[ExI] It stuff, only distantly related to billw's post: RE: : a light in the wilderness

Mon Oct 7 15:30:51 UTC 2019

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From: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com <mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com> >
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> >

>…Where is the writing of today that can compare to this?  How modern are these thoughts?  Who does it make you think of?

>…'The outlines came because a million voices called for them.  Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions of year… would be left precariously based upon a technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology."

>…Written nearly one hundred years ago by:  Will Durant - from the introduction to the second edition of The Story of Philosophy

The recent go-around with our list, the arcane details of modern information technology, really got me to pondering this.  Durant’s essay carries a kind of unspoken expectation or remembrance of a time when a really smart person with plenty of leisure could master most of humanity’s disciplines.  This slipped away, and is still going, for our society with its multiple (and quickly multiplying) subsets of knowledge forces us to suck.  We all must suck at most areas of human knowledge.  My own well-known area is IT.  I suck at IT.  I am so dumb at that, I would be embarrassed if I were not so dumb in that to know the depth, the height and breadth of my vast ignorance.

But I flatly refuse to study that topic, for it appears to me a perishable skill.  I was an assistant sys-admin on a mainframe in college (tragically many decades ago) but none of that knowledge is applicable today.  On the other hand, at that same time I was studying differential equations and control theory, none of which is changed.  Much of control theory is digital now, but the underlying principles are all the same.

I choose to focus my limited learning ability on that which is with us forever, which is why I am so turned on by all the cool new stuff we are learning from LIGO and the other gravity telescopes (oh what a glorious time to be alive for those of us who are into that kinda thing.)  Result: if you need someone to fix your satellite guidance system, call me.  If you need someone to fix your internet service, call… David McFadzean.

Remember that guy?  He was at Extro 4 or 5 as I recall, came over to my house for a big blowout party afterwards, we had a blast.  Hell of a good lad, one of the ones from back in the 90s.  He was the one who fixed whatever that problems was (no point in trying to explain it to me (my simplified view is that I paid for the domain and it worked for a few weeks then conked again (then David fixed it (now we are alive again.))))  

If we are nice to him, he may guide us to a better IT solution.  In the meantime, if we have any actual IT hipsters willing to work with him, do let him know.  I included him on the cc.  Do jump on the opportunity to be nice to him and invite him to find a way we can keep this an email-only list (which has its advantages) but somehow make it reliable.  If we need to register Extropy on another whatever one does that on, I am willing to pay for it (for Max has honored me to be the temporary custodian of Extropy until he is free (no not from prison dammit (free from more pressing obligations at Alcor (we want a good man to focus on that while we… (David and the IT hipsters) work this other (hey now there’s a name for a group: David and the IT Hipsters (it’s even better than LIGO and the Gravity Telescopes.)))))))

spike

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