the exact same way as most of > the matter in the universe, oh well, if movement is allowed at all then > everything can't be moving in the same direction at the same speed > because it would make no sense to say the entire universe just moved 3 > feet to the left. Damn it, John. You keep thinking in terms of the entire universe. It's pointless to do so. You are causally disconnected from near entirety of the universe by an event horizon located at the Hubble radius. The entire universe did not just move three feet to the left. Only your finite causal cell did. >> The big CMB hot spot, the Shapely super-cluster, and Dark Flow are all >> in the same octant of the sky in the direction of the constellation >> Centaurus. What could be out there pulling the Laniakea super-cluster >> and even the Great Attractor toward itself if not another causal cell?* > > Nobody thinks that the entire universe consists of a sphere with a 13.8 > billion light year radius with the earth at the center, which is what we > actually observe, so if earth is not the center of the universe then > there must be stuff we can't see. So if we observe large scale movement > 10 > billion light years away its probably because something more distant than > 13.8 billion light years that we can never see is attracting it > gravitationally. Let me get this straight. You concede the existence of stuff you can't see gravitationally attracting you but you don't concede the existence of an event horizon at the Hubble radius when that event horizon is precisely the reason you can't see the stuff that is attracting you? > *> What is surprising is that the observable universe has a non-zero > >> average velocity for the earth's velocity to differ from.* > > > You set the universe's average velocity at zero and compare things to > that because, as I said before, it would make no sense to say the entire > universe just moved 3 feet to the left. You *can't* set the universe's average velocity to zero. You don't know how big it is. An infinite universe moves at every possible velocity. > A statistical analysis of the biggest CMB cold spot shows it's probably > just caused by random variation produced by quantum uncertainty before > inflation started when the universe was about 10^-43 seconds old; the > evidence to support the theory its more than just random noise only has a > 2.2 sigma; that's pretty lousy, you need 5 sigma to claim to have made a > discovery. > > https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.07894 Awesome! I'll accept a 2.2 sigma significance of the hot spot as observational evidence for Causal Cell Theory any day. Thanks, John. :-) Now 2 sigma is my Bayesian prior for future observations. > > > *> Or better yet, try to get infinity to cancel itself out like > >> renormalization does in QFT.* > > > That would be nice but the discovery of Dark Energy made the canceling > out trick like Feynman used in Quantum Chromodynamics much harder. Quantum > Field Theory predicts something like Dark Energy will exist but it > predicts a value that is 10^120 times larger than what we observe, its > been called the worst prediction in the history of science. If the value > of Dark Energy were precisely zero you could hope that some very smart > person could find a way for 10^120 to cancel out, but now they must find a > way to cancel everything out EXCEPT for one part in 10^120. And that would > be about 10^120 times harder to figure out how to do. No. You don't have to renormalize all over again. All the heavy lifting has already been done by guys like John Baez. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/vacuum.html You just have to use Causal Cell Theory and a little logic. Now assume an event horizon at the Hubble radius. QFT predicts that virtual particles and antiparticles pairs are popping into and out of existence all the time. In order to exert any kind of force upon one another or any more permanent particles, they have to emit a boson of one sort or another to be absorbed by the affected particle. That means that Hubble horizon is a barrier to any virtual particles beyond it affecting our causal cell's spacetime. And the Hubble radius is the largest wavelength any quantum fluctuation can have within our causal cell. The Hubble parameter itself can be thought of as a minimum frequency of any quantum harmonic oscillator. If it hasn't vibrated at least once since the big bang, it is not vibrating fast enough to be maningful. Likewise, it makes no sense for something to vibrate faster than once a Planck time. Coupling that with the fact that both of those conditions have to be met for any quantum fluctuation to cause a force between any two particles in a given causal cell and one derives a dimensionless constant, I shall call S. S:= H^2*Tp^2 = H^2*h*G/c^5 or approximately 1.4*10^-122 where H is the Hubble parameter and Tp is the Planck time, h is the reduced Planck's constant, G is the gravitational constant, and c is the speed of light. S can be interpreted as the joint probability that any two particles within our causal cell will feel a force upon themselves as the result of a quantum fluctuation that is both within our causal cell P(H) and lasts for at least one Plank interval P(h). S then equals P(H)^2*P(h)^2 Now we are ready to predict the density of dark energy (De) based on causal cell theory. Ready for it? De = S*Dp That's it. See how simple causal cells make calculations? By setting the lower bound of wavelength at the Planck scale and integrating to infinite wavelengths, John Baez got 10^96 kg/m^3 for the vacuum energy density. That is 9*10^112 J/m^3 by E=mc^2. Let's call that Dp for the QFT predicted value for the vacuum energy energy. So substituting, we get (9*10^112 J/m^3)(1.4*10^-122) = 1.26 * 10^-9 J/m^3. Pretty darn close to the observed density of dark energy right? Stuart LaForge From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Feb 18 22:07:04 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 14:07:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?The_limitations_of_Steven_Pinker=E2=80=99s_optim?= =?utf-8?q?ism?= Message-ID: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1 I have only started to read the book, so can?t say how accurate Goldin is here. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Feb 18 22:51:41 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 17:51:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells In-Reply-To: <0f043a7fe184e1711270017f715b51ff.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <0f043a7fe184e1711270017f715b51ff.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 Stuart LaForge wrote: > > >> ?>? >> You need a reference point to set to zero, it could be anything but >> ? >> average velocity would be convenient , its the reference frame that shows >> ? >> zero dipole moment in the Cosmic Microwave Background. > > > ?> ? > *The average velocity of everything you can see being set to zero is > less? convenient and less sensible than setting your own velocity to zero. * ?Copernicus would have disagreed with you and so would Kepler who found it vastly more convenient to set the sun's motion as zero rather than that of the Earth when he calculated the motion of Mars. ? ?>* ?* > *Let me get this straight. You concede the existence of stuff you can't > see? gravitationally attracting you* ?Not gravitationally attracting ?me but gravitationally attracting ? something that I can see. If I see a galaxy 12 billion light years away move in an odd way I might conclude that something more distant ?than 13.8 billion light years, which is the limit of what I can see, is pulling on it gravitationally ?.? Or if I observe a large blemish in CMB (which we have not) I might even conclude that our universe had collided with another universe I can not see. > ?>* ?* > > > *but you don't concede the existence of an? event horizon at the Hubble > radius when that event horizon is precisely the reason you can't see the > stuff that is attracting you?* ? Things at the Hubble radius ? aren't at a event horizon they are at a causal horizon (sometimes called a absolute horizon), the two things are related but not identical, one is a subset of the other. All event horizons are ? are causal horizons but not all causal horizons are event horizons. I may or may not be inside a event horizon ?,? if I am then I'm heading toward a singularity and there is no way to avoid it, but I'm ?most ? certainly inside a causal horizon because everything is ?,? but I'm not necessarily heading toward a singularity. I can't send information outside ?what you call a causal horizon ? but I might be able to see things beyond it or at least deduce information about it; this asymmetry is do to the accelerating expansion of the universe, things are moving away from me faster now than they were long ago. ? But if I'm inside a event horizon I'm completely cut off from anything outside it. However the two types of horizons are similar enough that l ike a Black Hole's event horizon the causal horizon of the universe also has a temperature and also gives off radiation, it's called Gibbons?Hawking ?radiation, but unlike a Black Hole's Hawking radiation the universe's ? ?Gibbons?Hawking ?radiation does not change with time. The universe is doubling in size every 12.2 billion years, so after 850 ? billion years the CMB will have a wavelength of 22 billion light years and be too weak to be important ?,? but the background temperature will never be zero because the Gibbons?Hawking effect ? will start to dominate ?then? . The universe will never get any colder than 7*10^-31 K ? thanks to the ? Gibbons?Hawking effect ? , that's very cold but its not absolute zero. ?> ? > *You *can't* set the universe's average velocity to zero. You don't > know? how big it is.* ?I know how big the observable ? ?universe is and I can set that to zero, it is the only reference frame that doesn't show a dipole pattern in the CMB.? > ?>* ?* > *a dimensionless constant, I shall call? S.? S:= H^2*Tp^2 = H^2*h*G/c^5 or > approximately 1.4*10^-122 where H is the? ?Hubble parameter and Tp is the > Planck time, h is the reduced Planck's? constant, G is the gravitational > constant, and c is the speed of light.* > I checked your math and you're right, the units check out and it is indeed dimensionless ?? . ? ? I get a number closer to *1.9*10^-129*, but the accepted value of the the Hubble's constant H ? has changed lot in just the last few years and we may have been using different values, and you're taking the square of it. In meter-kilogram-seconds units ? I figured the ? Hubble's constant H is ?1.? 62*10^-18 s^-1 (although I wouldn't bet much money on the accuracy of the last of those 3 digits, or even on the last two) so ?:? H^2 is *2.6*10^-36 s^-2* *?. * The Plank constant h is *2.6*10^-36 ** (m^2) (kg/s)* The gravitational constant G is *6.8*10^-11 m^3/kg*s^2* ?The speed of light c is ? 3*10^9 ? m/s ?so c^5 is *2.43 *10^47 m^5/s^5* ?So ? H^2*h*G/c^5 ? = ? [? 2.6*10^-36 ?] ? ?[? 2.6*10^-36 ?]? ?[? 6.8*10^-11 ?]/? ?[? 2.43 *10^47 ? ] = * ?1.89*10^-129* In ? addition to the uncertainty in the Hubble constant the Gravitational constant is known to only 6 significant digits ? and the ? Planck constant is only known to only 9 significant digits. ? ? And we're talking about 122 digits ?, or maybe 129.? Also the ? ? Hubble ? ? constant ? ? has the name it does for historical reasons but we now know the ? ? Hubble ? ? "constant" is not a constant, it ? ? is a time dependent ? ? variable, a function ? ? of the ? ? CMB red-shift. ?Therefore your value S can't be a constant either, but as far as we know the density of Dark Energy is constant, so it doesn't work. And most important of all ?,? did you have a physical reason for coming up with ?( *H^2?)?*h*G/c^5 ? ?*or did you just pick it because if gave you a number you liked? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Feb 18 22:57:24 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 16:57:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?The_limitations_of_Steven_Pinker=E2=80=99s_optim?= =?utf-8?q?ism?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 4:07 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1 > > I have only started to read the book, so can?t say how accurate Goldin is > here. > > Regards, > > Dan > ?I have read most of it. The reviewer doesn't criticize much of Pinker's data, but focuses on what he left out or did not emphasize or what he said that contradicts the reviewer's own book. Not a bad review though. There is a LOT of progress detailed in this book and everyone should know these things, which very rarely appear on the news, because the news is slanted towards negative stories. bill w? > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > _______________________________________________ > 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 avant at sollegro.com Mon Feb 19 05:05:06 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:05:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells Message-ID: <2691365812e5964fbf8ebcc6686b8e5e.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > The Plank constant h is *2.6*10^-36 ** (m^2) (kg/s)* > The gravitational constant G is *6.8*10^-11 m^3/kg*s^2* ?> The speed of light c is ? > 3*10^9 ?> m/s ?so c^5 is *2.43 *10^47 m^5/s^5* Are you messing with me, John? Where do you live such that Planck's constant is 2.6*10^-36 kg*m^2/s and the speed of light is 3*10^9 m/s? Where I am the reduced Planck's constant is closer to hbar = h/(2*pi) = 1.05*10^-34 kg*m^2/s and the speed of light is more like c = 3.0 *10^8 m/s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light Stuart LaForge From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Feb 19 17:31:19 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 09:31:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?The_limitations_of_Steven_Pinker=E2=80=99s_optim?= =?utf-8?q?ism?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0B581F39-C9D7-4796-9586-1DBFB78454EA@gmail.com> On Feb 18, 2018, at 2:57 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > >> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 4:07 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: >> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1 >> >> I have only started to read the book, so can?t say how accurate Goldin is here. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan > > ?I have read most of it. The reviewer doesn't criticize much of Pinker's data, but focuses on what he left out or did not emphasize or what he said that contradicts the reviewer's own book. Not a bad review though. > > There is a LOT of progress detailed in this book and everyone should know these things, which very rarely appear on the news, because the news is slanted towards negative stories. Have you read Julian Simon? Years ago, he was pointing out and even betting on things getting better. I think it?s not just the news that slanted, but that there?s a default pessimistic bias ? a built in presumption things are getting worse, especially when looking at history or overall trends. The news simply works off that. (Feel good stories have a low demand, whereas feel bad stories seem to have a very high demand.) Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Feb 19 17:59:51 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 09:59:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?The_limitations_of_Steven_Pinker=E2=80=99s_optim?= =?utf-8?q?ism?= In-Reply-To: <0B581F39-C9D7-4796-9586-1DBFB78454EA@gmail.com> References: <0B581F39-C9D7-4796-9586-1DBFB78454EA@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00f101d3a9ab$70ecdf70$52c69e50$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan ? There is a LOT of progress detailed in this book and everyone should know these things, which very rarely appear on the news, because the news is slanted towards negative stories? BillW >?Have you read Julian Simon? Years ago, he was pointing out and even betting on things getting better. I think it?s not just the news that slanted, but that there?s a default pessimistic bias ? a built in presumption things are getting worse, especially when looking at history or overall trends. The news simply works off that. (Feel good stories have a low demand, whereas feel bad stories seem to have a very high demand.)?Regards, Dan Ja, and this has kicked into high gear as paper news went away. In the paper news days, the feedback was slow and unreliable. The personality and outlook of the editor had a great deal of influence on the content of the paper. But now, since news is delivered via electronic media, the news people get instant and useful feedback on what news stories sell the most advertising. It tells the outlet what news stories were selected and how long the readers stayed on that page. This feedback phenomenon caused a shift towards the dominance of freakish and threatening news, which is why we get the illusion that our world recently became freakish and threatening. The old saying in advertisement, ?sex sells? is now ?Sex sells, but death sells better.? If those two can be combined somehow, you know you have a winner in selling ad-space and ad-time. I have seen something else important: feels-good stories not only don?t sell well, they are widely doubted even if plausible and provable. The flip side of that is that stories that are threatening to the reader are believed even if clearly absurd. We should always strive to use that observation as a guide to how we consume news stories. For those who understand what is really happening in our benighted world, we just know there exists a marvelous path to maximizing profits, bigtime money to be made here, big money. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Feb 19 18:23:19 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 13:23:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells In-Reply-To: <2691365812e5964fbf8ebcc6686b8e5e.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <2691365812e5964fbf8ebcc6686b8e5e.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 12:05 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: ?> ? > > > > > *Are you messing with me, John? Where do you live such that Planck's > constant is 2.6*10^-36 kg*m^2/s and the speed of light is 3*10^9 m/s? Where > I am the reduced Planck's constant is closer to hbar = h/(2*pi) = > 1.05*10^-34 kg*m^2/s and the speed of light is more like c = 3.0 *10^8 m/s.* > ?Yes you are entirely correct, I plugged the wrong values into your equation, I guess my memory isn't as good as I thought it was, putting in 3*10^9 m/s for the speed of light was especially embarrassing. Sorry. But I still have some concerns and questions. Whatever its size I admit its sorta neat that your equation produces a pure dimensionless number, but what reason is there to think it has any physical significance? Even if it does I don't see how it could ever be proven because I don't think we will ?ever? ? know the fundamental constants in it to the staggering accuracy required. And as I said the Hubble "constant" is not a constant and changes with time, and so would the number your equation produces. And is that h or hbar in your equation? ?John K Clark? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Tue Feb 20 18:45:39 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2018 10:45:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells Message-ID: <5b86dcb855cc909aeadbec8366d6e9aa.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > Whatever its size I admit its sorta neat that your equation produces a pure > dimensionless number, but what reason is there to think it has any physical > significance? My equation arises naturally from considerations of the finite nature of our causal reality. What you choose to call the "observable universe" is a misnomer. It should be rightly called the *observed universe* as in the past tense. You can't see a single galaxy that has left our Hubble radius in any other state than what it was in when it crossed the Hubble horizon. Any such galaxy could have been instantly annihilated in the mother of all gamma ray bursts, and we would never be the wiser let alone have cause to fear. The reason is because it became causally disconnected from us the moment it crossed the causal horizon as you prefer me calling it and that GRB would never reach us. Now assuming that this Hubble volume is causally separate from what could be deem the universe-at-large or multiverse or what have you, you have an additional boundary condition to the equations of the Standard Model and QFT in general. There is no point in integrating all the way to infinity because you can never observe an infinite wavelength of anything. The QFT calculated vacuum energy density is correct with regards to the time just after the Big Bang or our past-singularity as I prefer to call it. My number which, you have correctly deduced can't actually be a constant, but is instead a function of time is simply a scaling factor. It represents the fraction of the vacuum energy density today to that of the big bang. I have decided to rename my function Z to avoid confusing it with entropy in my calculations. Z:= (H(t)*Tp)^2 or Z=H(t)^2*h*G/c^5 where h is indeed hbar or h/(2*Pi. This is equivalent to Z = (k/Tmax)^2 where k is a constant pretty close to one. So Z can be further approximated as Z~ 1/Tmax^2, where Tmax is the age of our causal cell in ticks of its fastest possible clock, the Planck interval. My equation stems from the fundamental nature of wave harmonics. Just like a the finite size of a pond define the fundamental harmonic and all possible harmonics of the waves in that pond, so too does the Hubble radius and Planck length govern the fundamental harmonic and all possible wavelengths of the vacuum energy in our causal cell. All, I've done is limit the calculated values of the vacuum energy density to those values which are actually observable i.e. those quantum harmonic oscillators that vibrate between once per age of the universe and once per Planck time. My number represents the square of the ratio of the maximum frequency possible in our causal cell to the minimum frequency possible. Or equivalently, the square of ratio of the shortest possible to the longest time interval of any observable phenomenon in our causal cell. It is dimensionless because of the way wave harmonics work although to be honest, I started out looking for a dimensionless constant of the appropriate magnitude. I wanted it to be a dimensionless constant so that it could be used as a patch for the QFT integrals because of the way constants and units propagate through integral signs. And so yes, I found it through dimensional analysis before I understood exactly what it meant. But I don't see how that matters. Stuart LaForge From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 01:29:27 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2018 17:29:27 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal Message-ID: Frans de Waal (who should be universally recognized on this list) spoke yesterday at San Diego State University. http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=77098 It was, as you would expect, an interesting talk. However, I was left with the impression that de Waal is just as mystified as the rest of us about the origin of religions. Not the recent state kinds, but where the human tendency to have religions came from in the first place. In some ways, it is trivial to answer. All characteristics of living things come from evolution. Evolution depends on selective reproductive success. So at some time in our evolutionary past, the trait for religion (or something linked with it) must have been valuable to our genes. At this point in the argument, I usually throw in an example such as capture-bonding. The direct selected effect is what we saw in the Patty Hearst kidnapping long ago and the more recent Elizabeth Smart case in SLC. The indirect effects of capture-bonding selection are things like battered spouse syndrome, fraternity hazing, and army basic training. It has been said that evolutionary psychology is a bunch of just-so stories. That's not really the case, it has sound underpinnings, but if you can't do a "just-so" evolutionary story for how some trait came to exist, then the chances of the trait having an evolutionary origin is not good. A fair number of theories have gone down that way. The tendency toward religions is not universal, it is around 50%. It's a bit hard to relate the religious tendency percentage to the number of people capable of capture-bonding, but my totally crude estimate is close to 90%. That would mean that the selective force for religious tendency has been selected to roughly the same degree as the tendency for people to display capture-bonding. We can put rough numbers on the selective force if we use the data from the Yanamano. There around 10% of the women per generation were captured from neighbors. So whatever droved the selection for religious tendencies, it was roughly the same as that that drove selection for capture-bonding With me so far? Keith From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 15:48:28 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 09:48:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So at some time in our evolutionary past, the trait for religion (or something linked with it) must have been valuable to our genes. keith I don't think you even have to go so far as to attribute anything to genetics. A baby starts learning that there are hierarchies in the world from the first. Later he learns that there are higher authorities than his parents, such as their parents or bosses. By simple projection, there can be figures higher than that and even quoted, such as "Well, Grandpa used to say........" What are the authorities for the highest figures in the tribe: gods. So acceptance of a god or gods is just the extension of acceptance of earthly authority. No need for a push from genetics. A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of the concept of the immortal soul. I am working on that one. bill w On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 7:29 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > Frans de Waal (who should be universally recognized on this list) > spoke yesterday at San Diego State University. > http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=77098 > > It was, as you would expect, an interesting talk. However, I was left > with the impression that de Waal is just as mystified as the rest of > us about the origin of religions. Not the recent state kinds, but > where the human tendency to have religions came from in the first > place. > > In some ways, it is trivial to answer. All characteristics of living > things come from evolution. Evolution depends on selective > reproductive success. So at some time in our evolutionary past, the > trait for religion (or something linked with it) must have been > valuable to our genes. > > At this point in the argument, I usually throw in an example such as > capture-bonding. The direct selected effect is what we saw in the > Patty Hearst kidnapping long ago and the more recent Elizabeth Smart > case in SLC. The indirect effects of capture-bonding selection are > things like battered spouse syndrome, fraternity hazing, and army > basic training. > > It has been said that evolutionary psychology is a bunch of just-so > stories. That's not really the case, it has sound underpinnings, but > if you can't do a "just-so" evolutionary story for how some trait came > to exist, then the chances of the trait having an evolutionary origin > is not good. A fair number of theories have gone down that way. > > The tendency toward religions is not universal, it is around 50%. > It's a bit hard to relate the religious tendency percentage to the > number of people capable of capture-bonding, but my totally crude > estimate is close to 90%. That would mean that the selective force > for religious tendency has been selected to roughly the same degree as > the tendency for people to display capture-bonding. We can put rough > numbers on the selective force if we use the data from the Yanamano. > There around 10% of the women per generation were captured from > neighbors. So whatever droved the selection for religious tendencies, > it was roughly the same as that that drove selection for > capture-bonding > > With me so far? > > 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 atymes at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 16:16:14 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 08:16:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Feb 22, 2018 7:51 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of the concept of the immortal soul. I am working on that one. "But I can't actually just stop existing. What happens to my memories, my identity, after I die? I have not experienced anything like them just going poof, so even if you say that's what happens, that doesn't make intuitive sense." In other words, a common cognitive dissonance when thinking about one's own death. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 17:34:04 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 11:34:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:16 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Feb 22, 2018 7:51 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of the concept of > the immortal soul. I am working on that one. > > > "But I can't actually just stop existing. What happens to my memories, my > identity, after I die? I have not experienced anything like them just > going poof, so even if you say that's what happens, that doesn't make > intuitive sense." > > In other words, a common cognitive dissonance when thinking about one's > own death. > ---- > ?Yes. Death, the great mystery. It's just impossible to think of going to sleep and not waking up. And primitive people extended this to plants - trees had souls, cattle had souls - others thought trees were gods and should be prayed to to excuse the act of cutting them down. In Pinker's book the more science/education a population knows/has, the more people leave religion. ? ?Science is a threat - the religious people are right. Natural causes trump metaphysical causes. bill w? > ? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 22 18:41:17 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 10:41:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <010201d3ac0c$b9f67c40$2de374c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 7:48 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] de Waal So at some time in our evolutionary past, the trait for religion (or something linked with it) must have been valuable to our genes. keith >? No need for a push from genetics. >?A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of the concept of the immortal soul. I am working on that one?bill w Eh, that is an easy one too: the kings and nobles needed some means of convincing the young men to go out and risk death on the field of battle. They offered them honor (which has its costs in a sense), and in some cases land (which is expensive.) But to offer them 72 virgins or an eternal afterlife was cheap. Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious people work together well as a team. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 19:19:47 2018 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:19:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3c56a6f5-ba79-6d98-5784-5a37a689cfd6@gmail.com> I think about religion being evolutionary useful in getting larger groups of people to co-operate.? If you have 10,000 or more people, all unified, following the same survival goals,? including taking resources and life? from "heathens", you will easily dominate any other smaller group of not us (i.e. heathens).? And the idea of a guy at the top of the hierarchy, directly linking to "God", and everyone else getting access to god, through him - you get some big hierarchies.? Hierarchies can never survive, when unforced from above, as most non religious people seem to think about religious leaders.? The only reason the tops of religious have powers, is because their followers give it to them.? The leader may be very tolerant to outside views and such, but the rank and file will hate, excommunicate, and destroy anyone questioning the top authority.? I'm sure this is because of our breading.? People that do that, naturally, able to form larger hierarchies, and better well defining who they are, and who the heathens are, the more survivable the large co-orating group. As far as beliefs in "immortal souls", spirits, ghosts and such, that is fairly easy to understand, given the way our brain represents knowledge of what we are, in our environment.? We have knowledge of the room around us, represented in our head.? At the center of the knowledge of the room, is knowledge of our body. When we stub out toe, the pain isn't in the toe, it is in our knowledge of the toe, in our brain.? When your foot is amputated, you still have knowledge of that foot, phantom limb pain and so on - hence people's beliefs in "spiritual body parts" that do not get amputated when your foot is. At the top of that knowledge of your body, is the knowledge of our head.? And inside your knowledge of your head, is your knowledge of you, as if you were a "spirit", "ghost" or whatever you want to think of that knowledge of you as being.? This knowledge is usually represented as a separate entity, reside within the head, and peering out the eyes, as if they were holes in the head, containing your spirit.? Your knowledge of your head, represents something in reality (your real head).? But your knowledge of your spirit/ghost, has no referent in reality.? And when you have an out of body experience, this is knowledge of your spirit, leaving your knowledge of your body, all in your head. Scientifically, we can observe/discover this knowledge of our spirit, with no referent in reality. Brent Allsop On 2/22/2018 10:34 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:16 AM, Adrian Tymes > wrote: > > On Feb 22, 2018 7:51 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" > > wrote: > > A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of > the concept of the immortal soul.? I am working on that one. > > > "But I can't actually just stop existing.? What happens to my > memories, my identity, after I die?? I have not experienced > anything like them just going poof, so even if you say that's what > happens, that doesn't make intuitive sense." > > In other words, a common cognitive dissonance when thinking about > one's own death. > ---- > > ?Yes. Death, the great mystery.? It's just impossible to think of > going to sleep and not waking up.? And primitive people extended this > to plants - trees had souls, cattle had souls - others thought trees > were gods and should be prayed to to excuse the act of cutting them down. > > In Pinker's book the more science/education a population knows/has, > the more people leave religion.? ? > ?Science is a threat - the religious people are right.? Natural causes > trump metaphysical causes. > > bill w? > > ? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Feb 22 20:04:36 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 14:04:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: <010201d3ac0c$b9f67c40$2de374c0$@rainier66.com> References: <010201d3ac0c$b9f67c40$2de374c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: But to offer them 72 virgins or an eternal afterlife was cheap. Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious people work together well as a team. spike But the concept of soul had to exist first, right? I don't understand the question. At one point I was a pretty religious person - Methodist; choir director, Sunday school teacher, member of the board. I don't see that we worked as a team any better or worse than anyone else, but as I said, I don't understand the question. As for Brent's post, I'll get to that, but first I have a question: is the breading flour or corn flakes, and does it have to be dipped in egg wash and buttermilk first? bill w On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 12:41 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2018 7:48 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] de Waal > > > > So at some time in our evolutionary past, the > trait for religion (or something linked with it) must have been > valuable to our genes. keith > > > > >? No need for a push from genetics. > > > > >?A far more difficult thing, in my opinion, is the origin of the concept > of the immortal soul. I am working on that one?bill w > > > > > > Eh, that is an easy one too: the kings and nobles needed some means of > convincing the young men to go out and risk death on the field of battle. > They offered them honor (which has its costs in a sense), and in some cases > land (which is expensive.) But to offer them 72 virgins or an eternal > afterlife was cheap. > > > > Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious > people work together well as a team. > > > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 22 20:06:27 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:06:27 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: <3c56a6f5-ba79-6d98-5784-5a37a689cfd6@gmail.com> References: <3c56a6f5-ba79-6d98-5784-5a37a689cfd6@gmail.com> Message-ID: <000f01d3ac18$9fb94c70$df2be550$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Brent Allsop Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 11:20 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] de Waal >? People that do that, naturally, able to form larger hierarchies, and better well defining who they are, and who the heathens are, the more survivable the large co-orating group.... Brent Allsop Ja. Even the most introverted among us may know the great joy and feels-so-rightness of being part of a big group acting in unison. My best example is a marching band. A hundred or more teenagers marching out in unison on the football field and blasting the wildly cheering crowd out of their socks is a feeling I can scarcely compare to any other. Think of religion as a kind of technology that gets people moving and acting in focused and disciplined unison. I know it leads to the controversial notion of group selection in evolution, but I have been a believer in group selection ever since I read Darwin?s description of it. That whole notion makes sense to me, how you can simultaneously have individual selection and group selection acting at the same time. Religions promote group selection. Brent, it?s why we have so many LDS people. We are happy about that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Feb 22 21:45:15 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 13:45:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: <010201d3ac0c$b9f67c40$2de374c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001801d3ac26$6d7f7280$487e5780$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] de Waal But to offer them 72 virgins or an eternal afterlife was cheap. Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious people work together well as a team. spike >?But the concept of soul had to exist first, right? bill w Hmmm, not necessarily. There are some modern forms of religion that do not have the concept of a soul or a spirit. Example: Seventh Day Adventist. The teaching is that in some future time, humans who faithfully donate money to the Seventh Day Adventists, plus a smattering of others, will be recreated out of atoms in a matter and energy world. After death and before that future even, they ?exist? as a memory (God?s) so one might say they have a dormant software phase, followed by a subsequent re-hardwared eternity. It is possible the old-timers went the same route: promising their soldiers there would be a literal physical resurrection, along with all those beautiful girls (you brave young men will be eternal Hugh Hefners (oh my, where?s my sword?)) Could be the whole notion of a soul was an after-thought, perhaps invented by the Essenes (notice the Old Testament doesn?t really have that soul business in there.) spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 01:01:23 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:01:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] quote on thinking Message-ID: I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else's; it's always what I've already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. Here's what William Deresiewicz says does work: It's only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn't turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 03:32:21 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:32:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] de Waal Message-ID: I didn't expect that kind of response. Is there agreement on capture-bonding being a strongly selected trait? Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 03:46:58 2018 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:46:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) Message-ID: Spike wrote: >Eh, that is an easy one too: the kings and nobles needed some means of convincing the young men to go out and risk death on the field of battle. They offered them honor (which has its costs in a sense), and in some cases land (which is expensive.) But to offer them 72 virgins or an eternal afterlife was cheap. Spike, the rules of EP is that for most purposes you have to consider the conditions of a 100,000 years ago, not 1000 years. Think primitive nomads. There are exceptions, such as the high selection of "capitalist values" that Dr. Gregory Clark reports on.but they are rare. > Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious people work together well as a team. That might be true. But before agriculture some 10,000 years ago, the only thing people worked together on was attacking or defending. Best wishes, Keith From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 14:40:40 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:40:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't have a response to this post, but want to make a general comment: if something is common is does not mean that there are genes for it. Most things are learned on a genetic base. Rats manipulate things with their front paws and learn mazes really well. These are things they do commonly in nature. But if you were to try to teach a rat to manipulate things, to learn something, with their back feet, I think you'd have big trouble. It's called prepared learning - meaning learning that comes easily because there is a strong genetic basis for it. Fear learning is the most easily created because fear is basic to survival. People easily learn to fear spiders but won't learn to fear door knobs with any kind of training. So just be on the alert for types of learning. Nothing is completely genetic, no matter how important it is for the creature. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Feb 23 15:05:08 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 07:05:08 -0800 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006101d3acb7$b23fe1c0$16bfa540$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace >?It's called prepared learning - meaning learning that comes easily because there is a strong genetic basis for it. ?. >?So just be on the alert for types of learning. Nothing is completely genetic, no matter how important it is for the creature.?bill w Cool, so prepared learning is related to, or is a special case of what Gould would call preadaptation. Excellent observation BillW. This leads to my strong contention that humans are preadapted to learn far more efficiently the lessons we map for their primary education in half the time we allot to it. This is a collective failure to fully take advantage of technologies currently available for teaching and learning. We are stuck to the notion of teaching students in the format of a single lecturer and a group of students learning a long-established curriculum, the factory model of education. Humans are preadapted to learn at twice the pace. The students are ready. The teachers and school systems are not. To the society which first figures out there is a better way to do education will go rewards beyond our imagination. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 15:34:25 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 09:34:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <006101d3acb7$b23fe1c0$16bfa540$@rainier66.com> References: <006101d3acb7$b23fe1c0$16bfa540$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Humans are preadapted to learn at twice the pace. The students are ready. The teachers and school systems are not. To the society which first figures out there is a better way to do education will go rewards beyond our imagination. spike I don't know about preadapted to twice the pace. But the main problem, as I see it, is that education research is done by educators. !!!!!! You cannot imagine the standards being as low as they are. (I also don't know about Gould's term) All the time spent running rats was not wasted, but not doing much more with humans was a big mistake for psychologists. But I think the cognitive learning people are going to do good things with education - maybe in my lifetime? bill w On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 9:05 AM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > > > > >?It's called prepared learning - meaning learning that comes easily > because there is a strong genetic basis for it. ?. > > > > >?So just be on the alert for types of learning. Nothing is completely > genetic, no matter how important it is for the creature.?bill w > > > > > > > > Cool, so prepared learning is related to, or is a special case of what > Gould would call preadaptation. > > > > Excellent observation BillW. This leads to my strong contention that > humans are preadapted to learn far more efficiently the lessons we map for > their primary education in half the time we allot to it. This is a > collective failure to fully take advantage of technologies currently > available for teaching and learning. We are stuck to the notion of > teaching students in the format of a single lecturer and a group of > students learning a long-established curriculum, the factory model of > education. > > > > Humans are preadapted to learn at twice the pace. The students are > ready. The teachers and school systems are not. > > > > To the society which first figures out there is a better way to do > education will go rewards beyond our imagination. > > > > 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 atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 16:00:07 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:00:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Feb 23, 2018 6:43 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: People easily learn to fear spiders but won't learn to fear door knobs with any kind of training. I can imagine Pavlovian conditioning. Hit someone with a doorknob often enough, and then when they next see you or anyone wield it - or, eventually, just see one in a door... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 19:02:26 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 13:02:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:00 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Feb 23, 2018 6:43 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > People easily learn to fear spiders but won't learn to fear door knobs > with any kind of training. > > > I can imagine Pavlovian conditioning. Hit someone with a doorknob often > enough, and then when they next see you or anyone wield it - or, > eventually, just see one in a door... > ? That would work with people, though if the guy were going through a hardware store he would not run screaming from the door knobs. In lab animals, the only one ethically usable, rekpeated shocks or whatever just do not work unless the animal has a prepared fear for that thing. bill w? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 deimtee at optusnet.com.au Fri Feb 23 19:59:22 2018 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (david) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 06:59:22 +1100 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: <000f01d3ac18$9fb94c70$df2be550$@rainier66.com> References: <3c56a6f5-ba79-6d98-5784-5a37a689cfd6@gmail.com> <000f01d3ac18$9fb94c70$df2be550$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20180224065922.5079c0af@JARRAH.home> On Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:06:27 -0800 wrote: > Think of religion as a kind of technology that gets people moving and acting > in focused and disciplined unison. I know it leads to the controversial > notion of group selection in evolution, but I have been a believer in group > selection ever since I read Darwin?s description of it. That whole notion > makes sense to me, how you can simultaneously have individual selection and > group selection acting at the same time. > > > spike > Spike, Have you ever read 'The Extended Phenotype' - Dawson's follow up to 'The Selfish Gene'? I found it the more enlightening read to be honest. Once you grok the concept of the unit of evolution being the replicating entity itself , the rest of The Selfish Gene' just followed naturally. 'The Extended Phenotype' extends that into areas that were not as obvious, such as modifying environments, group selection, and indirect selection. -David From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Feb 23 21:54:45 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:54:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells In-Reply-To: <5b86dcb855cc909aeadbec8366d6e9aa.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <5b86dcb855cc909aeadbec8366d6e9aa.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 1:45 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: ?*> ?* > *The QFT calculated vacuum energy density is correct with regards to the? > ?time just after the Big Bang or our past-singularity as I prefer to call? > ?it.* I think it would be difficult to find a single physicists who has much confidence in the ? ? QFT calculated vacuum energy density ? ? that produces a value 10^120 joules per kilometer of space when the observed value is about 1 joule ? per kilometer of space. This discrepancy should make us humble. ? ? The calculated value would be even larger, infinite in fact, if certain assumptions were not made, assumptions that don't have a scrap of experimental evidence of support, such as distances can't get smaller than 1.63*10^-35 meters and time can't get shorter than 5.39*10^-44 seconds. Our current theories produce nonsense at smaller distances and times than these, so does that mean there is nothing there? Maybe. But maybe not because we know our current theories are incomplete. What we need to figure this out is a quantum theory of gravity and we don't have one ? yet? . *?> ?My number which, you have correctly deduced can't actually be a? > ?constant, but is instead a function of time is simply a scaling factor.* ?If the scaling factor for deterring the amount of Dark Energy is S= ? H^2*h*G/c^5 ?then if should be changing, but the general consensus is that the Dark Energy density has remained constant since the big bang, although I admit that could change when more precise measurements are made. But there is another more serious problem, it seems to me there is circularity in your argument. You say the density of Dark Energy depends on your scaling factor, and the scaling factor depends on the Hubble "constant", and the Hubble "constant" depends on the rate of expansion of the universe, and the rate of expansion of the universe ? ?depends on the density of Dark Energy; but the density of Dark Energy depends on your scaling factor ?. And round and round we go.? > ?> ? > It is dimensionless because of the way wave harmonics work although to be > ? ? > honest, I started out looking for a dimensionless constant of the > ? ? > appropriate magnitude. ?That explains why c^5 ? ?showed up, something that doesn't come around very often in physics. But a good theory shouldn't be made to fit the facts it should emerge organically for physical and not just mathematical reasons, and it should predict things that haven't yet been observed. ? John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat Feb 24 05:11:24 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 21:11:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells Message-ID: <6d224629c539a2101d0cd3990d5596af.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > I think it would be difficult to find a single physicists who has much > confidence in the QFT calculated vacuum energy density that produces a > value 10^120 joules per kilometer of space when the observed value is > about 1 joule per kilometer of space. This discrepancy should make us > humble. The discrepancy is evidence that we live in a causally closed aquarium. An aquarium that's 28 billion light years across is none-the-less an aquarium. That's pretty humbling, at least in my opinion. We like to tell our kids the possibilities are endless when in reality, they are not. Not even in theory. ? ? > The calculated value would be even larger, infinite in fact, if certain > assumptions were not made, assumptions that don't have a scrap of > experimental evidence of support, such as distances can't get smaller than > 1.63*10^-35 meters and time can't get shorter than 5.39*10^-44 seconds. Lol. Last time we had *this* discussion, it was you who was trying to convince me that space-time was pixelated while I was arguing for the continuum. Ironic eh? > Our current theories produce nonsense at smaller distances and times than > these, so does that mean there is nothing there? Maybe. But maybe not > because we know our current theories are incomplete. What we need to > figure this out is a quantum theory of gravity and we don't have one ?> yet. Quantum gravity is really hard. The super-long wavelength of gravitational waves observed by LIGO make quantum mechanics predict gigantic particles for gravity that span light years across but have little to no mass. At least if you use the Planck constant. It could be that gravity is quantitized to a different constant, but I don't know what that constant might be. Although a case could be made that a causal cell behaves as a single particle in some respects. So maybe my theory is a step in the right direction. >> ?My number which, you have correctly deduced can't actually be a? >> ?constant, but is instead a function of time is simply a scaling factor.* ?> If the scaling factor for [determining] the amount of Dark Energy is > S= ?H^2*h*G/c^5 then it should be changing, but the general consensus is > that the Dark Energy density has remained constant since the big bang, > although I admit that could change when more precise measurements are > made. But Dark Energy supposedly caused inflation. If the Dark Energy density has been constant over time, why did inflation ever end? My equation predicts it to be constant over space, but changing over time. > But there is another more serious problem, it seems to me there is > circularity in your argument. You say the density of Dark Energy depends > on your scaling factor, and the scaling factor depends on the Hubble > "constant", and the Hubble "constant" depends on the rate of expansion of > the universe, and the rate of expansion of the universe? ?depends on the > density of Dark Energy; but the density of Dark Energy depends on your > scaling factor?. And round and round we go.? The same criticism could be made of Maxwell's Theory of Electromagnetism. A changing electric field generates a changing magnetic field that creates a changing electric field that creates a changing magnetic field. And round and round we go. The key is that both theories are about time-dependent phenomena that manifest as waves and waves and circles are mathematically related. ? >> It is dimensionless because of the way wave harmonics work although to be >> honest, I started out looking for a dimensionless constant of the >> appropriate magnitude. > That explains why c^5 ??showed up, something that doesn't come around very > often in physics. But a good theory shouldn't be made to fit the facts it > should emerge organically for physical and not just mathematical reasons, > and it should predict things that haven't yet been observed. A theory that predicts things that haven't yet been observed is worthless if it doesn't also predict the known facts. Which is why SR and QM both predict Newtonian physics at the appropriate scales and physical conditions. I think they call that the correspondence principle or something. Look, John, I am just an amateur no longer affiliated with any university and my background is in microbiology not physics. I am kind of out of my depth here. So what would you suggest I do to improve my theory? What do you think I should do with it? Stuart LaForge From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Feb 24 15:59:00 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 10:59:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Keith Henson wrote: * > was left with the impression that de Waal is just as mystified as the rest of us about the origin of religions. * Children are born knowing nothing so there would be an obvious evolutionary advantage if they tended to believe what their parents or authority figures told them. Most people don't have hallucinations but some do and they will tell children about them and they will tend to believe that its true, particularly if the hallucination is comforting. It is obviously an evolutionary advantage to fear death but we know someday we must face it and that thought is unpleasant, but even if you only half believe there is life after death that would make you feel a little less unhappy. And it wouldn't take long for some to figure out this is a way to gain control over other people. If I can convince you that only I am in contact with the person (God) who can give you this life after death then you will do what I tell you to do. The more people who believe what I say the more powerful I become. And the best way to get people to believe what I say is to teach them it when they are very young, so I set up religious schools. And if I wish to remain in power I would need to violently persecute anybody pushing a hallucination different from the hallucination I'm pushing. But all this stems from the simple fact that genes that tend to make children believe what authority figures tell them propagate through the gene pool faster than genes that don?t. If this theory is correct then we would expect to find a very strong correlation between 2 things that at first sight seem completely unrelated, the particulars of religious belief and geography. And that is exactly what we do see. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Feb 24 16:50:28 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 10:50:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: genes that tend to make children believe what authority figures tell them propagate through the gene pool faster than genes that don?t. john John - let me ask you a personal question: have you had any children? Have you heard of the terrible twos? Teenage rebellion? This reminds me of John Watson and his famous boast about getting 30 children at random and making them into anything he wanted. Obedience in youth is often by force - eat or go hungry - make up your bed or no TV, and so on. I also wonder what the statistics are about children growing up and following their parents' religion and other beliefs. Conformity is at an extreme in the teens, but not to parents' wishes!! Read "No Two Alike" - two sisters of a famous psychologist who were raised together by her and could not have been more different. Sometimes we look up on people as sheep, and sometimes they act that way. But often there is more pushback there than you think. bill w On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 9:59 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Keith Henson > wrote: > > * > was left with the impression that de Waal is just as mystified as the > rest of us about the origin of religions. * > Children are born knowing nothing so there would be an obvious > evolutionary advantage if they tended to believe what their parents or > authority figures told them. Most people don't have hallucinations but some > do and they will tell children about them and they will tend to believe > that its true, particularly if the hallucination is comforting. It is > obviously an evolutionary advantage to fear death but we know someday we > must face it and that thought is unpleasant, but even if you only half > believe there is life after death that would make you feel a little less > unhappy. > > And it wouldn't take long for some to figure out this is a way to gain > control over other people. If I can convince you that only I am in contact > with the person (God) who can give you this life after death then you will > do what I tell you to do. The more people who believe what I say the more > powerful I become. And the best way to get people to believe what I say is > to teach them it when they are very young, so I set up religious schools. > And if I wish to remain in power I would need to violently persecute > anybody pushing a hallucination different from the hallucination I'm > pushing. > > But all this stems from the simple fact that genes that tend to make > children believe what authority figures tell them propagate through the > gene pool faster than genes that don?t. If this theory is correct then we > would expect to find a very strong correlation between 2 things that at > first sight seem completely unrelated, the particulars of religious belief > and geography. And that is exactly what we do see. > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Feb 25 18:21:09 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2018 13:21:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dark Energy and Causal Cells In-Reply-To: <6d224629c539a2101d0cd3990d5596af.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <6d224629c539a2101d0cd3990d5596af.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 12:11 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > > The calculated value would be even larger, infinite in fact, if >> certain assumptions were not made, assumptions that don't have a scrap of >> experimental evidence of support, such as distances can't get smaller than >> 1.63*10^-35 meters and time can't get shorter than 5.39*10^-44 seconds. > > > *> Lol. Last time we had *this* discussion, it was you who was trying to > convince me that space-time was pixelated while I was arguing for the > continuum. Ironic eh?* Something has to be quantized for a quantum theory of gravity, but it might not be space or time that is, maybe we'll find something more fundamental than either of this things that is quantized. Or maybe unlike just about everything else in nature gravity just isn't quantized, maybe the and Real Numbers really are real and gravity makes use of them, maybe that's why gravity seems so different from the other fundamental forces; but even if that is the case General Relativity would still need to be supplemented to explain what's going on at the center of a Black Hole. *> Dark Energy supposedly caused inflation.* Nobody knows if Dark Energy caused inflation or if they are unrelated phenomenon, its true that they both cause space to expand but whatever caused inflation was astronomically more powerful than Dark Energy. During inflation he expansion was exponential which means it had a fixed doubling time, in this case every 10^-37 seconds the diameter of the universe doubled. In 10^-35 seconds it doubled a hundred times and it probably continued doubling for much longer than 10^-35 seconds. Dark Energy, as far as we know, can?t do anything like that. *> why did inflation ever end?* That is a very good question. According to Andrei Linde's Eternal Inflation idea inflation never did end. Alan Guth, the inventor of inflation, postulated an inflation field that decayed away in a process somewhat analogous to radioactive half life, and after the decay the universe expanded at a much much much more leisurely pace. But then Linde proved that for Guth's idea to work the inflation field had to expand faster than it decayed, Linde called it "Eternal Inflation". Linde showed that for every volume in which the inflation field decays away 2 other volumes don't decay. So one universe becomes 3, the field decays in one universe but not in the other 2, then both of those two universes splits in 3 again and the inflation field decays away in two of them but doesn't decay in the other 4. And it goes on like this forever creating a multiverse. >> it seems to me there is circularity in your argument. > > > *> The same criticism could be made of Maxwell's Theory of > Electromagnetism.A changing electric field generates a changing magnetic > field that creates a changing electric field that creates a changing > magnetic field. And round and round we go.* Maxwell said a changing electrical field causes a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field creates a electric field, and if the rate of change of the progenitor field is accelerating the resulting field will be changing. And so you get a wave. There is nothing circular in that reasoning. * > The key is that both theories are about time-dependent phenomena that > manifest as waves and waves and circles are mathematically related.* Maxwell's wave equation only has the time variable on one side, it has space on the other side. Put in the time on one side and it will give you the electric and magnetic field at any point in space on the other side; but you have the time variable on both sides because both the scaling factor and the Hubble "constant" are both functions of time. You say S(t)= H (t)^2*h*G/c^5 but H(t) depends on the acceleration of the universe, which depends on the Dark Energy density, which depends on the scaling factor S(t). So H(t) = S(t) *C1 where C1 is some constant, your theory does not tell us what C1 is and it can only be obtained by observation. So S(t)= [S(t)*C1]^2*h/c^5, but C1^2*h/c^5 is also a constant , lets call it C2. Now you get: S(t)= [S(t) ]^2*C2 The only way that could be true would be if S(t)=0 for all values of t, but that doesn?t work because we know from observation the universe is accelerating and the Dark Energy density is not zero. *> Look, John, I am just an amateur no longer affiliated with any > university and my background is in microbiology not physics. I am kind of > out of my depth here. So what would you suggest I do to improve my theory? > What do you think I should do with it?* Just keep at it, who knows maybe you'll find something others have missed, sometimes a ?n? amateur can strike gold ?,? and even it you don't you'll have learned a lot in the attempt. By the way, I don't know if it means anything but I still think its sorta neat that you found a dimensionless number of such magnitude. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Feb 26 03:12:53 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2018 22:12:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 11:50 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > *?> ?Have you heard of the terrible twos?* Yes, two years olds have been known to vigorously debate with their parents about the optimal number of cookies to receive or when bedtime is, but I am more interested in the political and religious views of 22 years olds than two year olds and how they compare to that of their parents. There is a reason there are very few Mormon children in Saudi Arabia, its because there are very few Mormon adults in Saudi Arabia. > *>Teenage rebellion?* Same story, they'll rebel against the small stuff but they almost always end up teaching their children the same old time religion their parents taught them in infancy. ? > *> I also wonder what the statistics are about children growing up and > following their parents' religion and other beliefs. * Take a look at this color map of world religions:? http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Wikipedia-World-Religion-Map-2.png ?Notice the blocks of solid color, why do you suppose that is? If children didn't almost always follow the religious views of their parents? the color a individual pixel has should be random and have no relation to nearby pixel, and instead of seeing solid blocks of color it would all blend into white. But that's not what we see. However I admit their are exceptions; I didn't end up with the religious beliefs of either of my parents, my mother was a Catholic and my father was a agnostic but I am a atheist. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Feb 26 15:12:42 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2018 09:12:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: genes that tend to make children believe what authority figures tell them propagate through the gene pool faster than genes that don?t. john I grant you the facts you cite, but you have not come close to proving the statement above. Pressure to stay with the community, the family, is great. I am sure you can agree that there are many who go to some church who don't believe a word of it, but don't want to act like a rebel or unbeliever. That includes the parents as well, of course. All you have to posit is a tendency to stay within a group, and that is a certainty. You don't have to posit a genetic tendency to believe what authorities are saying to explain the facts. It could easily be environmental. Ockham. There is some resistance to persuasion in all of us - contrarianism. We don't like to feel manipulated. What happens when you present conflicting views to a person? Most (?) people encounter in their lives religions and beliefs different from their own - what they were taught. The outcome of this is often that the person is swayed, especially if his training can be be characterized as a one sided communication. Presenting the other side(s) often knocks the person for a loop - he has no defense or counterarguments. This is usually the case in 'instant' conversions. If a person has been raised with numerous sides presented, he is often immune to any attempt to change him unless arguments are presented that are unfamiliar. If your position is that it is genetic, then you have a hard time explaining the world-wide decline in church attendance. bill w On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 9:12 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 11:50 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > >> *?> ?Have you heard of the terrible twos?* > > > Yes, two years olds have been known to vigorously debate with their > parents about the optimal number of cookies to receive or when bedtime is, > but I am more interested in the political and religious views of 22 years > olds than two year olds > and how they compare to that of their parents. There is a reason there are > very few Mormon children in Saudi Arabia, its because there are very few > Mormon adults in Saudi Arabia. > > >> *>Teenage rebellion?* > > > Same story, they'll rebel against the small stuff but they almost always > end up teaching their children the same old time religion their parents > taught them in infancy. ? > > >> *> I also wonder what the statistics are about children growing up and >> following their parents' religion and other beliefs. * > > > Take a look at this color map of world religions:? > > http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ > Wikipedia-World-Religion-Map-2.png > > > ?Notice the blocks of solid color, why do you suppose that is? If children > didn't almost always follow the religious views of their parents? the color > a individual pixel has should be random and have no relation to nearby > pixel, and instead of seeing solid blocks of color it would all blend into > white. But that's not what we see. > > However I admit their are exceptions; I didn't end up with the religious > beliefs of either of my parents, my mother was a Catholic and my father was > a agnostic but I am a atheist. > > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Feb 27 01:57:15 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2018 20:57:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 10:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > ?>* ?* > *I am sure you can agree that there are many who go to some church who > don't believe a word of it, but don't want to act like a rebel or > unbeliever. * > They go to church but don't believe a word of it? Not a word? I actually don't agree, I think that's pretty rare. And those that go to mosque but don't believe a word of what the Islamic franchise is pushing are even more rare. You don't fly an airliner into a skyscraper unless you strongly believe you will get 77 virgins in the afterlife for doing so. Why did they believe that was true? Because their mommy and daddy told them it was true.And? 86% of Muslims living in Egypt believe those leaving Islam should receive the death penalty, 79% in Afghanistan and 76% in Pakistan believe the same thing. Why do they think that would be a good idea? Because their mommy and daddy told them it was a good idea. ?> ? > *You don't have to posit a genetic tendency to believe what authorities > are saying to explain the facts. It could easily be environmental. * > ? It's both. Genes predispose the young to believe what the adults in their environment tell them, so if they are told idiotic things in childhood they will tend to believe idiot things in adulthood. ?>? > *Ockham.* Ockham liked simplicity and our genes are far simpler than our environment; you could put the entire human genome on a CD, and that format came out about 35 years ago. > ?> ? > *There is some resistance to persuasion in all of us - contrarianism. We > don't like to feel manipulated.* > True, and I'm sure none of the 911 hijackers felt manipulated when they flew airliners into skyscrapers, if they had they wouldn't have done it. ? > ?>* ?* > *What happens when you present conflicting views to a person? * > ?That depends on how old they are, with each passing year conflicting view ?s? ?will have less impact. And people never get religious views through logic so they can not be disabused of them through logic. *?> ?Presenting the other side(s) often knocks the person for a loop - he > has no defense or counterarguments.* But he ALWAYS has a ironclad counterargument; "logic be damned, the reveled WORD OF GOD says I'm right and you're wrong and that's that". > ?> ? > If your position is that it is genetic, then you have a hard time > explaining the world-wide decline in church attendance. > I'm not saying there is a gene for religion, I'm saying there is a gene that predisposes the young to believe what adults tell them. If adults don't push religion onto their kids then they probably won't grow up to be religious nuts. And church attendance may be in decline, at least in Europe, but I don't think mosque attendance is in decline John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Feb 27 16:49:18 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 10:49:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes, it's ALWAYS both genetics and environment. That should go without saying. But your claim is much more specific - obey adults. The one becomes an adult, you say, and just continue what your parents taught you. I still say that's like Watson's claim - very wishful thinking. Society is changing - read the Pinker book and see just how many and how much and I think you will tend to agree with me more. Given all the ravings Middle East nonJews see, it is amazing that terrorists number in the dozens rather than the millions - isn't it? And so you are stereotyping badly - taking a few thousand (depending on if you count Boko Haram and such) terrorists and making claims about the rest of the billion or so followers. Penalties for nonobservance in Islam are great. In other religions, small (that I know of - strange, small sects led by one person omitted). Conformity is the key to getting along in Islam. I saw this a few years ago and cannot find it, but - 60% or higher Iranians do NOT favor ruling a country by a religious figure. Hardly a unanimity of opinion supporting their religion. How much more would it be if that were an open society? Genes simple? Are you crazy? Do you know (of course you do - you can do the math) how many interactions are possible among 20k genes, given that some action can result from one gene, or two, or just about any number? I'd say figuring out genetics will take a thousand years or more. And we are just learning about the role of the gut microbes, which can change our genes, and of the glial cells and their influence over the neurons, about which we are just now learning. We agree in principle - I just think you are taking it more than a bit too far into the conformity region. I would like to see the stats on churchgoers who don't believe much of it, or are questioning the very basis of their own religion, like those who don't believe in the Original Sin - which is the *very basis of Christianity. * You have to be saved. From what? Original sin. No Original sin? No need to be saved. No need to go to a church that preaches that. I can't find a poll on Original Sin, but lot of what I did read shows that many people think God is good and would not send babies to Hell for just being a child of Adam. I just think there is a lot less conformity, thus less rigid following of parents and other authorities preachings. bill w On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 7:57 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 10:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > >> ?>* ?* >> *I am sure you can agree that there are many who go to some church who >> don't believe a word of it, but don't want to act like a rebel or >> unbeliever. * >> > > They go to church but don't believe a word of it? Not a word? I actually > don't agree, I think that's pretty rare. And those that go to mosque but > don't believe a word of what the Islamic franchise is pushing are even more > rare. You don't fly an airliner into a skyscraper unless you strongly > believe you will get 77 virgins in the afterlife for doing so. Why did they > believe that was true? Because their mommy and daddy told them it was > true.And? 86% of Muslims living in Egypt believe those leaving Islam should > receive the death penalty, 79% in Afghanistan and 76% in Pakistan believe > the same thing. Why do they think that would be a good idea? Because their > mommy and daddy told them it was a good idea. > > ?> ? >> *You don't have to posit a genetic tendency to believe what authorities >> are saying to explain the facts. It could easily be environmental. * >> > > ? > It's both. Genes predispose the young to believe what the adults in their > environment tell them, so if they are told idiotic things in childhood they > will tend to believe idiot things in adulthood. > > ?>? >> *Ockham.* > > > Ockham liked simplicity and our genes are far simpler than our > environment; you could put the entire human genome on a CD, and that format > came out about 35 years ago. > > >> ?> ? >> *There is some resistance to persuasion in all of us - contrarianism. We >> don't like to feel manipulated.* >> > > True, and I'm sure none of the 911 hijackers felt manipulated when they > flew airliners into skyscrapers, if they had they wouldn't have done it. > ? > >> ?>* ?* >> *What happens when you present conflicting views to a person? * >> > > ?That depends on how old they are, with each passing year > conflicting view > ?s? > ?will have less impact. And people never get religious views through > logic so they can not be disabused of them through logic. > > *?> ?Presenting the other side(s) often knocks the person for a loop - he >> has no defense or counterarguments.* > > > But he ALWAYS has a ironclad counterargument; "logic be damned, the > reveled WORD OF GOD says I'm right and you're wrong and that's that". > > >> ?> ? >> If your position is that it is genetic, then you have a hard time >> explaining the world-wide decline in church attendance. >> > > I'm not saying there is a gene for religion, I'm saying there is a gene > that predisposes the young to believe what adults tell them. If adults > don't push religion onto their kids then they probably won't grow up to be > religious nuts. And church attendance may be in decline, at least in > Europe, but I don't think mosque attendance is in decline > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Feb 28 00:22:01 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 18:22:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Most Iranians are not religious Message-ID: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-most-Iranians-are-non-believers-Islam-being-their-national-religion-and-are-prejudiced-against-Arabs Interesting site too. These are not hard data, but personal observations. Still, it might surprise most Americans to see these opinions on religion or lack thereof. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Feb 28 16:42:36 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 11:42:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> *?* > *Yes, it's ALWAYS both genetics and environment. That should go without > saying. But your claim is much more specific - obey adults. * > Not a gene to obey adults, a gene to believe what adults say is true, or at least probably true. It's not difficult to see why there would be evolutionary pressure for such a gene to develop, or why a gene with the opposite tendency would be lethal. And if the devout didn't think the very young didn't have such a tendency they would not place such emphasis on having religious grade schools and even religious kindergarten. Yes sometimes children rebel but if such actions wasn't rare (compared with the times they didn't rebel) it wouldn't be revolutionary. ?> ? > Society is changing > ?A gene that predisposes a child to believe what adults tell them will slow down the rate of social change but it will not slow down the rate of technological change, in fact technology itself would not exist without it. > ?> ? > read the Pinker book > I've read all of Pinker's books except for his newest "Enlightenment Now", and I'll get around to that before long. > ?>* ?* > *you are stereotyping badly - taking a few thousand (depending on if you > count Boko Haram and such) terrorists and making claims about the rest of > the billion or so followers.* > Stereotyping? I provided some hard data in my last post, you didn't. I'll give you some more, according to Pew research almost all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) want barbaric sharia law imposed, and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) and Egypt (74%) . Even in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, 62% of Muslims in that city think the country should be ruled by sharia law. These statistics may not be politically correct but facts are facts and there is something rotten in the heart of Islam . There is one bright spot, although 22% of Egyptians have a favorable opinion of Osama bin Laden that is better than what it was in 2007, back then it was 27%. ?>* ?* > *Penalties for nonobservance in Islam are great.* > ?True, thanks to good old sharia law. ? ?>* ?* > *Genes simple?* > ?Compared with the environment very simple indeed.? > ?>* ?* > *Do you know (of course you do - you can do the math) how many > interactions are possible among 20k genes,* > I know it would take far FAR *FAR* more than 20,000 variables to define the environment. > > ?>* ?* > * Are you crazy? * I don't think so, but then crazy people usually don't. Perhaps that's probably a question best left to others to decide. ? ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Feb 28 17:15:46 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 12:15:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can work be extracted from the expansion of the universe? Message-ID: For years physicists debated if gravitational waves were real, some said they contained no energy and so were just a mathematical artifact of no physical significance. But then in 1957 Richard Feynman came up with a thought experiment that showed gravitational waves must contain energy and thus must have real physical effects, the sticky bead argument. I could be wrong but it sure seems to me it could also show that work can be extracted from the expansion of the universe. Feynman said place two beads on a sticky rigid rod, the beads can slide freely but there is a small amount of friction between the beads and the rod. If the rod is placed transversely to the direction of propagation of the gravitational wave then atomic forces will hold the length of the rod fixed, or almost fixed, but the proper distance between the two beads would be free to oscillate. So the beads would have to rub against the rod, and the friction from that would produce heat, and with heat you could run a steam engine and get work out of it. Why couldn?t the same argument also be used to show you could get work out of the expansion of the universe? We already know that if local forces are strong enough they can overcome the general expansion and acceleration of the universe, that?s why the Andromeda galaxy is approaching the Milky Way, the 2 galaxies are so close that the attraction is stronger than the repulsion caused by the expansion of the universe. The atomic forces within the rod should keep its length the same or almost the same just as it did for gravitational waves, but the distance between the beads should increase due to the expansion of the universe and if there is friction I don?t see how heat could be avoided, but maybe I?m missing something, if so I hope somebody can point it out. I?ve already asked several people and most say no, you can?t get any work out but they can?t find and error in the thought experiment. I think it would work theoretically, it would be ridiculously impractical to do now but perhaps not in the very distant future if the acceleration of the universe is itself accelerating and we?re heading for the Big Rip. Most think it will never happen but it depends on the ratio between the dark energy pressure and its energy density. Physicist Robert R. Caldwell points out that if this ratio is even slightly less than ?1 then the Big Rip will happen, its just a matter of when. For example, if the ratio is ?1.5 then the Big Rip will happen in 22 billion years, the Milky Way would be ripped apart 60 million years before the Big Rip, the solar system would be ripped apart 3 months before the Big Rip, in the last 2 or 3 minutes stars and planets would be ripped apart and in the last few seconds even atoms would come apart. And then protons and neutrons would be ripped into quarks. Most think that would mean the end of any hope for a immortal life but maybe not, subjective immortality might still be possible. In fact for immortality to happen the Big Rip may be necessary. By immortality I mean the ability to have an infinite number of new thoughts, and that would require a infinite number of calculations, and that would require a infinite amount of work. It might be possible to get that much energy before the Big Rip. Your computer would continually get smaller as it was getting pulled apart but the energy available to run what was still intact would keep getting larger because the heat from friction would keep getting hotter and the cold sink of the external universe would keep getting colder increasing the efficiency of the heat engine. If the increase in speed of the remaining computer more than compensated for the decrease in the number of processors then physical law may allow for a infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations to be made between now and The Big Rip. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Feb 28 18:08:48 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 12:08:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: john clark - if the devout didn't think the very young didn't have such a tendency they would not place such emphasis on having religious grade schools and even religious kindergarten. --- I'd say that that was a good argument for the opposite: believing that environment had to install the values. It's indoctrination, of course, or the attempt at such, and I'll bet it doesnt' work very well. People are not sheep. I fail to see how all those statistics you gave about the Muslims support your case for genetics. You don't see nearly that kind of unanimity among followers of other religions. I admit Iran is a special case of a secular society in a theocracy. Keep in mind that in very homogeneous societies there is a lot of pressure to say or do the expected thing. That produces a response set in people who then don't tell you what they think; they tell you what is popular or socially accepted. This is a big problem in surveys: have women become much more open about sex, or have they just changed their survey responses as a function of greater acceptance of women's sex by society? Frustrating to the social scientist. You could be right. I don't even doubt that it is possible. I just say that you don't need genes here except for those involved in learning, esp. social learning - who tells who what to do is noticed by tots and up. The Kohlberg moral development level here in pre-school is "If I get rewarded it must be good. If I get punished it must be bad." That's all until several years later. It is to be noted that in Kohlberg's scheme, most adults don't get to the level of 5 or 6 and thus view all rules and laws as sort of optional. So, to contradict myself, some of us are a bit ovine. Some of those statistics are fooling us into thinking that something will take place if enough people are for it. Look at us: most of us favor gun control. Congress, no. Plenty of other differences between what people say they want and what the lawmakers will do. Even in Egypt. Leaders in Egypt are terrified of Islam and keep it out as much as they can, like the Muslim Brotherhood. bill w On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 10:42 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > ?> *?* >> *Yes, it's ALWAYS both genetics and environment. That should go without >> saying. But your claim is much more specific - obey adults. * >> > > Not a gene to obey adults, a gene to believe what adults say is true, or > at least probably true. It's not difficult to see why there would be > evolutionary pressure for such a gene to develop, or why a gene with the > opposite tendency would be lethal. And if the devout didn't think the very > young didn't have such a tendency they would not place such emphasis on > having religious grade schools and even religious kindergarten. Yes > sometimes children rebel but if such actions wasn't rare (compared with the > times they didn't rebel) it wouldn't be revolutionary. > > ?> ? >> Society is changing >> > > ?A gene that predisposes a child to believe what adults tell them will > slow down the rate of social change but it will not slow down the rate of > technological change, in fact technology itself would not exist without it. > > > >> ?> ? >> read the Pinker book >> > > I've read all of Pinker's books except for his newest "Enlightenment Now", > and I'll get around to that before long. > > >> ?>* ?* >> *you are stereotyping badly - taking a few thousand (depending on if you >> count Boko Haram and such) terrorists and making claims about the rest of >> the billion or so followers.* >> > > Stereotyping? I provided some hard data in my last post, you didn't. I'll > give you some more, according to Pew research almost all Muslims in > Afghanistan (99%) want barbaric sharia law imposed, and most in Iraq (91%) > and Pakistan (84%) and Egypt (74%) . Even in Ottawa, the capital of > Canada, 62% of Muslims in that city think the country should be ruled > by sharia law. These statistics may not be politically correct but facts > are facts and there is something rotten in the heart of Islam . There is > one bright spot, although 22% of Egyptians have a favorable opinion of > Osama bin Laden that is better than what it was in 2007, back then it was > 27%. > > ?>* ?* >> *Penalties for nonobservance in Islam are great.* >> > > ?True, thanks to good old sharia law. ? > > > ?>* ?* >> *Genes simple?* >> > > ?Compared with the environment very simple indeed.? > > >> ?>* ?* >> *Do you know (of course you do - you can do the math) how many >> interactions are possible among 20k genes,* >> > > I know it would take far FAR *FAR* more than 20,000 variables to define > the environment. > > >> >> ?>* ?* >> * Are you crazy? * > > I don't think so, but then crazy people usually don't. Perhaps that's > probably a question best left to others to decide. > > ? ? > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Feb 28 22:07:10 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 17:07:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 1:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?>>? >> ? >> if the devout didn't think the very young didn't have such a tendency >> they would not place such emphasis on having religious grade schools and >> even religious kindergarten. > > > ?>* ?* > *I'd say that that was a good argument for the opposite: believing that > environment had to install the values. * > I'd say the environment had to install the values? too, and the most important part of that environment is what adults say. And what adults say now depends on what their mommy and daddy ?said to them many years before. > *?> ?and I'll bet it doesnt' work very well.* *WHAT?!* If indoctrinating the young didn't work extraordinarily well how on earth could Christianity have survived for 2000 years when it doesn't make one particle of sense? Think about it, God is homicidally angry with the entire human race because one man was naughty and ate an apple when told not to, and even though He is omnipotent He is unable to forgive them unless they torture His son, who He loves very much, to death. Only after they've finished with the butchery and His son has died in agony can the atrocity of eating the apple be forgiven > *?> ?I fail to see how all those statistics you gave about the Muslims > support your case for genetics. * > ?But it does support my case that I wasn't ? ?stereotyping Muslims as you claimed I was, ? ?>? > *People are not sheep.* ?The two things are not identical but there are certainly similarities .? > *?> ?you don't need genes here except for those involved in learning, esp. > social learning - who tells who what to do is noticed by tots and up. * > If the tots didn't believe that what they were told was true there would be nothing to learn socially. ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Mon Feb 26 19:39:30 2018 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:39:30 -0000 Subject: [ExI] de Waal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5A945A9E.8090408@zaiboc.net> wrote: "Somewhere in this discussion I am looking for the notion that religious people work together well as a team" Haha, only with other members of the same sect of the same religion. In general, it seems that religion is one of the most divisive things we've invented. Ben Zaiboc